By Stuart Littlewood in London, UK
The abysmal performance of western TV and radio
interviewers when dealing with issues surrounding
Israel is not only embarrassing but a blot on the
escutcheon of journalism.
Have the nation’s truth-seekers fallen under some
wicked spell? Are their researchers on strike? Did
somebody nobble the programme editors?
While we wait with mounting frustration for our
broadcasters to get their act together, here are 20
simple questions the BBC and others seem anxious not
to ask......
On Rockets and Sieges (1) The numbers of home-made Qassam rockets launched
at Israel are diligently counted and quoted, but how
many sophisticated munitions have Israel’s F-16s,
helicopter gun-ships, armed drones, tanks, occupation
troops and navy patrol boats fired into the crowded
humanity that packs the Gaza Strip? We are never told.
(2) Why should we believe the claim that the siege of
Gaza is about rockets “raining down” on Sderot?
Palestinians in the West Bank don't fire rockets yet
the Israelis are still in occupation after 40 years,
still stealing their land and water, and now dumping
their toxic waste there.
(3) Israelis say that if the rockets stop, things will
be OK.... Does that mean Gaza will be able to trade
freely with the outside world like any other country,
and people will be able to come and go freely? Will
you and I be able to visit Gaza without Israeli
hindrance?
On the Collective Punishment of Gazans (4) Why can't Gaza's 3,000 licensed fishermen put to
sea and earn their living without being harassed and
fired on? What is the status of Palestinian
territorial waters under international law? Why are
half the hospitals’ dialysis machines out of action
and the chronically sick dying in agony for want of
proper medication?
(5) Which parts of the Declaration of Human Rights and
Geneva Conventions don't Israelis understand?
On the War on Christianity(6) Israelis use 'administrative' controls to disrupt
the life and work of the Christian Church in the Holy
Land. No Muslim or Palestinian Christian living
outside Jerusalem is allowed to visit the Holy Places
in the Old City without special permission. Christian
priests, many of whom are Jordanian, cannot go home to
see their families because Israel's new visa policy
would prevent them returning to their parishes. The
Catholic priest in Gaza has been trapped there for 9
years knowing that if he visits his folks the Israelis
won’t allow him back into the Strip. “We seek a
life of freedom—a life different from the life of
dogs we are currently forced to live,” he says. What
should be our response to attempts by Israel to
paralyse the Church?
(7) Is it not shameful that our elected politicians,
who are mostly Christian themselves, show so little
concern? Is it not doubly shameful how the leaders of
western Christendom seem oblivious to the Israeli
government’s war against Christian communities?
Beware those pseudo-Christians in high places, who
talk the talk but won’t walk the walk. How many top
brass have visited Gaza to show solidarity with the
flock? At the present rate there will soon be no
Christians left in the place where Christianity began,
and churchmen will wake up one morning to find the
Holy Land, from which their whole power and purpose
are derived, stolen from under their noses.
On Illegal Settlements (8) Israel has expropriated agricultural land and key
water resources in the Palestinian West Bank for its
own use. More than 38% of the territory now consists
of Israeli settlements, outposts, military bases and
closed military areas, Israeli-declared nature
reserves or other infrastructure that’s off-limits
to Palestinians. Jews-only highways linking
settlements to Israel, and the 580 checkpoints and
roadblocks, have fragmented Palestinian communities,
blocked access to their lands and severely restricted
movement. How can this be right?
(9) The freezing and dismantling of Israeli
settlements are a cornerstone of major peace
initiatives. The most recent, the Quartet's 2003
‘roadmap’ endorsed by the UN Security Council, is
perfectly clear on the question of illegal
settlements. Israel is under an obligation to....
a) immediately dismantle settlement outposts erected
since March 2001,
b) freeze all settlement activity (including natural
growth of settlements) consistent with the Mitchell
Report,
c) take "no actions undermining trust, including
confiscation and/or demolition of Palestinian homes
and property".
Why have none of these obligations been met?(10) A year ago the General Assembly reaffirmed that
Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory,
including East Jerusalem, "are illegal and an obstacle
to peace" and demanded "the immediate and complete
cessation of all Israeli settlement activities". Why
is Israel still stealing Palestinian land for more
illegal construction? By vowing to press ahead with
settlement building, Israel’s prime minister Olmert
again signals contempt for international law and world
opinion… further proof (if ever it were needed) that
Israel isn’t interested in peace.
On the Evil of the Wall(11) In 2004 the International Court of Justice,
sitting at the request of the UN General Assembly,
concluded that the route chosen for the Separation
Wall “gives expression in loco to the illegal
measures taken by Israel with regard to Jerusalem and
the settlements". The ICJ ruled the Wall illegal and
declared that it should be dismantled where it
encroaches onto Palestinian land. Why hasn't this been
done? Why is Israel still building it? If Israelis
feel a wall is necessary for security reasons why
don't they build one on their own territory?
On House Demolitions and the Right of Return (12) In 1948 the newly established state of Israel
began demolishing the homes of Palestinian refugees to
prevent their return. More than 125,000 houses were
systematically destroyed. Since 1967, 18,000 more have
been demolished, making another 100,000 Palestinians
homeless. Demolishing homes is a deliberate Israeli
strategy to inflict collective punishment and break
the Palestinians' will to resist the occupation; to
achieve a silent ethnic transfer; and to ensure that
Israel's control of the Occupied Territories and their
resources becomes permanent. Apart from the fact that
these acts breach every rule in the book, every
convention and every declaration governing civilised
conduct, how would the Israelis like it if they were
the victims?
(13) Why can any Jew from anywhere in the world, who
has never before lived in Israel and whose ancestors
have never lived in Israel, go and live in Israel –
or ‘squat’ in an illegal outpost in Palestine with
Israel’s blessing - while Palestinians who can prove
title to their former houses may not?
On Imprisonment (14) Nearly 10,000 Palestinians, including women and
children, have been abducted and languish in Israeli
prisons, many without charge or trial. 30+ Palestinian
parliamentarians, democratically elected, are also
imprisoned. What civilised country would do this?
On Ethnic Cleansing (15) The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, begun in the
months before and after the establishment of the State
of Israel in 1948, is still going on in and around
Jerusalem and in Gaza. Israel's Chief Rabbi Yona
Metzger argues for an ethnic cleansing programme to
transfer Gazans out and dump them in the Sinai desert.
Haaretz reports that he wants Britain, the EU and the
US to assist in the construction of a Palestinian
state in the middle of nowhere. “They will have a
nice country, and we, the Jews, shall have our country
and we shall live in peace.” This leading advocate
of ethnic cleansing says Muslims should recognize that
"our land is the Holy Land and Jerusalem belongs to
us”. Do we in Britain wish to associate with people
who hold such views?
On Terror(16) Since the land occupied by Israel was taken by
terrorist means, employing gangs such as the one that
blew up the British mandate government in the King
David Hotel in 1946 killing 90, by what moral
yardstick do British and other western leaders 'do
business' with the Israeli Government but not with
Palestine’s democratically elected Hamas leadership?
(17) Remembering that most Israeli prime ministers
have been responsible for authorising war crimes
against the Palestinian people, why are the words
'terrorist', ‘militant’ and ‘extremist’
applied only to Palestinians? They fit successive
Israeli governments like a glove, and given Israel's
lawless and inhuman conduct in Palestine and Lebanon,
which has outraged world opinion, why isn't it branded
a terrorist state?
On Our (Uncritical) Support(18) For decades Occupied Palestine has received
British and European aid. If Palestinians had been
left in peace, free to trade and develop in the normal
way, there would no need for aid. In effect British
and EU taxpayers are subsidising Israel's illegal
occupation and the economic strangulation it imposes.
Why should we think this acceptable and continue to
pick up the tab?
(19) Why is there such strong support for Israel at
the heart of British government? Why have so many MPs
and MEPs allowed themselves to be drawn into the
‘Friends of Israel’ web? How can supposedly bright
people with information at their fingertips still be
ignorant of Israel's apartheid practices, wholesale
land thefts, careless slaughter of children and other
atrocities? Can we take it that they approve of the
slow genocide inflicted on defenceless civilians, the
middle-of-the-night snatch squads, the house
demolitions, the torture and assassinations, and the
crushing of Christian and Muslim communities? Is it
not foolish and insulting for them to claim we share
Israel’s beliefs and values, and should even share
foreign policy? A well-respected Jewish MP recently
called the Israeli government “a gang of amoral
thugs”. Isn’t that about right?
On the Two-State Solution (20) Israel and friends are pushing for a two-state
solution… eventually, when it suits them and their
land grab is complete. To warped minds this will give
the racist regime and its supremacist ideals some kind
of seal of approval. By that time the shrunken and
shredded remnants of Palestine will have become a
permanently impoverished and ghettoized mini-state,
trashed and raped of its resources, traumatised,
subservient, easy to control and never capable of
prospering. Israel’s scheming allies, who include
western governments (though not western peoples), go
along with this grubby plan. Can someone please
explain why we, the citizens of a Christian democracy
once mandated with responsibility for Palestine’s
future wellbeing, would wish to soil our hands with
it? The ethical choice, surely, is a single state with
Jews living alongside their Arab neighbours as equal
citizens and sharing the land within a common legal
and democratic framework. That, after all, was the
original intention, and the developments of the last
60 years are a gross perversion and betrayal. Only the
Palestinians themselves have had the courage to resist
it.
When the Day of Reckoning comes to the Middle East -
and engulfs the meddlesome West - much of the blame
will rest squarely on the lack of journalistic rigour
here and in the US, which has allowed a delinquent
political élite to work their evil too long.
-Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free
Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians
under occupation. He contributed this article to
PalestineChronicle.com. For further information please
visit
www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk
