IS/WAS THERE A GENOCIDE IN PALESTINE?
The Palestine Telegraph
Feb 8 2010
London, February 8, (Pal Telegraph) – Having commemorated Holocaust
Memorial Day with Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer and some Jewish
friends, after a talk at Goldsmith University last week, I feel
that Palestinians have many common experiences with the survivors of
the Holocaust.
The way Meyer was imprisoned in the ghetto and moved across the
checkpoints could be a stereotypical image in occupied Palestine. I
was personally amazed to hear Hajo Meyer himself saying that the
Palestinian suffering is so close to the Holocaust and sometimes it
is the same. I was amazed because I heard it not from a Palestinian,
but from a Jewish man who has suffered a lot.
For a long time, it has been widely argued that genocide has never been
committed in Palestine. Some media outlets close to the Palestinian
viewpoint reckon there was genocide, one that is still in progress. The
Israeli narrative rejects the use of this term for the Palestinian
experience. Without doubt, the Germans perpetrated a heinous crime
and genocide against the Jews in World War Two. This should never
even be argued. Around 6 million Jews were killed across Europe in
an act that can never be tolerated by humanity. It was a huge crime.
There have, however, been genocides against many other peoples such as
the American Indians and the Armenians, which must also be remembered.
Most of these genocides are on a smaller scale than the Holocaust, but
surely the fact that genocide has occurred must be condemned no matter
the scale. Indeed, this seems to be the feeling of many Holocaust
survivors themselves. They believe it is crucial to recognize, condemn
and fight against genocide wherever it is happening no matter whether
it is a few thousand or millions.
The core question here is, have the Palestinians suffered genocide by
Israel? Has Israel really ethnically cleansed Palestinians? Does the
term genocide apply in the Palestinian case? Is it legally applicable?
Readers can make their own judgment via this analysis.
In 1944, Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the word "genocide"
by combining "geno" from the Greek word for race or tribe, with
"cide" from the Latin word for killing. He proposed that genocide
consists in "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the
destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups,
with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves."
Is this really happening; has it happened in Palestine? According
to the vivid history of the founding of Israel, thousands of violent
actions have been committed against one group of people: Palestinians.
Over 535 villages were destroyed, thousands were massacred, and around
800,000 were driven from their homes by force or fear of force. In all,
a process referred to by Israeli historian Ilan Pappé and others as
‘ the ethnic cleansing of Palestine’. If genocide is concerned with
the annihilation of a group, surely this is genocide.
On December 9, 1948, the United Nations approved the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This convention
establishes "genocide" as an international crime, which signatory
nations "undertake to prevent and punish." It defines genocide as:
[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent
to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; In 1948, thousands of Palestinians
were exterminated as terrorist Jewish groups like the Stern, Haganah
and Irgun, launched guerrilla wars against civilians. The attacks
amounted to ethnic cleansing with intent as many villagers were told
to leave or they would be killed.
Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948. Over 100 villagers,
including women and children, were annihilated. Some were shot by
live ammunition while others burned to death as rockets rained down
on the village. The prisoners were killed after being paraded through
the streets in occupied Jerusalem. In 1956, and after hundreds of
massacres committed in 1948, a massacre took place in Khan Younis in
the middle of the Gaza Strip. The victims were up to 500 from the
normal villagers. Other numbers were from the Egyptians who were
policing the area at that time.
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Nowadays, the deadly siege in Gaza could be considered as genocide
under this item. Bodily harm has been caused not only within the time
of the siege or the last war on Gaza in December 2008/January 2009,
but since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
With the maintenance of the siege, the scale of victims in Gaza is
always on the rise. The overwhelming majority of those victimized were
civilians, whereas only a small minority was resistance fighters. Some
agencies cite that 93% of those victimized were civilian, while only 7%
were resistance fighters (See Oxfam Report).
Organized and systematic attacks against civilians in Gaza can also be
considered to be part of the genocide. Several months before Operation
Cast Lead, an Israeli minister even used the term ‘holocaust’ to
describe what is planned for the citizens of Gaza. On 28th February
2008, the Guardian, BBC and other media outlets reported the story
under the title, "Israeli minister warns of Palestinian ‘holocaust’".
The Guardian reported that:
"An Israeli minister today warned of increasingly bitter conflict
in the Gaza Strip, saying the Palestinians could bring on themselves
what he called a "holocaust".
"The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a
longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because
we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Matan Vilnai, Israel’s
deputy defence minister, told army radio.
Shoah is the Hebrew word normally reserved to refer to the Jewish
Holocaust. It is rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi
extermination of Jews during the second world war, and many Israelis
are loath to countenance its use to describe other events."
Guardian:
/world/2008/feb/29/israelandthepalestinians1
Anot her genocidal act, which is causing mental harm, is also
applicable. In Gaza, the recent siege is affecting all aspects of
life. The children are suffering from severe health problems in terms
of malnutrition, anemia and other conditions caused by poor diet. As
pointed out in many UN agency reports, all Gazan children suffer
with mental and emotional problems. Stress and trauma are leaving the
children sick-minded due to constant fear. They have no opportunities
for fun and joy, as the Israeli blockade even includes a ban on toys
and the conditions of life are so hard. It is not an exaggeration to
say that a considerable number of the Gazan population are exhausted
and mentally drained, as their life is lifeless. They live with fear,
deprivation, war, restriction of freedom and death.
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
This has been happening for years since the establishment of the state
of Israel. Focusing on the Gaza strip now, the siege has impacted
every single corner of life. Living conditions are disastrous at the
moment. Factories have stopped operating, while food barely comes in.
Add to that, people are trapped in a concentration camp that has two
gates that open irregularly.
The Israeli blockade on exports and on all but humanitarian imports
has forced 98 percent of Gaza’s industry to close. Around 1.5
million Palestinians live in the 360 square km (139 square mile)
of Gaza Strip. More than three-quarters of them are refugees whose
families were driven from their land in what is now Israel in the
1948 Arab-Israeli war.
The remaining two characteristics of what constitutes genocide include
imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and,
forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. These
remaining two characteristics are most evident in the 1948 Arab-Israeli
war and the 1967 war.