Gaza is Buckling
Richard Falk, Israel and the New York Times
By ELLEN CANTAROW

Weekend Edtion
December 26-28, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/cantarow12262008.html

As Israel nails shut the coffin that is Gaza under a siege that has
lasted nearly three years, steadily intensifying so that malnutrition
rates rival those of sub-Saharan Africa, sewage runs raw in the streets
and pollutes the ocean, homes are still being bulldozed to super-add
collective punishment upon collective punishment; men, women and
children are still being sniped at and killed; children are deafened by
continuing sonic booms, the vast majority of them suffer from
post-traumatic stress syndrome, and many of that majority have no
ambition other than becoming `martyrs,' Israel in mid-December denied
entry to Richard Falk, UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on
the occupied territories.

It is Dr. Falk's responsibility to report to the UN on conditions in
the occupied territories. Israel is blocking him from carrying out this
job. In an article that reads as if it rolled off the computers in
Israel's Government Press Office (no quotes by anyone friendly to
Falk's point of view, for instance), The New York Times, tells us Dr.
Falk `has long been criticized in Israel for what many Israelis say
[emphasis mine] are unfair and unpalatable views.' The blind
attribution is typical.

Unlike European Union ministers who recently condemned Israel's acts in
Gaza and the West Bank only to turn around and approve upgrading the
EU's relations with Israel, Falk will not compromise. He not only
describes Israel's atrocities in Gaza, but calls for immediate
protective action `to offset the persisting and wide-ranging violations
of the fundamental human right to life.' He also calls for an
International Criminal Court investigation to `determine whether the
Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the
Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of
international criminal law.'

Perhaps it's his clarity of focus and refusal to back down that
constitute his sins in Israel's eyes? (The usual hasbarah about
anti-Semitism, etc., is to be discounted, though being Jewish Falk may
fall into the category, `self-hating Jew.') Many others, Jewish and
not Jewish (including Israeli Jews never quoted by The New York Times)
have charged Israel with violations of international law and war crimes
in Gaza. As Falk himself noted in his statement about Gaza to the UN
(see `Gaza: Silence is not an Option' at The Heathlander and other
Internet sites), the Secretary General of the UN, the President of the
General Assembly, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have
all condemned Israel for its monstrous siege. `Karen AbyZayd,' stated
Falk, `who heads the UN relief effort in Gaza, offered first-hand
confirmation of the desperate urgency and unacceptable conditions
facing the civilian population of Gaza. Although many leaders have
commented on the cruelty and unlawfulness of the Gaza blockade imposed
by Israel, such a flurry of denunciations by normally cautious UN
officials has not occurred on a global level since the heyday of South
African apartheid.' Other denunciations have been made by B'tselem, an
Israeli human rights organization that in June, 2006 called Israel's
destruction of Gaza's electrical power plant `a war crime' (`Aiming
attacks at civilian objects is forbidden under International
Humanitarian Law and is considered a war crime. The power plant bombed
by Israel is a purely civilian object and bombing it did nothing to
impede the ability of Palestinian organizations to fire rockets into
Israeli territory.') Last month, Switzerland accused Israel of
violating international law by destroying Palestinian homes in East
Jerusalem and Ramallah. This denunciation, writes a reporter for The
First Post, is `arguably the strongest condemnation of Israeli policy
towards the Palestinians to come from any western European country
since Charles de Gaulle famously attacked the `oppression, repression
and expulsions' of Palestinians by Israel over 40 years ago.'.
(November 17, 2008.)

Christopher Hedges writes that Falk told him Israel's siege has
unleashed `an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses
the entire 1.5 million [population] Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to
a struggle to survive . . . This is an increasingly precarious
condition. A recent study reports that 46 per cent of all Gazan
children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic
booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread
deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of
hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different
dimensions and affects 75 per cent of Gazans. There are widespread
mental disorders¦ Over 50 per cent of Gazan children under the age of
12 have been found to have no will to live."

Gaza committed the ultimate sin. Its residents refused to be good
little natives; it launched the first Intifada. It became legendary,
together with Jenin in the West Bank, for its refusal to submit to
Israel's occupation. Gaza was also a region that, unlike the West Bank,
was negligible in terms of fertile land and water resources. So Gaza
must first be quarantined (Darryl Li has compared Gaza after Israel's
`pull-out' to an animal pen where ` before the siege, at any rate `
food and supplies were thrown in, Israel having divested itself of any
responsibility for the population.) Israel's aim was that Egypt take
0Aresponsibility for Gaza, which has not happened. Gaza's resistance has
continued firing rockets into Israel. But Gaza's final and unpardonable
sin was, in a completely fair election, to elect a party that
displeased Israel and the US. Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra infamy
helped the reprisal along by engineering civil war between Hamas and
Fatah (see Vanity Fair, April, 2008.)

Now, finally, Gaza is buckling. While the world watches, a people is
being destroyed. The definitive essay is Sara Roy's in this month's
London Review of Books. She details an excruciating decline in all
means of life ` food, fuel, medicine, water-purifiers, etc. Roy doesn't
say it, and neither does Falk, but Israel's siege fulfills at least
three points in Article 2 of the Convention on Genocide (killing
members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members
of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in
part.) Roy's depressing conclusion is that if Gaza falls, the West Bank
will follow.

Ellen Cantarow has written about the occupied West Bank and Israel for
U.S. publications since 1979. She is also a Boston-based pianist,
singer and teacher. She can be reached at ecantarow@comast.net