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The Plight of the Palestinians Also by William A The Plight of the Palestinians Also by William A. Cook A Time to Know Psalms for the 21st Century Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy The Unreasoning Mask (co-authored with Darcy Jones Cook) The Agony of Colin Powell Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: The Rape of Palestine The Chronicles of Nefaria Decade of Deceit, 2002–2012: Reflections on Palestine (Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany) Age of Fools (Dandelion Books, Tempe, AZ) The Plight of the Palestinians A Long History of Destruction Edited by William A. Cook THE PLIGHT OF THE PALESTINIANS Copyright © William A. Cook, 2010. Corrected Printing 2010 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-10037-4 All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-28656-0 ISBN 978-0-230-10792-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230107922 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The plight of the Palestinians : a long history of destruction / edited by William A. Cook. p. cm. 1. Palestinian Arabs—Crimes against. 2. Palestinian Arabs— Government policy—Israel. 3. Palestinian Arabs—History—20th century. 4. Arab-Israeli conflict. I. Cook, William A. DS113.7.P57 2010 323.1192Ј74—dc22 2009044766 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: June 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To the memory of the innocent victims of the Nakba and its aftermath. CONTENTS List of Graphs and Tables xi Foreword xiii Acknowledgments xvii Authors’ Biographies xix Introduction 1 William A. Cook Part 1 The Human Tragedy 27 One Israel’s Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine 29 Steve Lendman (11-26-2008) Two Ongoing Palestinian Genocide 39 Gideon Polya (3-6-2008) Three The Lessons of Violence 43 Chris Hedges (1-28-2008) Four This Brutal Siege of Gaza Can Only Breed Violence 47 Karen Koning AbuZayd (1-23-2008) Five The Olive Trees of Palestine Weep 51 Sonja Karkar (9-7-2007) viii Contents Six Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust 55 Richard Falk (6-29-2007) Seven Gaza Is a Jail: Gaza Is Dying 63 Patrick Cockburn (9-8-2006) Eight The Shame of Being an American 67 Paul Craig Roberts (7-22-2006) Nine Israeli Immunity for Genocide 71 Andrea Howard (7-15-2006) Ten Palestinian Misery in Perspective 81 Paul de Rooij (6-3-2004) Eleven A Slow, Steady Genocide 91 Tanya Reinhart and Jon Elmer (9-11-2003) Part 2 Propaganda, Perception, and Reality 99 Twelve Gaza’s Holocaust 103 Dr. Elias Akleh (3-20-2008) Thirteen Big Bang or Chaos: What’s Israel Up To? 109 Ramzy Baroud (3-20-2008) Fourteen Israel Plots Another Palestinian Exodus 113 Jonathan Cook (3-10-2008) Fifteen America’s Armageddonites 119 Jon Basil Utley (10-11-2007) Sixteen Does It Matter What You Call It? Genocide or Erasure of Palestinians? 123 Kathleen and Bill Christison (11-27-2006) Contents ix Seventeen The Problem with Israel 135 Jeff Halper (11-23-2006) Eighteen Genocide Hides behind Expulsion 159 Adi Ophir (1-16-2004) Nineteen Palestine: The Final Solution and Jose Saramago 163 James Petras (4-2-2002) Twenty The British in Palestine, 1945–1948: A Conveniently Forgotten Holocaust 167 Robert Fisk (9-3-2002) Part 3 Rule by Law or Defiance 171 Twenty-One The Russell Tribunal on Palestine 173 Stephen Lendman (5-16-2009) Twenty-Two The Necessity of Cultural Boycott 177 Ilan Pappe (6-23-2009) Twenty-Three European Collusion in Israel’s Slow Genocide 181 Omar Barghouti (1-21-2008) Twenty-Four The Israeli Agenda and the Scorecard of the Zionist Power Configuration for 2008 185 James Petras (2-24-2008) Twent y-Five Genocide in Gaza 201 Ilan Pappe (2-20-2007) Twent y-Si x Genocide among Us 207 Curtis F. J. Doebbler (1-28-2007) Twenty-Seven Bleaching the Atrocities of Genocide 213 Kim Petersen (6-7-2007) xContents Twenty-Eight Looking from the Side, from Belsen to Gaza 219 John Pilger (1-18-2007) Twenty-Nine Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: The Rape of Palestine 221 William A. Cook (1-7/8-2006) Thirty Relative Humanity: The Essential Obstacle to a One-State Solution 233 Omar Barghouti (12-13/14-2003) Thirty-One Slow-Motion Ethnic Cleansing 255 Uri Avnery (10-9-2003) Thirty-Two Israel’s Crimes against Palestinians: War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, Genocide 259 Francis A. Boyle (8-28-2001) Bibliography 263 Subject Index 265 Name Index 273 GRAPHS AND TABLES Graphs 10.1 Average number of Palestinians killed per day during Intifada II 84 10.2 Average number of Palestinians wounded per day during Intifada II 85 10.3 Live ammo injuries/total injuries 86 10.4 Injuries vs. deaths ratio 87 Tables 10.1 Average and total Palestinian fatalities during Intifada II, September 29, 2000–May 31, 2004 82 10.2 Obstruction and destruction of ambulances in Palestine 88 FOREWORD Time passes slowly for the Palestinian people. Their ordeal has been extended and intensified over an incredibly long period. The length of this scandalous captivity can be measured from a variety of historical perspectives with each exhibiting an aspect of this tragic story. It could begin with the World Zionist Movement deciding in 1897 to insist on Palestine as the site of their hopes for an ingathering of diaspora Jews the world over. Or from the issuance of the notorious Balfour Declaration in 1917 when the British Foreign Secretary, with characteristic colonialist hubris, pledged support for the Zionist project of a Jewish homeland in Palestine without ever considering the wishes of the resident, overwhelmingly Arab population. Or from the Nakba, the massive dispossession of the Palestinian people from their homeland along with the destruction of their villages that occurred in the aftermath of the 1947 UN plan to partition Palestine between Jews and Palestinians without the slight- est effort to acknowledge the anti-colonial right of self-determination that unconditionally belonged to the majority Palestinian population. Or from the 1967 War when the whole of historic Palestine fell under Israeli occupation, and an administrative process of control that combined elements of apart- heid, ethnic cleansing, and settler colonialism was established and increas- ingly solidified over time through reliance on excessive force and state terror. Or from 1993 when the misbegotten Oslo Framework was foisted on the Palestinian people, giving Israel time to carry their annexation and settlement plans past the point of no return while the Palestinian leadership was being regularly pilloried by Israeli propaganda whenever it showed any sign of resis- tance to unlawful encroachments on Palestinian rights and even when on rare occasions it chose to remind the world of its national and human rights under international law. From a still different angle, this prolonged ordeal can be narrated from the perspective of Gaza, where the suffering of the imprisoned Palestinians has xiv Foreword been most severe. The more recent chapters in this saga of human misery can be dated from 2006 when Hamas won internationally monitored legislative elections after being urged to compete politically by Israel’s closest collabo- rators in the neocon government headed by George W. Bush. The apparent idea was to tempt Hamas to renounce armed struggle in favor of peaceful competition in pursuit of their national goals. But when Hamas surprised Washington pundits by prevailing in these elections, the response was not one of congratulations and encouragement, but rather of intensified hostility and recourse to punitive policies. After Hamas seized administrative con- trol of Gaza from a corrupt, collaborationist, and politically passive Fatah, American disruptive goals were concretely expressed by funding Fatah with the explicit goal of seizing power through a coup led by the Fatah secu- rity strongman Mohammed Dahlen to overthrow Hamas despite its electoral victory. This plot was foiled, but that did not alter Israel’s confrontational approach and neglect of Hamas’s repeated diplomatic initiatives proposing long-term ceasefires. Ever since the ascent of Hamas in 2007 Israel has branded Gaza as “a hos- tile entity,” more often classified as “a terrorist organization.” Such brand- ing is basically a way of validating a regime of rightlessness imposed on all 1.7 million Palestinians living within the crowded confines of the Gaza Strip, granting impunity to the Israeli leadership for its litany of criminal policies and practices imposed on Gaza. This led Israel in 2007 to impose a compre- hensive and crippling blockade, which quite literally imprisons the people of Gaza within a crowded, enclosed space periodically subjected to massive air, sea, and land attacks that kill, devastate, and displace, and are routinely described in Israeli media with the chilling genocidal phrase, “mowing the lawn.” In effect, when the grass grows too high, mowing must take place for the upkeep of the lawn. Such a logic has produced three major onslaughts in less than six years, 2008–09, 2012, and 2014, leaving the entire population of Gaza suffering from various degrees of trauma, their severe plight ignored by the world, and with no results ensuing even when investigated and condemned by authorita- tive UN and NGO reports.
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