George Bisharat is a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.
Writing an op-ed piece in the NY Times "Israel on Trial" he says:
"Chilling testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international law. The emergence of a predominantly right-wing, nationalist government in Israel suggests that there may be more violations to come. Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians also constituted war crimes, but do not excuse Israel’s transgressions. While Israel disputes some of the soldiers’ accounts, the evidence suggests that Israel committed the (following) six offenses."
Read the six offences the professor speaks of here.
Meanwhile, another dimension of Israel's behavour is under scrutiny in a piece "On the road to apartheid" by Professor Jeff Halper in Unleashed on the ABC's website.
Jeff Halper is an Israeli anthropologist and the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), a non-violent Israeli peace and human rights organisation that resists the Israeli Occupation on the ground.
A native of the US, Jeff moved to Israel in 1973. For more than a decade he worked as a community worker for the Jerusalem municipality in the poor Mizrahi Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem and, having done research among the Jews of Ethiopia in the 1960s, he became Chairman of the Israeli Committee for Ethiopian Jews.
Jeff served as the Director of Friends World College and has also taught at universities in Israel, the US, Latin America and Africa. In addition to his many academic and political writings, he is the author of Between Redemption and Revival: The Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century (Westview, 1991) and Obstacles to Peace, a resource manual of articles and maps on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, published by ICAHD. His new book, An Israeli in Palestine, on his work against the Occupation, has recently been published by Pluto Press in London.
Jeff Halper was nominated by the American Friends Service Committee for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, together with the Palestinian intellectual and activist Ghassan Andoni."
Halper writes:
"Lieberman-Barak government. For the notion that Israel acts against the Palestinians out of concern for its security, that it maintains its Occupation of 42 years for defensive reasons, that it really attacked Gaza in such a vicious and disproportional way because of an actual security threat or that it genuinely wants peace is increasingly seen by thinking people as an April Fool's joke.
In fact, Israel - since the Occupation began in 1967, if not before - has always striven for control of the entire country "from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea," as we refer to it in Israel. This is the Land of Israel, and in Zionist ideology, which drives all Israeli governments including the present "unity" one, it belongs exclusively to us, the Jews. We deny the very existence of a Palestinian people, certainly its claims over "our" country.
In fact, we Israelis do not see ourselves in a "conflict," since a conflict needs two sides and we deny that the Arabs (as we call the Palestinians) constitute a "side." Instead, we are in a process of "redeeming" our ancient homeland, to use the Biblical phrase. Arabs may stay, of course, if they give up any national claims to what they call "Palestine" and acknowledge that the entire Land of Israel is Jewish, but if not, they will be expelled - or worse, as the attack on Gaza demonstrated. This is "The Message" Israel tries constantly to communicate to the Arabs through its military actions."
Writing an op-ed piece in the NY Times "Israel on Trial" he says:
"Chilling testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international law. The emergence of a predominantly right-wing, nationalist government in Israel suggests that there may be more violations to come. Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians also constituted war crimes, but do not excuse Israel’s transgressions. While Israel disputes some of the soldiers’ accounts, the evidence suggests that Israel committed the (following) six offenses."
Read the six offences the professor speaks of here.
Meanwhile, another dimension of Israel's behavour is under scrutiny in a piece "On the road to apartheid" by Professor Jeff Halper in Unleashed on the ABC's website.
Jeff Halper is an Israeli anthropologist and the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), a non-violent Israeli peace and human rights organisation that resists the Israeli Occupation on the ground.
A native of the US, Jeff moved to Israel in 1973. For more than a decade he worked as a community worker for the Jerusalem municipality in the poor Mizrahi Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem and, having done research among the Jews of Ethiopia in the 1960s, he became Chairman of the Israeli Committee for Ethiopian Jews.
Jeff served as the Director of Friends World College and has also taught at universities in Israel, the US, Latin America and Africa. In addition to his many academic and political writings, he is the author of Between Redemption and Revival: The Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century (Westview, 1991) and Obstacles to Peace, a resource manual of articles and maps on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, published by ICAHD. His new book, An Israeli in Palestine, on his work against the Occupation, has recently been published by Pluto Press in London.
Jeff Halper was nominated by the American Friends Service Committee for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, together with the Palestinian intellectual and activist Ghassan Andoni."
Halper writes:
"Lieberman-Barak government. For the notion that Israel acts against the Palestinians out of concern for its security, that it maintains its Occupation of 42 years for defensive reasons, that it really attacked Gaza in such a vicious and disproportional way because of an actual security threat or that it genuinely wants peace is increasingly seen by thinking people as an April Fool's joke.
In fact, Israel - since the Occupation began in 1967, if not before - has always striven for control of the entire country "from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea," as we refer to it in Israel. This is the Land of Israel, and in Zionist ideology, which drives all Israeli governments including the present "unity" one, it belongs exclusively to us, the Jews. We deny the very existence of a Palestinian people, certainly its claims over "our" country.
In fact, we Israelis do not see ourselves in a "conflict," since a conflict needs two sides and we deny that the Arabs (as we call the Palestinians) constitute a "side." Instead, we are in a process of "redeeming" our ancient homeland, to use the Biblical phrase. Arabs may stay, of course, if they give up any national claims to what they call "Palestine" and acknowledge that the entire Land of Israel is Jewish, but if not, they will be expelled - or worse, as the attack on Gaza demonstrated. This is "The Message" Israel tries constantly to communicate to the Arabs through its military actions."
Comments