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What has become of Israel?
In Thursday, 16 August 2001, the first item of the "News
in Brief" of the DULUTH NEWS TRIBUNE, p. 2A, reported as follows:
Jerusalem Israeli tanks ready to attack
Israel kept tanks poised Wednesday outside Bethlehem and
other autonomous Palestinian towns in the West Bank, with Israeli officials
warning that they would strike if Palestinian gunmen started shooting
again at a Jewish neighborhood on Jerusalem's southern edge. Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli undercover agents in
Hebron gunned down a militia member from Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction,
a man who had been on an Israeli wanted list as responsible for a string
of anti-Israel attacks.
If
this were an isolated situation, perhaps it might have made the front
page. But these events--which
have included the use of F-16s and air-to-air missiles to level police
stations and kill Palestinian officials--have become all too familiar. These days, it is almost impossible to read
the paper, watch the news, or listen to the radio without hearing similar
reports. Of
course, if events like these were isolated incidents, perhaps they might
be excusable. A story in The New York Times on Thursday, 5 July
2001, p. A6, makes it evident that that is not the situation here:
Jerusalem Israel Reaffirms Its Policy of Assassinating Militants
Israel’s security cabinet decided today to
press ahead with a policy of assassinating suspected Palestinian militants
in an effort to stop persistent killings of Israelis, officials said. The decision fell short of demands by rightist
ministers for a broad military assault on the Palestinian Authority.
Yet the authorization of further assassinations, possibly on
a wider scale, raised the prospect of more violence, and ratcheted up
tensions.
Far
from being isolated incidents, Israel has publicly adopted the policy
of assassinating "suspected Palestinian militants", including,
as we have now learned, "a militia member. . . who had been on
an Israeli wanted list"! So
the Israeli's are systematically targeting for termination individuals
who are SUSPECTED OF MILITANCY or who have appeared on an Israeli WANTED
LIST!
Martin S. Indyk, the American ambassador to
Israel, who will be leaving the job soon, bluntly criticized the nation's
assassination policy in an interview broadcast tonight on Israeli television. "The United States government is very clearly on the
record as against targeted assassination", he said. "They are extrajudicial killings, and
we do not support that."
Nice
to know that the American ambassador speaks out against "extrajudicial
killings"! I'll bet that
set the Israelis trembling. They
are murdering SUSPECTS who appear on WANTED LISTS!
The United States is supposed to believe in due process and the
right to a presumption of innocence!
Our ambassador's response: "we
do not support that”. His remarks were broadcast on the 4th of July. I guess
that set the record straight. We
might have thought that a decision by Israel's security cabinet of this
magnitude would at least be condemned by the United States' Secretary
of State or even by the President, rather than by an outgoing ambassador.
If the Times regarded this decision as momentous,
it cleverly managed to conceal its hand by running the story on p. A6. Israelis
will insist that these problems are not of their making, because Palestinians
are turning themselves into suicide bombers.
But suicide bombing is a tactic that only a downtrodden people,
who are receiving little support and no respect, would employ. And the
disproportionate response by the Israelis— which may be causing as many
as 100 Palestinian deaths for each Israeli— speaks volumes about the
desire to subjugate an entire population. The
use of military weapons such as aircraft and tanks against civilian
populations armed with rifles and rocks tends to bring back images from
earlier and similarly disturbing times when gypsies, Jews, and communists
were deprived of their liberty and property--and ultimately their lives--without
the benefit of due process. I
find And,
indeed, there is reason to believe that the government itself realizes
that it has crossed the threshold that divides reasonable responses
from the commission of war crimes.
Consider, for example, another story from the Times
on Saturday, 28 July 2001, which read as follows:
Jerusalem Israel Is Wary Of Long Reach In Rights Cases
A warning went out this week from Israel's Foreign Ministry
to government, army, and security officials. Be careful in choosing destinations when traveling abroad, it cautioned,
because certain nations might be prepared to charge ranking Israelis
with violating Palestinian's human rights. The advisory was not worded quite that bluntly. It recommended, as a senior military official
put it today, that high-level officials "do their homework"
to avoid stumbling into "a legal embarrassment".
This
story, at least, made page A1. But
no doubt this country is not among those where Israeli officials run
the risk of "legal embarrassment".
Apart from the broadcast by our outgoing ambassador, I doubt
any of us have heard affirmations from this administration about the
human rights of Palestinians. Issues
involving human rights are clearly not on its "front burner". The United States should take a more aggressive
stand on behalf of The
situation is tragic. Nazi atrocities
that occurred before and during World War II produced worldwide sympathy
for the Jewish people, which led the United Nations to create a Jewish
state in Palestine in 1948. But
the ascension of Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister has brought in its wake
new atrocities that invite comparison with those of Nazis of the past. Surely a nation whose people have suffered as have these must rise
to a higher standard. Like
many other Americans, I have admired Israel for virtually my entire
life. Since I was born in 1940, my life has encompassed
the entire history of this nation.
It causes me great pain to raise these issues, but I can no longer
bear to remain silent. The times
are such that speaking out may add my name to a Israeli wanted list
as the author of an anti-Israel attack.
We cannot continue to support a nation that abuses human rights,
no
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