From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Sat Jan 10 2009 - 01:38:10 EST
The United States Promotes Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinians
by Prof. Francis A. Boyle
Global Research, January 10, 2009
(from "Tackling America's Toughest Questions," now at Amazon.com)
As long ago as October 19, 2000, the then United Nations Human Rights
Commission (now Council) condemned Israel for inflicting "war crimes"
and "crimes against humanity" upon the Palestinian people, most of whom
are Muslims. The reader has a general idea of what a war crime is, so I
am not going to elaborate upon that term here. But there are different
degrees of heinousness for war crimes. In particular are the more
serious war crimes denominated "grave breaches" of the Fourth Geneva
Convention. Since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, the world
has seen those heinous war crimes inflicted every day by Israel against
the Palestinian people living in occupied Palestine: e.g., willful
killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and by Israel's
illegal paramilitary settlers. These Israeli "grave breaches" of the
Fourth Geneva Convention mandate universal prosecution for the
perpetrators and their commanders, whether military or civilian,
including and especially Israel's political leaders.
But I want to focus for a moment on Israel's "crimes against humanity"
against the Palestinian people-as determined by the U.N. Human Rights
Commission itself, set up pursuant to the requirements of the United
Nations Charter. What are "crimes against humanity"? This concept goes
all the way back to the Nuremberg Charter of 1945 for the trial of the
major Nazi war criminals in Europe. In the Nuremberg Charter of 1945,
drafted by the United States Government, there was created and inserted
a new type of international crime specifically intended to deal with the
Nazi persecution of the Jewish people:
Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement,
deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian
population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political,
racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any
crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in
violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
The paradigmatic example of "crimes against humanity" is what Hitler and
the Nazis did to the Jewish people. This is where the concept of "crimes
against humanity" came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights
Commission determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian
people: crimes against humanity. Expressed in legal terms, this is just
like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews. That is the significance
of the formal determination by the U.N. Human Rights Commission that
Israel has inflicted "crimes against humanity" upon the Palestinian
people. The Commission chose this well-known and long-standing legal
term of art quite carefully and deliberately based upon the evidence it
had compiled.
Furthermore, the Nuremberg "crimes against humanity" are the historical
and legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by
the 1948 Genocide Convention. The theory here was that what Hitler and
the Nazis did to the Jewish people was so horrific that it required a
special international treaty that would codify and universalize the
Nuremberg concept of "crimes against humanity." And that treaty
ultimately became the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of
genocide in relevant part as follows:
In the present Convention, genocide 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;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
..
As documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his seminal book The
Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), Israel's genocidal policy against
the Palestinians has been unremitting, extending from before the very
foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and is ongoing and even
intensifying against the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza.
Zionism's "final solution" to Israel's much touted "demographic threat"
allegedly posed by the very existence of the Palestinians has always
been genocide.
Certainly, Israel and its predecessors-in-law-the Zionist agencies,
forces, and terrorist gangs-have committed genocide against the
Palestinian people that actually started on or about 1948 and has
continued apace until today in violation of Genocide Convention Articles
II(a), (b), and (c). For at least the past six decades, the Israeli
government and its predecessors-in-law-the Zionist agencies, forces, and
terrorist gangs-have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and
comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent
to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and
different religious (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) group
constituting the Palestinian people. This Zionist/Israeli campaign has
consisted of killing members of the Palestinian people in violation of
Genocide Convention Article II(a). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has
also caused serious bodily and mental harm to the Palestinian people in
violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b). This Zionist/Israeli
campaign has also deliberately inflicted on the Palestinian people
conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction
in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide
Convention.
Article I of the Genocide Convention requires all contracting parties
such as the United States "to prevent and to punish" genocide. Yet to
the contrary, historically the "Jewish" state's criminal conduct against
the Palestinians has been financed, armed, equipped, supplied and
politically supported by the "Christian" United States. Although the
United States is a founding sponsor of, and a contracting party to, both
the Nuremberg Charter and the Genocide Convention, as well as the United
Nations Charter, these legal facts have never made any difference to the
United States when it comes to its blank-check support for Israel and
their joint and severable criminal mistreatment of the
Palestinians-truly the wretched of the earth!
The world has not yet heard even one word uttered by the United States
and its NATO allies in favor of "humanitarian intervention" against
Israel in order to protect the Palestinian people, let alone a
"responsibility to protect" the Palestinians from Zionist/Israeli
genocide. The United States, its NATO allies, and the Great Powers on
the U.N. Security Council would not even dispatch a U.N. Charter Chapter
6 monitoring force to help protect the Palestinians, let alone even
contemplate any type of U.N. Charter Chapter 7 enforcement actions
against Israel - shudder the thought!. The doctrine of "humanitarian
intervention" so readily espoused elsewhere when U.S. foreign policy
goals are allegedly at stake has been clearly proved to be a joke and a
fraud when it comes to stopping the ongoing and accelerating Israeli
campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.
Rather than rein in the Israelis-which would be possible just by turning
off the funding pipeline-the United States government, the U.S.
Congress, and U.S. taxpayers instead support the "Jewish" state to the
tune of about 4 billion dollars per year, without whose munificence this
instance of genocide - and indeed conceivably the State of Israel itself
- would not be possible. What the world witnesses here is (yet another)
case of "dishumanitarian intervention" or "humanitarian extermination"
by the United States and Israel against the Palestinians and Palestine.
In today's world genocide pays so long as it is done at the behest of
the United States and its de jure or de facto allies such as Israel.
Of course miracles can always happen. But I anticipate no fundamental
change in America's support for the Israeli campaign of genocide against
the Palestinians during the tenure of the Obama/Clinton administration.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11721> &aid=11721