Richard Falk: An Open Letter of Response to CRIF (Counsèil Représentif des Institutions juives de France)

Richard Falk, 30 Dec  2012

An Open Letter of Response to CRIF (Counsèil Représentif des Institutions juives de France)

I am shocked and saddened that your organization would label me as an anti-Semite and self-hating Jew. It is utterly defamatory, and such allegations are entirely based on distortions of what I believe and what I have done. To confuse my criticisms of Israel with self-hatred of myself as a Jew or with hatred of Jews is a calumny. I have long been a critic of American foreign policy but that does not make me anti-American; it is freedom of conscience that is the core defining reality of a genuinely democratic society, and its exercise is crucial to the quality of political life in a particular country, especially here in the United States where its size and influence often has such a large impact on the lives and destiny of many peoples excluded from participating in its policy debates or elections.

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Top Ten Myths about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Jeremy R. Hammond, Foreign Policy Journal, June 17, 2010

Myth #1 – Jews and Arabs have always been in conflict in the region.

Although Arabs were a majority in Palestine prior to the creation of the state of Israel, there had always been a Jewish population, as well. For the most part, Jewish Palestinians got along with their Arab neighbors. This began to change with the onset of the Zionist movement, because the Zionists rejected the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and wanted Palestine for their own, to create a “Jewish State” in a region where Arabs were the majority and owned most of the land.

For instance, after a series of riots in Jaffa in 1921 resulting in the deaths of 47 Jews and 48 Arabs, the occupying British held a commission of inquiry, which reported their finding that “there is no inherent anti-Semitism in the country, racial or religious.” Rather, Arab attacks on Jewish communities were the result of Arab fears about the stated goal of the Zionists to take over the land.

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The Price of Courage: On Goldstone’s Bar Mitzvah and Finkelstein’s Book

Ramzy Baroud, Foreign Policy Journal, May 7, 2010

In his report on Gaza issued late last year, prominent South African jurist Richard Goldstone accused Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes. His language also showed awareness of the fact that the former is an occupying power with most sophisticated weapon arsenal (as reflecting in the number of Palestinian victims), and the latter is a besieged, occupied faction in a state of self-defense. Although Goldstone must have been aware of the kind of hysteria such a report would generate, he still did not allow ideological or ethnic affiliation to stand between him and his moral convictions.

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‘Mossad assassination squad used British passports’

The Times/UK, February 16, 2010

Hugh Tomlinson in Dubai

Six suspects in the assassination of a senior Hamas official in Dubai entered the country using British passports, it emerged yesterday.

Police in the Gulf state announced that they were hunting for 11 suspects, including a woman, for the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas commander, who was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 20.

Six of these suspects were travelling on British passports and three were carrying Irish passports, including the woman. The other two entered Dubai with German and French passports.

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Israeli soldiers: Talk to Hamas

As Israeli soldiers we hang our heads in shame over last year’s attack on Gaza’s civilian population. Dialogue, not war, is needed

by Arik Diamant and David Zonsheine, The Guardian/UK, Feb 15, 2010

Civilians flee during last year’s war on Gaza. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

The Israeli media marked the one-year anniversary of Operation Cast Lead, the war on Gaza, almost as a celebration. The operation is recognised almost unanimously in Israel as a military triumph, a combat victory over one of Israel’s deadliest enemies: Hamas.

As combat soldiers of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), we have serious doubts about this conclusion, primarily because hardly any combat against Hamas took place during the operation. As soon as the operation started, Hamas went underground.

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Tony Blair: Gaza’s Great Betrayer

It’s more than a year since Israel launched its immoral attack on Gaza and Palestinians are still living on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. So what has Tony Blair done to further peace in the region? Virtually nothing, argues the historian Avi Shlaim

• Avi Shlaim
• The Guardian/UK, February 3,  2010

Tony Blair in June 2009 speaking at a press conference in Gaza calling for a quick reconstruction. Photograph: Hatem Moussa/AP

The savage attack Israel ­unleashed against Gaza on 27 December 2008 was both immoral and unjustified. Immoral in the use of force against civilians for political purposes. Unjustified because Israel had a political alternative to the use of force. The home-made Qassam rockets fired by Hamas militants from Gaza on Israeli towns were only the ­excuse, not the reason for Operation Cast Lead. In June 2008, Egypt had ­brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement. ­Contrary to Israeli propaganda, this was a success: the average number of rockets fired monthly from Gaza dropped from 179 to three. Yet on 4 November Israel violated the ceasefire by launching a raid into Gaza, killing six Hamas fighters. When Hamas ­retaliated, Israel seized the renewed rocket attacks as the ­excuse for launching its insane offensive. If all Israel wanted was to protect its citizens from Qassam rockets, it only needed to ­observe the ceasefire.

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U.S. policy in Gaza remains unchanged

by Charles Fromm and Ellen Massey, Inter Press Service News

WASHINGTON, Jan 22, 2010 (IPS) – One year ago Thursday, the last Israeli tanks were lumbering out of the Gaza Strip, ending the 22-day Gaza War and leaving in their wake a decimated landscape and population.

A year later, the humanitarian and security situation in the devastated coastal enclave remains dire, yet the Barack Obama administration continues to overlook the crisis in Gaza, an approach which some experts say is an extension of the previous administration’s policy.

This policy has also done little to alleviate what human rights groups warn is a growing humanitarian crisis, plunging the Gaza Strip further into poverty and insecurity.

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Hosni Mubarak joins Israel in blockade of Gaza

Jean Shaoul, wsws.org, January 18, 2010

Egypt has intervened forcibly to prevent international aid reaching Gaza, and has implemented new measures aimed at further tightening Israel’s illegal and inhumane blockade.

Israel stopped all but the most essential food and medicine entering Gaza in June 2007. Hamas, the Islamist party which won the parliamentary elections against Fatah in January 2006, took control of Gaza in order to pre-empt a Fatah coup backed by Israel, the US, Jordan and Egypt. Israel has also banned virtually all exports from Gaza.

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Egypt’s new wall threatens Gaza’s lifeline

Middle East Online, Jan 13, 2010 Would be 30 meters deep and 10 kilometers long Cairo’s move to pressure Hamas threatening more humanitarian disasters in Israeli-besieged Gaza. GAZA CITY – The construction of a new underground wall and recent border clashes have frayed relations between Hamas and Egypt and could threaten Gaza’s main lifeline in Gaza, analysts say. Citing national security, Egypt is now building an underground iron wall in a new bid to tighten its porous Sinai border with the restive Palestinian territory. Media reports said it would be 30 meters (100 feet) deep and 10 kilometers (six miles) long. Since democratically elected Hamas seized total power in Gaza in 2007 it has relied on smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt to provide essential food and products for its Israeli-besieged people. Continues >>

The American-Israeli War on Gaza

Foreign Policy Journal, December 27, 2009

by Jeremy R. Hammond

An Israeli attack on a U.N. school in Beit Lahiya with white phosphorus munitions on January 17, 2009. Such attacks constitute war crimes under international law. (Photo: Muhammad al-Baba)

One year ago today, Israel launched “Operation Cast Lead”, a murderous full-scale military assault on the small, densely populated, and defenseless Gaza Strip. The operation resulted in the massacre of over 1,300 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians, including hundreds of children.

This includes only those killed directly by military attacks. The actual casualty figure from Israel’s policies towards Gaza, including the number of deaths attributable to its ongoing siege of the territory, is unknown.

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