What is Criminal is the Incarceration of Thousands of Palestinians and the Hannibal Directive Under Which the Israel Army Killed Hundreds of its Own Citizens
Prison Breakout October 7
Dear JVL,
I am not, nor have I ever been, a
member of Jewish Voice for
Labour. Nonetheless I consider myself a critical supporter. It is in that spirit
that I view with dismay the motion that JVL’s Executive has proposed on the ‘Gaza
War’ at your AGM this weekend.
Speaking with Haaretz, Israeli reserve pilot Col. Nof Erez describes Israeli army's response to Oct. 7 as "MASS HANNIBAL."
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) November 20, 2023
The Hannibal Directive orders the army to kill their own to prevent them being taken captive. pic.twitter.com/5IrERAAtVl
I know that it is a minor point but
it is important to point out that in the language we use we don’t unwittingly lend support to the Zionist narrative. There is no war between the people of
Gaza and the Zionist state. What has been taking place since October 7 is a
one-sided slaughter in which thousands of non-combatants, including children,
have been slaughtered in a campaign that has defied every tenet of
international law.
Socialists have always supported unconditionally
the right of people under occupation to resist their occupiers. That does not
mean that that that support is uncritical but any criticism which we make is
premised on our support.
Contrary to the lies of the mass media that babies had been beheaded, no baby died on October 7th, unlike the incubator babies that Israel killed in Al Shifa Hospital
I was therefore astounded that JVL’s
Executive sought to characterise the attack on October as ‘criminal’. According
to whose law? Israeli law? Of course the colonial occupier characterises resistance
to its occupation as criminal but I am surprised that JVL should join them.
The right to resist is recognised
in numerous resolutions of the UN General Assembly as well as the Additional
Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions (1977). Article 1(4),
classifies conflicts in which peoples are fighting against alien occupation and
racist regimes as armed conflicts in which individuals engaging in such
“fighting,” if captured, should be afforded the status of prisoners of war.
Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says
It is not necessary however to resort to international law to
understand that just as the French and Czech people had the right to resist the
Nazis, just as the American colonists had the right to resist the British and
the African slaves had the right to resist their overseers, so the Palestinians
too have a right to resist Israel’s Apartheid regime.
Between 1791 and 1804 slaves in Haiti and Santo Domingo
overthrew slavery, in the course of which they slaughtered every single French white
person. I would hope that if the JVL Executive had been around at the time that
you would have supported the slave uprising even if you had deplored much of
the killing that resulted. The same is true of October 7 when the Palestinians
of Gaza broke out of their prison.
Al-Qassam Brigades release letter of "Israeli" captive:
— AoR News 🇵🇸🇱🇧🇸🇾🇮🇶🇮🇷🇾🇪 (@AoR3138) November 27, 2023
To the generals who have accompanied me in recent weeks, it seems that we will part tomorrow, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
For your unnatural humanity that you showed towards me and to my daughter Emilia,… pic.twitter.com/MstMv2BJF8
As you are well aware Gaza has been occupied for over half a
century. For the past 16 years Israel has imposed a starvation blockade and
bombed the territory regularly (‘mowing
the lawn’) causing thousands of deaths. What right have we to call an
uprising of Gaza’s people ‘criminal’?
In 2018 when Palestinians in Gaza took part in the peaceful Great Return
March over 300 were mowed down by Israeli snipers and thousands more were
disabled by illegal Israeli ammunition. We all remember Razan
al-Najjar, the 21 year old medic gunned down by Israel as she was tending
to the wounded.
Great Return March
Israel
holds approximately 8,000 Palestinian prisoners, 3,000 of whom have not
even had the luxury of a ‘trial’ in a military court where the conviction rate
is over 99%. By what feat of intellectual gymnastics are Palestinians forbidden
to take Israelis prisoner when so many of them are imprisoned? This sounds very
much like Jewish Exceptionalism. We support the Palestinians whilst they are
nobly suffering but the moment they fight back we call them criminals.
The motion from the JVL Executive,
which talks of ‘Hamas’s killing of up to 1,200
Israeli residents, mostly civilians’ is simply wrong. According to the Times
of Israel approximately one-third of those killed were either soldiers or
police.
It is an open question as to how many of the remaining 800
civilians were killed by Israel itself as part of the infamous Hannibal
Directive which decrees that it is better to kill an Israeli captive than
have them taken prisoner and later swapped for Palestinian prisoners.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoEYFf1NYs8
Israelis in Tel Aviv 26 7 2014 There's no school tomorrow,there's no
children l
We know for a fact that at Kibbutz
Be’eri tanks were brought in to shell the houses where Israelis were being
held captive with the result that those held hostage died along with their
captors.
There is also considerable evidence
that Apache helicopters strafed
concert goers and cars indiscriminately. How then can the motion ascribe the
deaths on October 7 solely to Hamas when Israel acknowledges it bombed its own
bases when they fell under Hamas control?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi-ESUGUUMk
Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says (Full
with subtitles)
I also find the sentence ‘Israel’s
military onslaught is no surgical
operation targeting the militants responsible for October 7’ (my
emphasis) very strange. It implies that if Israel had launched a surgical as
opposed to a genocidal attack on Gaza then JVL would have supported it!
In the list of demands in the bullet points at the end of the
resolution JVL calls for the release of the (Israeli) ‘hostages’ but refers to Palestinian
‘detainees’. Why the difference? Are you implying that Palestinian prisoners are
lawfully detained? That they are not
hostages?
It is to be hoped that this resolution falls or is withdrawn.
Israel’s siege and occupation of Gaza are unlawful and it is therefore the
right of Hamas and any resistance group to resist that occupation.
Solidarity,
Tony Greenstein
See Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says
What really happened on 7th October?
Starmer’s Double Standards
Emergency motion on the Gaza War
This AGM rejects attempts by Israel and its Western backers
to portray the death toll inflicted on Gazans since October 7 as justified by
Israel’s claimed “right to defend itself”. Hamas’s
killing of up to 1,200 Israeli residents, mostly civilians, and the taking
of more than 200 hostages were criminal
acts. But Israel’s military onslaught is
no surgical operation targeting the militants responsible for October 7. It
is a vengeful retaliation by a government openly bent on the ethnic cleansing
of Palestinians.
This ongoing catastrophe stems directly from the consistent
policies of the Israeli settler-colonial state for decade after decade. It has
stolen Palestinians’ land and their water. It has demolished their homes. It
has imprisoned, tortured and murdered them and attempted to obliterate their
culture. It has created a vast open-air prison in Gaza and now turned it into
an open-air grave. Israel wants Palestinian land without Palestinians. In closing off all forms of non-violent
resistance to their apartheid policies the Israeli state has set the conditions
for the current disaster.
We deplore the proliferating attempts to silence Palestinians
and those who stand in solidarity with them by accusations that they are
motivated by antisemitism. It is Israel, a state, not the Jewish people
worldwide, that is carrying out the shamefully indiscriminate butchery in Gaza.
We reject the hypocritical arguments from politicians, Tory
and Labour, who talk of international law while ignoring obvious war crimes,
and who propose only temporary interruptions, so-called “humanitarian pauses”,
in the genocide. We welcome the negotiated release of some hostages and
detainees and any easing of the blockade. But only a permanent ceasefire can
open the way for an end to decades of injustice. A lasting peace, bringing
security, dignity, equality, justice and freedom for both to Palestinians and
Israelis, requires: (Bold is my emphasis)
·
an end to the Israeli bombardment and siege of Gaza
·
release of the hostages
·
release of Palestinian detainees
in Israeli gaols, many held without charge or trial
·
an end to Occupation and Apartheid
·
the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Moved JVL Executive Committee
Your clarity is too uncomfortable for the liberal left to accept. Well done Tony.
ReplyDelete"Truly, sir, I think it's clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government, and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under."
ReplyDeleteThe words of William Rainborough, uttered during the Putney debates in 1647, are among the foundation stones of our democracy. Presumably they also apply to members of Hamas today just as they did to the soldiers of the New Model Army during the English civil war.
To describe the killing of civilians on 7 October as "criminal" is either vulgar abuse or it presupposes that members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad were bound by laws which they had no voice in making.
As usual Tony you have expressed in lucid and cogent terms the actual legal status of the war as much as the implied absolute immoral indecency to fellow humans. Phil above has mentioned the 'liberal left', and we know what he means, but truth is there are people from across the political spectrum who would not disagree with your legal views here. I suppose as a LibDem I am a bit sensitive to use of the word liberal, even with a small 'l'. (No hard feelings Phil)
ReplyDeleteJVL are ok and mean well, but like so much of the Labour left, seem to think Labour is redeemable, and that its Starmer and 'new' Labour thats bad, not Labour itself. They don't ever seem to accept that Labour is part of the problem, regardless of who leads, and for all the anger about Sir Keirs I-P stance, will remain Labour loyalists. JVL, and the British liberal-left in general strike me as the types who go round screeching "GENERAL ELECTION NOW" and "TORIES OUT" but will only vote Labour, who are just as bad, if not worse.
ReplyDeleteOn the comments sections to a post titled 'How a slogan became bigger news than the murder of babies in Gaza' I noticed the following comment and no push back from JVL;
"A fundamental tenet when defining racism is to rely on the members of that race to identify what they see as threatening or discrimination. If most Jews think that “from the river to the sea” is a racist hate chant, then it is! End of …….The fact is most Jews do think the marches are racist and the chants threatening, I do for one. Furthermore, it is disgraceful to mock a man who’s brother was murdered in the Hamas terror attack."
I replied to challenge it, but its yet to be published, and I wonder if it even will be at all, which makes me think they're not so pro-Palestinian after all.
I agree with your quibbles mainly, but, having pedantically looked up ‘Hostage’, in the dictionary it would seem that it must be the wrong word for those illegally held Palestinian man, women and children in Israeli jails.. They have not been ‘ seized or held as security for the fulfilment of a condition’, In most cases they have been arbitrarily detained.
ReplyDeleteAre you saying that Israel wouldn’t use those arbitrarily detained as hostages if that became expedient.?
DeleteWe’ll said Tony. As a JVL member I have written to the JVL Executive supporting your stance. I am particularly surprised & very disappointed that said Executive has swallowed the propaganda, nay downright lies, about Hamas having killed 1,200 Israeli residents. It has been apparent for weeks now that many of those 1,200 were killed by Israeli forces,
ReplyDeleteThanks Richard. You and others of a like mind in JVL may find that Jewish Network for Palestine is a more congenial home at this time as JVL wrestles with its conscience and its liberal Zionist wing
DeleteUPDATE (3/12/2023)
ReplyDeleteJVL’s Executive Committee have withdrawn this Emergency Motion. Reasons given:
“Our emergency motion on Gaza has attracted, so far, 20 amendments… It is impossible to debate these in the time available… The proposed motion, we realise, has in any event been overtaken by developments.
The Committee’s statement concludes: “The EC will be listening closely to the contributions to the discussion and will be drafting an Executive statement, or possibly a series of statements, on the Gaza catastrophe in the light of the views expressed.”
Some of the amendments address points raised by Tony in his original blog, e.g. Amendment 4
a) In the first paragraph
Delete: ‘Hamas’s killing of up to 1,200 Israeli residents, mostly civilians, and the taking of more than 200 hostages were criminal acts. But’
b) In the first paragraph
Delete: ‘is no surgical operation targeting the militants responsible for October 7. It’
c) In the first paragraph
Insert’and genocide’ after ‘ethnic cleansing’
d) Delete second bullet point ‘release of the hostages’
I feel that much appreciation is due to Tony Greenstein for his part in achieving this outcome.
I am always happy to contribute to helping JVL avoid the pitfalls of identity politics!
ReplyDelete