Arab-Israeli Conflict

He Resigned!

Two weeks ago a person by the name of Noam Tibon was invited to lecture at Boston University’s International Relations Department. He is the former Commander of the Hebron Area Brigade in the Israeli Army (IDF) and he will stay an officer in that armytill he is 55. He was invited to give “Lessons from Israel’s War on Terror”. Colonel Tibon argued that “the high moral standards of the Israeli army” constrain the army’s operations in the territories.

Yesterday, Friday 8th of March, 59 civilian Palestinians were killed in refugee camps around the West Bank. Seven hundred and fifty three (753) Palestinians were injured in one day. Palestinian ambulances were captured by Israeli soldiers and used as traps; whenever a wounded Palestinian was brought to the ambulance Israeli soldiers hiding inside would shoot him along with those who brought him, 16 Palestinians died in this manner. Six bodies are left in the streets and no ambulance is allowed to come near them. Israeli helicopters fire at anything that moves. Today, Rana Adel Hamad, a pregnant woman who went into labor at 9 a.m was denied access to any medical facility, she and her baby died as a result. Rana is the 15th woman prevented from giving birth at hospital by Israeli checkpoints; she and her baby bring the total number of people who have died from the Israeli policy of preventing access to medical treatment to 36, and the total number of Palestinians killed in the Intifada to 1200.

“Civilian casualties among Palestinians are kept at the minimum, and they happen only accidentally” said Mr. Tibon giving his “Lessons from Israel’s War on Terror”. He shortly added: “For example, there was this terrorist who used to move around with his family, in the end we had to kill him along with his family…what should we do?…personally I felt bad about it!!”.

By saying the words above Tibon had just confessed a war crime. First of all he confessed to intentionally killing civilians. Secondly, he, not a court or any judicial system, decided that the victim was a terrorist, convicted him and executed him with no evidence or trial. Thirdly, the person he killed is not a terrorist at all. Tibon and his soldiers are an occupation force. According to the UN charter, the Geneva Conventions and all declarations of human rights, fighting Tibon and his soldiers is not only a right it is a duty. The 400 settlers in Hebron that are being protected by Tibon from 120 thousand Palestinians are not only criminals, but a crime too. The alteration of any demographic and/or geographic properties of an occupied territory, such as allowing the movement of settlers into such territories, is a crime of war according to the IV Geneva Convention. From these settlers came Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the person who shot to death 29 Palestinians while they were praying in the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron in 1994. The Hebron settlers, who declared Goldstein to be a saint and set up a memorial to him, were punished by granting them half the mosque!

Of these settlers too came the Israeli young woman who distributed caricatures of a half naked prostitute with “Virgin Mary” written on her chest, and a caricature of a pig with the word “Mohammad” written on its back.

Tibon’s soldiers are responsible for several executions at checkpoints. On the 7th of January 2001, Khaled Ghannam, an ordinary store owner, was stopped at a checkpoint, handcuffed, made to lie on the ground, face down, and then shot several times by the soldiers. He was denied medical care for more than an hour. On the 27th of March 2001, Mahmoud Ismail Daraweesh, 11 years old, was shot dead in the village of Doura by Tibon’s soldiers; none of them was even questioned about the death of the child let alone tried and punished.

According to the International Red Cross, 85-90% of Palestinian casualties are civilians, one third of all victims are hit in the upper part of the body, most of them in the eye, forehead or the heart, 30% are children, and Palestinian casualties are five times greater than Israeli casualties.

The same day, March 27th, Tibon himself asked the permission from the Israeli Crime Minister, who himself is facing charges of war crimes, including crimes against humanity and genocide in a Belgian court, to shell the civilian residential quarters of Abu Sneineh and Haret Al-Sheikh in Hebron. His reason was that Palestinians used to fire at his soldiers from these quarters. Again I repeat shooting at Tibon and his soldiers is not only a right, it is a duty under international law.

As a recent declaration by the Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention makes clear, the Israeli army’s actions in the occupied territories have been characterized by “indiscriminate or disproportionate use of force” and by “a lack of respect for international humanitarian laws.” Indeed, Israel’s continued occupation itself defies a binding resolution of the United Nations and is thus illegal. Resistance to this occupation is no different than resistance against any other illegal occupation, such as for instance that of the French against the Germans during WWII . If you want to call it terrorism, then I suppose the French should be ashamed of their “résistance” against the Nazis and may Louis Aragon be transferred to Guantanamo. The annexation of the land of others by force, on the other hand, is the ultimate crime in international law. Every agony felt by the Israelis and the Palestinians to this day is the direct result of the policy of occupation and settlement of successive Israeli governments.

For that matter, according to the principles established in the fourth Geneva Convention, the way in which Israel acquired its pre-1967 borders [should also be considered a war crime. The Jews in Palestine were less than 10% of the population [at] the time of the British invasion of Jerusalem in 1917. It was under the British policy of creating a national home for the Jews in the land of Palestinians that the percentage was raised through immigration to 30%. This British policy changed the demographic properties of an occupied territory. The Palestinian were not allowed to have a parliament or any kind of national representative government under the British and they had no say whatsoever regarding who had the right to settle in their country. By 1947 the Jews were still just 30% of the population, and when the UN issued the resolution of the partition of Palestine, Arabs were a majority even in the portion allotted to the Jews. The war of 1948 consisted of a series of massacres designed to scare the Palestinians out of their villages. Today Israel sits on the remains of 460 Palestinian villages that were totally whipped off the map in what amounted to a massive operation of ethnic cleansing. The Palestinians were turned into the most lasting refugee problem in the world. The thus created state of Israel issued a law that allowed any Jew to settle in Palestine and become an Israeli citizen under the pretext that David and Solomon passed by the place 2000 years ago, while a Palestinian who was just thrown out of his home, with his valid property documents in hand, with his relatives still living there and with a thousand UN resolutions, rules of international law to back his pledge, and with the recognition of 100 states in the world was not allowed to return, only because of his religion. Again Israel is a war crime. These refugees are the ones Israel is going after today in Tulkarem and Bethlehem. Israel destroyed their villages in 1948 and now Israeli tanks and F16 are going after them in their camps. These refugees are the anti-thesis of Israel. By their mere existence they prove that Theodore Hertzel was wrong when he said that Palestine was a land with no people. Zionism, like any form of colonialism, sees the land and does not see the people. Colonial powers saw Africa not the Africans, the fields not the peasants, the pyramids not the Egyptians who built them, Palestine not the Palestinians. Zionism, like colonialism, racism, and ethnic cleansing is a crime against Humanity.

Prof. Andrew. Bacevich, the person who invited Tibon to speak in this forum, should resign. All through the lecture he was holding the towel for the Israeli boxer. I was stunned to see this alliance between a university professor and an occupation officer. And Mr. Bacevich did not seem at all bothered to be sitting next to a person who had just admitted to committing a war crime by any standard of international law that is taught in this school or any other school. In the lecture I asked him to resign, he said he chose not to. On second thought, I think he had already resigned as a professor the minute he shook hands with Tibon.