The Marxist-Leninist Weekly

The Zionist state of Israel has started a ground invasion of occupied Palestinian territory with as many as 60,000 troops amassed at the Gaza border. This ground invasion is taking place in a desperate attempt to smash Palestinian resistance after their failure to smash it through a brutal two-week long campaign of daily aerial bombings, destruction of homes and mosques, a centre for the disabled and other civilian infrastructure, including water treatment facilities leaving many with no potable water. By the time the ground invasion started, more than 240 people had been killed and more than 1,700 injured, many of them women and children and, according to the United Nations, 80 per cent of them civilians.

In a continuing effort to intimidate families, soldiers blew up the main doors of many homes, causing extensive damage. Dozens of Palestinians protesting the raids have been treated for the effects of tear gas, while many were shot by live rounds and rubber-coated metal bullets in clashes between mainly youth and soldiers in Hebron, Bethlehem, Tulkarem, Salfit and Ramallah.

Israel has also attempted to decimate the Palestinian government, arresting eleven Palestinian legislators, including Finance Minister Dr. Omar Abdul-Razeq from Salfit in central West Bank, and legislators from Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin in the north and Hebron in the south. Youth were detained and taken to the Israeli military base near Hebron while many others were detained in Bethlehem.

The Ahrar Center for Detainees' Studies and Human Rights has reported that soldiers detained Professor Ibrahim Abdul-Sattar Qassem of the Najah University in Nablus, a prominent intellectual, in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.

A massive PR campaign has accompanied these war crimes in which the Zionists and the likes of U.S. President Barack Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and others have upheld Israel's so-called right to self-defence.

Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "No international pressure will prevent us from striking, with all force." Essentially branding all of Gaza as terrorist, he said "no terrorist target is immune."

U.S. President Obama said in a statement: "Israel has the right to defend itself against what I consider to be inexcusable attacks from Hamas." A White House spokesman said, "There are a number of relationships the United States has that we are willing to leverage in the region to try to bring about an end to the rocket fire that's originating in Gaza."

Canadian Prime Minister Harper said, "Canada is unequivocally behind Israel. We support its right to defend itself, by itself, against these terror attacks, and urge Hamas to immediately cease their indiscriminate attacks on innocent Israeli civilians.

"Canada reiterates its call for the Palestinian government to disarm Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups operating in Gaza, including the Iranian proxy, Palestinian Islamic Jihad."

In a further effort to stop Palestinian resistance while defending Israeli aggression, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the envoy for the Quartet (U.S., UN, Russia, European Union), flew into Cairo on July 12 for talks. Hamas however has rejected Egypt's U.S.-backed military government as incapable of serving as a mediator; furthermore, they are failing to assist the Palestinians in their hour of need. Blair's efforts to bring credibility to the Egyptians and put pressure on the Palestinians were also doomed to fail. Far from giving up their resistance struggle, Palestinians will curse Egypt for conciliating with the Israeli assault and not providing a humanitarian corridor to escape the assault.

These crimes and heinous justifications have been met with stepped up Palestinian resistance and worldwide opposition. This underscores the point that Israel's position that it will pursue these crimes until the resistance is wiped out, is not only unattainable but also unsustainable. It will cause grave suffering and destruction, and isolate Israel like never before, but it will not wipe out the resistance.

End the Occupation Now! Charge Israel with War Crimes!
Support the Palestinian Resistance! Long Live Palestine!

Occupation Is a Crime -- Resistance Is a Right!

International law and principles that came out of the experience of the second World War establish occupation is a crime and resistance to occupation is a right. The Palestinian people are affirming their rights by defending themselves from Israel's occupation and attacks. They are affirming everyone's right to be. By resisting the occupation they say No! to war crimes, to occupation and violations of human rights. By standing with them we affirm our own rights and the rights of all.

The Harper government does not represent Canadian public opinion. According to the Harper government there is nothing wrong with Israel's brutal assault on Gaza from the air, sea and now land that has resulted in mainly civilians, many of them children, being killed as well as thousands of homes and essential infrastructure damaged or completely destroyed.

For Harper and Baird it is those living under the occupation and their resistance to it that are the problem and responsible for their own deaths. If only they accepted their fate as an occupied people with all the indignities that entails, things would be fine.

Harper is actively egging Israel on, trumpeting that "Canada" is unequivocally behind what it is doing. Civilians are being killed in Gaza only because they are being used as human shields, he says, exonerating Israel of all blame. This is pure disinformation, deliberately intended to make the victim look like the aggressor.

Harper's ludicrous assertion and advice to other governments that solidarity with Israel is the best way of stopping the conflict shows he recognizes no norms of international law or principles. Everything is justified in the name of fighting terrorism. What he really means of course is that resistance to the systemic violence of the occupation will not be tolerated. The fact that Israel is engaging in state terror to mete out collective punishment to the people of Gaza is fine according to this twisted logic.

Not only this, in their desperation to disinform public opinion so that they get away with their own unprincipled support for Israel, the Harperites attempt to criminalize anyone at home who speaks or acts politically to oppose the occupation. They do so because the future they want for Canada is one completely embroiled in the U.S. imperialist project for world domination and occupation where the peoples are dispossessed of their lands and resources.

Students at the University of Windsor held a referendum in March this year to give youth a chance to express their conviction that the Israeli occupation of Palestine must be ended, which they did. Instead of recognizing that Canadian youth are not for war and occupation and when given information they stand for justice, the Harper government sought to demonize and criminalize them, and the University, to its shame, followed suit.

Cabinet Minister Jason Kenney equated the fact that students voted for their student government to boycott or divest from companies that profit from Israeli war crimes, occupation and oppression with "hatred."

Jeff Watson, Conservative MP for Essex referred to the students' stand as "this new anti-Semitism poisoning our Canadian campuses."

The students' vote, despite this pressure and blackmail, showed that Canadian youth are not for war and occupation and can be counted on to take a just stand.

The Israeli aggressors, U.S. President Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Harper are justifying war crimes by calling it self-defence. All of it is an attempt to disinform public opinion so as to make sure firm stands against occupation and Israel's war crimes are ineffective. But this is failing miserably as the peoples of the world rise up and demand an end to the occupation. Israel's crimes -- killings, demolitions, arrests and now ground invasion -- show that its sole aim is to smash the resistance. But it has not succeeded. Let's go all out to make sure it does not succeed.

Witness to an International Crime:
Israeli State Terrorism in Gaza

"Protective Edge," the cartoonish name given to the latest Israeli military offensive against the occupied people of Palestine, is representative of the inverted reality whereby the 1.7 million captive and largely defenseless Palestinians in Gaza are the vicious aggressors against the peace-loving settlers of Israel. Similar to the inverted reality in the U.S., where the myth of the innocent settler was created to justify the systematic slaughter of Indigenous peoples, the genocidal policies of Israel are camouflaged by the transformation of its position from an armed colonial invader to one of victim.

This repositioning is aided and abetted in the U.S. by a corporate media whose world view and angle of reporting is framed by the innocent settler narrative. This narrative simultaneously liquidates and normalizes the colonial relationship between the colonizer and the colonized so that the occupied territories are not occupied but transformed into "disputed" territories and all forms of resistance on the part of Palestinians becomes terroristic.

Informed by this imperial vision, the corporate media not only parrot Israel's victim narrative but go even further with the creation of the two-equal-sides fiction. Mainstream coverage laments how both sides are locked in battle or a spiral of violence, giving the absurd impression that the violence in the occupied territories is a conflict between two forces with similar power and equal moral standing.

It should be clear that attempting to conceptually equate the force of the state of Israel, one of the most powerful militaries in the world, with a resistance movement of a captive people trapped by land and sea in an open-air concentration camp on one of the most densely populated strips of land on the planet is a position that is fundamentally immoral. Yet for most editors and reporters in the U.S., pro-Zionist liberals and their counterparts in the Christian Zionist movement as well as some elements of the European press and public, the conceptual blinders of white supremacist colonial consciousness makes it impossible to see the immorality inherent in this construction of the so-called conflict.

The position for most of the world is that the latest assault on the Palestinian people is a war crime and an ongoing crime against humanity. That position was affirmed by the international Court of Justice, which ruled that as an occupying military power Israel has an obligation under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 to protect the rights of civilians under military occupation.

Within this legal framework, the killing of civilians under occupation, indiscriminate shelling of Palestinian communities, collective punishments, house demolitions, arbitrary imprisonment, the theft of water and other natural resources and the building of settlements in occupied territories are all considered war crimes and crimes against humanity.

That is the real story that should be communicated to the general public in the U.S. But instead, the public is being led to believe that the Israeli military assault is a legally and morally justified response to aggression from Hamas. From this perspective there is no special responsibility on the part of the Israeli authorities to protect the rights of Palestinians under military occupation, and the actions of the Israeli government in response to the killings of the three Israeli teenagers is seen as a measured and rational response.

Colonialism and the Humanitarian Fraud

Only the most naive believe the current military assault has anything to do with "defense" issues related to the symbolic resistance offered from Hamas via the firing of rockets into Israel. Honest commentators on this issue know that Israel provoked the response from the Palestinian resistance with the mass repression it launched in Gaza after the killings of the three Israeli teenagers in order to use the response to justify its attack on Hamas. An attack meant to destroy the newly established unity government of the Palestinians.

The colonialist mentality sees any resistance, no matter the form, as illegitimate, punishable by death and unrelenting terror. That message is clear for Palestinians as their homes are reduced to dust and the people dig out the bodies of their children, spouses, fathers and grandmothers. The other message communicated to Palestinians, once again, and which they understand all too well, is that compared to the lives of the settlers their lives are worthless and there is no "responsibility to protect" for them.

The assault on the people and the institutions of Gaza has as its objective the eradication of the people of Gaza -- not necessarily in the physical sense, only because at this stage in global consciousness any such attempt would galvanize universal opposition, but to erase Gaza as a functioning society, to destroy it politically, culturally, spiritually and psychologically. A process that IIan Pappe refers to as "incremental genocide," that whatever the label is terroristic in its most naked, brutal and devastating effect.

When genocide or systematic ethnic cleansing is not a viable option, reducing the indigenous population to a weak, terrorized and dependent condition is the next best thing for settler policy. The targeting of the civilian infrastructure and governing institutions by the Israeli military makes it clear that this is the objective of the current attack on Gaza.

The international community has failed to hold the Israeli state accountable for war crimes and other serious violations of international law over the last four decades. Human rights organizations and United Nations special procedures have produced detailed reports on the crimes committed by Israel over the last four decades without the perpetrators being brought to justice. And when it comes to Israel, humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect is exposed as the imperialist ideological construct that it is.

Images of Palestinian children being dug out of bombed-out residential buildings have not resulted in calls for humanitarian intervention to save a population that may be the most brutalized on the planet today. Instead weak and pathetic calls are made for "both sides" to show restraint and protect "civilians" as though a distinction can be made or is ever made between combatants and non-combatants when it is the whole people who are seen as the enemy by Israeli authorities.

Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights points out the hypocrisy of the West when it comes to Israel,

"instead of condemning such recourse to massive violence as "aggression" that violates the UN Charter and fundamental international law principles, the reaction of Western diplomats and mainstream media has perversely sided with Israel. From the UN Secretary-General to the president of the United States, the main insistence has been that Hamas must stop all rocket attacks while Israel is requested ever so politely to show 'maximum restraint'."

What is the future for Palestine? Is reconciliation possible within the context of an ongoing colonial relationship? Is a two-state solution still viable with more than 500,000 settlers occupying almost half of the land that was supposed to be the Palestinian state, a land base that is just 22 percent of original Palestine before the establishment of Israel?

"One world, either that of the settler or that of the native, must be destroyed to bring the colonial system to an end. Not simply a military defeat or a political deal -- the total destruction of the other mode of living."

As the Israelis continue to steal Palestinian land, murder, degrade and humiliate Palestinian people, and create "facts on the ground" that make it impossible to establish a viable, independent Palestinian state, it is becoming clear that the only solution to the original sin of the Zionist project is authentic decolonization where the presence, humanity and sovereignty of the colonized is restored.

Authentic decolonization is the only solution because the inner logic of the colonial/capitalist process suggests that Fanon's assertion is correct -- that there can be no reconciliation of Palestinian self-determination and independent development with the continuation of the Israeli state as a settler state. Because even within the framework of the so-called two-state solution, the material basis of the Israeli colonial project is dependent on the continued expansion and expropriation of Palestinian land and the subordination of Palestinian people.

So while some Palestinians and their supporters still hope for a two-state solution, Israeli rulers also understand Fanon's position that "only one mode of living will survive" and are moving to destroy Palestinian resistance. This is the real story of Gaza and all of the occupied territories -- an ongoing crime that degrades all of us who are forced to witness it.

*Ajamu Baraka is a human rights defender whose experience spans three decades of domestic and international education and activism. A veteran grassroots organizer, his roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles.

Baraka has provided human rights trainings for grassroots activists across the country, briefings on human rights to the U.S. Congress, and appeared before and provided statements to various United Nations agencies, including the UN Human Rights Commission (precursor to the current UN Human Rights Council). He is also a contributing writer for various publications including Black Commentator, Commondreams, Pambazaka, People of Color Organize and Black Agenda Report.

No, Israel Does Not Have the Right to Self-Defense
In International Law Against Occupied
Palestinian Territory

[The following article originally published in 2012 by Jadaliyya Co-Editor Noura Erakat has been re-published in light of Israel's assertions that its current attacks on the Gaza Strip are an exercise in legitimate self-defense.]

On the fourth day of Israel's most recent onslaught against Gaza's Palestinian population, President Barack Obama declared, "No country on Earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders." In an echo of Israeli officials, he sought to frame Israel's aerial missile strikes against the 360-square kilometer Strip as the just use of armed force against a foreign country. Israel's ability to frame its assault against territory it occupies as a right of self-defense turns international law on its head.

A state cannot simultaneously exercise control over territory it occupies and militarily attack that territory on the claim that it is "foreign" and poses an exogenous national security threat. In doing precisely that, Israel is asserting rights that may be consistent with colonial domination but simply do not exist under international law.

Admittedly, the enforceability of international law largely depends on voluntary state consent and compliance. Absent the political will to make state behavior comport with the law, violations are the norm rather than the exception. Nevertheless, examining what international law says with regard to an occupant's right to use force is worthwhile in light of Israel's deliberate attempts since 1967 to reinterpret and transform the laws applicable to occupied territory. These efforts have expanded significantly since the eruption of the Palestinian uprising in 2000, and if successful, Israel's reinterpretation would cast the law as an instrument that protects colonial authority at the expense of the rights of civilian non-combatants.

Israel Has a Duty to Protect Palestinians Living Under Occupation

Military occupation is a recognized status under international law and since 1967, the international community has designated the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as militarily occupied. As long as the occupation continues, Israel has the right to protect itself and its citizens from attacks by Palestinians who reside in the occupied territories. However, Israel also has a duty to maintain law and order, also known as "normal life," within territory it occupies. This obligation includes not only ensuring but prioritizing the security and well-being of the occupied population. That responsibility and those duties are enumerated in Occupation Law.

Occupation law is part of the laws of armed conflict; it contemplates military occupation as an outcome of war and enumerates the duties of an occupying power until the peace is restored and the occupation ends. To fulfill its duties, the occupying power is afforded the right to use police powers, or the force permissible for law enforcement purposes. As put by the U.S. Military Tribunal during the Hostages Trial (The United States of America vs. Wilhelm List, et al.)

International Law places the responsibility upon the commanding general of preserving order, punishing crime, and protecting lives and property within the occupied territory. His power in accomplishing these ends is as great as his responsibility.

The extent and breadth of force constitutes the distinction between the right to self-defense and the right to police. Police authority is restricted to the least amount of force necessary to restore order and subdue violence. In such a context, the use of lethal force is legitimate only as a measure of last resort. Even where military force is considered necessary to maintain law and order, such force is circumscribed by concern for the civilian non-combatant population. The law of self-defense, invoked by states against other states, however, affords a broader spectrum of military force. Both are legitimate pursuant to the law of armed conflict and therefore distinguished from the peacetime legal regime regulated by human rights law.

When It Is Just to Begin to Fight

The laws of armed conflict are found primarily in the Hague Regulations of 1907, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and their Additional Protocols I and II of 1977. This body of law is based on a crude balance between humanitarian concerns on the one hand and military advantage and necessity on the other. The post-World War II Nuremberg trials defined military exigency as permission to expend "any amount and kind of force to compel the complete submission of the enemy" so long as the destruction of life and property is not done for revenge or a lust to kill. Thus, the permissible use of force during war, while expansive, is not unlimited.

In international law, self-defense is the legal justification for a state to initiate the use of armed force and to declare war. This is referred to as jus ad bellum -- meaning "when it is just to begin to fight." The right to fight in self-defense is distinguished from jus in bello, the principles and laws regulating the means and methods of warfare itself. Jus ad bellum aims to limit the initiation of the use of armed force in accordance with United Nations Charter Article 2(4); its sole justification, found in Article 51, is in response to an armed attack (or an imminent threat of one in accordance with customary law on the matter). The only other lawful way to begin a war, according to Article 51, is with Security Council sanction, an option reserved -- in principle, at least -- for the defense or restoration of international peace and security.

Once armed conflict is initiated, and irrespective of the reason or legitimacy of such conflict, the jus in bello legal framework is triggered. Therefore, where an occupation already is in place, the right to initiate militarized force in response to an armed attack, as opposed to police force to restore order, is not a remedy available to the occupying state. The beginning of a military occupation marks the triumph of one belligerent over another. In the case of Israel, its occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai in 1967 marked a military victory against Arab belligerents.

Occupation Law prohibits an occupying power from initiating armed force against its occupied territory. By mere virtue of the existence of military occupation, an armed attack, including one consistent with the UN Charter, has already occurred and been concluded. Therefore the right of self-defense in international law is, by definition since 1967, not available to Israel with respect to its dealings with real or perceived threats emanating from the West Bank and Gaza Strip population. To achieve its security goals, Israel can resort to no more than the police powers, or the exceptional use of militarized force, vested in it by (international humanitarian law). This is not to say that Israel cannot defend itself -- but those defensive measures can neither take the form of warfare nor be justified as self-defense in international law. As explained by Ian Scobbie:

"To equate the two is simply to confuse the legal with the linguistic denotation of the term "defense." Just as "negligence," in law, does not mean "carelessness" but, rather, refers to an elaborate doctrinal structure, so "self-defense" refers to a complex doctrine that has a much more restricted scope than ordinary notions of 'defense.'"

To argue that Israel is employing legitimate "self-defense" when it militarily attacks Gaza affords the occupying power the right to use both police and military force in occupied territory. An occupying power cannot justify military force as self-defense in territory for which it is responsible as the occupant. The problem is that Israel has never regulated its own behavior in the West Bank and Gaza as in accordance with Occupation Law.

Israel's Attempts to Change International Law

Since the beginning of its occupation in 1967, Israel has rebuffed the applicability of international humanitarian law to the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Despite imposing military rule over the West Bank and Gaza, Israel denied the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (the cornerstone of Occupation Law). Israel argued because the territories neither constituted a sovereign state nor were sovereign territories of the displaced states at the time of conquest, that it simply administered the territories and did not occupy them within the meaning of international law. The UN Security Council, the International Court of Justice, the UN General Assembly, as well as the Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) have roundly rejected the Israeli government's position. Significantly, the HCJ recognizes the entirety of the Hague Regulations and provisions of the 1949 Geneva Conventions that pertain to military occupation as customary international law.

Israel's refusal to recognize the occupied status of the territory, bolstered by the US' resilient and intransigent opposition to international accountability within the UN Security Council, has resulted in the condition that exists today: prolonged military occupation. Whereas the remedy to occupation is its cessation, such recourse will not suffice to remedy prolonged military occupation. By virtue of its decades of military rule, Israel has characterized all Palestinians as a security threat and Jewish nationals as their potential victims, thereby justifying the differential, and violent, treatment of Palestinians. In its 2012 session, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination described current conditions following decades of occupation and attendant repression as tantamount to Apartheid.

In complete disregard for international law, and its institutional findings, Israel continues to treat the Occupied Territory as colonial possessions. Since the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000, Israel has advanced the notion that it is engaged in an international armed conflict short of war in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Accordingly, it argues that it can 1) invoke self-defense, pursuant to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, and 2) use force beyond that permissible during law enforcement, even where an occupation exists.

The Gaza Strip Is Not the World Trade Center

To justify its use of force in the OPT as consistent with the right of self-defense, Israel has cited UN Security Council Resolution 1368 (2001) and UN Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001). These two resolutions were passed in direct response to the Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001. They affirm that those terrorist acts amount to threats to international peace and security and therefore trigger Article 51 of the UN Charter permitting the use of force in self-defense. Israel has therefore deliberately characterized all acts of Palestinian violence -- including those directed exclusively at legitimate military targets -- as terrorist acts. Secondly it frames those acts as amounting to armed attacks that trigger the right of self-defense under Article 51 irrespective of the West Bank and Gaza's status as Occupied Territory.

The Israeli Government stated its position clearly in the 2006 HCJ case challenging the legality of the policy of targeted killing (Public Committee against Torture in Israel et al v. Government of Israel). The State argued that, notwithstanding existing legal debate, "there can be no doubt that the assault of terrorism against Israel fits the definition of an armed attack," effectively permitting Israel to use military force against those entities. Therefore, Israeli officials claim that the laws of war can apply to "both occupied territory and to territory which is not occupied, as long as armed conflict is taking place on it" and that the permissible use of force is not limited to law enforcement operations. The HCJ has affirmed this argument in at least three of its decisions: Public Committee Against Torture in Israel et al v. Government of Israel, Hamdan v. Southern Military Commander, and Physicians for Human Rights v. The IDF Commander in Gaza. These rulings sanction the government's position that it is engaged in an international armed conflict and, therefore, that its use of force is not restricted by the laws of occupation. The Israeli judiciary effectively authorizes the State to use police force to control the lives of Palestinians (e.g., through ongoing arrests, prosecutions, checkpoints) and military force to pummel their resistance to occupation.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) dealt with these questions in its assessment of the permissible use of force in the Occupied West Bank in its 2004 Advisory Opinion, Legal Consequences on the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The ICJ reasoned that Article 51 contemplates an armed attack by one state against another state and "Israel does not claim that the attacks against it are imputable to a foreign state." Moreover, the ICJ held that because the threat to Israel "originates within, and not outside" the Occupied West Bank, the situation is thus different from that contemplated by Security Council resolutions 1368 (2001) and 1373 (2001), and therefore Israel could not in any event invoke those resolutions in support of its claim to be exercising a right of self-defense. Consequently, the Court concludes that Article 51 of the Charter has no relevance in this case.

Despite the ICJ's decision, Israel continues to insist that it is exercising its legal right to self-defense in its execution of military operations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since 2005, Israel slightly changed its position towards the Gaza Strip. The government insists that as a result of its unilateral disengagement in 2005, its occupation has come to an end. In 2007, the government declared the Gaza Strip a "hostile entity" and waged war upon the territory over which it continues to exercise effective control as an Occupying Power....

In effect, Israel is distorting/reinterpreting international law to justify its use of militarized force in order to protect its colonial authority. Although it rebuffs the de jure application of Occupation Law, Israel exercises effective control over the West Bank and Gaza and therefore has recourse to police powers. It uses those police powers to continue its colonial expansion and apartheid rule and then in defiance of international law cites its right to self-defense in international law to wage war against the population, which it has a duty to protect. The invocation of law to protect its colonial presence makes the Palestinian civilian population doubly vulnerable. Specifically in the case of Gaza,

"It forces the people of the Gaza Strip to face one of the most powerful militaries in the world without the benefit either of its own military, or of any realistic means to acquire the means to defend itself."

More broadly, Israel is slowly pushing the boundaries of existing law in an explicit attempt to reshape it. This is an affront to the international humanitarian legal order, which is intended to protect civilians in times of war by minimizing their suffering. Israel's attempts have proven successful in the realm of public relations, as evidenced by President Obama's uncritical support of Israel's recent onslaughts of Gaza as an exercise in the right of self-defense. Since international law lacks a hierarchal enforcement authority, its meaning and scope is highly contingent on the prerogative of states, especially the most powerful ones. The implications of this shift are therefore palpable and dangerous.

Failure to uphold the law would allow states to behave according to their own whim in furtherance of their national interest, even in cases where that is detrimental to civilian non-combatants and to the international legal order. For better or worse, the onus to resist this shift and to preserve protection for civilians rests upon the shoulders of citizens, organizations, and mass movements who can influence their governments enforce international law. There is no alternative to political mobilization to shape state behavior.

* Co-editor of Jadaliyya.com Arab Studies Journal, Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and writer. She is currently a Freedman Teaching Fellow at Temple University, Beasley School of Law and is a member of the Legal Support Network for the Badil Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights. She has taught International Human Rights Law and the Middle East at Georgetown University since Spring 2009. Most recently she served as Legal Counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, chaired by Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich.

Statements Against the War Crimes

The Arab League "affirmed the necessity of urgent steps for an immediate end to the Israeli aggression on Gaza and providing protection for the Palestinians," in a report to be submitted to a meeting of the foreign ministers of the countries which comprise the Arab League. Israeli "air strikes on Gaza have become a matter that cannot be met with silence any more," it said.

The Arab League "demands that the international community intervene through its legal and humanitarian institutions to protect the Palestinian people," the statement said.

A spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani described reports about the increasing number of Palestinian casualties, especially children, as disturbing. She added that targeting houses is a breach of human rights law unless the buildings were used for military purposes.

"We have received disturbing reports that many of the civilian casualties, including of children, occurred as a result of strikes on homes," Shamdasani said, adding, "Such reports raise doubts about whether the Israeli airstrikes have been in accordance with international humanitarian law and international human rights law."

According to Shamdasani, in case of any doubt, the buildings which are ordinarily used by the civilian population cannot be a legitimate target.

The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) condemned Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people saying that Tel Aviv's offensive violates even the most minimum standards of international humanitarian law by attacking civilians indiscriminately.

In addition, ALBA reaffirmed "its unconditional solidarity, support and sympathy to the people of Palestine against the new wave of violence."

In a communique, the Foreign Ministry of Cuba denounced Israel's use of its military and technological superiority to execute a policy of collective punishment with out-of-proportion use of force, which causes the death of innocent civilians and huge material damage.

"Faced with that situation, we are calling on the international community to demand that Israel ends its escalation of violence," the statement, signed by Director for Bilateral Issues of the Cuban Foreign Ministry Gerardo Peñalver, said.

Only talks on the grounds of equality can lead to a fair peace that allows the Palestinian people to exercise their inalienable rights and establish definitively the Palestinian State, with its capital in East Jerusalem, the text said.

Israeli academics condemned the slaughter and endless oppression of the Palestinian people. Their statement reads: "The signatories to this statement, all academics at Israeli universities, wish it to be known that they utterly deplore the aggressive military strategy being deployed by the Israeli government. The slaughter of large numbers of wholly innocent people, is placing yet more barriers of blood in the way of the negotiated agreement which is the only alternative to the occupation and endless oppression of the Palestinian people. Israel must agree to an immediate cease-fire, and start negotiating in good faith for the end of the occupation and settlements, through a just peace agreement.

"If you are an Israeli academic, working in Israel, and would like to sign this statement, please send an email to Prof. Rachel Giora [rachel.giora@gmail.com] with your name, title and affiliation."

The world's foremost theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking took the decision at the request of Palestinian academics to boycott the Israeli president's conference. Cambridge University, where Hawking is the former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and today Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge, initially made a false claim that he had withdrawn on health grounds but Hawking issued a letter correcting that information saying his action was in support of the boycott, divestments and sanctions (BDS) movement. Hawking also made it clear that if he had gone he would have used the occasion to criticize Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. His stand was approved by a majority of two to one in a poll conducted by the Guardian newspaper in England.

Reports inform that Hawking's public refusal follows that of prominent singers, artists and writers, from Brian Eno to Mike Leigh, Alice Walker and Adrienne Rich, all of whom have publicly rejected invitations to perform in Israel. The fact that Hawking is a famous scientist and that science and technology drive Israel's economy is particularly damaging to Israel's research ties with European and American scientists.

Communist and Workers' Parties from around the world issued a joint statement titled: Massacre at the Expense of the People of Palestine Must End Now. It reads:

"We, the communist and workers' parties which sign this Joint Statement condemn the barbaric and criminal assault of the state of Israel against the Palestinian people.

"We express our full solidarity with the people of Palestine and we call on the workers all over the world to mobilize in order to strengthen the wave of condemnation against Israel, in order for solidarity with the Palestinian people to be expressed in a practical way.

"The USA also bears an enormous responsibility for these bloody developments, which is supporting Israel in every way in the continuation of the oppression and massacre of the Palestinian people.

"The EU also bears responsibility, as it follows the line of keeping an 'equal distance' between the victim and the persecutor and is simultaneously developing cooperation with Israel at a military and economic-political level.

"The continuing air raids against the Palestinian people must cease immediately and a ground offensive must be prevented.

"The tearing down of the unacceptable wall of division and the lifting of every form of blockade against the Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

"The immediate end to the settlements and the withdrawal of all the settlers that have settled beyond the 1967 borders.

"The right of return of all the Palestinian refugees to their homes, on the basis of the relevant UN decisions.

All joint military exercises and all the agreements of military cooperation with Israel must be cancelled.

Actions Worldwide Call for End to Israel's
Crimes Against Palestine

Resistance continues worldwide to the state terrorism that has been unleashed against Palestine by U.S.-backed Zionist Israel under the pretext of the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers on June 12. The Israeli state, without evidence or observing due process, blames the Hamas government of Gaza for the kidnappings, declaring it a terrorist organization. It is using the situation to justify mass arrests, indefinite detention and bombing raids. Mass collective punishment is a heinous crime associated with the Nazis, fascists and Japanese militarists during World War II and the U.S. imperialists in countries such as Korea and Viet Nam. Around the world people have responded with actions demanding an end to the crimes against humanity being perpetrated against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.

Some 400 people took part in a spirited demonstration in Halifax on July 18th to denounce Israeli war crimes and to show support for the people of Gaza and Palestine. Organized by SAIADAL -- Students Against Israeli Apartheid at Dalhousie University to both CBC Radio and CBC TV buildings to denounce biased media coverage of the massacre taking place in Gaza.

Far from having reporters cover the event or sending out a representative to speak with the protesters the CBC called security demanding that the demonstrators get off the property. The demonstration carried on from the sidewalk with several speakers, who included Palestinian patriot Dr. Ismail Zayid, representatives from SAIADAL, Canadian Union of Postal Workers, No Harbour For War and others.

SAIADAL has called for a Candlelight vigil for the victims of Israeli aggression in Gaza on Saturday, July 19th at 9:30pm at the main entrance to Halifax Public Gardens.

On July 11, more than 2,000 people marched through rush hour traffic in downtown Montreal to condemn Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people. People were invited to sign an immense Palestinian flag being sent to Palestine as an expression of the firm support of Canadians for the struggle of the Palestinian people.

"Viva Viva Palestina!", "Free Gaza!", "Israel Terrorist, Harper Accomplice!" and other slogans filled the air as the demonstration made its way to the office of Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard and demanded that he denounce Israel’s attacks.

Representatives from Palestinian and Jewish Unity, Jews United against Zionism, the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN), Gaza's Ark, and Quebec's International Cooperation Association were among the speakers.

On July 16, another action saw hundreds of people gathered in front of metro Mont-Royal during rush hour, demanding that Israel stop its genocidal actions against Palestine and acknowledge its right to be. The demonstration, organized by the "Howl Arts Collective" of Montreal and Tadamon!, declared that only the defence and affirmation of the rights of the Palestinian people can guarantee peace in the region and denounced the Harper government's shameful role in its support of the Zionist State. The demonstration, which included a long Palestinian flag carried by 66 people -- one person for each of the 66 years of occupation since the Nakba, was greeted with support all along the way.

In Ottawa on July 12, Students Against Apatheid, Independent Jewish Voices, Palestinian community groups and others gathered at the Human Rights Monument in downtown Ottawa, to demand an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Chants of "Free, Free Palestine!" echoed as the demonstration moved up Elgin St. to the U.S. Embassy. There 3,000 people gathered to denounce U.S. Imperialism’s role in Israeli Zionist occupation and aggression. Music expressing the long struggle of Palestinians for the recognition of their rights was heard throughout downtown Ottawa.

On the way to Parliament Hill, the demonstration stopped briefly in front of the Prime Minister's Office to denounce the government’s support for Israeli policies and demand the government represent the majority of Canadians who believe in justice and human rights for all.

On July 11 more than 1,500 people from the Greater Toronto Area, the vast majority Canadian youth, demonstrated across from the Israeli Consulate in Toronto in the early evening. This was a powerful rebuff of the Harper government's disinformation about "Canada's unconditional support" for the Israeli Zionist state and evidence that Harper and his pro-Zionist gang do not speak for Canadians.

The demonstration was organized by Palestine House and the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid. During the speeches the youth formed a solid fist-raising, slogan-shouting, flag-waving phalanx shouting "Harper, Harper You will See, Palestine Will Be Free!" amongst other slogans drowning out a provocation by a group of Zionists forcing them to scurry off.

Demonstrators took to the street, marching along Bloor to Yonge, down to College St. and back to the Israeli consulate, with onlookers expressing support for the demonstrators and the just cause of the Palestinian people.

Waterloo

London

Windsor

In Windsor on July 18 several hundred people participated in the Action Against Israeli War Crimes: Windsor Protest for Palestine. The main organizers were activists with the University of Windsor Palestinian Solidarity Group. The action was characterized by a large presence of youth as well as entire families of several generations. It was supported by the Windsor Peace Coalition and others who came out to join the demonstration. A spirited march was held through the busy downtown core at 5:30 in the afternoon with participants carrying signs and chanting slogans like Free Free Palestine and Free Free Gaza. The march ended at City Hall Square for speeches. Speakers called for an end to the attacks on Gaza, pointing out this was the third war Israel had launched in six years. They demanded that the occupation be ended and upheld the right of Palestinians to resist it until that happened. The Harper government was repeatedly denounced for supporting Israel's war crimes and use of disinformation to try and justify it. Participants were encouraged to stay informed, active and organized in order to win the fight for justice for Palestine. At the conclusion of the march a collection was taken up for medical aid for those wounded in Gaza.

Calgary

United States

Chicago

Cleveland

Indianapolis, Columbia

Minneapolis, St Paul

St. Louis

Houston, Fort Worth

Austin

Tempe, Denver

Albuquerque, San Diego

Los Angeles

San Francisco

Portland

Puerto Rico

Latin America

Mexico

Venezuela

Left: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro holds up a sign reading S.O.S. Palestine. On July 12 during a television broadcast he called for the launch of a twitter campaign #SOSPalestine stating: "The Palestinian people have the right to live in their ancestral lands in peace. Our international position on the issue of Palestine is just and follows the policy of comandante Hugo Chavez". The campaign also directly challenged a campaign called #SOSVenezuela launched by various celebrities in the U.S. Maduro stated: "To those who went around the world saying "SOS Venezuela" what do the hypocrites that launched SOS Venezuela have to say about Palestine? Let's see if they dare! SOS Palestine!" he stated.

El Salvador, Colombia