I've Heard That Song Before

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Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a prison for Palestinians where life is intolerable, a human rights envoy has told the United Nations Human Rights Council.

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Aljazeera - 09/27/06

Israel violates international laws

John Dugard, special UN rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, said on Tuesday that the US, Europe and Canada had failed the Palestinian people by withdrawing funds since Hamas's refusal to accept Israel's right to exist.

He also described the Palestinians' lives as appalling and tragic.

He said: "In other countries this process might be described as ethnic cleansing but political correctness forbids such language where Israel is concerned."

"If the international community cannot take some action, it must not be surprised if the people of the planet disbelieve that they are seriously committed to the promotion of human rights."

Israel hit back saying there was an "alarming disconnect" between the rapporteur's report to the UN's human rights watchdog and the experience of Israelis who continued to face the "daily threat of Palestinian terrorism".

And what do Palestinians continue to face? They continue to face the daily threat of the Israeli government stealing more of their land, the Israeli army killing more of their children.

But Dugard, who has been a special UN investigator since 2001, said:

Israel violates international law as expounded by the Security Council and the International Court of Justice and goes unpunished. But the Palestinian people are punished for having democratically elected a regime [Hamas] unacceptable to Israel, the US and the EU.

Dugard said that three-quarters of Gaza's 1.4 million people were dependent on food aid.

Bombing raids by Israel since the June 25 capture of an army corporal by Palestinian militants had destroyed many houses and the territory's only power plant.

The West Bank also faced a humanitarian crisis, due to the barrier, which Dugard said was a move by Israel to annex [steal] more land.

War crime

An Israeli human rights group has condemned Israel's bombing of a Gaza power plant as a war crime.

B'Tselem, an independent group that monitors Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its policies in Gaza, said Israel could have used "less harmful alternatives".

Israeli war planes [provided by the United States] largely destroyed the power plant outside Gaza City on June 28.

Israel said at the time that it bombed the plant to cut power supplies and therefore make it more difficult for Palestinian fighters to operate following their kidnap of an Israeli soldier on June 25.

The bombing cut off electricity to many of Gaza's 1.4 million residents, affecting hospitals and food supplies, and had a knock-on impact on water and sewage systems.

"The bombing of the power plant was illegal and defined as a war crime in international humanitarian law as the attack was aimed at a purely civilian object," the rights group said in a report entitled Act of Vengeance.

"Even if one adopts the doubtful claim that the attack provided some definite military advantage, it was disproportionate and Israel had other, less harmful alternatives."

What is described as disproportionate depends on who is making the assessment. You and I may consider Israel's bombing of a civilian power plant, denying electricity to more than a million people, as a disproportionate retaliation for the kidnapping of one soldier. But people who follow a religion based upon the Babylonian Talmud have a different set of values, a different sense of proportion. --
Rabbi Yaacov Perrin

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