While Israel has been withholding aid deliveries into the Gaza Strip, the EU has supported upgrading its relations with the European community.
“Gaza
is burning,” writes French activist Liliane Cordova Kaczerginski, using the
very words of a famous song of a Jewish village destroyed by the Nazis. Like
sixty years ago, Gaza
is burning and the world is silent, waiting for the outcome of a non-existent
peace process. “A hostile
entity” —this was the way the Israeli leadership defined, a year ago, a
territory in which one and a half million civilians, women, the elderly and
children, are trying to survive. As such, the Israeli state has the right, in
fact the duty, to launch a war of annihilation.
Several years ago, the late Tanya
Reinhart used the word “genocide” to describe the harsh repression of the
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories by Israel; I was among those who
criticized her for using too strong of a concept. From where you are now,
forgive me Tanya, because you were right and saw the true nature of the Israeli
plans, and I was dead wrong: the State of Israel is conducting a rampant
genocide against the people of Gaza, using the weapon of near-starvation,
electricity cuts and deprivation of drinking water, provoking epidemics and
preventing basic health-care. Gaza is under siege, and the war criminal Ehud
Barak has just ordered a halving of even the emergency humanitarian aid
conveyed by the United Nations.
When Sarajevo was
victim of the criminal siege initiated by the Serbian army and militias, the
international community retaliated with severe sanctions, a boycott of the
Yugoslav regime and the bombardment of Belgrade.
When Iraq occupied Kuwait, the international community launched a
military offensive against Iraq
and a radical embargo that provoked the death of hundreds of thousands of
innocent children. Today, that same international community is completely
silent in the face of the martyrdom of Gaza.
It is our duty, the duty of civil societies all over the world, to demand from
international institutions and governments urgent and drastic actions against Israel, a state
that is violating the basic rules of international law, hundreds of United
Nations resolutions and each and every convention aimed at protecting human
rights.
The war crimes committed by the Israeli state against
the population of Gaza
exclude it from the community of nations. Like apartheid South Africa,
it should be sanctioned and boycotted, and not rewarded with an upgrading of
the partnership agreement with the European Union.
As an Israeli citizen, I expect from the European
Union to help us pressure our government to stop the crimes against the
Palestinian population of Gaza.
By rewarding Israel with an upgrading of its relations with the European
community, the message of EU is a disgrace that should be condemned and fought
by all Europeans who care for human dignity.
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