Pity Palestine: The 51 Day War (July 9, 2014 to August 26, 2014)
How do we even begin to fathom the devastation
Visited by Israel on the Palestinian nation?
A superpower with war technology on a par with our own
With F16s, Blackhawk gunships and drones.
Much as we did with Iraq
A flimsy excuse justified the latest Israeli attack
Destroying the infrastructure of a society
Hospitals, power plants and schools with impunity
Clearly War Crimes against Humanity
Vicious attacks on women and children—insanity.
Israel righteously mouths the desire for peace
But West Bank Settlements only increase and never cease.
But the Israeli pattern is becoming clear
Any time the chance of peace is near
An assassination or invasion or new assault–
Some incident– is used to grind the process to a halt
Kati Marton in A Death in Jerusalem adroitly
Documents the death of Count Folke Bernadotte
At the hands of Lehi (Stern Gang) Zionists
Derailing an accord with the Palestinians
40 years later Yitzhak Rabin was killed also
For his Nobel Prize winning work at Oslo,
And anytime there is tilt towards a peace convention
There is another military intervention
For clearly there is a grand strategy:
Namely the destruction of Palestinian society.
Every aspect of Palestinian life is circumscribed
In a system that can only be called apartheid.
And the UNHRC votes 29 to 1 with 17 abstentions
Announcing their intention
To investigate Israel for potential violations of the Geneva Convention
And the lone vote supporting Israel is that of the US delegation.
It is one thing to support the Israeli right of self defense
But that assertion elicits offense
As the Israeli assault is so asymmetric and disproportionate
And on our weapons technology dependent.
Solutions to this quagmire are few we see:
Ending lucrative weapons subsidies,
Or mobilizing Boycott, Divestment Sanctions three
And impacting the Israeli economy.
Barring this– more of the same we will see
With Israel proceeding with impunity
Driving the Palestinians into the sea
As Netanyahu proceeds with his solution final
Dispatching the Palestinians “once and for all”.
But the targeting of three UN camps
Finally elicits world-wide condemnation
And when the White House insists
Israel immediate desists
Demonstrating with felicity
American complicity
Israel has “mown the grass”
Any chance for a Palestinian state is surely past.
But maybe maybe not
As world-wide condemnation
And the rising disgust of the American nation
Forces a cease fire–shaky at first
But for peace there is surely a thirst
We note that change is certainly in the wind
With the American Hellfire missile rescind
With other weapons too
Scheduled for White House review
And an Israeli ship in the port of Oakland can’t unload
Stopped by a picket line of Palestinian supporters blocking the road
Supported by longshoreman in heartfelt sympathy
For Palestinian people’s longstanding misery
And the action is spreading —there’s more to this battle
With actions planned in the ports of Tacoma and Seattle
Lets hope this sends a message to Israel loud and clear:
Free Palestinians or we don’t want you ill-gotten goods here.
Netanyahu’s macabre charge of Hamas using the “telegenically dead”
And Palestinians inviting casualties as a cynical propaganda spread
Belies Pernille Ironside, UNICEF’s Gaza Chief,
Documenting the need of Palestinian children for relief
The wicked Israeli Gaza blockade
And ruthless annihilation of infrastructure
Eliminates all possibility of any kind of future
For this country of children.
But Israel will not end the blockade
What they really want is for Palestinians to disappear
As they purposely propagate continuous fear
Clearly we have here war crimes and crimes against humanity
Disturbing, outrageous, an absolute profanity
Res ipsa loqitur –the thing speaks for itself- nothing else to say
The international community must find a way
To intervene and end this obscenity
And acknowledge Palestinian’s humanity
Their right to live in peace – secure
And to have a viable future.
To be able to finally cope
And experience a deserved ray of hope.
But the us does nothing to help resolve the matter
And instead resupplies so Israel can resume the slaughter.
But with the final cease fire agreement signed
And the heartless bombing finally ended we find
Israel stealing another 1000 acres of Palestine
And Robert Fisk stating “Palestine Good-bye”
Howard P. Charman, MD 7-31-2014 to 9-27-2014 and 7-12-2015
See Max Blumenthal: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza: THE 51 DAY WAR. Nation Books, NY, 2015
Coda 3-16-2017
Recently Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley have for the United Nations
issued a meticulously documented presentation
Demonstrating Israel over a protracted time
is guilty of the international apartheid crime
Based on detailed analysis of International law
For the first time this report exposes the flaw
Israel has succeeded in controling all aspects of Palestinian life
Which is reduced to continous strife.
This report is based on the human rights law embedded in
The International Convention on the Elimination
of all Forms of Racial Discrimination
The crime of Apartheid derives from this convention
Apartheid it is agreed with unanimity
Is considered a crime against humanity
The crime of Apartheid consists of inhuman acts
Committed in the context of an institutionalized regime
Of racial descrimination
With intentional oppression and domination
Of one racial group of persons
Over any other group of persons
To make it worse Israeli law
Bans any law opposing this descrimination
Descrimination in land use
No right of return
Already we hear israel’s loud protests
And charges of anti semitism
Any criticism elicits anti-semitism charges
Israeli policies are based it seems on fragmentation
Of the four domains of the Palestinian nation
First is 1.7 million Palestinians living in Israel
With voting rights, but no true of the ability
To oppose Israeli racial policies
Treated as second class citizens
In houseing, land use schools and facilities
Next is 300,00 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem
They experience descrimination in health care, housing and building rights
education and house expulsions and demolItions
In this category they do not add to the demographic
The goal is to pressure emigration and hence
Reduce the demographic pressure
Domain 3 reflects the Israeli military occupation
2.7 million in west bank and 1.9 million in Gaza
No rights- controlled by the IDF’s iron hand
Though Israel abandoned Gaza in 2006
Military rule continues unabated.
Every aspect of Palestinian life is rigidly controlled
To the point where Gaza is the world’s largest prison
Domain 4 includes Palestinian refugees- exiles pushed out
These people are denied the right to return
They are stateless and impotent to return
To the land to which they yearn