McCully rewarded with ingratitude

Palestine Human Rights Campaign Press Release | 14 January 2017

Leslie Bravery | www.palestine.org.nz
Because it has overreached itself, Israel is in a state of fury and its Zionist mouthpieces around the world are in overdrive. Shalom Kiwi's press release McCully's explanation reinforces bias, flawed logic cannot, however, counter the growing strength of world opinion against Israel's flagrant violations of international law. The Zionist state claims legitimacy from those UN resolutions it approves of, while utterly rejecting the far larger number that condemn its failure to comply with the conditions of its UN membership.

On 3 July 1969, UN Security Council Resolution 267 recalled that, since the adoption ofearlier resolutions, “Israel has taken further measures tending to change the status of the City of Jerusalem” and reminded Israel, yet again, of “the established principle that acquisition of territory by military conquest is inadmissible”. The UNSC confirmed that “all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel which purport to alter the status of Jerusalem, including expropriation of land and properties thereon, are invalid and cannot change that status”. These principles of international law are non-negotiable.

As far as relations with New Zealand are concerned, Benjamin Netanyahu reportedlywarned New Zealand’s Foreign Minister that support for a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlement-building in the Occupied territories would be viewed as a “declaration of war”. According to reports in the Israeli media, Netanyahu called Murray McCully before Friday’s resolution and told him: “This is a scandalous decision. I’m asking that you not support it and not promote it. If you continue to promote this resolution, from our point of view it will be a declaration of war. It will rupture the relations and there will be consequences. We’ll recall our ambassador [from New Zealand] to Jerusalem.”

The New Zealand Government has for years assisted Israel by supporting the 'peace negotiations' and two-state solution that have served only to buy time for Israel to graband colonise ever more Palestinian land. But there are limits and the Israeli leadership has been too stupid to comprehend them. Israel always wants more.

The Shalom Kiwi press release referred to the attack by a Palestinian man who ran a truck into a group of soldiers, killing four of them and injuring others. What is missing is any acknowledgement of why a lone individual might commit such violence. The Israeli Army is an agent of the government and its human rights violations are directly attributable to the objectives of a powerfully armed state. A third generation of Palestinians is growing up under Israeli military domination. Most children have experienced either direct Israeli Army brutality or know family members and friends that have. Thanks now to a growing number of cellphone videos, the world can see something of the cruelty directed at children and the oppressive atmosphere of daily life under foreign military rule. There is malevolence that creates in young minds an indelible impression of the ugly face of hostile, heavily armed soldiers. The terror of night home invasions, destroyed homes and dead and injured relatives remains in the sub-conscious. Most learn to cope with the mental strain and concentrate on education, family and other interests. A very few cannot and, eventually, their mental resistance breaks and they lash out, irrationally, tragically, pointlessly. Each time this happens they hand Israel's leaders another propaganda coup.

It isn't just the militarily Occupied and blockaded Palestinian people outside Israel that suffer. The blight of Zionist discrimination asserts itself both within Israel and in the Occupied West Bank. For example, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, founder of Jews and Arabs for Defence of Human Rights, reports that, on 15 January this year, yet more residents of the Bedouin village of Umm Al-Hiran will be forced from their homes. Israel aims to remove these people in order to establish the Jewish-only town of Hiran. Aschermannotes that a 100-year-old Israeli Bedouin citizen, Musa Hussein Abu Al Qian, is among those to be evicted, along with his family “simply because they aren't Jewish.”

The Palestinian people are able to draw additional spiritual strength from the support they receive from the world community. They know that BDS (the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement) is growing. The next step must be to draw the UN Security Council and General Assembly into support for sanctions directed at Israel in defence of international law. Violence delays justice; bringing criminals to account advances peace.

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