After a nearly month-long assault that left at least 1,865 Palestinians dead, Israel has pulled its ground forces from the Gaza Strip under the 72-hour ceasefire that went into effect earlier today. Israeli and Palestinian factions have agreed to attend talks in Cairo on a longer-term agreement. Gaza officials say the vast majority of Palestinian victims were civilians in the Israeli offensive that began on July 8. Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed. Palestinians are returning to homes and neighborhoods that have seen a massive amount of destruction. Nearly a quarter of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents were displaced during the fighting which destroyed more than 3,000 homes. The ceasefire was reached after international outrage over Palestinian civilian deaths peaked, with even Israel’s chief backer, the United States, criticizing recent Israeli shelling of United Nations shelters that killed scores of displaced Palestinians. To discuss the lead-up to the ceasefire and what to expect from the talks in Cairo, we are joined by author and scholar Norman Finkelstein.
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“Except for one thing”: Yes, one “minor” detail, Israel and the United States have committed a heinious crime against humanity. Their leaders must be brought before the International Court of Justice and tried for these crimes. If this does not happen then there is effectively nothing that will stop Israel and the United States in their next war/massacre in Gaza, which Norman says they’re already talking about and planning. Yes, except for one thing: there has to be justice now, to make the criminals, Israel and the US, pay for their crimes. Otherwise there will never be real peace in the Middle East, much less the world.
Israel should be forced to pay reparations for the war crimes that it has committed against the people of Gaza. Also, these perpetrators should be prosecuted for these war crimes in the International Criminal Court.
I used to get twitchy when listening to Norman Finkelstein, but I have grown to appreciate his style and content, largely through listening to him on DemocracyNow. I was very moved by why he said when he was arrested about a week ago for civil disobedience at the Israel Mission to the UN in NYC. I listened to the segment above, on DemocracyNow and found it had one piece of information (among many ) that I’d not heard anywhere else on the density of population in Gaza, even more dense than Manhattan (I don’t recall the number now but it made an impression since I live in Manhattan and it’s darn dense.),
Norman Finkelstein said something that had carryover into my art that went up today on my Flickr public photostream page:
http://www.Flickr.com/photos/sanda-aronson-the-artist/
I was commemorating Aug. 6, the day the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Aug. 9, Nagasaki, when it occurred to me that I wanted to say more than paraphrase Howard Zinn’s point about the bomb on Hiroshima and the one on Nagasaki “How many children is an OK number to kill in the name of peace?” I added “self-defense?” to the line of words in the art, in answer to Israel’s claim (bogus) of “self-defense” for killing 1863 or more civilians in Gaza these last few weeks.
I also noted in art done yesterday, that “We look for the disappeared in the shadows” and that, quoting Dr. MLKing Jr “The arc of history is long and bends towards justice”, listing U.S. and Palestine/Gaza.