Israel must cease her barbaric measures against Gaza now — Centhra

OCT 6 —The Centre for Human Rights Research and Advocacy (Centhra) is concerned by and strongly condemn Israel’s recent interception of the Woman’s Boat to Gaza, Zaytouna-Oliva, from seeking to break the nearly 10 years unlawful economic blockade of the Palestinian Gaza strip by boarding and diverting the same to its port in Ashdod and its detention of 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Magiure as well as Malaysian physician Dr. Fauziah Mohd Hasan.

Such an act is reminiscent of Israel’s previous illegal interception of the Mavi Marmara in 2010 in which 10 Turkish activists were killed in cold blood. Centhra calls upon Israel to immediately release the detainees and allow them to continue their journey to the Gaza strip unhindered.

Built upon land unlawfully confiscated from Palestinians by the British in 1948 and illegally expanded by a war of its own making in 1967, Israel as a nation state purports to belong to the worldwide community of nations.

Whether or not her occupation of Palestinian territory is justified, it cannot now be said that Israel is a member of the international community of civilised nations.

Whatever Gaza has done in rebellion against Israeli rule, as an occupier of lands seized in wars under in international law, and as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICCPR), to starve and imprison Gazan citizens from the world-at-large is surely an indefensible action for any entity befitting the title government, to take against any people held under its rule and jurisdiction.

And to forcibly detain harmless women operating a flotilla in defiance of its unlawful blockage makes a mockery of its position as a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Are the Israelis so intelligent after all? They have raided and hijacked an aid ship operated exclusively by unarmed, defenceless women, carrying nothing but life-support supplies for the Gazan people. Do these Israelis care nought for world opinion?

Evidently so. Until such time as the Israeli regime treats its own Gazan citizens as full-fledged members of the world community, allowing them sundry needed support for dignified human daily life, Israel must be treated as a renegade entity, isolated by the international community, cast aside as well as expelled from the United Nations.

Israel continues to test the patience of the world community with its arrogance and high-handed policies against the Palestinians. The more she succeeds in these policies, the closer we come to the Armageddon of an Israeli super-state controlling all human life on earth.

Only the Soviet Union in past times dared to sequester its people from all forms of human interaction with other nations. The name given to this form of governance previously was “fascism”, the defeat of which was the great task of World War Two. And now, Gaza is a victim of this same utterly tyrannical governance. So by what wild stretch of the imagination does Israel flout herself as a Middle Eastern Democracy?

Where is the voice of the Israeli women in this matter? Will they protest, or are they all to emulate the view held by Aleyet Shaked, the infamous Israeli so-called “justice minister” who once likened Palestinian children to little snakes, branded the entire Palestinian people as “the enemy” and justified genocide as a legitimate means of punishment to be meted upon the whole of the Palestinian nation?

What of the voice of the thousands of American followers of the religion of Judaism who absolutely renounce any linkage of their religious duties with the struggle for Israeli land? What will the Neuterei Karta, for example, do apart from organising yet more feeble protests instead of really stepping up to their responsibility to disarm with appropriate force the link between their religion with that of the evil, barbaric and murderous ideology that is Zionism, and do more to protect others who do so from false charges of anti-Semitism?

Further, where is the rational challenge to the American government’s unilateral classification of peaceful groups as terror groups at Israel’s behest? The Israelis may think of themselves as uncommonly brilliant. And yet, how are they going to answer for the hijacking of an aid ship operated entirely by women? If the world community does not immediately decry this hijack, it will lose yet another opportunity to hold Israel to its rightful place among civilized nations – if indeed she even holds such a place.

Centhra reiterates its condemnation of Israel in this regard and urges the world community join it in doing the same. Centhra also urges that an emergency meeting of the Security Council be held to discuss this matter, and table a binding resolution sanctioning Israel if she continues to enforce her barbaric blockage against the poor, impoverished and destitute people of Gaza. The time to act is now.

*Press Statement by Azril Mohd Amin, lawyer and Chief Executive of Centre for Human Rights Research and Advocacy (Centhra).