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John Pilger (outstanding UK-based expat Australian journalist) reveals shocking realities of Gaza - 1.4 million people imprisoned "in a cage", incessant attacks by Israeli troops and planes, starvation & trauma.
Shocking psychiatric statistics; QUOTE: "When I was last in Gaza, Dr Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist, showed me the results of a remarkable survey. "The statistic I personally find unbearable," he said, "is that 99.4 per cent of the children we studied suffer trauma. Once you look at the rates of exposure to trauma you see why: 99.2 per cent of their homes were bombarded; 97.5 per cent were exposed to tear gas; 96.6 per cent witnessed shootings; 95.8 per cent witnessed bombardment and funerals; almost a quarter saw family members injured or killed."
Pilger quotes courageous Israeli writers (Gideon Levy, Dr Ilan Pappe, Amira Hass) who have NOT been "looking from the side" (as other Israelis, the West, and much of the world do) and who object to the racism, imprisonment , violence, killing, starvation, avoidable death, and trauma that should shame their people.
Comment: The statistics quoted in this article are horrifying. Thus 1.4 milllion people (three quarters Women and Children) are suffering illegal occupation, imprisonment without charge or trial, hunger, deprivation from life-sustaining requisites, military bombing, shooting, destruction and trauma.
Gaza is not merely a Prison (as perceived for example by humanitarian Jewish writers such as Israeli Ha'aretz wrtier Amira Hass and outstanding US scholar Professor Noam Chomsky), it is akin to a Concentration Camp (indeed Israeli Amira Hass refers to Nazi concentration camps).
Figures from the authoritative UN Population Division data: the post-invasion excess deaths and under-5 inant deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territory total 0.3 milion and 0.2 million, respectively; there are 6 million Palestinian refugees, 4 million registerd with the UN, and 80,000 flee annually (see: http://esa.un.org/unpp/ , http://mwcnews.net/content/view/11409/42/1/1/ and http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).
Reading of the Internationally-agreed UN Genocide Convention (see: http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/convention/text.htm ) makes it quite clear that what the Racist Zionists (RZs) of Apartheid Israel are doing is deliberate, sustained genocide - a Palestinian Genocide:
"Article I: The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
Article IV: Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals."
Pilger's use of the term Genocide is exactly applicable here as simple inspection of Article II sections (a) - (d) reveals.
Article III suggests that Racist Zionists, Israel Lobyists, holidaying Israelis and Western supporters of the Racist Zionist Palestinian Genocide should be arrested and arraigned throughout the world for punishable complicity in Genocide.
Key Pilger quote about "Looking from the side" [or in my terms "genocide denial" or "walking by on the other side"]; QUOTE:
""Looking from the side" is what those of us do who are cowed into silence by the threat of being called anti-Semitic. Looking from the side is what too many western Jews do, while those Jews who honour the humane traditions of Judaism and say, "Not in our name!" are abused as "self-despising". Looking from the side is what almost the entire US Congress does, in thrall to or intimidated by a vicious Zionist "lobby". Looking from the side is what "even-handed" journalists do as they excuse the lawlessness that is the source of Israeli atrocities and suppress the historic shifts in the Palestinian resistance, such as the implicit recognition of Israel by Hamas. The people of Gaza cry out for better."
Full praise to John Pilger, Gideon Levy, Ilan Pappe, Amira Hass, Noam Chomsky and those others who simply will NOT "look the other way".
Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity - decent people cannot walk by on the other side.
