Counting the huge human and economic cost of Israel's 60 years

"Jerusalem Madonna" by Gideon Polya

The State of Israel today celebrates the 60th Anniversary of its Declaration of Independence and the Indigenous Palestinians simultaneously mourn Al-Naqbah (the catastrophe). What has been the cost?

The fundamental messages from the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) and the World War 2 Holocaust in general (30 million Slav, Jewish and Roma dead) are "zero tolerance for racism" and "never again to anyone". All decent folk are bound by these sacred injunctions.

We are all obliged to face up to human rights abuses. In considering violations of human rights in the Holy Land I am guided by the considered views of wonderful, anti-racist, humanitarian British and Australian Jews of Independent Jewish Voices ( IJV: http://jewishvoices.squarespace.com/ ) and Independent Australian Jewish Voices (IAJV: http://www.iajv.org/ ) as well as the views of other outstanding humanitarian Jewish intellectuals such as Professors Noam Chomsky (US), Norman Finkelstein (US), Bertell Ollman (US), Steven Rose (UK), Peter Singer (US, Australia), Ilan Pappe (UK, Israel), Tanya Reinhart (late of Israel) and many others (most notably 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter).

Peace with equity, justice and reconciliation is the only way for the Holy Land. However silence kills and silence is complicity. We cannot walk by on the other side - we must follow the examples of the outstanding humanitarian Jews referred to above and address the human cost of the State of Israel.

1. There are now 7 million Palestinian refugees (4.3 million registered with the UNHCR); 85% of Christian Palestinians have fled. There are about 11 million Palestinians in the World today, half of them living in the now completely Israeli-occupied Holy Land.

2. 1.5 million Palestinian Israelis live under race-based laws (compulsory race-based ID at all times; race-based marriage prohibition laws; race-based discrimination over property acquisition, property rights, employment, social participation, travel in their own country and family reunion).

3. 4 million Occupied Palestinians are illegally held as prisoners in increasingly abusive conditions in what outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Noam Chomsky of the 63-Nobel-Laureate MIT describes as a "Prison" (they are held without charge or trial in three major areas of concentration - Gaza, Samaria and Judaea - in a tiny proportion of the Holy Land.

4. Post-invasion excess deaths (violent and non-violent avoidable deaths from bombs or bullets or deprivation, respectively; deaths that did not have to happen) now total 0.3 million and post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million.

5. Annual Occupied Palestinian avoidable under-5 infant deaths total 2,400; annual violent deaths total about 800 (20% children); annual excess deaths total 5,000 - deaths that must be described as "deaths in custody" as they have been in South African and Australian contexts.

6. Using UN Population Division data one can estimate that the 1950-2005 excess deaths in all countries partly occupied by the State of Israel in the last 60 years totalled 24 million. The breakdown (1950-2005 excess deaths/2005 population) for the State of Israel and its thus violated neighbours is as follows: Israel [0.095m/6.685m =1.4%] - Egypt [19.818m/74.878m = 26.5%], Jordan [0.630m/5.750m = 11.0%], Lebanon [0.535m/3.761m = 14.2%], Occupied Palestinian Territories [0.677m/3.815m = 17.7%], Syria [2.198m/18.650m = 11.8%], total = 23.858m/106.854 = 22.3% (see: "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950" (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya/ ).

7. It has cost the American taxpayer about $3 trillion (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/22356/42/ ) plus the further $3.5 trillion accrual cost of the Israeli-backed Bush War on Terror that has been so far associated with as many as 9 million post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/22356/42/ ). 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz has said that the $3 trillion accrual cost of the Iraq War alone has "bankrupted" America (see: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2236161.htm ) - for the horrendous national and global consequences of these immense economic distortions see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/22356/42/ .

This catalogue was perhaps inevitable from the outset in the late 19th century when the Zionists set out a "me too" program of colonization at a time when Western Europeans were already doing this on every continent with a heavy human cost - the Americas (genocide of the Indigenous Indians in Canada, the US, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay); horrendous racist colonization and mass murder in West Africa, East Africa and Southern Africa (10 million died in the Belgian Congo alone); the Aboriginal Genocide in Australia, and the Maori Genocide in New Zealand; slavery and mass Indigenous death from introduced disease in the Pacific; and mass murder in Asia (excess deaths from the British enslavement of India 1757-1947 total 1.5 BILLION; excess deaths in China from the Opium Wars and the Tai Ping rebellion associated with Western encroachments totalled 20-100 MILLION) (see: "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950", G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ; see also Lindqvist, S. (1992), Exterminate All the Brutes (Granta Books, London, 2002); Chalk, F. and Jonassohn, K. (1990), The History and Sociology of Genocide. Analyses and Case Studies (Yale University Press, New Haven & London) ).

Zionism founder Theodor Herzl was explicit in stating the agenda of Zionism in a more general context of European colonialism 112 years ago (1896) in "Der Judenstaat" ("The Jewish State", see Chapter 2, sub-heading "Palestine or Argentine?": http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/herzl2b.html ); thus the following QUOTE.

"If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey. We should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should as a neutral State remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence."

Theodor Herzl's 1896 dismissal of the great Asian civilizations – Mesopotamia, Iran, Turkestan, India, China, Japan, Korea, Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka etc - as "Asian barbarism" is mirrored by the extraordinary recent assertions of an Israeli Ambassador to Australia in 2006 as QUOTED below.

"Israel and Australia are like sisters in Asia. We are in Asia without the characteristics of Asians. We don't have yellow skin and slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia and Israel are not - we are basically the white race. We are on the western side of Asia and they are on the southeastern side. Israel has not fully acknowledged the value of working together with Australia in Asia. It's a way for us to cooperate with and enhance our position in the countries neighboring Australia." (see top Israeli newspaper Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/774471.html ).

Peace with equity, justice and reconciliation is possible NOW in the Holy Land (e.g. see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/533/26/ , http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5175/42/ and http://mwcnews.net/content/view/9253/26/ ). However Peace will require exactly that: "equity, justice and reconciliation" involving the 5.5 million Jewish Israelis, the 5.5 million Indigenous Palestinians in the Holy Land and 5.5 million Palestinians forced to live outside the Holy Land.

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