The HyperTexts
Gaza Genocide Quotes
compiled
by Michael R. Burch,
an editor and publisher of Holocaust and Nakba poetry
A growing chorus of international voices has described what Israel has done to
Gaza in military operations "Iron Swords," "Cast Lead," "Pillar of Fire"
and "Protective Edge"
as genocide. Genocide has been defined legally as (1) the intent to destroy a
people in whole or in part, and (2) killing members of a group of people or
inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical
destruction, in whole or in part. Terms applied to Israel's treatment of
Palestinians by world-recognized figures include: genocide,
Holocaust, Nakba ("Catastrophe"), ethnic cleansing, massacre, torture,
barbarism, inhuman, atrocity, immoral, abomination, evil, oppression, nightmare,
intolerable hell, apartheid, racism, fascism, fanaticism, war crimes, crimes
against humanity, and war on children.
The people who have said such things include prominent
Jewish intellectuals like Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Noam Chomsky,
Christopher Hitchens, Richard Falk and Ilan Pappé. They also include Nobel Peace
Prize laureates Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter. And they include
eloquent Palestinians such as the poets Mahmoud Darwish, Fadwa Tuqan, Khaled
Nusseibeh, Iqbal Tamimi, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi and Walid Khazindar, who was born in
Gaza City.
Jewish historian Ilan Pappé:
"... I defined the Israeli policy towards the Gaza Strip as an incremental
genocide. Israel’s present assault [Operation Protective Edge] on Gaza, alas, indicates that this policy [genocide]
continues unabated. The term [genocide] is important since it appropriately
locates Israel’s barbaric action—then and now—within a wider historical
context."
Benny Morris is another Jewish historian; he freely admits that Israel
deliberately chose the path of ethnic cleansing. Morris went through Israeli
military archives and documented every ethnically cleansed village and every
recorded act of violence. His conclusion:
A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting
[ethnic cleansing] of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary [in the
thinking of Zionists] to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel
that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and
cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main
roads.
Avi Shlaim is another Jewish historian, and a professor of international
relations at St Antony's College, Oxford. Among his books are The Iron Wall:
Israel and the Arab World. Here is his explanation for Israel's brutal
attacks on Gaza:
The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through
understanding the historical context. The establishment of the state of Israel
in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the
Palestinians. British officials were aware at the time of the grave
injustice perpetrated by one-sided American support for the Israelis.
On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to foreign secretary Ernest Bevin that
the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state
headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this
judgment is too harsh; but Israel's vicious assault on the
people of Gaza, and the George W Bush administration's complicity in this
assault, have reopened the question. I write as someone who served loyally in
the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of
the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the
Zionist colonial project beyond the "green line". The Israeli
occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip in the aftermath of the war of
June 1967 had very little to do with security and everything to do with
territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish "greater Israel"
through permanent political, economic, and military control over the
Palestinian territories. The result has been one of the most prolonged
and brutal military occupations of modern times.
Tom Segev is also a Jewish historian. He writes of Israel:
"We have become, in a way, a very cruel society ... First of
all, one of the things which I find difficult to understand about the attitude
of American Jews to Israel is that they tend to support every government, even
if it's an evil government. The government we have today, the
Sharon government, is really an evil government. But they
support it because they say it's been democratically elected, and it's not for
us to decide who is ruling the Israelis ... Israel now has a policy of
systematically violating the human rights of the Palestinians.
UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk, also Jewish, paraphrased the great Irish poet William
Butler Yeats:
"Israel is slouching towards nothing less than a Palestinian Holocaust."
Dr. Reuven Moskovitz, a Jewish Holocaust survivor and peace activist who
was awarded the prestigious Aachen Peace Prize peace prize, fired a broadside at
Israel during his acceptance speech:
"All Israel's governing politicians have transformed the lives of the
Palestinian people into an intolerable hell with their
sanctions and expulsions [ethnic cleansing]."
Moskovitz said out that acts of violence by Palestinians could not be justified,
but he pointed out they were often a result of hopelessness and indignation
caused by Israel's racial injustices. Later, after Dr. Moskovitz was manhandled
by Israeli soldiers who boarded a small boat, the Irene, that was trying to
deliver humanitarian aid and children's toys to Gaza, he said:
"I as a Holocaust survivor cannot live with the fact that the State of Israel is
imprisoning an entire people behind fences. It's just
immoral. What happened to me in the Holocaust wakes me
up every night and I hope we don't do the same thing to our neighbors. What I
went through during the Holocaust compares to what the besieged
Palestinian children are going through."
Hedy Epstein, another Jewish Holocaust survivor who also opposes Israel's brutal
treatment of Palestinians and has attempted to sail to Gaza and break the
blockade, said in an interview:
They [the Palestinians] are an amazing, resilient people. They will never give
up. The Israeli may kill many of them, destroy their
homes, destroy their lives, but they will never be
able to destroy their hope for a different way of existence, for a better way of
living together. No matter what the Israelis do, they cannot take away the hope
and the dignity of the Palestinian people. The Israelis have the power, the
Palestinian people have dignity and despite all odds, still have hope. The
Israelis have the airplanes from which they drop bombs in Gaza, they have
bulldozers [used for home demolitions] made here in the United States, not far
from my home. They can do all those things, but despite this imbalance of power,
the Israelis will never be able to destroy Palestinians' hope and dignity.
Nelson Mandela, an international icon of peace and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate:
"Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Israel has deprived
millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has perpetuated a
system of gross racial discrimination and inequality. It has
systematically incarcerated and tortured thousands of
Palestinians, contrary to the rules of international law. It has, in particular,
waged a war against a civilian population, in particular children."
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, another Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, said that
Israel's treatment of Palestinians reminds him of South African apartheid, and
reiterated his support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against
Israel:
"I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men,
women and children by members of the Israeli security forces. Their
humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled
and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the
apartheid government."
In July 2008, a group of 21 South African activists visited Israel and Occupied
Palestine. Their conclusion was unanimous: Israel is far worse than apartheidist
South Africa was. Former Deputy Minister of Health and Member of Parliament
Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge explained:
"What I see here is worse than what we experienced—the absolute control of
people’s lives, the lack of freedom of movement, the army presence everywhere,
the total separation and the extensive destruction we saw ... [Israel's] racist
ideology is also reinforced by religion, which was not the case in South
Africa."
Another member of the group, Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya, went further:
"When you observe from afar you know that things are bad, but you do not know
how bad. Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen
here. It is worse, worse, worse than everything we endured. The level of
apartheid, the racism and the brutality
are worse than the worst period of apartheid [in South Africa]."
Mahmoud Darwish, the great Palestinian poet, explained how it feels to live
under the ever-present, constant shadow of Israel's brutal military occupation:
"The Palestinians are the only nation in the world that feels with certainty
that today is better than what the days ahead will hold. Tomorrow always heralds
a worse situation ... A person can only be born in one place. However, he may
die several times elsewhere: in the exiles and prisons,
and in a homeland transformed by the occupation and
oppression into a nightmare."
Darwish also said of Zionists:
"You have what you desire: the new Rome, the Sparta of Technology and the
ideology of madness."
Albert Einstein, the great Jewish scientist and humanitarian, predicted the
"inner damage" Israel and Judaism would suffer if Jews chose the path of
domination of Palestinians via a racist Jewish state:
"I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of
living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish State. Apart from
practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism
resists the idea of a Jewish State, with borders, an army, and a measure of
temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism
will sustain ... "
Einstein recognized the rise of racism and fascism in Israel as soon as the
Jewish State was announced and its mass destruction of Palestinian villages
began, in 1948. Einstein,
Sidney Hook, Hannah Arendt and Seymour Milman were among the prominent Jewish signers of this
letter, which appeared in the New
York Times on
December 4, 1948. The letter mentioned Menachem Begin, the preeminent
terrorist in the Middle East, who later became Prime Minister of Israel:
"Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in
the newly created state of Israel of the 'Freedom Party' ... a political party
closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy, and social
appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and
following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist right-wing chauvinist
organization in Palestine.
The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States
is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party
in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative
Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have
lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who
opposed fascism throughout the world, if currently informed as to Mr. Begin's
political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the
movement he represents ... A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab
village of Deir Yassin [the site of a massacre] ... this incident exemplified the character and actions
of the Freedom Party. Within the Jewish community they have preached an
admixture of ultra-nationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority.
Like other fascist parties, they have been used to break strikes, and have
themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions.
The discrepancies between the bold claims now being made by Begin and his party,
and their record of past performance in Palestine, bear the imprint of no
ordinary political party. This is the unmistakable stamp of a fascist party for
whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike) and misrepresentation
are means, and a 'Leader State' is the goal.
In the light of the foregoing consideration, it is imperative that the truth
about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in this country. It is all the
more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign
against Begin's efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers
to Israel of support to Begin. The undersigned therefore take the means publicly
presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party, and of urging all
concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism."
Sigmund Freud, one of the world's most famous Jews and the father of modern
psychoanalysis, rejected political Zionism, joining Albert Einstein and other
prominent Jewish intellectuals of his day. Here is a letter Freud wrote to a Zionist, Dr. Chaim Koffler,
who had tried to recruit him to the Zionist cause:
"Dear Sir: I cannot do as you wish [i.e., become a Zionist] ... Whoever wants to influence
the masses must give them something rousing and inflammatory and my sober
judgment of Zionism does not permit this. I certainly sympathize with its goals,
am proud of our University in Jerusalem and am delighted with our settlement’s
prosperity. But, on the other hand, I do not think that Palestine could ever
become a Jewish state, nor that the Christian and Islamic worlds would ever be
prepared to have their holy places under Jewish care. It would have seemed more
sensible to me to establish a Jewish homeland on a less historically-burdened
land. But I know that such a rational viewpoint would never have gained the
enthusiasm of the masses and the financial support of the wealthy. I concede
with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed
for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the
misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall [i.e., the Wailing
Wall] into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives. Now
judge for yourself whether I, with such a critical point of view, am the right
person to come forward as the solace of a people deluded by unjustified hope.
Your obedient servant,
Freud"
Christopher Hitchens, a noted Jewish author, essayist and columnist:
"In order for Israel to become part of the alliance against whatever we want to
call it, religious barbarism, theocratic, possibly thermonuclear theocratic or
nuclear theocratic aggression, it can't, it'll have to dispense with the
occupation. It's as simple as that. It can be, you can think of it as a
kind of European-style, Western-style country if you want, but it can't govern
other people against their will. It can't continue to steal their land
in the way that it does every day. And it's unbelievably irresponsible
of Israelis, knowing the position of the United States and its allies are in
around the world, to continue to behave in this unconscionable way. And I'm
afraid I know too much about the history of the conflict to think of Israel as
just a tiny, little island surrounded by a sea of ravening wolves and so on. I
mean, I know quite a lot about how that state was founded, and the amount of
violence and dispossession that involved. And
I'm a prisoner of that knowledge. I can't un-know it."
Henry Siegman served as executive director of the American Jewish Congress from
1978 to 1994 and was the head of the Synagogue Council of America. He later
became a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and now serves as
president of the U.S./Middle East Project. Here is what he said in an interview
about Israel's assaults on Gaza and the myths surrounding Israel’s founding in
1948:
"When one thinks that this is what is necessary for Israel to survive, that the
Zionist dream is based on the repeated slaughter of innocents
on a scale that we’re watching these days on television, that is really a
profound, profound crisis—and should be a profound crisis in the thinking of all
of us who were committed to the establishment of the state and to its success."
Responding to Israel’s claim that its assault on Gaza is necessary because no
country would tolerate the rocket fire from militants in Gaza, Siegman said:
"What undermines this principle is that no country and no people would live the
way that Gazans have been made to live … The question of the morality of
Israel’s action depends, in the first instance, on the question, couldn’t Israel
be doing something [to prevent] this disaster that is playing out now, in terms
of the destruction of human life? Couldn’t they have done something that did not
require that cost? And the answer is, sure, they could have ended the
occupation."
Noam Chomsky, an American Jew who has been called the world's greatest
contemporary scholar:
"Israel's demonstration of its military prowess in 1967 confirmed its status as
a 'strategic asset,' as did its moves to prevent Syrian intervention in Jordan
in 1970 in support of the PLO. Under the Nixon doctrine, Israel and Iran were to
be 'the guardians of the Gulf,' and after the fall of the Shah, Israel's
perceived role was enhanced. Meanwhile, Israel has provided subsidiary services
elsewhere, including Latin America, where direct US support for the most
murderous regimes has been impeded by Congress. While there has been internal
debate and some fluctuation in US policy, much exaggerated in discussion here,
it has been generally true that US support for Israel's militarization and
expansion reflected the estimate of its power in the region. The effect has been
to turn Israel into a militarized state completely dependent on US aid, willing
to undertake tasks that few can endure, such as participation in Guatemalan
genocide. For Israel, this is a moral disaster and will eventually become a
physical disaster as well. For the Palestinians and many others, it has been a
catastrophe, as it may sooner or later be for the entire world, with the growing
danger of superpower confrontation."
Naomi Wolf, a Jewish writer:
"I mourn genocide in Gaza because I am the granddaughter of a family half wiped
out in a Holocaust and I know genocide when I see it."
Michael Ratner, a Jewish human rights activist and lawyer, explains that
the targeting of Gazan schools and hospitals and the overwhelming percentage of
civilian deaths constitute genocide:
"I want to emphasize today that these killings are part of a broader set of
inhuman acts by Israel constituting international crimes, carried out by Israel
over many years, going back to at least 1947 and 1948. They include crimes that
aren’t talked about that much in the media or the press, the crimes of genocide,
crimes against humanity, and apartheid. These crimes can be prosecuted in the
International Criminal Court and are defined there. They include what the
well-known Israeli writer Ilan Pappé called 'incremental genocide.' Pappé says
he wants to place the barbarity of what Israel is doing in its proper context.
I’m a lawyer. I’ve looked at genocide. Genocide has two elements. One element is
the mental element, the intent to destroy the whole or in part a national or
ethnical or racial or religious group. Palestinians are clearly a national and
ethnic group. And you don’t need to kill them all. You just need to have the
mental intent to kill part of them. For example, it would be enough to have the
mental intent to kill the leadership of the Palestinians or to kill people in
one region. No doubt about that. Genocide also requires that there be acts of
genocide: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm,
or inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical
destruction, in whole or part, of the people you’re trying to destroy. There’s
no doubt again here this is 'incremental genocide,' as Ilan Pappé says. It’s
been going on for a long time, the killings, the incredibly awful conditions of
life, the expulsions that have gone on for from Lydda in 1947 and ’48, when 700
or more villages in Palestine were destroyed, and in the expulsions that
continued from that time until today. It’s correct and important to label it for
what it is."
Former American President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jimmy Carter, explains
why Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians led to 9-11 and other acts of
terrorism:
"The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and
intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially
condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation [theft] and
colonization [ethnic cleansing] of Palestinian territories."
Jimmy Carter described the plight of Gaza's Palestinians as he toured the
war-torn, blockaded Gaza Strip:
"Tragically, the international community too often ignores the cries for help
and the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals
than like human beings. The starving of 1.5 million human
beings of the necessities of life—never before in
history has a large community like this been savaged by bombs and missiles and
then denied the means to repair itself."
Jimmy Carter was quoted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as saying:
"It's an atrocity, what is being perpetrated as punishment on
the people in Gaza. It's a crime ... I think it is an abomination
that this continues to go on."
Brazil’s Special Adviser for International Relations Marco Aurelio García:
"For the love of God, what we have here is genocide, a
massacre, to the point
where top UN officials are starting to talk about war crimes."
Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff:
"What’s happening in Gaza is ... a massacre."
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan:
"If you support this cruelty, this genocide, this Hitler-like
fascism and child
murderer regime, take your award back." (Erdogan was referring to an award he
had received from American Jewish Congress in 2004.) "What is the difference
between Israeli actions and those of the Nazis and Hitler?" Erdogan continued.
"How can you explain what the Israeli state has been doing in Gaza, Palestine,
if not genocide? This is racism. This is
fascism. This is keeping Hitler’s
spirit alive."
Film legends Pedro Almodovar, Javier Bardem, and Penelope Cruz were among a
hundred Spaniards who signed a letter calling the bombardment of Gaza
genocide:
"Gaza is living through horror these days, besieged and attacked by land, sea
and air. Palestinians’ homes are being destroyed, they are being denied water,
electricity [and] free movement to their hospitals, schools and fields while the
international community does nothing."
Javier Bardem later expressed his thoughts in the newspaper El Diario:
"I cannot understand this barbarism, even more brutal
and incomprehensible considering all of the horrible things the
Jewish people have gone through in the past."
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of genocide in Gaza; at
a crisis meeting of Palestinian leadership in Ramallah:
"It's genocide—the killing of entire families is genocide by Israel against
our Palestinian people. What's happening now is a war against the Palestinian
people as a whole and not against the [militant] factions. We know that Israel
is not defending itself, it is defending settlements, its main project."
Israel's leaders seem to relish the idea of ethnically cleansing Palestinians.
For instance,
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman espouses ethnic cleansing:
"Israel needs to conquer and thoroughly cleanse the Gaza Strip."
Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai:
"The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages, only then
will Israel be calm for the next 40 years."
In 1998, Ariel Sharon said:
"There is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish
State without the eviction [i.e., ethnic cleansing] of the Arabs and the
expropriation [i.e., theft] of their lands."
Gilad Sharon (the son of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon):
"We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza! The
Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima—the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast
enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too. There should be no electricity in Gaza, no
gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing."
Michael Ben-Ari:
"There are no innocents in Gaza, don’t let any diplomats who want to look good
in the world endanger your lives—mow them down!" (Gaza has 1.6
million people, half of whom are children; according to Ben-Ari, none of them
are innocent.)
Mordechai Eliyahu:
According to a leading Israeli newspaper (“Eliyahu advocates carpet bombing
Gaza,” The Jerusalem Post, 30 May, 2007), Israel’s former Sephardic Chief Rabbi,
Mordechai Eliyahu, "ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against
the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential
massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings."
Shmuel Eliayhu:
Mordechai Eliayahu’s son, Shmuel Eliayhu, the chief rabbi of Safad, amplified
his father’s comments, stating: "If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we
must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill
10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever
it takes to make them stop."
Laila El-Haddad, a Palestinian freelance journalist, photographer, and blogger
who divides her time between Gaza and the United States:
The real genocide in Gaza cannot or will not be assessed
through sheer numbers. It is not a massacre of gas
chambers. No. It is a slow and calculated genocide—a
genocide through more calibrated, long-term means. And if the term is
used in any context, it should be this. In many ways, this is a more sinister
genocide, because it tends to be overlooked: all is ok in Gaza,
the wasteland, the hostile territory that is accustomed to slaughter and
survival; Gaza, whose people are somehow less human; we should not take note,
need not take note, unless there is a mass killing or starvation.
Robert Shetterly:
Isn’t it curious how closely the role of Manifest Destiny in U.S. history
resembles that of Zionism in Israel’s? ... There was, of course, one snag in
[Frederick Jackson] Turner’s theory about all this "free" land. Genocide of
Native Americans was necessary to claim it. Our distinctive American
“democratic” character and our burgeoning economy were to be forged in blood.
But the blood was spilled from "savages"—so, no big deal. I mention this because
as we witness today the genocide of Palestinians by Israelis, we should remember
the foundational Israeli mantra as they established their state: "A land without
a people for a people without a land." Sounds good. Sounds clean. Sounds just.
Sounds familiar. Replace Manifest Destiny with Zionism, and a very familiar
pattern develops. The only problem is that unless one considers the Palestinians
something other than people, as we did natives, the land was heavily settled.
Shetterly also said of Israel's apartheid wall:
"As this Wall dehumanizes the Palestinians, it ultimately questions the humanity
of the author [Israel] even more than the victim. The Wall reduces Israelis to
this one colossal concrete fact of national hatred. It says the Israelis do, in
fact, believe in a one-state solution: the state will be theirs and the
Palestinians will be gone."
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich:
Let’s not mince words. Israelis are committing genocide in Gaza. But the United
Nations is loath to use the "G" word and it us using the "C" (condemn) word
instead. Why? Money talks. The top financier of the United Nations is
America, with a whopping 22.00% in direct funds (followed by Japan 10.83%,
Germany 7.14%, France 5.59%, and GB 5.18%); if the United Nations called out the
genocide in Gaza, its top financier would have to be punished for its
complicity.
According to Article 3 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide, persons committing genocide or being complicit in genocide
shall be punished "whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public
officials or private individuals." The United States not only supports and funds
the ongoing genocide in Gaza, replenishes Israel with more funds and weaponry,
but it also uses its political clout to enable Israel to continue its ruthless
crimes against humanity.
While many have not been shy about calling these crimes genocide, they have come
under attack for using the "G" word. Is genocide an appropriate term to use?
Well, it is if one has respect for international law and the rules of the
genocide convention. Article 2 of the Convention clearly spells out:
"In the present Convention, genocide means any [emphasis added]of the following
acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part [emphasis added], 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."
There is little argument and ample evidence that Israel’s actions against the
people of Gaza in particular, and Palestine as whole, constitute genocide. While the pro-Israel Western media has been unable to conceal the daily,
indiscriminate killing of anything that breathes and moves in Gaza (Article 2a)
and the terrorization of children, the young and the old (mental harm) with the
constant bombardment, bulldozers, and drones (Article 2b), the media has been
apt at hiding the horrific effects of the blockade—the deliberate infliction
of condition of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or
in part (Article 2c).
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini also uses the word:
"What Israeli authorities are doing (in Gaza) today is a genocide and a huge
historical disaster."
Ambassador Abukar Arman is the former Somalia special envoy to the United States
and a foreign policy analyst:
"As much as Israel is trying to misrepresent what it is doing in Palestine and
move away from the word 'genocide,' it is clear that its strategy is failing.
While Israel has Gaza in the cross-hairs, international public opinion has
Israel in its cross-hairs as well. Netanyahu must accept the fact that the
Palestinian people, like their cousins—the Jewish people—are too resilient
in their drive to survive and reclaim their land. Israel has three options to
choose from: To allow a free and an independent Palestinian state to form and
exist side by side with that of Israel; allow a bi-national state in which both
peoples would have to learn to live together as in South Africa; or keep pushing
the Palestinian people against the wall till the youth snap and their wrath
explodes. Keep in mind that Palestinian youth are at ground zero and they have
nothing to lose!"
Other genocide quotes:
"For the dead and the living, we must bear witness."—Elie Wiesel
"Genocide is the responsibility of the entire world."—Ann Clwyd
"My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept
plain...There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a
wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed
away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory."—Chief
Seattle, The Chief Seattle's Speech
"I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high
hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying
heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them
with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the
bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was
a beautiful dream ..."—Nicholas Black Elk
"The history of interactions among disparate peoples is what shaped the modern
world through conquest, epidemics and genocide. Those collisions created
reverberations that have still not died down after many centuries, and that are
actively continuing in some of the world's most troubled areas."—Jared Diamond
"The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was
a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were
butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread.
When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out 'Stop!' When crimes
begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the
cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer."—Bertolt
Brecht, Selected Poems
"It is not power that corrupts but fear."—Aung San Suu Kyi
"It is not what you can do for your country, but what you can do for all of
mankind."—Mike Norton
"Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism ...
neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific
underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the
world's greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy."—Richard Weikart
"What people still do not like to admit is that there were two crimes in the
form of one. Just as the destruction of Jewry was the necessary condition for
the rise and expansion of Nazism, so the ethnic cleansing of Germans was a
precondition for the Stalinization of Poland. I first noticed this point when
reading an essay by the late Ernest Gellner, who at the end of the war had
warned Eastern Europeans that collective punishment of Germans would put them
under Stalin's tutelage indefinitely. They would always feel the guilty need for
an ally against potential German revenge."—Christopher Hitchens
"I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said
to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or
relative, who knew who she was. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early
mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about
that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays,
exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships—gone. She went on living, but
with a tabula rasa as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every
time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again':
Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means
not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to
the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to
have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic
miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general
but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual
perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt
Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world
of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans
put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about."—Christopher Hitchens
"...the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon."—Noam
Chomsky
The HyperTexts