palestine
A senior Palestinian official has accused the United States of being part of Israel’s illegal occupation.
Nikki Haley is not world’s ‘schoolmarm’
Hanan Ashrawi took special aim at the US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley [Nimrata Randhawa] who had walked out of a Security Council meeting when the Palestinian envoy began speaking.
Al Jazeera’s James Bays reports from the UN. See Video
JERUSALEM — Days after Christian leaders in the Holy Land bolted shut the doors to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in protest of attempts by the Jerusalem municipality to impose taxation on church properties, Israeli authorities backtracked Tuesday, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wading into the dispute.
A statement from Netanyahu’s office said that in coordination with Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, a professional team would be established, led by a senior government minister and representatives of the foreign and finance ministries, to “formulate a solution to the issue of municipal taxes on buildings belonging to the churches that are not houses of worship.”
But the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which draws thousands of pilgrims daily to the place where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried and later resurrected, remained shuttered Tuesday. Church leaders said they had received Netanyahu’s statement and were still contemplating reopening the church.
In a news conference Sunday, the leaders of the Greek Orthodox, Catholic and Armenian churches, which jointly manage the site, said they had received “collection notices and orders of seizure of Church assets, properties and bank accounts for alleged debts of punitive municipal taxes.”
Later, in a joint statement, the churches said Israel was waging a “systematic campaign against the churches and the Christian community in the Holy Land, in flagrant violation of the existing status quo.” Read More
Over many decades, Israel’s self-serving deceptions about the Nakba in 1948 have been exposed for the lies Palestinians already knew them to be.
It was long accepted in the west that, as Israel claimed, Palestinians left their homes because they had been ordered to do so by neighbouring Arab leaders. The lie usefully distracted diplomats and scholars from the much more pertinent question of why Israel had refused to allow 750,000 Palestinian refugees to return to their homes after the war finished, as international law demanded.
The myth about the Arab leaders’ order, which had been steadily undermined by the work of the “new historians” of the late 1980s, was decisively punctured two years ago by an Israeli scholar who was given the wrong file by Israeli army archivists. It showed the story of the Arab leaders’ order was concocted by Israeli officials.
The same files should also have ended an equally diverting and lengthy debate about how many Palestinian villages Israel ethnically cleansed in 1948. Most Palestinian scholars were agreed it was well over 500; Israeli experts variously claimed it was between 300 and 400. Not that hundreds of ethnically cleansed villages was not bad enough, but Israel was happy to engage in a debate designed to make Palestinians look like inveterate exaggerators. Again, Israel’s archives confirmed the Palestinian account, with 530 villages razed.
Now another, related deception has been exposed. For decades Israel’s supporters have been arguing that Haifa, one of Palestine’s most important cities, was not ethnically cleansed of its population. The tens of thousands of Palestinians who fled under Israeli attack in April 1948 were later urged to return, according to Israel’s supporters, but they chose not to. Further proof, it seemed, that the Palestinians had only themselves to blame for losing their homeland. They chose to stay away.
Strangely, none of Israel’s propagandists ever seriously tried to suggest that the other 700,00 or so Palestinian refugees had been invited back home. It seemed as if the welcome supposedly extended in Haifa was reason enough for all Palestinians in exile to put aside their fears of Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy at its new borders and make the journey home.
But now a letter signed by David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and the engineer of its ethnic cleansing policy in 1948, shows that, far from Haifa’s doors being thrown open, Ben Gurion ordered that the refugees be barred from returning.
Written on 2 June 1948, the letter was sent to Abba Khoushy, soon to become Haifa’s mayor. It states: “I hear that Mr. Marriot [Cyril Marriot, the British consul in Haifa] is working to return the Arabs to Haifa. I don’t know how it is his business, but until the war is over we don’t want a return of the enemy. And all institutions should act accordingly.”
Of course, that policy was not reversed after the war, as Ben Gurion hinted it might be. And one can wonder how much more specific his orders were to his army commanders if this was what he was telling civilian administrators.
The myth about Haifa was encouraged by Golda Meir, who wrote in her autobiography that Ben Gurion told her: “I want you to immediately go to Haifa and see to it that the Arabs who remain in Haifa are treated appropriately. I also want you to try and persuade the Arabs who are already on the beach to return home. You have to get it into their heads that they have nothing to fear.”
Meir added: “I went immediately. I sat on the beach there and begged them to return home… I pleaded with them until I was exhausted but it didn’t work.”
Heartbreaking – if only it were true.
How much longer must we wait to explode all the other myths associated with the Nakba, and much of Israel’s history ever since? More
www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.658179
“The dynamic regional context creates opportunities for synergies between Palestinians, Israelis and other regional actors in the field of energy,” Ariel Ezrahi, Energy Advisor at the Office of the Quartet Representative told the International Oil and Gas Conference on Thursday (20 November 2014).
Ariel Ezrahi
In his presentation to the conference at the Dead Sea in Israel, Ezrahi gave an overview of the Palestinian energy sector including the current capacities, future demand, and potential opportunities for investment and development. He said that development of the Gaza Marine offshore gas field would constitute an important source of revenue for the Palestinian Authority, and fuel Palestinian power generation projects for years to come. The Gaza Marine field would not only be a cost-efficient solution for domestic power generation, but also a more environmentally friendly solution than the present sources of fuel, said Ezrahi.
He also noted that the West Bank currently has no power generation capacity whatsoever. Electricity usage is currently around 860 megawatts, but demand in the West Bank alone is expected to reach around 1,300 megawatts in 2020. Gaza currently receives between 150 to 210 megawatts, while demand is closer to 410 megawatts. By 2020, Ezrahi said, demand will hit 855 megawatts.
“There is a lot of room for cooperation in the energy sphere between Palestinian actors and Israel and other regional counterparts. I think it’s a very exciting time and that the energy sector can hopefully act as a bridge to overcome some of the political constraints. And that would be in everyone’s interest,” he told participants.
“Israel needs to see the Palestinians as an asset as they strive to join the regional power grid, and as a bridge to the Arab world.” Ezrahi emphasised that the Gaza Marine field should not be seen as a competitor to Israel’s fields, but rather, it provides a potential additional source of gas and opportunities for cooperation between the neighbouring countries. More
Related Links
One has to question why Gaza and Palestine would want to give their energy generation to Israel, the occupying power, or in fact help Israel sell their gas through Egypt. Using the gas from the Gazan fields would at least give both Gaza and Palestine energy independance and insulate them from the withholding by Israel of their tax receipts, see http://is.gd/FPWOWr Editor
Via Jonathan Cook, journalist
I did a brief speaking tour of Montreal and Ottawa in the spring during which I met many inspiring individuals finding their own ways to help from afar end the injustices being inflicted by Israel on the Palestinians.
One seminar I participated in was on the Jewish National Fund, a Zionist “charity” whose funds have been used to plant forests to conceal Israel’s eradication of Palestinian villages during and after the 1948 war and which continues to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from areas like the Negev, or Naqab.
It’s great to see that the organisers have put together a powerful short video presentation that shows pictorially what the JNF is really doing with those charitable donations.
Israel and the United States are trying to dissuade the nearly 200 states that are party to the Fourth Geneva Convention from convening a special session in mid-December to address conditions in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, Israeli and Western diplomats told Haaretz Wednesday.
Government officials believe that convention sponsor Switzerland has come under strong pressure from the Palestinians and Arab states, and is expected to issue invitations to the conference within days.
In early April, following Israel’s refusal to free the last scheduled group of Palestinian prisoners, and its announcement that it would build 700 homes in East Jerusalem, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas decided to sign, in the Palestinian state’s name, on 15 international conventions and ask to join them. One of them was the Fourth Geneva Convention, which deals with protecting the civilian population in fighting areas or occupied territories.
This move brought to a head the crisis that led to the collapse of U.S. efforts to extend the talks between Israel and the Palestinians. A few weeks later the Palestinians and Arab League asked Switzerland officially to call a conference of the convention signatories to discuss the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as the damage Israel caused civilians in Gaza.
So far four attempts have been made to convene the Fourth Geneva Convention – all of them in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The last attempt was made in 2009 after Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.
However, after consultations of the Swiss Foreign Ministry at the time, it was decided there wasn’t sufficiently broad international support for holding the conference. In 2001, on the other hand, after the outbreak of the second intifada, such a conference was held. Israel and the United States boycotted it.
Recently Swiss diplomats said their country, as the convention’s sponsor, couldn’t decide by itself on calling the conference again. So Switzerland began consultations with the other signatory states to see if enough of them were interested in holding the conference.
Switzerland distributed to all the signatories a proposal to hold the conference in Geneva in mid-December. The Swiss made it clear they wanted the event to focus on the upholding of international humanitarian law.
The Swiss proposal is for a three-hour conference at an ambassadorial level, with few speeches and no media coverage except for a statement to the press to be released at the end.
“We made it clear we didn’t want a political event or debate club, or a conference that would blame or criticize one of the sides,” a Swiss diplomat said.
Israel objected to the move strongly despite the low profile Switzerland suggested. Senior Israeli diplomats went to Bern and Geneva a few times in a bid to persuade the Swiss Foreign Ministry not to hold the conference, saying Israel would boycott it if it were held.
“They told us that holding the conference would help a one-sided Palestinian move intended to make Israel look bad and attack it in an international forum,” the Swiss diplomat said.
Updated draft refers to settlements
The conference cannot make binding decisions, but could increase international criticism of Israel’s policy in the territories, especially regarding the settlements.
The Israeli fear over the conference increased after Jerusalem received an updated draft of its proposed contents. Unlike previous versions, the updated draft was phrased in a very political way, mentioning Israel by name and referring in detail to issues like the West Bank settlements.
Israeli and Swiss diplomats said the United States, Canada and Australia were helping Israel and exerting pressure on Switzerland and other states to thwart the conference. Israeli diplomats said that despite the fact that the Americans have yet to make a formal decision on the matter, U.S. officials have told Switzerland they would boycott the conference if it is held. Canada has conveyed a similar message to Switzerland.
Speaking with Haaretz on Wednesday, Edgar Vasquez, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, affirmed the American disapproval. “We strongly oppose the convening of the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions and have made our opposition unmistakably clear,” he said.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman held telephone conversations in the last few days with colleagues worldwide, asking them to object to the conference and declare they would boycott it if it is held. Also, Israeli ambassadors in several key Western states have been instructed to try to obtain a commitment from those states to boycott the conference.
The Palestinians, meanwhile, along with the group of Arab nations, are pushing for the summit to be held.
But the Israeli efforts look bound to fail. Israeli and Swiss diplomats estimate that the Swiss government will in the coming days announce the holding of the summit.
Western diplomats knowledgeable of the proceedings described the Swiss as determined to move forward despite the significant resistance by nations such as the U.S., Canada, Australia and others.
The Fourth Geneva Convention is one of the four treaties of the Geneva Conventions, adopted in 1949, which deals with the protection of civilian populations residing in areas of armed conflict and in areas under military occupation. The treaty forbids harming any agents uninvolved in the fighting – which includes, in addition to civilians, captured and wounded soldiers.
In regarding to a state of protracted military occupation – such as exists in the West Bank – the treaty decrees that the occupying power must uphold the human rights of the occupied civilian population, and ensure its conditions of living. The treaty also forbids any and all movement of civilian population from within the borders of the occupying power into the areas under military rule – such as the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Israel is a party to the convention, but the Knesset has never legislated the treaty into Israeli law. Israel claims the treaty is not applicable to the West Bank or East Jerusalem, for it considers these areas to be “disputed,” and not as under occupation. Thus, Israel does not regard the settlements as violations to the treaty.
An IDF medic was surprised to hear two new orders given by his superiors: only Jews are worthy of resuscitation, and that attackers who pose no threat should be shot dead.
New orders in the Israeli army? D., a medic in the infantry, was surprised last week to find out during training for an operation in the occupied territories that at least two orders typically given to soldiers have been refreshed.
“During the refresher course the instructor, who works as a medic on the base, told us that the orders of the IDF are not to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to people we do not know. When asked about it he said that it basically means that we do not need to resuscitate Palestinians,” says D., who took part in the course at the Lakhish base in southern Israel. D. has since then left for duty in the West Bank.
“It sounds strange but he repeated it twice, so I have no doubt that that was what he meant. I was very surprised by the order not to resuscitate anyone who needs it. Since then I have come to understand that Magen David Adom (Israel’s national emergency medical, disaster and ambulance service) came up with the order regarding mouth-to-mouth resuscitation several years ago. The emphasis on the Palestinians was probably the instructor “thinking ahead.” I assume that he goes these trainings all the time. That’s worrying.”
Furthermore over the course of the week, D. participated in a refresher on the rules of engagement, where he said he was given permission to kill people who pose no threat. “They told us that the order regarding someone who stabs, ditches the knife and begins running is shoot to kill. The company commander said he doesn’t want anyone like that “to see a judge.”
Did anyone protest or critique these orders?
“The company seemed very bitter over the rules of engagement. The company commander almost apologized every time he forbade. So when he finally gave us permission to shoot an unarmed terrorist, most of the company was okay with that.”
It was only two weeks ago that Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich gave a similar order to Israeli Police in the wake of the vehicular attack in Sheikh Jarrah. Two days later police shot Kheir Hamdan to death in Kafr Kanna.
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A policy such as this would be in contravention of International Humanitarian Law and Geneva Conventions.
The International Committee of the Red Cross states; Without renewed commitment from governments to address growing social inequities and other sources of instability in the region, any quest for peace and prosperity will remain elusive. As a neutral and independent humanitarian organisation, the ICRC can only remind the parties to these conflicts that without respecting the basic tenets of international humanitarian law (IHL) in these testing times, it is most unlikely that the various communities will find their way toward reconciliation or be prepared to share the burden of a just peace after decades of conflict. Considering that the customary core of that law is older than the state- based system itself, the specific nature and extraordinary significance of IHL in today’s armed conflicts provide a legitimacy beyond the current international system. Far from being outdated, humanitarian law is very much a contemporary and future-oriented body of law. Turning specifically to the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the particular challenges facing humanitarian action there cannot be tackled without an honest look at certain Israeli policies that have become key features of the occupation. Israel has exercised ‘actual authority’ 1 over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for almost half a century, making its presence in these areas one of the longest sustained military occupations in modern history. While the shape and degree of this military occupation have varied, Israel has continuously maintained effective control over the territories it occupied as a result of the Six Day War in 1967, and over the Palestinian population living there. The constant pressure that Israeli occupation has imposed on the Palestinian population has had a profound impact on both the Palestinian and theIsraeli economies, cultures, andsocieties.Beyondtherecurringexcessesof armed violence, the ensuing grief among the people affected, and the trauma among the broader community, the lack of progress on issues of major humanitarian concern further illustrates the inability of a generation of decision-makers to find constructive ways to bring concrete improvements to the lives of millions of Palestinians. See: Challenges to international humanitarian law: Israel’s occupation policy Download PDF
George Galloway MP addresses a Zionist caller and asks him “what right did Britain have to grant you somebody elses country?
The civilian population in Gaza is “a partner of terror” that “gets what they choose,” the top commander of the Israeli army’s Givati Brigade told the Israeli press recently, after orchestrating some of the deadliest episodes of butchery visited upon the Gaza Strip this summer.
Colonel Ofer Winter
Colonel Ofer Winter also admitted to ordering the mass-bombardment of an area where an Israeli soldier was know to be in order to prevent his capture alive by Palestinian resistance fighters — an army policy known as the Hannibal Directive.
These are just two of the many incriminating comments made by Winter in a lengthy and candid interview published in a paper-only edition of the Hebrew-language Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot on 15 August.
The interview took place near the end of Israel’s 51-day bombing campaign which killed more than 2,100 people in Gaza, the vast majority of them civilians — including more than 500 children. Israel expert Dena Shunra translated the interview for The Electronic Intifada.
In addition to justifying the mass killing of civilians in Gaza, Winter applauded the carpet bombing he ordered in Rafah as a necessary punishment and repeatedly invoked religious supremacy as a leading factor in what he views as a Jewish victory in Gaza.
Just as a temporary three-day humanitarian ceasefire negotiated by Egypt and the United States went into effect on the morning of Friday 1 August, a unit of soldiers from the Israeli army’s Givati Brigade conducted a tunnel incursion in Rafah, provoking fire from Palestinian resistance fighters.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed in the ensuing firefight and another, Hadar Goldin, went missing. It was later determined that Goldin died in the battle, but in the immediate aftermath the Israeli army operated under the assumption that he had been captured.
Ofer Winter was napping when he woke up to news of Goldin’s possible capture. He told Yediot Ahronot’sYossi Yehoshua:
At 9 am, half an hour after I put my head down, the Deputy Brigade Commander woke me up: “come quickly, it’s best you be here.” We asked for a snapshot, we wanted information. We didn’t think there was an abduction yet. While inquiring if everyone was there, I commanded Sagiv, the Armored Forces Commander operating under my orders, to start moving from Hirbat Hiza’a, which was where he was, toward Rafah. Just then I got the message “it’s not green in our eyes” – in other words, not everyone had been found. We were missing a soldier. At 9:36, after inquiries with the battalion commander on site, I announced on the communication system the word that no one wants to say – “Hannibal.” In other words, there had been an abduction. I instructed all the forces to move forward, to occupy space, so the abductors would not be able to move.
The Hannibal Directive is an unwritten Israeli military protocol for executing captured Israeli soldiers to avoid politically painful prisoner swaps. Although its existence has been reported in the Israeli press since the 1980s, this interview with Winter appears to be the most frank acknowledgement of its use.
The idea is to prevent the captors from taking the soldier alive, effectively denying Palestinian or other Arab resistance groups a bargaining chip down the line and relieving Israeli leaders of the political fallout from having to make concessions (such as prisoner swaps) to secure the soldier’s release.
According to blogger Richard Silverstein, the Israeli army has implemented the Hannibal Directive on at least three occasions during this latest war on Gaza, deploying massive firepower with the intention of executing three of their own.
For the following several hours, residents of Rafah, many having just returned to their homes for what they were told would be a three-day ceasefire, were subjected to a carpet bombing campaign that left the town in ruins and 190 people dead.
An Israeli army officer told the Associated Press that soldiers pounded Rafah with 500 artillery shells in just eight hours and launched an estimated 100 airstrikes within two days.
Acting on Winter’s “Hannibal” order, the Israeli army sealed off Rafah to prevent the alleged captors from escaping with Goldin alive. Homes were flattened on top of families sheltering inside. Civilians who attempted to flee the inferno were torn to shreds by artillery. Vehicles trying desperately to evacuate the wounded were fired upon.
By 2 August, the Israeli army had killed 190 Palestinians in Rafah, including 55 children. With the morgues full to capacity, medical workers were forced to store corpses in vegetable refrigerators to accommodate the high volume of dead bodies.
As Israel laid waste to Rafah, the Obama administration called the alleged capture of Goldin, an invading Israeli soldier engaged in armed hostilities against Gaza, a “barbaric” and “outrageous” act.
“A lot of criticism was heard about the force you employed in Rafah, directly after the abduction,” said interviewer Yossi Yehoshua to Winter.
“Everything we did was from the understanding that we could return Hadar Goldin alive,” responded Winter. “Stop the abduction event. Come from above to the places he could come out of. That’s what we employed all the force for,” he insisted.
These claims are totally inconsistent with the reality on the ground, where the only possible intended outcome of bombing everything was to kill Goldin and his captors while collectively punishing the surrounding population in the process.
Winter continued with an even more contradictory remark, hinting that the response in Rafah was partly an act of retribution. “Anyone who abducts should know that he will pay a price. This was not revenge. They simply messed with the wrong brigade,” he said.
Then, in a stunning display of hypocrisy, Winter (who relies on airstrikes and indiscriminate artillery fire to avoid face to face confrontations with the supposed enemy and who had to be woken up from a nap to be informed that his soldiers were killed in Rafah) tried to portray Palestinian resistance fighters as cowards.
“We fought against two Hamas brigades. Where were their brigade commanders?” he asked indignantly. “I hoped they would come face to face with us, but they chickened out. They sent their men forward, causing more evil and killing. That’s not combat. There were very few places where there were fighting retreats. They left everything and escaped.”
As an orthodox Jew firmly in Israel’s religious nationalist camp, Winter is making a career of mixing his brand of messianic Zionism with military aggression.
As a graduate of Bnei David, a religious pre-military academy located in Eli, an illegal Jewish-only settlement in the occupied West Bank, Winter epitomizes the mainstreaming of religiously motivated brutalityin the Israeli army. Bnei David’s goal is to replace Israel’s largely secular military elite with religious Zionists, like Winter.
On the eve of Israel’s ground invasion, Winter declared in a letter to his troops that they were fighting a Jewish holy war to punish the blasphemous Palestinians of Gaza.
Responding to criticism of the letter, Winter doubled down, telling Yediot Ahronot, “if I had to do so, I would write the same letter again, without batting an eyelid.”
The impact of Winter’s fanaticism on Palestinians in Gaza was nothing short of catastrophic.
Soldiers from the Givati Brigade under Winter’s command made up the majority of ground troops that thundered into Khuzaa, a farming community near the Israeli boundary line. With massive artillery shelling accompanied by airstrikes, the Israeli army reduced all of Khuzaa to rubble to secure a path for columns of invading tanks, jeeps and soldiers.
Cut off from the outside world for days, the residents of Khuzaa were at the mercy of Winter’s religiously-guided soldiers who carried out summary executions of both fighters and civilians and mowed down anyone trying to flee, including a wheelchair-using 16-year-old girl with epilepsy and a wounded elderly women crawling on the ground desperate for help.
Speaking about his brigade’s reign of terror in Khuzaa, Winter is cited by Yediot Ahronot as telling the ultra-Orthodox weekly newspaper Mishpacha that as the sun rose during the ground invasion, the movement of his troops remained hidden by “clouds of divine honor.”
“It was only when the homes that were supposed to be exploded were exploded and there was no longer any danger to our lives, the fog suddenly dispersed,” said Winter, insisting that the clouds were a direct intervention from God to protect the Jewish people.
Winter offered further religious explanations for his “victory” in Gaza to Yediot Ahronot.
Noting that the ground invasion coincided with “The Between the Straits Days” — a three-week mourning period observed by orthodox Jews to commemorate the ancient siege on Jerusalem and the loss of Jewish statehood — Winter opined that the overlap “was not just a coincidence.”
The Between the Straits Days end on the 9th of Av, also known as Tisha B’Av [observed on 5 August of this year], the very day that the fighting ended. It was especially on this day, a day of national mourning, that the decision was made: the IDF [Israeli military], the Nation of Israel – they won. We proved that we are a unified, determined nation and that we will not be beaten. Unitedness won. No ill words were spoken. Even the ultra-orthodox public – which cannot be taken for granted – fought with all its might from the place where it stands [meaning they prayed very hard]. I received lots of messages during the war. This is a tikun – repair – for what our ancestors have hurt. It enhanced the victory.
Despite the Palestinian blood on his hands, or more likely because of it, Winter has emerged as a hero in Israel, completely revered within the military and adored by the public.
Asked about his earlier complaints that the political and military establishment was holding him back from finishing the job in Gaza, Winter told Yediot Ahronot that he is ultimately satisfied with the outcome of the onslaught and then proceeded to brag about the carnage.
“There are hundreds of terrorists who were killed,” he boasted. “That is the message – no matter what we do, we’ll go in wherever we want to go. It is important that the enemy know this.”
“We shredded them. We can do it much worse, and it’s best for them that we not do it,” added Winter. “We gave them a much stronger beating than in Cast Lead.”
“When the Palestinians return to their home they will understand the scope of the damage Hamas has inflicted on them. Hamas used them,” he said.
Winter clarified that the enemy is not just Hamas but all of Gaza.
“This population is a hostage, but I think it is also a partner. I don’t exonerate them of responsibility so quickly,” said Winter of the 1.8 million Palestinians who inhabit the besieged coastal enclave, half of whom are children.
“True, there are some pitiable people there, but in many cases the terrorists are the children or relatives of the people who live there. In almost every home there is a son or other relative that is a partner in terror. How do you raise children in a home with explosives? In the end, everyone gets what they choose.”
He went on to call the Israeli assault “A just war against a cruel enemy. We, who sanctify life, fought against an enemy who sanctifies death. The forces of light against the forces of darkness.”
“This is an important statement due to the absolutism of it,” explains Israel expert Dena Shunra, who translated the article for The Electronic Intifada. “If Hamas (or Gaza as a whole) are the forces of darkness, any action is absolved. It is a Manichean sentiment similar to what we hear from the US military, and does not leave any room for ending hostilities – a war to the death.”
Winter’s warped vision of a civilian population in Gaza complicit in the “forces of darkness” essentially justifies killing them en masse, which is exactly what he did in Rafah and Khuzaa.
As a result, “[Winter] cannot walk around today without being halted, hugged, asked for a photo opportunity,” according to Yediot.
In a final address to his troops following the Gaza slaughter, Winter alluded to the next round of massacres.
“I am proud of you for everything that you have done. It is all thanks to you,” he told the soldiers. “I cannot promise you, like the song does, that this will be the last war, but I promise that this war, which is so just, will push the next war a good few years away.” More
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