Despite what international law says, the
Israeli public has internalised the notion that,
by definition, there is no legitimate
Palestinian struggle for national liberation
By Orly Noy
November 18, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- "Middle
East Eye"
It is doubtful if more than a handful of
Jews in
Israel could tell you accurately how many
raids the Israeli army conducted last week in
Palestinian cities in the West Bank, the
number of arrests they made, or the number of
people they killed.
At the same time, it is doubtful if there
were more than a handful of Israelis who had not
heard of the
shooting incident on a soldiers' bus in the
Jordan Valley, on Sunday 4 September.
A Palestinian shooting at Israeli soldiers -
as opposed to Israelis shooting at Palestinians
- is not just an alarming “man bites dog” story
that reverses the usual order, demanding
extensive reports; in all of those reports, the
event was defined as a terror attack and the
Palestinian shooters as terrorists.
Not a word about how the shooting targeted
soldiers of an occupying army and occurred on
occupied land.
The Israeli media has a key role in shaping
public consciousness to serve the
establishment’s propaganda machine, while
keeping the Israeli public thoroughly ignorant
of the most basic facts.
The Israeli public, in general, has
completely internalised the notion that, by
definition, there is no legitimate Palestinian
struggle for national liberation.
As with the thorough erasure of the 1949
armistice line, also known as the Green Line,
from Israeli consciousness - to the point that
the
mere mention of its existence by the Tel
Aviv municipality provokes threats from the
Ministry of Education - so too the consistent
labelling of any Palestinian struggle as
terrorism obscures the important distinction
under international law between an action
targeting combatants and one directed against
civilians.
A legitimate right
The fact is that international law recognises
the legitimate right of a people to fight for
its freedom, and for "liberation from colonial
control, apartheid and foreign occupation by all
the means at its disposal, including armed
struggle", as confirmed, for example, by a
resolution of the UN General Assembly in
1990.
The use of force to achieve liberation is
legitimate. The manner in which force is used is
governed by the laws of war, the main purpose of
which is to protect uninvolved civilians on both
sides.
The Jordan Valley shooting did not target
civilians, and cannot be considered a terrorist
act. It was an act of armed resistance against
an occupying power, on occupied land.
The Israeli regime and its dutiful echo, the
Israeli media, treat every action against
occupation forces on occupied land exactly as if
they were actions targeting civilians in the
heart of Tel Aviv: as terrorist acts perpetrated
by terrorists.
This conflation not only negates a legal or
moral basis for the act; it is also contrary to
the interests of Israel’s citizens.
The relevant laws of war are designed first
and foremost to protect civilians who are not
participants in the cycle of violence and to
limit that violence to actual combatants.
Israel, however, recognises no such category
of Palestinian combatants; from Israel’s
standpoint, any resistance, even nonviolent
resistance, to its occupation and oppression
poses a danger to security that is easily
recognised as terror, as when Israel recently
declared the six most prominent
Palestinian NGOs to be terror organisations.
This is a two-way distortion by Israel. Just
as it treats every Palestinian action, even
those directed against soldiers, as acts of
terrorism, so too does Israel paint any Israeli
action taken against Palestinians as legitimate,
even when those Palestinians are civilians.
A typical brutality
For an especially outrageous example of this
policy, consider the final conclusions published
by the Israeli army regarding the fatal shooting
of journalist
Shireen Abu Akleh. The army initially
claimed that Abu Akleh
was killed by Palestinian gunfire, a blatant
lie that was exposed by
a series of media outlets that examined the
evidence minutely. The revised version the army
later published is also far from congruent with
the evidence.
The Military Advocate General announced that
no investigation would be opened, despite
the chilling admission that Abu Akleh, wearing a
vest clearly identifying her as a journalist,
was shot to death by a soldier using a sniper
rifle's telescopic sight - which magnifies the
target by a factor of four.
Equally disgraceful was the Israeli response
to the very minor American request to "take
another look at" the army’s open-fire procedures
in the West Bank.
Not that the army will stop murdering
innocent people, God forbid, nor that it will
stop the endless invasions of West Bank cities,
the mass arrests, the midnight abductions of
children from their beds - just that it will
exert itself a bit more, if it’s not too
difficult, to avoid any more such cases.
The mighty United States prefers not to find
itself mired in such cases because the victim
happens to hold American citizenship, as was the
case with Abu Akleh.
Even the courtesy of paying lip service to
this minor request was not forthcoming from
Israel, which responded with
typical brutality. Prime Minister Yair Lapid
hastened to tell the Americans that “no one will
dictate open-fire regulations to us".
Defence Minister Benny Gantz, in the same
spirit, stated: "The chief of staff, and he
alone, determines and will continue to determine
the open-fire policies."
In other words, Israel put the Americans,
indeed the entire world, on notice: no one will
tell Israel how many, who, when, where or how we
will kill. And there the matter ends, until the
next time.
The views expressed in this article belong
to the author and do not necessarily reflect the
editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
This article is available in French on Middle
East Eye French edition.
Views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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