Editorial from Kommunistisk Politik, No. 8, April 13, 2002
A disgusting massacre, a brutal repression of human rights and international
law, has been going on in front of the eyes of the international community since
Israel launched its big offensive in the occupied Palestinian territories in
order to destroy the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority and crush the
armed Palestinian resistance, to make a military showdown with the PLO and the
resistance groups outside the PLO, to completely paralyse and intimidate the
whole Palestinian civil society, and to humiliate the Palestinian President
Yasser Arafat who has been under siege for months in Ramallah. Israeli troops
crushed Arafat's police and security forces, all the institutions of the Palestinian
Authority while the murderer and butcher Ariel Sharon was screaming, "Arafat
is the leader of the Palestinian terrorist network".
By "terrorist network", the war criminal Sharon simply understands
all armed Palestinian groups, that is, the Palestinian army which the state
of Palestine cannot build to defend itself because the state of Palestine does
not exist.
If there is something that the Israeli aggression can and must be compared
to is it the bloody ravaging of the Nazis in the occupied countries during the
Second World War, a master race versus an inferior race.
If the concept of terror should have any content, then the Israeli aggression
is terror, terror against a whole people, random executions and murders of soldiers
and civilians, killings of children and old people, systematic shooting of ambulances
and killings of health personal, massacres in refugee camps, especially in those
camps which are known for fighting the occupying power, prevention of medical
care to wounded people, cutting off water and electricity supplies to a series
of cities, terror through starving out and hindering the functioning of civil
society.
Israel has stopped just at the verge of a large-scale genocide and real ethnic
expulsion although some members of Sharon's government have openly declared
that the three million Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza should be expelled
to Jordan.
Hundreds of people have been killed, thousands have been injured, and more than
5,000 Palestinians have been arrested and taken to prisons and camps for torture.
Does this sound like a description of fascism? It is fascism - Zionist
fascism!
No witnesses have been wished. Israel has displaced and shot at journalists,
international observers, and workers of the Red Cross, humanitarian organisations
and the UN.
The terrorist Sharon wants that all witnesses be eliminated, but he will not
be able to hinder a whole world from witnessing against him! And the individuals
responsible for the Israeli crimes shall one day be punished!
The US has stood behind Sharon and this whole dirty operation right from the
start. The fascist aggression has been coordinated with the US. The Americans
have given Israel the green light. It is a massacre committed with the acceptance
of the US and with the use of US weapon.
Had Bush wanted to stop Sharon, he could have called him on the telephone. He
could have sent his Foreign Minister Colin Powell directly to Israel instead
of sending him on a tour in the Middle East before arriving at the war zone.
The butcher Sharon and the warlord Bush are together in this: they are important
partners in the so-called "War on Terror", and the slaughter has been
going on in the name of "fighting terror" and with exactly the same
choice of words as being used by Bush and Co. While Arafat has been kept locked
up and deprived all possibilities of action, Bush was not screaming that Israel
should stop, but demanding "Arafat should fight terror". From the
offices of the Danish government, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Foreign
Minister Per Stig Moeller announced, "Arafat should do more against terror".
Also the government of Denmark gave green light for Israel's odious aggression.
What has come out from the occupied territories has, however, been enough to
cause a radicalisation of the opinion everywhere in the world. Israel has lost
almost all sympathy and has never been as isolated as now. Therefore, the US
has put out contradicting signals and voted for resolutions of the UN Security
Council demanding an immediate stop of the Israeli military offensive and withdrawal
of Israeli troops from the occupied territories.
If any other country than the US-backed Israel had been behaving like this,
it would have been given the cold shoulder; it would have been boycotted and
put under sanctions by the international community. But Israel has been permitted
to do as it likes.
Therefore, the peoples of the world have started building, from below, a Boycott
Israel Campaign and a Palestine solidarity movement of an unprecedented magnitude.
The explosive reactions all over the world have forced the "quartet" consisting of the US, the EU, Russia and the UN to put forward an initiative which is not sanctions against the criminal Israel, not a clear stand against repression and Israeli state terror, but instead new calls on ending the offensive, stopping the suicide bombs and initiating a dialogue based on the US Mitchell Plan. That is not good enough. Israel must get out of the whole occupied Palestine, without any conditions and immediately!
April 10, 2002