COLUMN: Double standards — The last part
Avner Cohin was formerly the co-director of the Project on Nuclear Arms Control in the Middle East. In his book “Israel and the bomb,” banned to be published in Israel, Cohin reveals that Israel crossed the nuclear weapons threshold on the eve of the 1967 Six Day War. Israel never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the 1968 international agreement designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. It is estimated that Israel possesses about 200 nuclear heads and defense analysts say it has the most extensive and sophisticated nuclear arsenal outside of the major powers. Yet, Israel still refuses any United Nations inspection on its weapons of mass destruction.
Israel doesn’t care about United Nations resolutions, international laws or human rights. For example, resolutions No. 242 in 1967 and No. 338 in 1973 call upon Israel to withdraw from Arab-occupied territories. However, Israel illegally stays in the occupied zones without any consideration to the international communities. The above two resolutions are among more than 60 others pertaining to the occupation of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon that Israel chose to ridicule and ignore.
My personal experience in my home country, Lebanon, is an example of the Israeli forces’ acts of crime against humanity. During its 22-year occupation of Lebanon (a democratic republic just north of the Israeli borders), and disregarding another U.N. resolution (No. 425 in 1978), Israel caused the death of more than 15,000 people and the injury and panic among more than half a million.
Bombing the villages, burning agricultural lands, and exploiting the water were among the almost-daily activities. Israel also established detention camps in the occupied territories and started arresting people at random (even 14-year-olds). The Israelis used to bring the women, mothers and sisters of the arrested people and threaten to rape and torture them if the detainees refused to cooperate with them. Not to mention the methods of torture they tried on the detainees, for 18 years of imprisonment. Israel now still detains many people in
its prisons.
In 1996, the Israeli government launched a huge military attack on Lebanon calling it “Grapes of Wrath.” Hundreds of thousands of people became homeless, seeking refuge in Beirut, the capital. One hundred-twenty women and children were sheltered in one of the United Nations’ camps in Qana, the town where Jesus Christ turned water into wine.
On April 18, the Israeli air forces fired rockets on the part of the camp where the people were sheltered. The women and children were turned into ashes by the Israeli phosphoric bombs. The Israeli air force fired rockets on schools and ambulances, killing children and injuring people trying to reach the hospital. They bombed bridges and power plants to destroy the Lebanese economy. The Israeli army left about half a million land mines planted in the land of South Lebanon.
They declined to give the United Nations Forces maps of these deadly mines. People will continue to be killed at random. David Levi, the Israeli foreign minister, said on March 23, 2000 that they “will burn down the Lebanese land …” if the Lebanese resisted the Israeli occupying forces.
These are common practices by the Israelis, who still do the same with the Palestinians. In the 1930s and during the British mandate, the social establishment of the Palestinian communities was destroyed by the colonial powers. That was designed to give the immigrant Jews 57 percent of the Palestinian land. This was the beginning of the continuing series of the human rights violation of the Palestinians.
The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 forced millions of Palestinians to live in refugee camps under the Israeli occupation, resulting in a massive refugee problem.
In 1967, Israel extended its occupation of the Arab land to fully control all of the Palestinian land. Not only do they occupy a part of the Palestinian land, the Israeli forces also continue to kill children, women, and elders by shelling heavy bombs on densely populated areas in Gaza strip and other places.
They are constantly damaging the houses of the Palestinians, cutting down their trees and destroying their agricultural land.
Is Israel “the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people?” Does this one-sided belief justify all the crimes committed by the Israeli entity against their Arab neighbors? If that land, called Palestine in the holy bible, is the home of today’s Jews just because their ancestors lived there from 923 to 586 B.C., then, by the same argument, it is the land of today’s Palestinians who have been living there since 2500 B.C.
I wonder what kind of peace is hoped, with Israel led by the famous war criminal, Ariel Sharon.
Prime Minister Sharon was found responsible in 1983 by an Israeli state inquiry for the massacre of about 2,800 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. What kind of peace do they say they want if they only believe in violence to solve the conflict?
Hadi Jaafar is a graduate student in irrigation engineering. Comments can be sent to him at hadij@cc.usu.edu.