{"id":120478,"date":"2018-10-22T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=120478"},"modified":"2018-10-17T13:37:37","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T12:37:37","slug":"this-is-not-law-enforcement-it-is-a-war-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/10\/this-is-not-law-enforcement-it-is-a-war-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is Not Law Enforcement \u2013 It Is a War Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

17 Oct 2018 – <\/em>It was not in the heat of battle that they were expelled from Israel in 1951.\u00a0 Again, it is not in the heat of battle that the IDF is planning to destroy all the houses in the village and evict all the members of the Jahalin tribe who live in Khan Al-Akhmar.\u00a0 Once again, Israel plans to harm people whose only crime is that they are Bedouins living under Israeli rule.\u00a0 And once again, the army will be sent to carry out a unilateral act of war against a defenseless civilian population.\u00a0 An act that is contrary to morality, to the ethics of war and army, to human rights conventions, and to international law.<\/p>\n

This one-sided war that the Israeli army is waging against\u00a0 this defenseless civilian population under its rule since 1967 includes:\u00a0 widespread land robbery under cover of various bizarre pretexts;\u00a0 relentless destruction of houses; establishing settlements on stolen land, then expanding and defending them;\u00a0 deportations;\u00a0 stealing water and quarry sources; preventing the return of Palestinians who have been abroad for lengthy periods;\u00a0 preventing unification of families; preventing entry of visitors, etc.\u00a0 All these things are not connected in any way to national security.\u00a0 They are all carried out in the service of Israel’s project of territorial expansion.\u00a0 When Palestinians try to object to all this “good” that the IDF is showering on them, then its security role begins.<\/p>\n

Both the government and the IDF understand that this one-sided war against a defenseless population is turning the army from a legitimate organization that was founded to safeguard the country and its citizens into a criminal organization.\u00a0 This is because it operates in total contradiction to the ethic of war and army, violating three important ethical principles.\u00a0 It uses violent force to gain objectives that are not matters of national security; it operates in defiance of any rule of decency \u2013 a soldier should fight against other soldiers and not against defenseless civilians; it fights against people not because they have caused us any injury or harm, but simply because they exist. And so they have found a simple solution to this problem:\u00a0 cloak this war in the costume of the “law”.<\/p>\n

Now the IDF’s soldiers are being sent to enforce the laws of the occupation on a defenseless civilian population, who are not able to dispatch their representatives to try and influence the legislation that affects their lives.\u00a0 Moreover, to add to the “fairness” of this legislation, the courts of Israel have been opened to the occupied population. Now they can appeal to the Israeli courts against the harm caused by the Israeli army.<\/p>\n

However, there is a problem with this whole concept.\u00a0 Israel is acting in total violation of international law, according to which the settlements in the occupied territories are illegal and any action taken against the occupied population, which is not strictly for security purposes, is illegal.\u00a0 Apparently, Israel’s brilliant legal minds have found ways to provide legal cover for the systematic violations of international law.\u00a0 And all this is done with the backing of the United States that does not allow the international community to take any action to prevent Israel’s criminal activities.<\/p>\n

The fate of Khan Al-Akhmar has been decided.\u00a0 Neither Israeli nor international protests will help now.\u00a0 Protests from countries like France, the United Kingdom, Germany and others are not of any use.\u00a0 As long as the United States does not oppose these actions, there is no one who can stop this, and all that remains to be done is to continue to protest, and to show solidarity with the victims of this premeditated crime.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Amos Gvirtz is founder of\u00a0<\/em>Israelis and Palestinians for Nonviolence, was chairperson of the Committee against House Demolitions, and a peace and human rights activist. He is a former Israeli representative to the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and wrote the book,<\/em>\u00a0Don\u2019t Say We Did Not Know\u00a0(working on the translation to English).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

17 Oct 2018 – This one-sided war that the Israeli army is waging against the Khan Al-Akhmar civilian population includes: widespread land robbery; relentless destruction of houses; establishing settlements on stolen land, then expanding them; deportations; stealing water and quarry sources; preventing the return of Palestinians; preventing unification of families; preventing entry of visitors. These are not connected in any way to national security but with Israel’s project of territorial expansion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":104868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}