Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 24.02.2024
The American imperialists for the third time since the war on Gaza began have used their veto power to block the resolution introduce this time by Algeria for cease fire to end the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West-Bank. The genocide continues in spite of the orders by the ICJ. Israel simply does not care about the decision of the ICJ because it knows that the U.S supports its genocide.
“The message given today to Israel with this veto is that it can continue to get away with murder,” Palestine’s United Nations envoy Riyad Mansour says. [1] Rejecting a UN Security Council (UNSC) ceasefire resolution shows “approval of starvation as a means of war”, says Algeria’s ambassador to the UN, Amar Bendjama[2]..“We are appalled to hear of this new low in an already deep pit of failures from the international community,” Save the Children’s director for the occupied Palestinian territories Jason Lee says, as the US vetoes the resolution which was supported by 13 of the UNSC’s 15 members[3]”
The U.S even denies that Israel is committing a genocide. A State Department Spokesperson Stated after the ICJ pronounced that it is possible that Israel is committing genocide:
“We continue to believe that allegations of genocide are unfounded and note the court did not make a finding about genocide or called for a ceasefire in its ruling and that it called for the unconditional, immediate release of all hostages being held by Hamas,” the spokesperson said in a statement in response to Anadolu.” [4]
There are real reasons why the American imperialists stand behind the war crimes of Israel. First of all because Israel is the first line of the imperialist controlled of the region and its role is to protect the exploitation of the region for the by the Western imperialists.
“Israel declares war ‘for the Western world’ in showdown with Hamas” writes Washington examiner.”[i] Israeli Defense Forces are mobilizing for “a long war” against Hamas, according to Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, who characterized the looming campaign as a “fight for the Western world” [5]
Hanit is the Hebrew word meaning spearhead. That word explains why Israel is a vital strategic asset not just to Great Britain, but to the West as a whole. Hanita is also the name of a settlement established in the western Galilee in March 21, 1938. Geographically, Hanita is literally the spearhead of Israel, hard up against the front line with Lebanon. When the establishment of Hanita was proposed, the British administration vetoed it and then did everything in their power to prevent it going ahead.
The Zionists persisted and the tower and stockade village was eventually built. This was during the Arab Revolt in Palestine (1936-1939), and Hanita fought against the anti -imperialist uprising.
In 1940, the British imperialists planned to invade Syria to prevent the Vichy French government there from allowing a German imperialist army to build up and threaten the Mosul oilfields and the Suez Canal. An Australian force was to enter Lebanon from Palestine, using Hanita as a base, and from there to advance into Syria. Bridges over the Litany River were vital for the British operation, and because of their familiarity with the wild and uncharted border country, the Zionists were asked to capture and hold those bridges to prevent their destruction by the Vichy forces.
In 1956 Israel joined the British and French imperialists in the war against Egypt’s Nasser who supported the FLN national liberation war against France, and he nationalized the Suez Canal that until then was under the control of British imperialism. He also supported the Palestinians struggle against the Zionist apartheid
In 1967 Israel attacked Egypt’s Nasser because he had close ties with Stalinist Russia and refused to ally Egypt with the U.S.
The second reason is the common values of Israel other Western imperialists:
“In a speech in London, British Prime Minister Theresa May strongly asserted the value that Israel has to Britain. She said: Israel will be crucial to us as we exit the EU, we have common values; we work together, on health, counter-terrorism, cyber security, technology; and we can help each other achieve our aims. When we work together on our mutual security at the highest level, it makes the world safer” [6]
In the case of American imperialism, Israel is doing to the native Palestinians what the white American colonists did to the Native Americans. So, these two states have common values.
The belief in white superiority and supremacy, set out to annihilate the natives:
“During the American War of Independence (1775-1783), the Second War of Independence (1812-1815) and the Civil War (1861-1865), the U.S. leaders, eager to transform its plantation economy as an adjunct to European colonialism and to expand their territories, coveted the vast Indian lands and launched thousands of attacks on Indian tribes, slaughtering Indian chiefs, soldiers and even civilians, and taking Indian lands for themselves.
In 1862, the United States enacted the Homestead Act, which provided that every American citizen above the age of 21, with a mere registration fee of 10 U.S. dollars, could acquire no more than 160 acres (about 64.75 hectares) of land in the west. Lured by the land, the white people swarmed into the Indian areas and started a massacre that resulted in the death of thousands of Indians.
Leaders of the U.S. government at that time openly claimed that the skin of Indians could be peeled off to make tall boots, that Indians must be annihilated or driven to places that no one would go, that Indians had to be wiped out swiftly, and that only dead Indians are good Indians. American soldiers saw the slaughter of Indians as natural, even an honor, and would not rest until they were all killed. Similar hate rhetoric and atrocities abound, and are well documented in many Native American extermination monographs.
Since the colonists set foot in North America, they had systematically and extensively hunted American bison, cutting off the source of food and basic livelihood of the Indians, and causing their death from starvation in large numbers.
Statistics reveal that since its independence in 1776, the U.S. government has launched over 1,500 attacks on Indian tribes, slaughtering the Indians, taking their lands, and committing countless crimes. In 1814, the U.S. government decreed that it would award 50 to 100 dollars for each Indian skull surrendered. The American Historian Frederick Turner acknowledged in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, released in 1893, that each frontier was won by a series of wars against the Indians.
The California Gold Rush also brought about the California Massacre. Peter Burnett, the first governor of California, proposed a war of extermination against Native Americans, triggering rising calls for the extermination of Indians in the state. In California in the 1850s and 60s, an Indian skull or scalp was worth 5 dollars, while the average daily wage was 25 cents. From 1846 to 1873, the Indian population in California dropped to 30,000 from 150,000. Countless Indians died as a result of the atrocities. Some of the major massacres include:
In 1811, American troops defeated the famous Indian chief Tecumseh and his army in the Battle of Tippecanoe, burned the Indian capital Prophetstown and committed brutal massacres.
From November 1813 to January 1814, the U.S. Army launched the Creek War against the Native Americans, also known as the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. On March 27, 1814, about 3,000 soldiers attacked the Creek Indians at Horseshoe Bend, Mississippi Territory. Over 800 Creek warriors were slaughtered in the fight, and as a result, the military strength of the Creeks was significantly weakened. Under the Treaty of Fort Jackson signed on August 9 of the same year, the Creeks ceded more than 23 million acres of land to the U.S. federal government.
On November 29, 1864, pastor John Chivington massacred Indians at Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado, due to the opposition of a few Indians to the signing of a land grant agreement. It was one of the most notorious massacres of Native Americans. Maria Montoya, a professor of history at New York University, said in an interview that Chivington’s soldiers scalped women and children, beheaded them, and paraded them through the streets upon their return to Denver.
James Anaya, former UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, submitted his report after a country visit to the United States in 2012. According to the accounts of the descendants of the victims of the Sand Creek Massacre, in 1864, around 700 armed U.S. soldiers raided and shot at Cheyenne and Arapaho people living on the Sand Creek Indian Reservation in Colorado. Media reports showed that the massacre resulted in the deaths of between 70 and 163 among the 200-plus tribal members. Two-thirds of the dead were women or children, and no one was held responsible for the massacre. The U.S. government had reached a compensation agreement with tribal descendants, which has not been delivered even to this day.
On December 29, 1890, near the Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, U.S. troops fired at the Indians, killing and injuring more than 350 people according to the U.S. Congressional Record. After the Wounded Knee Massacre, armed Indian resistance was largely suppressed. About 20 U.S. soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor.
In 1930, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs began sterilizing Indian women through the Indian Health Service program. Sterilization was conducted in the name of protecting the health of Indian women, and in some cases, even performed without the women’s knowledge. Statistics suggest that in early 1970s, more than 42% of Indian women of childbearing age were sterilized. This resulted in the near extinction for many small tribes. By 1976, approximately 70,000 Indian women had been forcibly sterilized.”
President Obama was the first American President that sort of apologized to the native Americans. But researchers say a government apology needs to go beyond “I’m sorry” in several ways: It should acknowledge the contributions of the victimized minority to society as a whole; it should be worded in a way that is acceptable to those wronged and non-victimized majorities, who may believe the apology implicates them in the injustice. It should also stress the fairness of modern justice systems, as opposed to historic systems that allowed abuses to take place.
Elsa Stamatopoulou believes more than a Rose Garden ceremony is warranted. A former chief of the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, she today directs the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Program at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights.
Indigenous peoples have not tried to come up with any formula for a “perfect” apology, Stamatopoulou said. “But it would have to be more than a single moment or event. It has to have a timing and a process that is meaningful for indigenous peoples,” she added.
In 1998, Canada offered a lengthy “Statement of Reconciliation” to First Nations, Inuit and Metis people and announced a $350 million ”healing fund” for boarding school survivors. But many First Nations people believed this wasn’t enough. Over the next decade, thousands of survivors filed lawsuits against the government and churches.” [7]
The native Indians have the right not only for real compensation but for self- determination. We can learn from Lenin and the early history of the Soviet Union before Stalinism the rights of self determination for the “small nations”
Total Ceasefire now!
Exchange prisoners All for All.!
For Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/2/21/israels-war-on-gaza-live-us-ceasefire-veto-a-new-low-as-hunger-spreads
[2] Ibid
[3] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/us-maintains-genocide-charges-against-israel-unfounded-after-international-court-ruling/3120197
[4] Ibid
[5] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2440271/israel-declares-war-for-the-western-world-in-showdown-with-hamas
[6] https://jcpa.org/article/israel-strategic-asset-west
[7] https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_native-american-pastor-seeks-white-house-apology-historic-abuses/6219215.html