re: unique cowardice
Cowards attack in tanks as well
We Are Not Asking for the Moon, Some Justice Would Do
Thursday, January 09 2003 @ 09:35 PM GMT
"If Palestinian and Israeli blood is indeed equal before the international community, why then does the response to the killings vary? Why are Palestinians condemned and Israelis are simply asked to use more caution? .."
By Ramzy Baroud*
SEATTLE (PalestineChronicle.com) - Two Palestinians blew themselves up in a crowded Tel Aviv street on Sunday, Jan 05. As a result, many people lost their lives. Some of the casualties had little or nothing to do with the bitter Middle East conflict altogether; they were foreign workers.
As expected, the bombings provoked worldwide condemnations. Few in the international community who condemned the bombings as “terrorist” however, felt compelled to raise questions, to challenge both parties to resolve the bloody conflict peacefully. Many even provided Israel with a pretext to unleash hell on the Palestinians in response. And no one, no one at all bothered to spend a few minutes to examine the reports of the Palestinian Health Ministry, counting the Palestinian deaths in the preceding months; 75 lives in December 2002 alone.
The purpose of this article is to challenge the humanity of the so-called international community, in particular, the United Nations and the European Union, to honor the lives of Palestinians and Israelis alike, as if they were equal, according to similar definitions and interpretations of international law.
“Terrorism”, according to Webster’s NewWorld Dictionary is the “act of terrorizing; use of force or threats to demoralize, intimidate and subjugate, esp. such as a political weapon or policy.” Neither Webster’s, nor the other dictionaries suggest that suicide bombings are exceptionally terrorist, and the violence carried out by the Israeli army is legitimate self-defense.
I am obliged to assume that the life of a Palestinian child holds the same precious value of the life of an Israeli child. But would I be as naïve to demand that UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, the European Union and all of their eloquent spokesmen hold the same conviction as mine? If Palestinian and Israeli blood is indeed equal before the international community, why then does the response to the killings vary? Why are Palestinians condemned and Israelis are simply asked to use more caution? Let me demonstrate.
Annan described the duel bombing in Tel Aviv, apparently carried out by two men, whose political affiliations remain unconfirmed as “morally reprehensive and completely unjustified.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello said, “Such indiscriminate attacks on civilians are illegal acts aimed at the destruction of the most basic human rights. He called on the Palestinian Authority to investigate these “heinous crimes and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.”
Javier Solana, EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy “unreservedly condemn.. (the) terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv.” He said, no cause can justify the blind killing of innocents. Acts of terror such as the ones we have witnessed in Tel Aviv are intolerable and must stop.”
I am forced to exclude the US government’s condemnation of the bombings or any others. For one they were too lengthy, too elaborate and too wordy. Second, since Israel is never condemned, no matter how devastating their actions may be, there is no point of demanding equal condemnations. Also, few Palestinians place any expectations on the Bush administration in terms of fairness and evenhandedness, which isolated the American stance on the Middle East from the rest of the world, in terms of its relevance to international law or even common decency.
However, from the above quotes, one can reach two realizations. One, the UN and the EU perceive the act of killing Israeli civilians as terrorism, and demand apprehending and punishing those responsible. Moreover, the UN and EU find the Israeli action, which was believed to have triggered the Palestinian reaction of no relevance to their perception of the bombings.
A reasonable person has the right to expect that the two organizations’ responses to the Israeli attack on the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza on the first day of the Muslim holiday, on Dec 07, would be equally, if not more assertive, after all, the Tel Aviv bombings were carried by two individuals, while the Bureij attack was carried by over 50 tanks, apaches and hundreds of soldiers. Also, the Palestinian leadership condemned the killings of Israelis in very strong terms. Israel on the other hand, not only ordered the attack and killings in Bureij in the first place, but also gloated, once again for the great success of its army that killed and wounded dozens of innocent people. And finally, one has to keep in mind that Israel is the occupier, the one in violation of international law, the one who killed three times more Palestinians than Palestinians killed of Israelis.
But if you are a reasonable person, therefore expecting such evenhandedness, you are mistaken.
France reacted to the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in Bureij by reminding Israel to “take into consideration the limitations imposed by the international humanitarian law.”
The US urged Israel to consider the consequences of the military actions in the territories (this was seen as the harshest American criticism of Israel since the beginning of the Intifada.)
Solana (see his reaction to the Tel Aviv bombings above), said “A massive intervention of that type of a densely population urban area can only lead to the loss of innocent lives.”
The EU’s Danish presidency said it “strongly condemns military or other violent actions directed indiscriminately against a civilian neighborhood, whether Palestinian or Israeli.” (An excellent approach indeed, to avoid direct criticism of the murder of innocent people while celebrating the holiday).
A spokesman for Mr. Annan said at the time that the Secretary-General is "gravely disturbed by the Israeli military attack in the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.” Although two UN workers were also murdered in Bureij, Annan’s remained composed and careful not to evoke Israeli wrath. “The Secretary-General deplores the loss of innocent civilian life,” while “wishing to remind the Government of Israel of its obligations as an occupying power to protect the civilian population.”
From the above statements, one can also reach several realizations; one, the UN, the EU, US and various other countries don’t perceive the killing of Palestinian civilians as acts of terrorism, but “excessive use of force” (the harshest statement often used to describe Israeli state terror). Second, neither entity ever demands the apprehension of the perpetrators of these acts of murder, nor is punishment ever sought for the Israeli murderers or their commanders (Palestinians will always recall the UN’s failure to even reach the Jenin refugee camp to investigate a massacre against the civilian population.)
This is not an attempt to compare whose blood holds more value, or to simply conclude that the UN and the rest of the Western hemisphere is bias. It’s a mere reminder, however, that a just end to the Palestinian Israeli conflict can never actualize if those who claim to be the peacemakers (Or the Middle East Peace Quartet) are neither fair, nor courageous enough to stand for the basic principals of justice, which they claim to advocate.
I am not asking the UN to threaten Israel with “serious consequences” if it fails to withdraw from the Occupied Territories, nor am I asking for any other threatening language similar to that used to unleash wars on Iraq and others. I was only hoping that the killing of both Israeli and Palestinians could be viewed according to the same standards, the same language. But it seems, my naiveté has misled me again. It often does.
*Ramzy Baroud is the editor-in-chief of palestinechronicle.com, and the editor of “Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion 2002”.
