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Israel's Undeclared Long War on Palestinians

Israel's Undeclared Long War on Palestinians

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

It's been ongoing for over 70 years - with full US support and encouragement, with the world community doing nothing to challenge Israeli Nuremberg-level high crimes.

Fundamental Palestinian rights affirmed under international law don't matter, ignored since the infamous 1917 Balfour Declaration, calling for a Jewish homeland - on stolen Palestinian land, a high crime against humanity gone unpunished.

Endless conflict, occupation, dispossession, and repression, along with social and cultural fragmentation define conditions for beleaguered Palestinians - over 100 years of suffering, no end of it in sight, the world community dismissive of their rights.

How many years of illegal occupation are too many? How long will holding two million Gazans hostage to Israeli viciousness be tolerated?

When will Israel be held accountable for daily state terror throughout the Territories, beleaguered Gazans suffering most of all?

On Friday, its health ministry said Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian child, injuring 220 others in the Strip during another peaceful Great March of Return demonstration.

During the day, Israeli soldiers shot and wounded 17 children, three women, two paramedics and two journalists. Dozens of the injured required hospitalization, some with serious wounds.

According to Gaza's health ministry, from March 30 through July 7, Israeli soldiers killed 137 peacefully demonstrating Gazans threatening no one - including 18 children, two women, two journalists, and two paramedics.

Over 16,000 Gazans were injured, including 2,600 children and 1,200 women - hundreds with serious (for some life-threatening) wounds, mostly caused by live fire.

It includes use of internally exploding dum dum bullets, leaving fist-sized wounds when exiting bodies struck, designed to inflict disabling damage to internal body parts or death.

The 1899 Hague Convention banned their use - international law never deterring Washington and Israel from doing whatever they please extrajudicially.

Palestinian injuries by body parts include 590 to the head or neck, 350 to the chest or back, 420 to the pelvis or abdomen, 1,230 to upper limbs, 4,200 to lower limbs, and 1,600 others - according to Gaza's health ministry.

Palestinian ambulances were struck by live fire 45 times.

Great March of Return demonstrations have been ongoing for three-and-a-half months - heroic activism for fundamental rights denied Gazans and all Palestinians.

On July 13, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) denounced Israeli violence with no end of it in prospect, saying:

"Upon a Decision by the highest political and military echelons, the Israeli forces continued to use excessive force against the peaceful protesters, who posed no threat to the life of the soldiers."

"Israeli snipers deliberately and selectively opened fire at the participants in the peaceful demonstrations which included thousands of civilians in different areas in the eastern Gaza Strip."

Medical workers, journalists, young children and women are willfully targeted.

Free expression and assembly are inviolable rights - everyone everywhere entitled to them. 

Israel maliciously calls all forms of legitimate Palestinian activism terrorism or incitement - its own state terrorism considered self-defense.

Separately overnight, Israeli warplanes terror-bombed Gaza, what's gone on many times before during three preemptive wars of aggression in the last decade, along with numerous incidents lasting one or more days.

When Gazans respond by firing homemade rockets into Israeli territory, legitimate acts of self-defense, Israel responds with more terror-bombing.

Israel brutalizes Palestinians with impunity, besieged Gazans most of all, held hostage under horrific concentration camp conditions. 

World community failure to challenge Israeli high crimes reflects complicity through inaction and silence.

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My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

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