Gaza: Israel's war of aggression

In the Nuremberg trials after World War II, the launching of a war of aggression was labeled as "the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole".

With that established, lets note a few things.

1. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry's own information, the truce between Hamas and Israel had held since June, with Hamas basically keeping its side of the bargain. See the graph below. Between January and June 2008 there was an average of 179 Gazan rocket attacks per month on Israel. Then, from the beginning of the truce until 5 November, there was an average of 3 rocket attacks per month (recall that these are rudimentary projectiles that have killed a few over 20 people in 8 years, though thousands have been fired, and none from June til last Saturday).

Hamas had therefore essentially proven its ability to control both its own armed wing and the other militant factions in the Gaza strip. In those terms, the ceasefire was a success. But note that under the terms of this truce, Israel was supposed to ease the crippling blockade on Gaza and let the required humanitarian supplies in. It did not.

2. Israel - not Hamas - then unilaterally broke the ceasefire on 5 November 2008, conducting a raid into Gaza and killing six Hamas gunmen. Israel claims this was in response to a threat of militants tunnelling under the border. I am inclined to take Israel's word for very little, myself. I do note however that under the Israeli blockade, tunnel-smuggling was one of the few routes by which food and other essentials got into the Gaza Strip. So the existence of a tunnel may prove the intent of Hamas to break a ceasefire that it had held for three solid months. Or it may prove that human beings need to eat food. I'm prepared to belive the former, but I don't discount the latter.

3. After the ensuing resumption of violence, it now transpires that, according to UN officials, there was a 48-hour "lull" or informal ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and it was during that "lull" that Israel commenced its indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza on Saturday morning, killing by now close to 400 people.

4. So having already broken two truces, Israel has now rejected calls for a ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid to reach the victims of its attacks.

Bottom line: Israel is freely choosing violence - massive, overwhelming violence - when other options are (and always have been) available. As such, Israel is committing the crime of aggression; the supreme international crime.

See my posts of earlier this week (here and here) for more info on the conflict, links to details of demonstrations taking place in the UK, and aid agencies you can donate to to help with the emergency relief effort.

A closing comment on the news report at the top of this post. No reasonable and fair minded person, who has taken care to follow the events of the past few days, can now pretend that the Israeli government and its military hold some inherent, in-built moral superiority to Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorist groups. Though it may well be a case of a lack of means rather than a lack of intent, it remains a fact that the Palestinians have never inflicted anything remotely like the level of suffering on the Israeli public that is currently been experienced by 1,500,000 Gazans. Can we watch and listen to the family in the news report above and then characterise these events as essentially Israel defending itself against terrorism? No, I rather think we cannot.