by Stephen Lendman

It's longstanding Israeli policy. Palestinians aren't wanted. Israel considers them subhuman.

It wants them eliminated. It wants Jewish exclusivity. It wants maximum Jews and minimum Arabs.

Israel's entire history is blood-drenched. Depravity defines it. It's longstanding genocidal war on Palestine reflects it.

In 1985, then Israeli president Chaim Herzog said:

"We are certainly not willing to make partners of the Palestinians in any way in a land that was holy to our people for thousands of years. There can be no partner with the Jews of this land."

Former Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan urged treating Palestinians like dogs.

They're denied fundamental human and civil rights. Israel spurns peace and stability. Militarized occupation harshness persists.

Rule of law principles don't matter. War without mercy is waged preemptively whenever Israel wishes. Victims are blamed for its crimes.

Imagine living in limbo under a foreign occupier. Imagine being denied self-determination.

Imagine having no control over your daily life. Imagine living in constant fear.

Imagine being economically strangled. Imagine being collectively punished.

Imagine being denied free expression and movement. Imagine Gaza's suffocating blockade.

Imagine isolated West Bank population centers. Imagine closed borders, curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences, and separation walls.

Imagine daily Kristallnacht in Palestine. Imagine hellish state terror. Imagine normal life denied.

Imagine torture as official Israeli policy. Imagine mass arrests and imprisonments.

Imagine thousands of Palestinian political prisoners languishing in Israel's gulag. Imagine their brutal treatment. Imagine it for wanting to live free on their own land in their own country.

Imagine land and resource theft, targeted assassinations, and diaspora Palestinians prevented from returning to land rightfully theirs.

Imagine Israeli security forces given authority to kill, brutalize, and otherwise collectively punish Palestinians with impunity.

Imagine them taking full advantage. Imagine them being promoted, decorated or otherwise honored for cold-blooded murder and brutality.

Imagine justice denied. Imagine Western leaders supporting Israeli genocide.

Israeli historian Ilan Pappe addressed genocide in Gaza earlier. It's "taking place," he said. It never stops.

It began long before Operations Cast Lead, Pillar of Cloud and Protective Edge. It's daily reality.

"An average of eight Palestinians die daily in the Israeli attacks on the Strip," said Pappe.

"Most of them are children. Hundreds are maimed, wounded and paralyzed."

(It's) daily business" as usual. It's "reported (only) in the internal pages of the local press, quite often in microscopic fonts."

"The chief culprits are the Israeli pilots who have a field day." It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Francis Boyle urges "the Provisional Government of (Palestine) and its president (to) institute legal proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague for violating the" Genocide Convention.

"Israel has indeed perpetrated the international crime of genocide against the Palestinian people (and the) lawsuit would demonstrate that undeniable fact to the entire world," said Boyle.

He calls it slow-motion genocide. So does Pappe. Raphael Lemkin defined genocide as:

"the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group…" It corresponds to other terms like "tyrannicide, homicide, infanticide, etc."

"(It) does not necessarily mean the destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings…"

"It is intended...to signify a coordinated plan (to destroy) the essential foundations of the life of national groups" with the intent to eradicate or substantially weaken or harm them.

"Genocidal plans involve the disintegration...of political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion, economic existence, personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and" human lives.

The 1948 Genocide Convention defines it in legal terms. Their unequivocal. They're binding. Violators are supposed to be held accountable. Justice remains denied.

Genocide is the highest of high crimes. According to the Genocide Convention, it "means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious groups, as such:

• Killing members of the group;


• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;


• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about is physical destruction in whole or in part;


• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (and/or)


• Forcibly transferring children of the group to other groups."

The Convention calls for punishing the following acts:

• "Genocide;


• Conspiracy to commit genocide;


• Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;


• Attempt to commit genocide; (and/or)


• Complicity in genocide."

Israel is guilty on all counts. So is America. It supports Israel's killing machine. It wages global war on humanity.

Israel wants Palestinians ethnically cleansed. It wants them eliminated. It wants them exterminated.

It's waging slow-motion genocide to achieve it. World leaders able to make a difference do nothing to intervene.

They back Israel's killing machine. They support its genocidal high crimes against peace.

Rule of law principles don't matter. Nor Nuremberg principles. They established guidelines for what constitutes crimes of war and against humanity.

Principle I states: "Any person (including heads of state) who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment."

Punishable crimes include "crimes against peace," "war crimes," and "crimes against humanity."

It bears repeating. Israel and America are guilty on all counts. So are complicit rogue partners.

They plan, prepare, initiate, and wage wars of aggression. They do so in violation of core international law.

They commit mass murder and destruction, extermination, virtual enslavement, and other inhumane acts against defenseless populations.

Obama continues genocidal Bush policies. Netanyahu gives rogue leadership new meaning.

America and Israel are pariah states. State terrorism is official policy. So is war on humanity.

Both nations are nuclear armed and dangerous. They have large illegal chemical and biological arsenals.

They use them in wars they wage. They use radiological weapons. They use other illegal ones.

Blood-lust defines their agenda. Their dirty hands destroy everything they touch.

Duplicitous managed news misinformation suppresses their high crimes against peace.

Martin Luther King called America "(t)he greatest purveyor of violence in the world."

Israel is a willing partner. So are rogue NATO states. The only threats they face are ones they invent.

They do so to wage war on humanity. They're serial international law abusers. They violate them repeatedly. They do so with impunity. World peace hangs by a thread.

Shakespeare said "(w)hat's past is prologue." History repeats. The worst of it threatens humanity.

Today's modern weapons risk the unthinkable. US/Israeli/rogue NATO partners' rage to fight risks nuclear war.

Noted geopolitical observer Hans Morgenthau (1904 - 1980) believed "the world is moving ineluctably toward a third world war - a strategic nuclear war."

"I do not believe anything can be done to prevent it," he said. "The international system is simply too unstable to survive for long."

Resistance is essential. It's a universal right. It's a fundamental imperative. It's more vital than ever. It represents hope.

John Locke said "when governments fail their people, their trust must necessarily be forfeited, and the Power devolve into the hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and security."

Martin Luther King wrote:

"I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."

He called "noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good."

He championed "creative protest." Passivity is no option in the face of injustice.

Henry David Thoreau said "(t)he only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think is right."

"All men recognize the right…to refuse allegiance to, and to resist the government when its tyranny (is) great and unendurable."

Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark paid tribute to those punished for trying. "Our jails are filling up with saints," he said.

Supporting them is a universal obligation. When governments threaten humanity, resistance is the last line of defense.

America is lawlessly out-of-control. So is Israel. They partner in horrific high crimes against peace.

They threaten humanity. They risk global war. Stopping them is a universal imperative. So is holding their culpable officials accountable.

Francis Boyle is clear and unequivocal. Washington and Israel are guilty of "serial wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany," he said.

Ordinary citizens are obligated to resist. They should "prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities…"

"Today's civil resisters are the sheriffs!" US and Israeli officials are "outlaws."

They deserve "indictment, conviction, and long-term incarceration…" They're guilty of the worst high crimes against peace.

No one should be allowed to get away with them. Not presidents. Not prime ministers. Not Congress. Not Knesset members.

Not courts at any level. Not military commanders. Not appointed officials. Not intelligence operatives. Not local security forces.

It's up to ordinary people to act. America and Israel aren't fit to live in. Full-blown tyranny looms.

It's perilously close. Freedom is on the chopping block for elimination.

Fundamental rights are disappearing in plain sight. They no longer matter.

Right-wing extremists run things. Wars without end persist. Barbarism is official policy.

At risk is turning planet earth into an uninhabitable wasteland. It bears repeating. World peace hangs by a thread.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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