From the U.S. Peace Council:
“We are in a state of war…. The enemy will pay a price like they have never known before,” declared Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, immediately after the beginning of the Hamas forces’ military operation against Israel.
Netanyahu’s words conceal a fundamental historical fact: Israel has been in a state of war against the people of Palestine, whom he now blatantly calls “the enemy,” for the past 75 years. The “enemy” he is referring to are the Palestinian people, who have been enduring 75 years of violent occupation, bombings, mass arrests and imprisonment, torture, assassinations, and exile at the hands of the Israeli State, just because they would refuse to submit to the illegal occupation of their land and the blatant violation of their fundamental human rights by the Israeli occupation forces.
More deceiving is the claim that this was a “surprise” attack by the Palestinians. But looking back at the shameful history of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people in the past seven decades, and its recent offending actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque, no rational mind would be “surprised” by the Palestinian reaction.
The historically inevitable bloodshed that has started, and has already taken too many lives, is the Israeli States’ own doing. The State of Israel has no other party to blame for this human catastrophe than itself.
However, this is not where the blame stops. The government of the United States is equally — if not more — responsible for the current tragedy. Decades of unconditional support for the Israeli State’s violations of international law and human rights, tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military aid to Israel with eyes closed to the atrocities and terrorism committed by Israeli military and settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories, and persistent blocking of every effort by the international community to call Israel into account for its illegal actions, all have contributed to this horrendous situation.
We call upon the international community to take every necessary collective action to stop this bloodshed based upon the globally recognized international law and the United Nations Charter.
This bloodshed will not be the last until the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is ended and the human rights of the Palestinian people are recognized and fully realized.
