? Our silence won’t protect us ? - American writers on Palestine

In 2016, Ru Freeman collected the contributions of sixty-five writers and poets for an anthology on Palestine. Among them Alan Shapiro, Roger Reeves, Sarah Schulman, and Colum McCann[1].

The volume featured not only their harrowing poems and prose, but factual numbers and documentary evidence gathered by The ??Russell Tribunal on Palestine?? (RToP), created in March 2009 a few weeks after Israeli bombs fell on Gaza over Christmas and New Year of 2008, killing 1417 people, 313 of them children. Paving the way for the escalation of military operations that were to follow: first under the ??Protective Edge?? banner, launched on 8 July 2014 and now under the current and ongoing total siege of the Gaza Strip.

The ??Russell Tribunal on Palestine?? (RToP), originally known as the International War Crimes Tribunal or the Stockholm Tribunal, was formed in 1966 as an International Organization Committee, from the private initiative of British philosopher and Nobel Prize Winner Bertrand Russell to investigate and evaluate the consequences of American intervention in Vietnam[2]. Subsequent tribunals were formed to document repressions and Human rights violations in Brazil, Iraq and most specifically Palestine (2009-2014).

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), jailed twice during his lifetime for voicing his dissent and for advocating ethical principles, justified the establishment of the first International War Crimes Tribunal by quoting Justice Robert H. Jackson, appointed U.S. Chief of Counsel for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials?: ??If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes, whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.??

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP) first session whose goal was to consider the complicities and omissions of the European Union and its member states in the Palestinian-Israel conflict took place in Barcelona in March 2010. After a second session in London (November 2010), the third session in Cape Town (November 2011) was dedicated to the question: ??Are Israeli practices against the Palestinian People in breach of the prohibition on apartheid under international law??? After two more Sessions in New York and Brussels the following years, an extraordinary Session was held in Brussels on 24 September 2014 in response to Israel’s Operation Protective Edge of July that same year[3]. Not only was this operation the third major military assault on Gaza in six years, but it was marked by a significant escalation in the scale, severity, and duration of the attack, falling far short of the current and ongoing siege of Fall 2023.

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Here is an excerpt of the RToP Findings on the 2014 Israeli operation: ??Over the course of fifty days, approximately 700 tons of ordinances were deployed by the Israeli military forces through sustained aerial bombardment and ground offensive, a total of two tons of ordinance per square kilometer of the Gaza Strip. These actions resulted in?: the death of 2188 Palestinians, at least 1658 of whom were civilians?; 11'231 civilians injured?; damage to 18'000 housing units (13 percent of all available housing stock in Gaza was completely or partially destroyed)?; the internal displacement of 110'000 civilians?; the complete destruction of eight medical facilities and damage to many others, such that seventeen out of thirty-two hospitals were and six closed down as a result?; massive destruction of water facilities leaving 450'000 civilians unable to access municipal water supplies?; the destruction of Gaza’s only power plant facility rendering the entire Gaza Strip without electricity for approximately twenty hours per day, thereby having a profound impact on water treatment, food supply and the capacity of medical facilities to treat the wounded and displaced?; numerous attacks on and destruction of UN sponsored and controlled infrastructure, including UNRWA schools which were being used as temporary centers of refuge?; the total destruction of some 128 business and approximately US$550 million worth of damage caused to agricultural land and livestock?; attacks on cultural and religious property?; and finally, leaving approximately 373'000 children in need of direct and specialized psycho-social support.??[4]

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The 2014 operation created a precedent showing no one would take action and condemn Israeli drastic military actions. Not only did a majority of Israeli Jews backed the operation framed as self-defense, but international leaders, as it is the case now, did nothing but support Benjamin Netanyahu claims to self-defense?: ?Do what you want to defend your people.?? was and still is their only answer.

According to Frank Barat, the witnesses and experts who testified in the RToP court gave its members a ??much broader and scarier picture of the situation on the ground?? that might explain the casual acceptance of extreme violence[5]. Among them, Nurit Peled explained and demonstrated how biased and distorted the history of the ??conflict?? was presented in School books for Israeli children[6]. How Palestinians were portrayed as animals, and dangerous terrorists. ??From a very early age, Israeli Jews learn that their neighbors, who are historically the indigenous people of this land, are not to be trusted and need to be avoided and fought against.??[7]

Frank Barat commented?that this form of education from the moment of birth created the kind of warped society, ??so closed, so paranoid, so utterly convinced that its very existence is at stake, that it is ready to condone and support the most barbaric actions by its army and its government.??[8]

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Today, as Palestinian civilians and children die under the bombs, some forms of civic protests and mobilization against the war have appeared under various forms but are still too weak and scattered. Voices of Palestinians, Jews, artists as well as journalists and even isolated dissenting State Department official Josh Paul, are barely heard and covered by mainstream media[9]. ?The Wikipedia page already online titled the “2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip” and “2023 Israel-Hamas war” demonstrate how Israel has managed to influence if not frame by and large the narrative of this conflict, evacuating all mentions of civilian Palestinian casualties[10]. As Mourid Barghouti wrote in his memoir, I was Born There, I was Born Here (2012) ??The weaker party in any conflict is never allowed to tell his own story,?? for the enemy will not allow a competing narrative[11].

This must change if the international system built and founded upon the principles and rules of international law is to be salvaged. Palestinian civilians and children find themselves isolated, facing a deafening silence. Precisely what Bertrand Russell wanted to prevent, drawing on the Nuremberg Trials of 1945 that had successfully prosecuted the perpetrators and collaborators of the Holocaust Genocide, when he made use of these few significant and truthful words, on November 13, 1966, creating the International War Crimes Tribunal: ??May this tribunal prevent the crime of silence??.

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[1] Ru Freeman, Extraordinary Rendition, American Writers on Palestine, New York, OR Books, 2016

[2] The Tribunal members included Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Günther Anders, Tariq Ali, Isaac Deutscher, Gisèle Halimi. The Conclusions and verdict of the Russell Tribunal on US policy and military act of war in Vietnam was without appeal and definitive: The US were found guilty of acts of Genocide in Vietnam, notably by their bombardment of targets of purely civilian character, like hospitals and schools. Not mentioning the 1969 notorious infamous Mai Lai Massacre.

[3] The Tribunal RToP had been officially dismantled in December 2013, before reconvening a year later due to the exceptional circumstances in Gaza.

[4] Frank Barat, ??The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Extraordinary Session on Gaza?: Summary of Findings?? in Ru Freeman, Extraordinary Rendition, American Writers on Palestine, op. cit. p.415-424

[5] Ibid.

[6] Nurit Peled, Palestine in Israeli Books, Tauris Academic Studies, 2012.

[7] Frank Barat, op. cit. p.415

[8] Ibid.

[9] Excepting a few independent media such as Democracy Now, see the Josh Paul case, ??State Department Official Resigns, Says Israel is using U.S. Arms to Massacre Civilians in Gaza, 04.11.2023, sur?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w9fAgaUBrw

[10] See Wikipedia, ??2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip?? on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Israeli_invasion_of_the_Gaza_Strip; Prof. Nancy Snow explained how Israel has been engaged in the past and present time in a ??public opinion war??, ??How graphic pro-Israel ads appeared in kids video games, Reuters Videos, October 30, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZPQ5cYo9f8

[11] Quoted in Ru Freeman, op. cit. p.18