Galway Protests Against Israeli War Crimes and EU Complicity

“Irrespective of the cost to the Palestinians”

Last Saturday's information stall in Shop Street was again focused on EU complicity with Israeli war crimes against Palestinians, particularly Gazans; it's almost a year ago now since Commissioner-General for United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, Karen Koning AbuZayd, warned: “Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution,” citing the EU and international community as accomplices in the barbaric siege of Gaza . Despite the fact that the Fourth Geneva Convention defines collective punishment as a war crime, the EU runs empathetically with the hare in condemning such a crime whilst, at the same time hunting, cheek by jowl, with the hounds who perpetrate such criminality.

John Ging, director of the UNRWA in Gaza has also condemned this "man-made disaster created by policies that are not humane," an inhumanness and inhumanity that can be assayed by the February threat of Defense Minister, Matan Vilnai, to Gaza of a"bigger 'shoah'" than was visited on the Jewish people by the Nazis, by the view of Ehud Olmert, that Gazans should not be allowed to “live normal lives,” Minister of Public Security, Avi Dichter belief that punishment should be inflicted “irrespective of the cost to the Palestinians” and Israeli Minister of the Interior, Meir Sheetrit, urging that Israel should “decide on a neighbourhood in Gaza and level it”- the proposed war crime discussed in cabinet last week.

Our petition to the EU calling on it to suspend or terminate the Euro-Med Agreement that allows Israel privileged access to the EU market in the context of the worsening situation may be a little like Oliver Twist naively asking for more porridge but at least we are not standing idly by, same as head of the Bil'in Peoples Committee, Iyad Burnat, and director of the Palestinian prisoner and human rights group Addameer, Sahar Francis, who graced Galway last week.

Iyad Burnat