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CounterPunch
November
26, 2002
The Murder of Iain Hook
by KURT NIMMO
One day the Israeli government demands $10 billion
dollars from the spendaholic Americans -- the next day the IDF
kills a UN worker assisting Palestinians rebuilding homes in
the rubble bestrewn Jenin Refugee Camp.
Naturally, the Israeli government hates
UNRWA, or the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Iain Hook,
the man killed by the IDF, worked as Project Manager for UNWRA.
It stands to reason the IDF didn't take kindly to Hook's presence
in the pulverized camp or his humanitarian mission to aid the
homeless enemies of the Israeli state. After all, the IDF spent
a lot of time sending in armored bulldozers to widen narrow alleys
by shearing off the fronts of buildings. How dare UNRWA help
Palestinians rebuild what Israel has destroyed. Shooting Hook
will teach UN Secretary General Kofi Annan a lesson. And even
if it doesn't, the murder of Hook was an accident.
There sure a lot of accidents in the
Occupied Territories, once known as Palestine. The IDF is one
of the most accident prone neocolonialist armies of occupation
in the world. It accidentally kills a lot of people. Mostly Palestinians,
although we don't hear a whole lot about it through the corporate
news media. If you watch Fox or CNN you would think only Israeli
citizens die in terrorist acts. If you watch the corporate news
shows or read the corporate newspapers you would quickly deduce
a hundred Arab lives hardly measure up to one single Israeli
life.
Besides, the UN has a lot to answer for
-- think of all those "biased and anachronistic gestures
by the international community" (as the Anti-Defamation
League terms them) put forth by the General Assembly and dutifully
trashed by the United States. There are dozens of them. Let's
see... affirmed the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination,
statehood and equal protections; condemned Israel's mistreatment
of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and
its refusal to abide by the Geneva convention protocols of civilized
nations; deplored Israel's violation of the human rights of the
Palestinians, etc. It seems there's a lot of anachronistic fellows
at the United Nations drafting up resolutions intended to punish
Israel for its crimes against humanity -- resolutions the US
diligently trounces upon.
Events are forever in flux. I just took
a look at the Washington Post. It seems the IDF now says Palestinian
gunmen were shooting at Israeli soldiers when Hook was killed.
They were inside the UN compound, reports the embattled IDF.
Maybe UNRWA invited them in? Maybe UNRWA is a bunch of patsies?
Or a fifth column? Maybe it's those blue helmets they wear. I
mean, who would seriously enter a war zone wearing a damn blue
helmet? It means you're not serious. It means you're asking to
get shot. Members of Israel's Likud Party and US supporters of
Israel (a lot of them born-again Christian types) know those
perfidious Palestinians will take advantage of gullible international
bureaucrats in their zeal to push the Jews into the sea. It's
obvious -- the Palestinian leadership has decided to award Hook
its highest medal, the Al Quds Sharif medal, or the Noble Jerusalem
medal, and will declare him a martyr of the Palestinian people.
I mean, how cynical can you get? I bet Yasir Arafat thought that
idea up all on his lonesome.
Caoimhe Butterly, another UN worker and
Irish peace activist, was also shot in the attack that killed
Hook. She was attempting to protect Palestinian school kids throwing
stones at IDF tanks and APCs (Armored Personnel Carriers) --
a crime the IDF often punishes with summary execution -- when
an Israeli soldier shot her in the thigh. "No ambulances
were allowed into the camp," Butterly told the Palestine
Chronicle, "so I was carried on a makeshift stretcher to
where a Red Crescent ambulance could reach me near the entrance
of the camp. While I was in the Emergency Room of Jenin Hospital,
Iain Hook of UNRWA was brought in. He died a few minutes later."
As Butterly told Annie Higgins, and Counterpunch and others reported,
before the IDF murdered Hook they informed him via bullhorn,
as he attempted to arrange the removal of women and children
from the combat zone, "We don't care if you are the United
Nations or who you are. Fuck off and go home!"
It's also too bad the Israeli government
will not allow the Palestinians to go home -- or, for that matter,
even allow them to build homes on land they have lived on for
centuries. Instead, they are continually threatened by American-made
attack helicopters and bigoted settlers, many of whom believe
the biblical Eretz Yisrael stretches (as Israeli prime minister
David Ben-Gurion envisioned it) from "the Litani river [in
southern Lebanon], to the northeast, the Wadi 'Owja, twenty miles
south of Damascus; the southern border will be mobile and pushed
into Sinai at least up to Wadi al-'Arish; and to the east, the
Syrian Desert, including the furthest edge of Transjordan."
It's something far too many of the 200,000 illegal settlers in
the West Bank and Gaza believe with religious -- and increasingly
-- murderous fervor.
Meanwhile, the Israel government wants
more money. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's bureau chief Dov Weisglass
went to Washington recently with a request for $10 billion in
loan guarantees. Sharon had his hand out when he went to Washington
in October. You see, they need the money because of the "difficult
economic situation as a result of the ongoing violence, and increased
defense expenses expected as a result of the looming US campaign
in Iraq," as the Jerusalem Post characterized it. Now that
Bush has settled on Iraq Attack, version II, there are a lot
of people out there asking for money and other favors. The US
government -- or, rather, the American people -- are deemed nothing
more than a big fat cash cow. In these sort of situations, loyalty
is bought. Even so, I bet there's a subtext to the Israeli government's
decision to take us to the cleaners -- viz., pay us off or there's
no way we're not going to attack Iraq when they shoot a few of
those creaky old hit-or-miss Scuds our way. If you can count
on anything it's the Israeli government going its own way --
the international community be dammed. Money talks and... well,
you know the rest.
The US is conflicted about all the money
it sends to tiny Israel -- more money than it sends anywhere
else in the world. Even so, the US State Department says that
Israel engages in "torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading
treatment of punishment, prolonged detention without charges
and trial, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction
and clandestine detention of those persons, and other flagrant
denials of the right to life, liberty, or the security of people."
Normally, this would be considered a violation of international
law. But since when does the US respect international law or
ask Israel to do so? Regardless of what the State Department
says, Congress routinely votes overwhelmingly to send the buck-a-reenos
to Sharon and the Israeli settlers. All told, the US sends about
$3 billion annually -- or $13.7 million per day.
It's a great deal for US death merchants
like Lockheed Martin and the Carlyle Group because about seventy-five
percent of the military aid going to Israel is in the form of
helicopter gunships, tanks, M-16s, bullets, and other deadly
stuff manufactured in the good ol' US of A. Of course, section
4 of the Arms Export control Act says the US can't sell "defense
articles" to countries that use such to shoot up their own
people. No problem, though. The US government pretty much picks
and chooses what laws it will obey. You can do that when you're
the world's only remaining superpower.
In 2001, the US State Department described
the actions of Israeli army against Palestinians as an "excessive
use of force," referring to the use of live ammunition when
soldiers were not in danger (or when UNRWA guys take out their
cell phones). Once again, the US government was conflicted. Chances
are, however, Lockheed Martin wasn't conflicted when it closed
a deal recently to sell Israel 50 spanking new F-16s for $2.5
billion. Last year the Israel military began using F-16s for
the first time since the 1967 Middle East war. No, not on invading
Syrian troops but on police stations in Ramallah. It is really
no concern of Lockheed Martin that there happens to be apartment
blocks near those police stations -- or kids playing the street.
Palestinian kids should know better. Maybe they should play in
bomb shelters for the rest of their lives?
In a more equitable world the stockholders
over at Lockheed would be seized with terrible pangs of guilt
at the prospect of earning a tidy sum of money on business deals
saturated with the blood of old women and nursing infants. In
a just and humane world the US Congress would realize they are
being yanked around by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
and the Christian Coalition and tell the Israeli government to
stop violating the Fourth Geneva Convention protocol (shooting
up medical teams). In a fair and square world Palestinians wouldn't
bomb pizzerias and the IDF wouldn't bomb densely populated Gaza
City neighborhoods. In the best of all worlds the Israelis would
get out of the West Bank and Gaza and take the fanatical settlers
with them.
But this isn't an equitable world.
Especially if you are one of 9 million
Palestinians eking out a diminished existence in the Occupied
Territories -- or one of the 4.6 million who live in the Diaspora.
Or if you are, as well, an idealistic yet unfortunate homebuilder
from UNRWA.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
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November 23,
2002
Susan Davis
Now About
That Big Stick
Caoimhe Butterly
I Was
Shot While Escorting Jenin's School Children
Kurt Nimmo
Bush &
the Canadians
Chris Floyd
Rough Beast
Slouching
Francis Boyle
On Behalf
of Iraq's 4.5 Million Children
Dave Marsh
Spirit
in the Light
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Rebirth
of Student Protest in Iran
Mark Hand
Dr. Alterman,
I Presume
Ralph Nader
Back Alley
Loan Sharks
Elaine Cassel
The Shameful
Treatment of John Malvo
Adam Engel
& Ian Harvey
Poets'
Basement
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