Not Genocide, nor war crimes but a Humanitarian Miracle unparalleled in history!
Palestinian Araabs must be treated as Human Beings, not as a tool or raw material in the fanatical fight of some countries and terrorist groups against Israel.
To: Agnès Callamard
Amnesty International Secretary General
Dear Dr. Agnes Callamard !
I am Russian physicist and human rights defender during last 50 years, 20 years of them in cooperation and friendship with Andrei Sakharov.
I remember well the 1970s, marked by Sakharov's Nobel Lecture, when the priority of human rights gradually became the most important factor in world Big Politics. Now this is an axiom for us all, but achieving this result was a very difficult task. And in those years, the support of Amnesty International was a huge help for us, Soviet human rights defenders.
And now I have perceived with great bitterness the Amnesty International Report of December 5, accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, which parallels the biased ICC accusations of Israel.
First, I note that the incorrect use of the word genocide insults the memory of millions of victims of real horrific ethnic slaughters - the Holocaust, Armenian massacre of 1915, in Rwanda in 1994, the Halabja massacre of Kurdish civilians by poison gas on 16 March 1988, etc.
On 7 October 2023 Hamas killed civilians - all from babies to old men/women just because of their ethnicity, because they were Jews. This is genocide!
Israel cooperated with WHO in vaccination against polio over 90% of children in Gaza under age 10. Israel has also been supplying huge amounts of food to Gaza throughout the war. This is not genocide!
There is no famine in Gaza with people dying of starvation, as was the case in Somalia in 1992 and in 2010-2012 or in the USSR in the 1930s during Stalin's collectivization. And food shortages in Gaza arise because of administrative chaos and the looting of food convoys by Hamas militants.
You will not find in history an example of a war when the attacking side would have warned in advance about every strike, about every bombing. The Israeli military do just that, saving civilians while neglecting the fact that these warnings also allow terrorists to escape.
And unparalleled in history is the stimulating [sic] of displacement of millions of civilians from the territories of future battles which would otherwise have resulted in unimaginable loss of human lives. Those are not war crimes, nor crimes against humanity as ICC insists!
Let us look back to 1945, to the last battle aimed at the total liquidation of the awful Hitlerism. Who in the anti-Hitler coalition (USSR, USA and UK) thought at that time about millions of German civilians perishing in this battle? Nobody! And Israel thinks about civilians.
“Despite our efforts not to hurt them, there was a tragic mishap. We are investigating the incident. For us it’s a tragedy, for Hamas it’s a strategy.” - Netanyahu on the incident in which civilians fell victims to an Israeli strike in Rafah, southern Gaza, in May 2024.
We can be sure that the leaders of Hamas are by no means stupid people, and realizing the impossibility of defeating Israel in a direct battle, they count on victory in the so-called “humanitarian battle” where their weapon is the Goebbels-like propaganda about alleged Israeli crimes against civilians in Gaza.
Yes, this is a strategy aimed at preserving Hamas power in Gaza.
Thus, instead of admitting its defeat and agreeing to hand over control of Gaza to the coalition of Arab countries (which would end the crises and which Israel has repeatedly proposed) Hamas does not surrender, having every reason to hope that the colossal international humanitarian pressure on the Israeli government, combined with the skillful use of hostages and with the political instability in Israel itself, will lead to its Great Victory.
I ask You, I ask Amnesty International: do not take on this heavy responsibility for the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, do not help Hamas, but try to help Israel in the final liberation of the people of Gaza from the totalitarian rule of the terrorist organization Hamas. This 17 years long rule was accompanied by the monstrous violations of the fundamental rights of Palestinian Arabs, including the merciless suppression of Fatah and any other opposition.
This awful governance of Gaza's 2.5 million population was carried out in conditions of complete independence, the complete absence of Israel there. And do you realize that if Israel stops its daily anti-terrorist operations in the 'West Bank', then Mr. Mahmoud Abbas, Administration and police of the PNA will be immediately exterminated by radicals, repeating the Fatah sad fate in Gaza after Israel's withdrawal from there on 2005?
I ask you to think about how to protect the Palestinian Arabs from the dictatorial terrorist form of governance inevitably accompanied by the drastic violations of fundamental human rights.
In February this year, on the eve of the visit to Moscow of the delegations of Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, I made an Open Statement whose central idea is: “Palestinians must be treated as Human Beings, not as a tool or raw material in the fanatical fight with Israel of some countries and terrorist groups!”
Yours sincerely!
Boris Altshuler, Moscow, Russia
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