[12.5] Statement Calling for Immediate Ceasefire between Israel and Hamas
공동
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professornetDate
2023-12-05 10:43
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179
[Statement by South Korean, Japanese, and U.S. Scholars and Researchers Calling for Immediate Ceasefire between Israel and Hamas]
It has been over a month and a half since the Hamas rocket attack. As of November 16, the Israeli death toll stands at 1,200, half of them soldiers and policemen. Hamas' killing and abduction of Israeli civilians is rightly condemned, and we demand the immediate release of the civilians it has abducted. However, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza is nearly ten times as high, at 11,667, half of whom are children.
More than 6,000 Palestinian hostages are known to be held in Israeli jails under Israeli law, including approximately 4,000 from Gaza and more than 1,900 from the West Bank, of whom more than 500 are reportedly children. The high proportion of Palestinian casualties is due to the fact that children make up more than 40% of Gaza's total population of 2.3 million. Given that children and the elderly are the most vulnerable to all dangers, Israel's attacks with its most advanced weapons are focused on Palestinian children, not Hamas. So we are now witnessing the unspeakable reality that Israel is waging war on unarmed children.
With the missing on the Palestinian side virtually impossible to rescue, the number of child deaths since the beginning of Israel's indiscriminate bombing should be seen as reaching a little over 6,500, adding 1,770 missing children to the 4,758 confirmed dead. The unprecedented regime that has slaughtered so many children in such a short period of time is the current Israeli far-right Zionist regime.
Israel has been dropping tons of bombs on densely populated areas, killing children at a rate of one every ten minutes, turning Gaza into a children's graveyard. Furthermore, Israel made it impossible to even escape for survival within Gaza by destroying mosques, hospitals, and even ambulances, not to mention the UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). Even bakeries have been targeted for bombing, forcing residents to live on bloody bread.
Already before the war, 70% of the population of the Gaza Strip were refugees who had been expelled from their land. Israel is again forcibly expelling them from refugee camps within Gaza. Israel's original plan was to "dump" them in the Sinai desert in Egypt by giving them a single tent. However, Egypt and other countries have strongly opposed the idea, and so far, the plan has been abandoned. In the meantime, plans are slowly emerging to seize Palestinian gas and oil fields off the coast of Gaza, worth trillions of dollars.
Israel's actions do not stop there. By imposing collective punishment prohibited by international law, such as cutting off electricity, water, food, fuel, and communications to the Gaza Strip, it is deliberately forcing the starvation and starvation of the entire civilian population. Similarly, it has indiscriminately fired the banned weapon white phosphorus munitions at civilians.
Currently, Israel is intentionally and without limit violating all relevant international laws that exist, including the genocide provisions of The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the relevant provisions of the 1949 Geneva Convention on Rules of War, and other laws and customs related to international armed conflict in existing international law. And yet, it has gone even further, to the point of threatening to use nuclear weapons against Gaza.
The United States is now projecting its largest military presence since World War II in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Gaza. There are well over 100 military vessels, including four aircraft carriers, warships, and nuclear submarines. The United States has demanded that countries in the region refrain from intervening in any way, under the banner of extended deterrence. In other words, the United States is telling these countries to stand still, until Israel's far-right terrorist regime kills enough Palestinians.
And while the United States pays lip service to a humanitarian ceasefire, it continues to provide an endless supply of child-killing, ultra-precise weapons. We can't help but ask what kind of value-oriented diplomacy and rules-based order the United States is talking about. The U.S. opposes a nuclear-armed Iran to the point of war, but does nothing about Israel's nuclear program. The Biden administration, realizing that this hypocrisy, deceit, and double standard undermines the legitimacy of US hegemony and vested interests, should withdraw its military forces from this region and demand Israel an immediate cessation of hostilities to Palestinian people.
The world is on the brink of a world war. The liberation and freedom of Palestine is the categorical imperative. The deepest cause of all this is the Israeli racist regime's apartheid: racism and extermination, 56 years of military illegal occupation and 17 years of blockade of Gaza. There are reports that Hamas and Israel are seeking to free hostages in exchange for some sort of ceasefire, but the problem does not end there. We recognize that only full Palestinian independence will solve the problem. This requires an armistice for full scale peace, not a timed ceasefire.
Despite the unscrupulous support of the Israeli racist regime by the U.S., U.K., G7, and other "Atlanticist" political elites, there are seeds of hope in the fact that conscientious citizens around the world have risen up to demand an end to the war and peace, and that a number of countries in the Global South have begun to cut ties with Israel.
We, scholars and researchers from Korea, the United States, and Japan, would like to collectively express our thoughts below.
Gaza is the Last Testament to Human Conscience
The unprecedented Israeli genocide in Gaza has once again brought humanity to a crossroads of conscience. No other atrocity known in the modern era compares to this massacre by Israel's far-right regime.It has been over a month and a half since the Hamas rocket attack. As of November 16, the Israeli death toll stands at 1,200, half of them soldiers and policemen. Hamas' killing and abduction of Israeli civilians is rightly condemned, and we demand the immediate release of the civilians it has abducted. However, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza is nearly ten times as high, at 11,667, half of whom are children.
More than 6,000 Palestinian hostages are known to be held in Israeli jails under Israeli law, including approximately 4,000 from Gaza and more than 1,900 from the West Bank, of whom more than 500 are reportedly children. The high proportion of Palestinian casualties is due to the fact that children make up more than 40% of Gaza's total population of 2.3 million. Given that children and the elderly are the most vulnerable to all dangers, Israel's attacks with its most advanced weapons are focused on Palestinian children, not Hamas. So we are now witnessing the unspeakable reality that Israel is waging war on unarmed children.
With the missing on the Palestinian side virtually impossible to rescue, the number of child deaths since the beginning of Israel's indiscriminate bombing should be seen as reaching a little over 6,500, adding 1,770 missing children to the 4,758 confirmed dead. The unprecedented regime that has slaughtered so many children in such a short period of time is the current Israeli far-right Zionist regime.
Israel has been dropping tons of bombs on densely populated areas, killing children at a rate of one every ten minutes, turning Gaza into a children's graveyard. Furthermore, Israel made it impossible to even escape for survival within Gaza by destroying mosques, hospitals, and even ambulances, not to mention the UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). Even bakeries have been targeted for bombing, forcing residents to live on bloody bread.
Already before the war, 70% of the population of the Gaza Strip were refugees who had been expelled from their land. Israel is again forcibly expelling them from refugee camps within Gaza. Israel's original plan was to "dump" them in the Sinai desert in Egypt by giving them a single tent. However, Egypt and other countries have strongly opposed the idea, and so far, the plan has been abandoned. In the meantime, plans are slowly emerging to seize Palestinian gas and oil fields off the coast of Gaza, worth trillions of dollars.
Israel's actions do not stop there. By imposing collective punishment prohibited by international law, such as cutting off electricity, water, food, fuel, and communications to the Gaza Strip, it is deliberately forcing the starvation and starvation of the entire civilian population. Similarly, it has indiscriminately fired the banned weapon white phosphorus munitions at civilians.
Currently, Israel is intentionally and without limit violating all relevant international laws that exist, including the genocide provisions of The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the relevant provisions of the 1949 Geneva Convention on Rules of War, and other laws and customs related to international armed conflict in existing international law. And yet, it has gone even further, to the point of threatening to use nuclear weapons against Gaza.
The United States is now projecting its largest military presence since World War II in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Gaza. There are well over 100 military vessels, including four aircraft carriers, warships, and nuclear submarines. The United States has demanded that countries in the region refrain from intervening in any way, under the banner of extended deterrence. In other words, the United States is telling these countries to stand still, until Israel's far-right terrorist regime kills enough Palestinians.
And while the United States pays lip service to a humanitarian ceasefire, it continues to provide an endless supply of child-killing, ultra-precise weapons. We can't help but ask what kind of value-oriented diplomacy and rules-based order the United States is talking about. The U.S. opposes a nuclear-armed Iran to the point of war, but does nothing about Israel's nuclear program. The Biden administration, realizing that this hypocrisy, deceit, and double standard undermines the legitimacy of US hegemony and vested interests, should withdraw its military forces from this region and demand Israel an immediate cessation of hostilities to Palestinian people.
The world is on the brink of a world war. The liberation and freedom of Palestine is the categorical imperative. The deepest cause of all this is the Israeli racist regime's apartheid: racism and extermination, 56 years of military illegal occupation and 17 years of blockade of Gaza. There are reports that Hamas and Israel are seeking to free hostages in exchange for some sort of ceasefire, but the problem does not end there. We recognize that only full Palestinian independence will solve the problem. This requires an armistice for full scale peace, not a timed ceasefire.
Despite the unscrupulous support of the Israeli racist regime by the U.S., U.K., G7, and other "Atlanticist" political elites, there are seeds of hope in the fact that conscientious citizens around the world have risen up to demand an end to the war and peace, and that a number of countries in the Global South have begun to cut ties with Israel.
We, scholars and researchers from Korea, the United States, and Japan, would like to collectively express our thoughts below.
- We support the liberation and freedom of Palestine!
- Israel must immediately end the war and begin peace negotiations!
- Israel must immediately resume electricity, water, food, and essential fuel supplies to Gaza!
- The U.S. should immediately end its anti-humanitarian intervention!
- The international community should bring Israeli war criminals and other actors responsible for crimes against humanity to justice!
November 30, 2023
Scholars and Researchers from South Korea, Japan, and the U.S.