A New York court has fined the Palestine Liberation Organisation $218mn after it held the group liable for attacks in Israel 10 years ago, in which Americans were amongst the victims. The jury ruled in favour of 10 American families who sought damages relating to the 6 attacks, which killed 33.
This extraordinarily perverse judgement ignores the 10,000 Palestinians killed by the IDF from 1987 to date which includes hundreds of children under the age of 16, women under the age of 60 and persons over the age of 60.
The published statistics from the B’Tselem Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories,* are as follows:
Palestinians killed by the IDF from 1987-2000 = 1376
Palestinians killed by the IDF from 2000-2008 = 4790
Palestinians killed by the IDF from 2008-2009 = 1398
Palestinians killed by the IDF from 2009-2015 = 609
Palestinians killed by the IDF in August 2014 = 1767
(inc. 431 children, 200 women and 85 over sixty)
_____________________TOTAL killed by the IDF = 9940
2. Palestinians in Israeli custody as at 31.12.14 = 5528
3. There are now an estimated 515,000 illegal settlers in the Occupied Territories who must be repatriated to Israel in accordance with the will of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice before there can be peace in the Holy Land.
However, for so long as the Israel lobby in the United States exerts such undue influence over the judicial system and over the House of Representatives, the outlook for peace is virtually non-existent – but the likelihood of further war, funded and supplied by a misinformed and lobby-controlled US Congress, is almost inevitable.
Meanwhile the international community should condemn this perverse court ruling that offends justice, reason and democracy.
