From Dachau to Gaza

by Prof. Francis A. Boyle
Global Research, December 30, 2008

"During the summer of 1982 I had the opportunity to visit the Nazi concentration camp just outside Dachau , Germany and then the little town itself. Given the proximity of the town to the camp, my immediate reaction was: “This town is so close to the camp that the citizens of Dachau must have known what was going on out there. Why did they not do anything about it?” I had the exact same reaction during the last two weeks of May 1986 as I traveled up and down the West Bank and Gaza Strip in order to investigate Israel ’s atrocities and war crimes against the Palestinians.....

After forty years of an incredibly brutal and inhumane military occupation, the only really effective manner for all states party to the Geneva Conventions to ensure respect for the terms of the Fourth Convention in these occupied Palestinian territories would be to compel all Israeli military forces and colonial settlers to withdraw immediately and by all means possible from the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. In 1999 President Clinton ordered Indonesia out of East Timor that it had illegally invaded and annexed as far back as 1975 with the approval of the Ford/Kissinger administration. Some future American President must likewise order Israel out of Palestine .

It was toward obtaining that end that I had originally called for the establishment of an Israeli divestment/disinvestment campaign in November of 2000. Free Palestine!"