World must pressure Israel to stop atrocities: Activist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Paul Larudee, a member of the Free Palestine Movement, about the Israeli military closing a file on its shelling of a United Nations school in the southern Gaza town of Rafah during Tel Aviv's 50-day war on the besieged territory in 2014.

Here is a rough transcription of the interview:

Press TV: Tel Aviv is closing a file on its own wrongdoing, where probably it should have been an international body conducting this investigation. Israel refused to allow a UN investigation team to investigate war crimes right after its 2014 war on Gaza. Your take!

Larudee: Of course they refused it because the result might not have been exoneration for those who took part in the killing, so why would they cooperate with an organization that might rule in a way that they do not want it to, they have no respect for that?

Press TV: Why do you believe Washington stands by silently and allows Tel Aviv to commit atrocious things, while Tel Aviv does not let investigators in so we can never get the full scope of what is taking place in Gaza? None of these war crimes that Tel Aviv has committed are a mystery; many of them are extremely well-documented. Why does Washington continue to give them 3 billion dollars a year in military support to Israel?

Larudee: Because Washington considers them to be blameless for the same reason that Israel considers themselves to be blameless and there is no difference between the Israeli government and the American government. The American government is an extension of the Israeli government. So the American government does what Israel tells it to.

Press TV: And what do you think it is going to take to get Washington to maybe change its stance on Tel Aviv?

Larudee: We are posed a few months before a new election in the United States for the president. The next president - regardless of who gets elected – will probably be the worst president in US history and there is a great likelihood that they will increase the crimes that are being committed against Israel. They will support Israel in increased crimes. I do not know what it will take before the American people are fed up with doing Israel’s dirty business and paying Israel upwards of eight or nine or ten million dollars a day out of their pockets. I do not know when the American people are going to do something about this but that is the only way it is going to happen.

Press TV: In your opinion, should Tel Aviv be allowed to handle investigations into its own possible misconduct or should that be strictly left to a third party?

Larudee: There are a lot of things that Israel should not be allowed to do but who is going to do the allowing or the disallowing, this is the problem. Nobody is ready to do that.

On the contrary, Israel is controlling those who would do, make the decisions about what Israel should or should not do and what consequences they are going to suffer because of that. So if Israel is controlling these people, there is not very much that the world is going to do about it short of some really huge mass movement throughout the world that it is going to make it really painful for Israel and for those who sponsor Israel but otherwise it is not going to happen.  

Press TV: Israel’s file is now open at the ICC for alleged possible war crimes. Do you think anything positive will come out of it for the sake of the Palestinians?

Larudee: It is not inconceivable that Israel will be held guilty of war crimes but then what? Suppose that Israel will say this is nonsense, it is being manipulated and we do not have to listen to this and they are right, they do not have to listen to it. It depends on where the power structure is and the power structure is right now with Israel.

Those who have enough power to make Israel obey or change are not exerting it and I do not see it happening in the near future. There must be pain and we, everyone of us, has to try to figure out a way to exert that pain on Israel in order to make Israel change its policy, otherwise it is not going to happen.

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