The State of Israel was ostensibly established to save the Jewish people from centuries of European anti-Semitism, which culminated in the holocaust against Jews, Slavs, gypsies, communists, disabled people and homosexuals executed by German Nazis. But the state was not located in Europe, and the people who paid the price and suffered loss were not Germans but Palestinians and other Arabs, with whom Jews had lived peacefully in the Middle East for the past 2000 years.

Israeli Occupation and the Law of Belligerency by Dr Jamal Nasir is a brilliant account of the laws established by the international community to prevent recurrence of the worst features of Nazi conquest and occupation, and the systematic manner in which Israel, backed by the United States of America, has subverted these laws, treating the conquered peoples with the brutality and contempt of Hitler’s Germany.

Having suffered Nazi degradation, Israel seems determined to take revenge on another oppressed people.

Israeli Occupation demonstrates in graphic detail how the Jewish state continues to build settlements on occupied land, to annex East Jerusalem, and prevent the return of Palestinians driven from their country. While many Jews who fled Nazi Germany have settled in their land of refuge, many, unlike the Palestinians, have been allowed to come back and settle in the land of their birth. With the continued occupation and colonisation of his homeland, Palestinians such as Dr Nasir will never again be able to return.

The Nazis were condemned for the massacres they committed all over Europe, but the Israeli killings at Deir Yassin and other Arab settlements replicate the horrors of the German destruction of the Polish village of Lidice and other European populations. In the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and the Golan Heights, Israelis have committed massacres, or allowed them to occur, as in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chetila by right-wing Lebanese militia. And in last year’s attack on Gaza the United Nations accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity, for targeting civilians.

Collective punishment was carried out by European colonists against occupied populations in Africa, Asia and the Americas, but it was its wanton practice by the Nazis which led to its being outlawed by the United Nations and other international bodies. The Romans invented the practice of decimation, whereby the 10th member of each offending cohort was executed. But the Nazis exterminated whole populations for “offences” against the Reich.

Although Israel destroys houses and imprisons families of those who resist its illegal occupation, it ignores international sanctions and is backed by the United States, which routinely vetoes resolutions condemning its actions. While the United States and the Soviet Union contributed most to the military defeat of Nazism, and used the Nuremberg Tribunal to call the violators of international law to account, the USA has stood solidly by Israel in its violations, negating its contribution to laws against genocide, illegal occupation, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

Israeli Occupation details scores of United Nations Resolutions, Geneva Conventions, Hague Regulations and other international conventions governing the conduct of war, the laws of occupation, and the obligations of conquering powers to protect the human and civil rights of the vanquished. All these continue to be violated by Israel, which proceeds with its annexation of Palestinian land, suppression of the civil rights of the population, and collective punishments of those who resist its occupation.

The wall built by Israel, much of it on Palestinian territory, effectively fragments the land meant for a Palestinian state, and violates many provisions of international statutes governing the nature of occupation. The wall separates people’s houses from their farmlands and other places of occupation, making it impossible to earn a living, thus putting further pressures on them to migrate.

While apartheid South Africa was condemned by the international community for segregating its population along racial lines, Israel is allowed to restrict the residence and movements of its occupied population. It supported and armed the apartheid regime, because it shared white South Africa’s belief in a “Chosen People” and a “Master Race”, despite the fact that Jews and Palestinians are Semitic peoples.

Israeli Occupation is not anti-Jewish or even anti-Israel, and Dr Nasir is at pains to record the attempts of the Palestinians and other Arab nations to come to a settlement which acknowledges Israel’s right to exist, and to relate to its neighbours in conditions of normality. He quotes prominent Jewish scholars who condemn the nature of Israel’s occupation and its violations of international law.

One of the objectives of the book is to educate Palestinians to their rights, so they too, in their territories as well as in the diaspora, can mobilise the international community to support their cause. Despite its violation of international law, and the brutality of its occupation, Israel, through its far-flung lobbies, is able to manipulate public opinion to regard it as a victim. By publicising the facts of occupied Palestine and the oppression of its people, Israeli Occupation hopes to educate people all over the world to help end injustice, the violations of international morality, and denial of human rights.

Patrick Wilmot writes from London, England.