Self-defence, blood lust, ethnic cleansing, disproportionate response, mowing the lawn, genocide, death from the sky.
Whatever way you wish to describe the unparalleled violence unleashed on Gaza is up to you.
I describe it as shooting or in this case bombing Palestinians in a barrel.
Let’s have a brief resume of what’s happened.
The district of Sheikh Jarrah is in East Jerusalem. This was the proposed capital of a Palestinian state. The signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1993 saw further Israeli expansion into the West Bank and areas like Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah have been systematically targeted by the illegal Jewish Settler movement which uses Israeli courts to award Zionist Jews the homes and land currently occupied by Palestinians.
If you take nothing else from this article please remember the occupation is illegal, therefore every decision taken by the occupation army, the illegal settlers and the apartheid Israeli judiciary, that routinely sends young children, young boys and men to prison on extracted false confessions, many made under duress, under physical threat and in some cases children are handed false confessions written in Hebrew which they cannot understand and they are told these are official release forms.
The kids sign them thinking they are going home but in reality, they have signed a confession which will condemn them to jail.
Add to this ‘Administrative Detention’, Imprisonment without trial and we have the flawed corrupt apartheid regimes conveyor belt to jail. All of this is illegal.
Many Human Rights organisations describe Israel as an apartheid state.
This is because Zionism, a political ideology is inherently apartheid.
Netanyahu is facing corruption charges. A former Israeli Knesset member during a CNN interview accused him of inciting the current round of violence by continuing Israel’s expansionist, illegal land grabs in the occupied west bank and also through the attacks on people at prayer, men, women and children at the Al Aqsa mosque, towards the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
Is it really conceivable that the leader of the 7th largest military force on earth would engineer the circumstances whereby a state of conflict between Israel, a heavily armed modern state would be at war with a civilian population that has no army, no air force and no navy, to protect it. Just local militia composed of the fathers and sons, mothers and daughters of the local community?
Well, I guess if an Israeli Knesset member says exactly that, then it must carry some weight.
So, where are we now?
As the bloodletting ends as it must. As the dead are buried and the destroyed building dust settles like a shroud on Gaza where do we go from here.
The reality is, everything will be the same and everything has utterly changed.
Who won and who lost?
I have always struggled when I heard claims following previous attacks on Gaza that the resistance has won.
I genuinely thought it was bravado for the masses. When we see the death toll, the numbers injured and the devastating damage to civilian homes, hospitals and the infrastructure, I have to ask how have they possibly won?
The loss of life alone is unimaginable in such a small environment. 25 miles by 6 miles, that is the size of the Ards Peninsula in Ireland, having the whole population of Northern Ireland 2 million people squeezed into it.
As of now the destruction in Gaza is of unbelievable proportion.
The targeting and killing of whole families is a war crime in itself.
The systematic destruction of all roads leading to the main hospitals in Gaza, preventing ambulances and victims from accessing acute services is another war crime.
The destruction of family homes, farms, places of worship and work are further war crimes.
The latest blitzkrieg on Gaza is just another Zionists war on civilians that will never be forgotten.
Israel claims its aims were to degrade the military capabilities of Hamas and other resistance groups in Gaza.
It sites rockets fired from Gaza as the pretext.
Under international law, as Israel illegally occupies the West Bank and controls the air, sea and land borders around Gaza, the Palestinians have the right to resist occupation, by any means necessary, including armed resistance. Then this Samson versus Goliath battle is one of the Palestinian Samson with rocks and rockets legally resisting an illegal Goliath occupation, that uses Gunboats, tanks, artillery shells, drones and F16, F35 jets to bomb, flatten and murder Gazan’s at will and without any recourse to the rules of war.
Israel will end the bloodshed when it has expended the armaments supplied to it by America France Britain and the EU.
Israel has failed again in its stated objective to destroy the ability of the resistance in Gaza to challenge the occupation.It did not have the courage to commit ground troops as the cost in Israeli soldiers lives was deemed potentially to be too high.
The resistance groups retain both the ability and the will to continue to resist the illegal occupation and siege by any and all means necessary.
The attacks on Gaza are a proxy threat to other nations in the region. We will do the same ‘to you’ is the message. Indeed Israel routinely bombs Syria in another example of its illegal war crimes.
The resistance has won!
I know, it’s hard to believe.
Gaza is destroyed. The dead, the injured and the dying are Testaments to the unfathomable loss of life.
Israeli military leaders have stated on numerous occasions that they will bomb Gaza back into the stone age.
Gaza is destroyed yet the spirit of resistance and the spirit of the people has survived. The spirit to continue to demand equality, peace, freedom and justice for Palestinians and Palestine survives not just in Gaza but in East Jerusalem, in Sheikh Jarrah, in the West Bank, in Al Aqsa and in historic Palestine, that Zionists call Israel.
Netanyahu has united Israelis in their demand for his prosecution for corruption and united Palestinians for the first time in a generation in their defence of Al Aqsa, East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza. A new generation of resistance has been born. United and unified from the river to the sea.
Did the prime minister of Israel help create the conditions that made this latest attack on Gaza inescapable?
Is the shedding of blood in Gaza simply an electioneering gambit.
He or she who kills the most Palestinians gets the most votes?
History certainly bears that perspective out to be true.
What Gaza needs is financial support, rebuilding materials, medicine, hope and solidarity in equal measures.
What it will get is 50,000 plus homeless refugees many of whom were already refugees from the Israeli murder and bombing campaigns of 2014/2009/1967/1948.
Further degradation of civil societies ability to respond to the damage to lives, homes, infrastructure and the economy is the result.
Egypt is complicit in the siege. It will not help Gaza or Palestine.
The humanitarian catastrophe will continue apace
Israel sells Gaza water, gas, oil and electricity. It makes a profit from all of these utilities. The profits of occupation.
The resistance has prevailed once again.
The price of resisting the continued illegal Zionist Israel occupation of Palestine is the continued loss of liberty and life for Palestinians.
The continues loss of life, homes, farms, workplaces, mosques, schools, hospitals, clinics, the innocence of the young, their hopes for the future and their dreams of a life free from violent occupation, imprisonment, death from the skies and a psychological trauma that has no end.
When the bombs stop flying in the east the people stop protesting in the West.
Will you stand with Palestine. Or simply melt away like snow on a ditch until the next murderous bombing raids occur.
Peace needs you now. Palestinians need you now. The future generations being born into captivity need you now.
What will you do to help end the madness of a rogue Apartheid state and bring peace to the people of the middle east and west Asia.
It really is in your hands
Fra Hughes is a Belfast based Palestine solidarity activist
The current situation of Israeli house demolitions in Sheikh Jarrah is highlighting the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their indigenous lands in order to protect the demographic dominance of the Israeli Jewish population. The system well under way and being strengthened each year is that of apartheid.
Historical moments
In pre World War I Europe, the various empires were contesting most indigenous lands around the world. The Middle East had newly discovered resources of oil and the militaries of the world were changing from coal fired to oil powered ships of war. In the eyes of the British empire, as well as the burgeoning interests of the U.S. in Saudi oil, a Jewish state made sense, an outpost to keep the Arabs under control as well as to protect the transportation of oil by pipelines to the Mediterranean coast.
A long history of demographic fears is apparent in most of the contributors to the establishment and maintenance of the Israeli state. Theodor Herzl, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizman all understood that the indigneous Palestinian population would be hostile to their development of a Jewish state in the region. Arguments made to the British government of the period varied, but arguably the ones carrying the most weight were the imperial desires of the British to control the Middle East for its oil resources, oil transportation routes, and its general transportation routes through to Persia and India.
The Balfour letter of 1917 promoted the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine, a promissory note, indicating “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” As is common with empires various other intrigues carried on simultaneously, the two most notable being the Sykes-Picot agreement to divide the Ottoman empire into areas of French and British control, as well as the MacMahon-Hussein correspondence recognizing a post war Arab state in former Ottoman lands.
The Balfour letter carried the day. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles went against Woodrow WIlson’s ideals of all nationals having a right to determine their own status and led to the establishment of the French and Palestinian mandates in the Middle East. From then on the British to varying degrees both allowed Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine and later fought against the same immigrants, the various Jewish militant groups being described as terrorists at the time. The British also significantly suppressed any Palestinian expressions of independence.
After World War II the recognition of the holocaust gave impetus and sympathy to the Jewish cause. The UN Partition Plan – a plan, not a law – tentatively divided the mandate into two separate states. Britain pulled up stakes and departed, followed by the nakba of 1948 creating the new Israeli state. At the time as many as 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed and as many as 750 000 Palestinians were expelled from the new Israeli territories. Prior to this David Ben Gurion had set plans for expulsion understanding there would be Palestinian resistance.
A large part of the demographic fear had been reduced, but the continued presence of Palestinians remaining in their homeland has since then slowly created an apartheid state, and has since then created a slow moving set of rules and regulations assisting with the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the state and what might be considered by Israel a partial solution – apartheid.
Modern apartheid
Within the past year two significant pronouncements have been made firmly establishing the idea of Israel as an apartheid state. B’tselem, a Jewish human rights organization issued a statement with the summary,
“Israel is not a democracy that has a temporary occupation attached to it: it is one regime between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea, and we must look at the full picture and see it for what it is: apartheid.”
Human Rights watch, an international organization headquartered in New York, issued a much larger report declaring that the Israeli government is committing crimes of apartheid.
Apartheid has been a significant part of Israeli plans to ethncially cleanse Palestine of its indigenous population. After the nakba, the more ‘modern’ form of this has been since the 1967 Israeli attack against neighbouring Arab countries and the “occupation” of lands previously controlled by Egypt and Jordan – the ever increasing establishment of settlements in occupied Palestine. The result has been the establishment in conjunction with this of many small non-contiguous bantustan like areas denying any possibility of a Palestinian state, all under the control of the Israeli military complex.
Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem, is the current hot spot for house demolitions and the slow creep of ethnic cleansing although similar destruction is served up on an ongoing basis over most remaining Palestinian towns. Gaza, already an open air prison on subsistence rations at best, is being attacked once again as the Israeli’s lash out at Palestinian resistance.
Global apartheid
Apartheid in Israel has its most significant comparisons with the apartheid of South Africa. Many similarities are found between the two systems; there are some differences, but also some of those differences are only by degree.
In the 2012 production “Roadmap to Apartheid” (Journeyman Films, available on Vimeo by subscription) describes many of the similarities while recognizing the demographic aspect of the situation:
“The whole framework of Israeli law is designed to prevent the growth of the non-Jewish population and maintain Jewish numerical and political supremacy – and that’s the framework in which we can understand everything we see inside Israel as well as in the Westbank and Gaza.” [Ali Abunimah]
The structures of apartheid are highly comparable between the two systems: identity passports, passes, and special permits are required; military control of checkpoints where abuse, beatings, and humiliation are used to create fear; the contradictory descriptors of “present absentees” and “foreign natives”.
Ideological similarities can also be found. The idea of a god given land is common to both. The rhetoric of being the victim is used to deny criticism of their actions. In contradiction to that both argue for an “iron fist” used to suppress any resistance.
In a recent Independent Jewish Voices webinar (The fight over BDS: lessons from the South African anti-apartheid movement. April 26, 2020. Available on Youtube.) more similarities can be found. Reactionary campaigns, an international propaganda war is carried out: in South Africa it occurred with TV and magazines, later becoming covert with the establishment of their own false front organizations and assassination of opposition leaders. For Israel, the modern computer web allows for similar hasbara actions as well as using other covert actions.
The hasbara arguments are similar to both situations. The arguments included the notions of being singled out for attack, of using double standards. Opponents are accused of using inflammatory language and of being against society in general. For South Africa, the Soviet Union was the threat to be blocked; now it is Iran, and, well for sure under the auspices of the U.S. empire, Russia.
The South African BDS movement did not target foreign domestic support as much as Israel does. Israeli attempts to criminalize BDS and raise the spectre of anti-Semitism are additions to their current struggle against the small successes of the BDS movement. Along with the anti-Semitism charge, South Africa did not contain as large a religious component whereas in the U.S. the Christain evangelical movement is generally in full support of Israeli ideology replete with all its very real racism.
A common thread
It could be argued it is just a rhetorical continuity, but there is a common thread between South Africa, Israel, and on into the five eyes of the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain. The thread should be obvious – British inspired imperial racism and its desire to conquer and control large regions of the world. The five eyes countries are themselves wonderful examples of the application of an apartheid racist system of governance.
Racism is obvious in the U.S. but the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population and its apartheid results are compounded by the racism of slavery. Canada presents a much more clear comparison as a colonial-settler state using the elements of apartheid to – for the most part – successfully ethnically cleanse itself of its indigenous population.
Canada has many elements of an apartheid system based on its British heritage of racist supremacy. The current system, similar to that in the other five eyes countries, is the use of the polite term “reservations” to designate the small left over parcels ‘given’ to the indigenous people. It sounds so much better than bantustans or enclaves – or concentration camps. In order to remove the Indians from their land many tactics were used: military force, starvation, broken promises, disease (purposely contaminated).
Once removed, more tactics were developed to maintain the system: different levels of identification (status, non-status), removal of children, denial of language rights, banishing religious ceremonies, denial of voting, denial of access to the law, removal of tribal hereditary chiefs to be replaced by band councils, more easily controlled by the government. One of the larger elements is the Indian Act of 1876, now institutionalized in the Constitution, effectively limiting what any band can or cannot do without Federal authorization.
Beyond these ‘legal’ systems, many of them supposedly overcome in law although still highly institutionalized within government systems, is the ongoing use of military force. Most recently that has been seen with the struggle of the Wet’suwet’in people attempting to stop a pipeline from crossing their unceded territory (as much of British Columbia is). Protests of support broke out across much of Canada, but the government’s response was to use paramilitarized – and generally racist – police forces to harass and intimidate the protestors.
Canada remains an apartheid country, a well tended one. Arguably it presents a good example for Israel to follow. Currently the two countries have a strong security relationship. Officially Canada supports the two state solution for Israel and all parliamentary parties support this idea without recognizing its impossibility under the current situation. In the meantime the same old tired rhetoric is handed out about the right to defend oneself without recognizing that one side is a colonial settler system with a predominant military force and the support of powerful and wealthy overseas allies, while the other is mainly a bunch of terrorists.
Canadian media is fully complicit with these efforts to present Israel as a beleaguered victim of terrorism, the lone democracy in the Middle East. It is neither the victim nor a democracy – it is the perpetrator of human rights abuses, and within the constructs of a racist apartheid theological state cannot be considered democratic.
Jim Miles is a Canadian educator
In Mark Wortman’s impressive historical account of the lead-up to WW2 here in America, 1941 , Fighting the Shadow War, one becomes amazed at what went on then. We can still have debates as to whether the US should have gotten into the European conflict or not before December 7th, 1941. Obviously, once the Japanese attacked our naval base at Pearl Harbor, the Germans then declared war on us. Yet, up until that moment our nation was as divided as we are now, but for different reasons and issues. On page 126 of Wortman’s book we read about the attitude of one Charles Lindbergh, hero aviator and ‘ America First’ spokesman. The 1940 presidential election was becoming a very close race between FDR, attempting his 2nd re-election, and Republican Wendell Willkie. Willkie had flip flopped during that campaign season on the issue of US intervention . .. First he approved of FDR’s plan to sell old US destroyers and other needed goods to the Brits in return for many of their overseas bases ( The Lend Lease Plan). Then, when the movers and shakers of the Republican Party ‘ Schooled him’, Willkie did an about face and protested the moves by FDR. The 1940 election then became very close indeed. After having been ill advised about our sending troops etc to Europe during WW1, many Americans did not wish us to get involved again in any European conflict… and rightly so.. until Pearl Harbor.
Lindbergh actually said the following on the evening of the 1940 election: ” Democracy as we have known it is a thing of the past… a political system based on universal franchise would not work in the United States… one of the first steps must be to disenfranchise the Negro.” Lindbergh went on that evening to express his feelings about ” The Jewish problem and how it should be handled in this country.” He was convinced that Jews exercised outsized influence relative to their numbers. He was particularly worried about what he believed to be their control of newspapers, newsreels, and advertising. This was, at that time, actually untrue. Other than the New York Times and many prominent Hollywood movie studios, Jews had NO measurably media ownership. He then wrote: ” Were it not for the Jews in America we would not be on the verge of war today.”
If one studies the rank and file of most of today’s white supremacist groups, one sees the merging of Anti Black and Anti Jewish sentiment. Do you recall the August 12, 2017 Charlottesville march? That particular event showcased the ‘ Jews will not replace us’ and ‘ Blood and Soil ‘ mantras as they marched with torches held high. Lindbergh would have been proud. All the rhetoric on needing a border wall and cutting of entitlements has been gravy to this puree of racism and anti Semitism. Sadly, the January 6th riot revealed just how deep that wound has travelled inside the body politic of this republic. Imagine how many of my fellow lifetime Lefties , yours truly included, had to bite our lips and vote for Neo Cons like Joe Biden , just to insure that the demonic Trump and his swamp were drained a bit. They are really not that drained , as that Grand Old Party has been relabeled The Neo Fascist Party. Again, Charles Lindbergh would be more than proud. How many of my neighbors and acquaintances would agree to that? HORRIFIC!
Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Countercurrents.org, and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid ‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.net.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.