The war crime state
declares "peace"
The urgency of the
protests and outrage against Israel's war of terror on Gaza must be maintained
and mobilized to expand the movement in solidarity with Palestine.
EDITORIALS
Published by the
International Socialist Organization.
August 7, 2014
THE
LATEST onslaught in Israel's war of annihilation against Gaza appears to have
come to a close if the cease-fire and withdrawal of Israeli troops in effect as
this article was being written continue.
But the
ruins of Gaza are still smoldering. The human toll has been enormous: More than
1,800 dead, including 1,300 civilians. Some 10,000 injured. The homes of 60,000
people reduced to rubble. Nearly a quarter of Gaza's 1.8 million residents on
the move in search of somewhere safe to shelter from Israel's rampage.
Meanwhile,
burning questions are being asked around the world: What was Israel's
month-long offensive all about? And if we've seen the horrors of war for the
past weeks, what will "peace" mean for the people of Gaza?
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that Israel's massacre was
"justified" and that every civilian casualty was the fault of Hamas
for using civilians as "human shields."
Never
mind that even the New York
Times acknowledged that "[t]here
is no evidence that Hamas and other militants force civilians to stay in areas
that are under attack--the legal definition of a human shield under
international law." The BBC reached the same conclusion.
And never
mind that as recently as last year, the United Nations condemned Israeli
soldiers for repeatedly using Palestinian children as--you guessed it--human
shields. "[Israel's] soldiers have used Palestinian children to enter
potentially dangerous buildings ahead of them and to stand in front of military
vehicles in order to stop the throwing of stones against those vehicles," a UN report concluded.
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EACH OF
Israel's rationalizations for its rampage through Gaza make far more sense when
leveled against Israel itself. Remember the kidnapping of three settler youth
in June. Hamas' alleged responsibility for this crime served as the pretext for
war? Now, however, we know that Israeli police concluded that the kidnappers
were part of a lone cell operating independently of Hamas.
And then
there's the larger truth: It's Israel that systematically detains, tortures and
abuses children, provided they're Palestinian. More than 400
Palestinian children were killed during the course of Operation Protective
Shield.
Stopping
the rockets from Gaza? Netanyahu says Hamas fired nearly 3,000 rockets at
Israel and asserts, "No country would tolerate this." But it's Israel
that for years has routinely carried out assassinations in Gaza, by drone,
sniper and air strike. In recent weeks, it fired some 3,000 tons of
high-powered missiles at Gaza.
Rocket
fire from Gaza took the lives of three Israeli civilians, and Hamas fighters
killed 65 soldiers during ground operations. Of the more than 1,800
Palestinians killed by Israel, less than 25 percent were actual fighters; by
contrast, 96 percent of those killed by Gaza's resistance fighters were Israeli
soldiers.
Closing
down the "terror tunnels"? Egypt sealed the tunnels between its
territory and Gaza last year--without destroying a single neighborhood in Gaza.
In any
case, the very term "terror tunnel" betrays how every utterance by
Israel is designed to demonize the idea that the oppressed can and should
resist their oppressors. This is an old smear, faced by the resistance of South
Africa's Black majority against apartheid, African Americans fighting Jim Crow
laws in the South and countless other movements--the oppressor invariably
portrays the resistance of the oppressed as "extremist," "a
threat to law and order" and "terrorist."
Israel
hasn't accomplished on the battlefield any of the various war aims it has given
publicly--and for good reason. The war was itself the aim--with the
purpose of advancing Israel's long-term goal of the ethnic cleansing of
Palestine. In Netanyahu's own words: "There cannot
be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of
the territory west of the River Jordan."
Despite
some words of criticism, the U.S. government's support for Israel's barbarism
can be counted on to continue. Stopping Israel from succeeding in its goal of
eliminating Palestinian society in Gaza and the West Bank will require the
ongoing resistance of Palestinians--and the mobilization of concrete solidarity
by ordinary people from Copenhagen to Cairo to Columbus, Ohio.
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THE
POLARIZATION of opinion about Israel's Operation Protective Edge has been
stark. Israel's Jewish population, the U.S. political class and the American
and Israeli media stand ready to justify every last atrocity committed by
Israel during the last month.
Fully 95
percent of Israeli Jews believe that Israel's war on Gaza was justified, and
less than 4 percent think that Israel Defense Forces used "excessive
force," according to a poll conducted in July. A solid
majority believes there will be more confrontations with Hamas to come.
In the
midst of the relentless bombing, the U.S. Senate voted 100-0 to stand with
Israel--a unanimous vote that not even the USA Patriot Act managed to inspire.
Mainstream media figures across the political spectrum--from Fox
News' Sean Hannityto CBS News' Charlie Rose--criticized Arab and
Palestinian spokespeople for their "anti-Israel" views. If the
frenzied media defense of Israel was less than completely unanimous, it was
because of the influence of independent journalists and social media commentators,
which occasionally forced the mainstream media to acknowledge their shortcomings. But generally, the media simply reported Israel's deceptive and
self-serving statements as fact.
As part
of the truce negotiations being brokered by the Egyptian regime, Israel is
demanding that Gaza be "demilitarized," while Hamas is calling for an
end to the seven-year siege that has plunged Gaza into a hellscape of
unemployment, malnutrition and crumbling infrastructure. But finalizing the
truce may well expose even more the extent to which various currents in the
Israeli establishment believe the main problem was that Netanyahu's prosecution
of the war didn't go far enough.
Hamas has
signaled that it is willing to concede to monitoring of Gaza's border crossing
with Egypt by the rival Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA), as part of an
easing of the siege. But it has so far refused to give up its right to
self-defense. If this ends up unraveling the cease-fire, the open calls for
concentration camps and genocide that have echoed around Israeli society--and
not just in its right-wing and militaristic margins--will no doubt intensify.
For
example, Moshe Feiglin, the deputy speaker of the Knesset, Israel's parliament,recently described on Facebook his vision for the
"final solution":
There are no two states, and there are no two peoples. There is
only one state for one people...The IDF [Israeli army] shall designate certain
open areas on the Sinai border, adjacent to the sea, in which the civilian
population will be concentrated, far from the built-up areas that are used for
launches and tunneling. In these areas, tent encampments will be established,
until relevant emigration destinations are determined...The supply of
electricity and water to the formerly populated areas will be disconnected...
The formerly populated areas will be shelled with maximum
firepower. The entire civilian and military infrastructure of Hamas, its means
of communication and of logistics, will be destroyed entirely, down to their
foundations...The IDF will divide the Gaza Strip laterally and crosswise,
significantly expand the corridors, occupy commanding positions, and
exterminate nests of resistance, in the event that any should remain.
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THE U.S.
government--long the world's most ardent and powerful supporter of
Israel--shocked many with a condemnation of Israel's July 30 bombing of a UN
school-turned-shelter, killing at least 19 people and wounding many more.
"The shelling of a UN facility that is housing innocent civilians who are
fleeing violence is totally unacceptable and totally indefensible," said
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.
Strong
words of rebuke for Israel coming from the U.S. are highly unusual, but the
circumstances show how long a leash Israel can still count on when it comes to
committing atrocities against Palestinians. After all, Earnest's criticism followed the sixthIsraeli
bombing of a UN shelter. Apparently, attacking five shelters was
tolerable, but a sixth was "unacceptable."
When
Barack Obama commented on the current truce negotiations, he talked about the
need for "trust-building" and "giving hope"--the kind of
empty rhetoric typically used at the end of an election campaign, not a merciless assault on civilian life.
Of
course, whatever rhetorical censures that Obama and members of his
administration voiced, no one threatened to withhold even one dollar of the $3
billion in annual aid to Israel, let alone call for an end to the siege that
has turned Gaza into an open-air prison.
If U.S.
officials made mild criticisms, the Arab states were shamefully quiet. Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and analyst, called the
reaction:
remarkable.
In all the other invasions and assaults on Gaza, there was at least some
government that would come out and talk about how what Israel was doing was
illegal and show some support. This time around, there's been nothing. The
silence is deafening.
The
silence was not only deafening, but it represented a shift in regional
politics, as theNew York Times explained:
After the
military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a
new coalition of Arab states--including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates--that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against
Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip.
Yet the
Palestinian cause continues to be embraced by the popular classes throughout
the Middle East--even if those who rule over them do not. And to this steadfast
regional support is now added the worldwide outrage, expressed in large Gaza
solidarity protests around the world.
The
protests are themselves an expression of shifting tides of public opinion. A Gallup poll in July found that while a
majority of Americans over 65 believed Israel's actions were
"justified" by a 55-to-31 percent margin, the percentages were
reversed for 18 to 29 year olds, who believed by a 51-to-25 percent margin that
Israel's actions were "unjustified."
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THE
PEOPLE of Gaza may enjoy greater support in world public opinion, but the fact
remains that Hamas is politically isolated.
Last
year's ouster of Egyptian President and Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed
Morsi, combined with Hamas' estrangement from Iran, leaves the Islamist
leadership in Gaza without any of the backing from regional elites it enjoyed
just a couple years ago. And Qatar, which has flirted with offering financial
support to Hamas, has largely caved to regional pressures not to do so.
This has
revealed the dead end of Hamas' strategy of attempting to ally itself with one
or another Arab regime--just as the Palestine Liberation Organization tried in
past decades.
Given
Israel's overwhelming military superiority, the hard question remains: How can
Palestinian liberation be achieved if a direct military confrontation with
Israel is unwinnable?
Israel
has benefited from the setbacks for the "Arab Spring" upsurges that
began in 2011 with the overthrow of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. This gave Israel the political space it needed to
carry out Operation Protective Edge. But the bitter grievances that underlay
the Arab Spring have not been resolved and are bound to fuel future struggles.
When they arise, they will again inspire broad solidarity with the Palestinian
cause.
Beyond
the Middle East, the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement
represents another front in the long-term effort to expose Israeli apartheid
and its systematic violations of international law and basic rights for
Palestinians.
These
campaigns--targeting everything from Israeli-produced hummus on college
campuses, to artists performing in apartheid Israel, to international
conglomerates engaged in infrastructure projects that extend Israel's
settlement-building enterprise--are an essential component of raising the
political price Israel must pay, both for its recent string of war crimes in Gaza
and its ongoing oppression of Palestinians.
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FOR AN
intensified BDS campaign to be effective in opening up another front against
Israel, those who support justice must confront the political arguments used to
deflect their initiatives. During the Israeli onslaught, liberal publications
such as The Nationmagazine, for example, maintained a steady
drumbeat of criticism of Hamas as at least partly responsible for
"provoking" Israeli violence for its fighters' decision to resist
occupation, as is their right under international law.
Liberal
criticisms will come as no surprise to anyone who has participated in the
Palestine solidarity movement. But many activists may have been taken aback by
similar statements that have come from sections of the socialist left.
For
example, Kshama Sawant of Socialist Alternative, newly elected to the Seattle
City Council, included in her statement denouncing the Israeli war a
condemnation of Hamas for firing rockets, and a call to "stand in
solidarity with the ordinary people of Israel and their desire for
security." The Militant newspaper published by the Socialist Workers Party-U.S.
went further, denouncing Hamas for the
"targeting of citizens in Israel," which has "set back prospects
for united action by Arab and Jewish working people."
Such
statements are especially stunning in the face of the racist war frenzy that
gripped Israeli society almost unanimously--leading to the opinion poll results
already cited that showed 95 percent of Jewish Israelis agreeing that Operation
Protective Edge was justified.
These
attitudes are not merely the result of brainwashing. They are inevitable in an
apartheid system in which Jewish citizens, rich and poor, enjoy exclusive
rights and material financial benefits in a militarized society built around
the logic of expulsion and ethnic cleansing.
A
movement that seeks to achieve justice in Palestine and the broader Middle East
must champion the demands of Palestinians for self-determination and embrace
the Palestinian call to organize a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign
that can undermine international support for Israeli apartheid.
If there
was any sign of hope amid nightmare inflicted on Gaza in the past weeks, it was
the sense of urgency and determination that animated the protests against
Israel's war and expressions of support for Palestine. Because of the hard work
of organizing, especially around BDS, in the past several years, the
international movement in solidarity with Palestine is in a position to connect
to this broader outrage at Israel's war--and continue to mobilize it for the
struggles to come.
We will
do so with the horrors of Israel's war fresh in mind to remember the barbarism
we are fighting against--and with the determination of the Palestinian people
to resist tyranny and violence to teach us what we are struggling for.
Published by the
International Socialist Organization.
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[10]
http://www.buzzfeed.com/miriamberger/anger-after-nbc-pulls-award-winning-journalist-from-gaza
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