Gilad Sharon, the son of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has an Op-Ed in today’s Jerusalem Post in which, among other things, he writes: “We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too. There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing.”
More here.
Completely aside from the merits of the grievances on the two sides, one side is militarily omnipotent and the other side crouches helplessly in fear. Such a grotesque reality passes under the radar screens of world conscience because of the geopolitical shield behind which Israel is given a free pass to do whatever it wishes. Such a circumstance is morally unendurable, and should be politically unacceptable. It needs to be actively opposed globally by every person, government, and institution of good will. (Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights)
More here.
a local news channel tries to get it right, interviewing one palestinian american and one israeli american about their families back home. nati katz worries about his relatives in israel: “it’s very unnatural when sirens go off in a civilized town” — i found that to be profound. it encapsulates: sixty yrs of how palestinian/israeli history has been framed, how the colonial narrative works in general, and the completely asymmetrical realities on the ground. news story here.
Marillion: This is a song for the people – especially the children – of Gaza. It was written after many conversations with ordinary Palestinians living in the refugee camps of Gaza and the West Bank. I spoke also to Israelis, to N.G.O workers, to a diplomat unofficially working in Jerusalem, and took their perspectives into account whilst writing the lyric. It is not my/our intention to smear the Jewish faith or people – we know many Jews are deeply critical of the current situation – and nothing here is intended to show sympathy for acts of violence, whatever the motivation, but simply to ponder upon where desperation inevitably leads.
Many Gazan children are now the grandchildren of Palestinians BORN in the refugee camps – so called “temporary” shelters. Temporary for over 50 years now..
Gaza is today, effectively, a city imprisoned without trial. We ask you to add your voice to those already campaigning and lobbying for a peaceful and urgent resolution to this desperately unfair situation.
While it is understandably appealing for pundits and spectators to search for a reason for yet another indefensible assault on Palestinians in Gaza, this focus separates Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip from its ongoing policies to implement the “Iron Wall”, a term coined by the far-right Zionist leader, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and referring to a strategy used throughout all Israeli regimes since 1948. As John Mearsheimer explains in his latest piece for the London Review of Books’ blog, the Iron Wall is “an approach that in essence calls for beating the Palestinians into submission”.
When it comes to looking behind the scenes of Israeli military assaults on Gaza (or Lebanon), there is always a general hoping for a promotion, a politician looking for votes, and an arms dealer making profits, but the rationale that enables that triumvirate to enact the lethal policies we are seeing play out in Gaza right now is the same one that allows the Israeli government to calculate how many calories each Palestinian in the Gaza Strip needs to survive, and to then intentionally allow fewer trucks and supplies in to meet that need.
And it’s the same rationale that motivates the Israeli occupation authorities to prevent construction in Area C of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to encourage widespread drug addiction in Area B, and to make near-daily incursions into Area A to arrest political leaders, activists and journalists.
It’s the rationale of a coloniser, who wants land but not the people on it. When the media starts speaking about this, then we’ll know there’s been a sea change. (Charlotte Silver)
More here.
Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s concept of the ‘Iron Wall’: an approach that in essence calls for beating the Palestinians into submission. Jabotinsky understood that the Palestinians would resist the Zionists’ efforts to colonise their land and subjugate them in the process. Nonetheless, he maintained that the Zionists, and eventually Israel, could punish the Palestinians so severely that they would recognise that further resistance was futile.
Israel has employed this strategy since its founding in 1948, and both Cast Lead and Pillar of Defence are examples of it at work. In other words, Israel’s aim in bombing Gaza is not to topple Hamas or eliminate its rockets, both of which are unrealisable goals. Instead, the ongoing attacks in Gaza are part of a long-term strategy to coerce the Palestinians into giving up their pursuit of self-determination and submitting to Israeli rule in an apartheid state.
Israel’s commitment to the Iron Wall is reflected in the fact that its leaders have said many times since Cast Lead ended in January 2009 that the IDF would eventually have to return to Gaza and inflict another beating on the Palestinians. The Israelis were under no illusion that the 2008-9 conflict had defanged Hamas. The only question for them was when the next punishment campaign would start. (John Mearsheimer)
From a collection of drawings by children from Gaza who were part of an art therapy program. The collection was titled “A Child’s View From Gaza” and was themed around the experiences they lived through during the weeks of Operation Cast Lead. The children were aged seven to fourteen.
The news coming out of Gaza and Israel these past few days has been truly horrifying.
Drones and F-16s are dropping bombs over densely populated Gaza, which continues to be under Israel’s control from infrastructure to border. Twenty Palestinians have been killed. Rockets being launched out of Gaza have killed three Israeli civilians.
This Operation “Pillar of Defense” is being paid for thanks to the blank check the Israeli military receives from the US government. Even as we take to the streets to call for an immediate cessation of the bombings into Gaza, the rocket attacks into civilian communities in Israel, and an end to the ongoing siege of Gaza, we are aware that more is required.
Now is the time to demand Obama take decisive action that honors all the lives being lost.
Tell your friends to sign this open letter to Obama.
Israel has always sold itself to the west as a democracy in a sea of fanaticism. The Arab spring has undermined that narrative, possibly fatally. So Israeli politicians have been pushing hard for a war against Iran and, in the interim, they’ve gone on a killing spree in Gaza. If they had wanted to instigate violence against themselves they could not have done better than to assassinate Ahmed al-Jaabari, the Hamas commander who’s prevented attacks on Israelis for the past five years. With his killing they’ve raised the probability of these attacks resuming, as is happening now. They can then try to hijack the narrative of the Arab spring and wind the clock back to “Islamist terrorists v civilised Israelis”. Meanwhile, they take the heat off Bashar al-Assad’s murderous activities in Syria – and, of course, score hawkish points for Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak before the coming elections.
But they have served to remind the world that Israel is a democracy where politicians may order the murder of children to score electoral points. Palestinian children, true. But the citizens of the world don’t make racist distinctions. On Thursday there were protests for Gaza across the world. They continued today. And there will be many more.
In every Arab country where the people rise up to demand their rights, they demand action on Palestinian rights as well. Tunis has just announced that its foreign minister is heading for Gaza. In Jordan today, hundreds of thousands were on the streets and, as well as demanding the fall of their own regime, they’re also calling for justice for Palestine. Protesters are out in Libya. In Egypt, people are heading for Rafah. We are heading for true representation of the people’s will in the region and, in the coming years, governments will need to follow the road shown to them by their people. (Ahdaf Soueif)
More here.
my thoughts today: this is so scripted it isn’t even corny. escalating violence in order to provoke a reaction then exaggerating that reaction in order to simulate a state of war. one of the best equipped armies in the world funded by the only super power in the world vs a besieged civilian population on a minimum calorie diet for the last 6 yrs? u must be kidding me. hysterical israeli woman coddled by IDF soldier vs men squeezing the charred remains of their children against their bodies? seriously? i want to cry and puke at the same time. what a fucked up world we live in.
Jaabari had been chief negotiator with Israel in the deal that led to the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian political prisoners held illegally in Israeli jails. He had negotiated the cease-fire that had mostly held over much of the last year or more. The attack, code-named “Operation Pillar of Defense” [sic], also killed someone else in Jaabari’s car, and quickly expanded with additional airstrikes against Palestinian security and police stations in Gaza, making it impossible for Palestinian police to try to control the rocket-fire.
So why the escalation? Israeli military and political leaders have long made clear that regular military attacks to “cleanse” Palestinian territories (the term was used by Israeli soldiers to describe their role in the 2008-09 Israeli assault on Gaza) is part of their long-term strategic plan. Earlier this year, on the third anniversary of the Gaza assault, Israeli army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz told Army Radio that Israel will need to attack Gaza again soon, to restore what he called its power of “deterrence.” He said the assault must be “swift and painful,” concluding, “we will act when the conditions are right.” Perhaps this was his chosen moment.
It is an interesting historical parallel that this escalation—which almost certainly portends a longer-term and even more lethal Israeli assault—takes place almost exactly four years after Operation Cast Lead, the last major Israeli war on Gaza, which left 1,400 Gazans dead in 2008–09. Then, as now, the attack came shortly after the US presidential elections, ending just before President Obama’s January 2009 inauguration.
But the timing for this escalation is almost certainly shaped more by Israel’s domestic politics than by the US election cycle. The most likely timeline is grounded in Netanyahu’s political calendar—he faces re-election in January, and having thoroughly antagonized many Israelis by his deliberate dissing of President Obama, needs to shore up the far-right contingent of his base. (Phyllis Bennis)
More here.
Self-Defense or Provocation?: Israel’s History of Breaking Ceasefires: Since Israel’s creation in 1948, Israeli political and military leaders have demonstrated a pattern of repeatedly violating ceasefires with their enemies in order to gain military advantage, for territorial aggrandizement, or to provoke their opponents into carrying out acts of violence that Israel can then exploit politically and/or use to justify military operations already planned.
The following fact sheet provides a brief overview of some of the most high profile and consequential ceasefire violations committed by the Israeli military over the past six decades. (Adam Horowitz)
More here.
As in every vicious military offensive Israel carries out in Gaza, the dominant narrative is that it is a response to rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel. This is how it’s being reported in the US, and this is how virtually every American understands it.
And it’s a lie. More here.
