Déjà Vu All Over Again.

About 4 years ago, right after an American election and before an Israeli election, six prominent Gazans were assassinated by Israel. This came in the midst of a long-time relative lull in rocket attacks. It was clear at the time that the killings and subsequent bombardment of the Gaza strip had been planned for months.

This time, after several Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy, had been killed in the previous week or so, Ahmed Al-Jabari, head of Hamas’ military wing, was assassinated in a trap set by Israel the day after he thought he had negotiated a cease fire with them.

Israeli leaders need to show how tough they are to be able to appeal to their constituents, who mostly seek revenge and retribution against the Palestinians will never give up their quest for freedom from occupation no matter how many die or how many suffer the repression that comes in response to their valiant, but feeble attempts to fight back and gain their freedom and dignity. Israel has no interest in negotiating a real peace, one that would be fair to the Palestinians, because that would mean giving up land they have stolen, so they need to kill and maim and destroy on a regular basis to try to suppress the restless natives and hold onto their dream of Greater Israel.  

The majority of Israeli Jews are completely out of touch. When the UN General Assembly votes 189 against Israel, 3 for, they don’t connect their actions, their murderous ways to the reason for their near universal censure. The BBC radio program World Have Your Say interviewed an Israeli living near Gaza. He was complaining about having to spend so much of his time in his bomb shelter. He then made one of the most preposterous, off-the-wall statements I’ve ever heard, anytime, anywhere. He said that the Gazans don’t build bomb shelters because they know the IDF doesn’t target civilians. This at a time when 90 Gazans had died and 700 were injured.

Is he unaware that his country has maintained a blockade of Gaza for 5 years in which building materials are banned from import? There is one way around the blockade, through the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, but everything costs twice as much when it comes in that way. Is he aware that Gazans are very poor. That they don’t have the money to build shelters. Does he know that 80% of Gazans are dependent on food aid. Is he aware that 50% of children there are malnourished because Israel limits the amount of food that’s allowed in.

The blockade has shut down 95% of Gaza’s industry because no raw materials are allowed in and no finished products allowed out. A substantial part of Gaza’s farmland is off limits because it’s either near the border – any Palestinian within 300 meters, and sometimes a lot more, of the border is liable to be shot – or was destroyed in the last Israeli rampage. They aren’t allowed to fish more than 3 miles from shore. They have few options and almost no hope so they don’t care how hard they are hit, or how many of them die as long as they can pick off a few Israelis with their rockets and occasional sneak attacks.

The next night an Israeli said that the IDF is the most moral army in the world. The words, moral army, in themselves are an oxymoron. Soldiers are trained to kill, and if they feel threatened, to shoot first and ask questions later. As for the IDF, it’s noted around the world for being ruthless, callous and brutal. Israeli Jews live on another planet where they are always right and everybody else is wrong.

Subsequently, an Israeli on the program said he wanted the army to go in and finally wipe out the terrorists, like the army hasn’t been trying to do that for the last 30 years. He sounded young, probably was not even born when the first Intifada began. They never learn, they’re always the victim, they never connect their brutal occupation with the attacks against them. No matter how many times their violent, bloodthirsty ways fail to bring safety and security, they only know how to double down on the killing.

The night before the cease fire, an Israeli insisted that his country had totally left Gaza, as if leaving a place still allowed you to enforce a near total and crippling blockade. In fact, the IDF goes into Gaza anytime they want, to arrest anybody they want, to kill anybody they want. Israelis have no clue, they only know talking points, they’re divorced from reality, they’ve lost their capacity for fairness or compassion or even logic. If the roles were reversed, and the Arabs were the occupiers, the Jews would fight to the death to free themselves, and use all means at their disposal to do it, just as they did in their fight to create the state of Israel in 1947 when they committed devastating terrorist acts, like the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem when more that 200 innocent people died.

It’s clear what Israelis want. A recent survey showed nearly 60% think they live in an apartheid state and want to keep it that way, with their Arab citizens, who make up 20% of Israel proper, permanently relegated to second class status. A poster of four maps showing the loss of Arab land since the beginning of Israel has circulated on the internet and elsewhere. The 2012 map shows the West Bank as hundreds of tiny dots or small enclaves – urban ghettos and rural shtetls – surrounded by land controlled by Israel. Palestinians now control about 10% of the West Bank.

When the poster was placed on the London Underground it was called a provocation by some Jewish groups. Yes, the truth hurts, and it is very provocative to show how Israel is seeking to squeeze the Palestinians into ever smaller ghettos, something no other country in the world would be allowed to do. As long as the US vetoes every attempt at the UN to stop Israel from its illegal and immoral actions and also provides billions of dollars in military aid - in spite of Israel being a wealthy country - the farce will continue, nothing will change to balance the Arab-Jewish equation or provide the Palestinians the freedom every person in the world deserves.

The Gazans consider their efforts to have been victorious, since in spite of being outgunned 1000 to 1 they managed to kill six Israelis and wound many more. It doesn’t matter to them that 162 Gazans were killed and more than a thousand injured, they’ll never cease their fight for freedom. On the other side, Israeli Jews have to know they will never be safe and secure until justice is done, no matter how much destruction they wreak or how many casualties they cause. They could indulge in mass murder or deportation to try to stop the resistance, as some Israeli politicians have suggested, but even the US might balk at that.

War Crimes Indictments Sure to Arise from Israel’s war against Gaza.

The Israeli government is making serious preparations to defend itself from war crimes accusations and indictments. As well it must because the other side is working feverishly to prepare them.

As the case of Pinochet, who was indicted in Spain and apprehended in England for crimes committed in Chile, there is no escape from justice aside from never leaving Israel.

In the Gaza offensive three UN schools were bombed. In one case, Palestinian civilians were told to evacuate their neighborhood because it was going to be targeted. The took shelter in a UN compound which was then hit by Israeli shells resulting in 40 deaths and many more injuries.

In another case a UN school was hit by phosphorus bombs. They are made of many pieces of felt soaked in phosphorus which burns in contact with air. When the shells explode in mid air many burning fragments spread over a wide area.These are legal but only in open areas away from civilians. They cause horrible burns which essentially melt flesh they come in contact with.

In both cases large numbers of people were sheltering from combat zones. Israeli authorities insist their troops were responding to fire from the area (the UN insists not). And if they were being fired on, do you take a chance on killing large numbers of civilians in response to a small number of fighters with only small arms? Not if you care about the laws of war, not to mention human life.

Which only brings up the impossibility of fighting insurgents with a conventional army. Which, unless your intention is indeed to kill civilians, shows the utter and absolute futility of Israel’s war against Gaza.

If anything Hamas was strengthened. If anything, Israel’s callous disregard for non-Jewish life was broadcast to the world.

Seventeen mosques were hit, every one, according to Israel, being used to store munitions. Big deal; Hamas can always get more arms. Consider the impression Israel made upon the Muslim world by purposely hitting houses of worship. Imagine the uproar if Hamas were able to target synagogues in return.

Now less than two weeks after it declared a unilateral cease fire, an Israeli soldier was killed on the Israeli side of the Gaza border by a militant group not affiliated with Hamas. Israel’s response? Kill a nearby farmer and bomb smuggling tunnels. As if that will bring peace and security to its country. After 60 years of ignoring the plight of Palestinian refugees it created and 40 years of murderous suppression of those under its control it still hasn’t learned the essential lesson; that is, it’ll never bring peace to its country through force of arms.

Even if Israel magically turned into a country of peace loving pacifists tomorrow, the hatred it has engendered to date is so strong there will always be some who seek revenge. However, once again for the umpteenth time, it will never have peace until it begins to treat the Palestinians respectfully and fairly as equal members of the human race.

Meanwhile, my fervent hope is that the threat of war crimes indictments will somehow affect the upcoming Israeli elections in a positive manner… but I’m not holding my breath. At this point, considering their overwhelming approval of the Gaza attack and their casual acceptance of its terrible cost in Palestinian lives, I can’t imagine the great mass of Israelis caring one whit about what anyone else in the world thinks.

Hopefully there will be indictments and those in power will think twice the next time before undertaking another bloody rampage.

David and Goliath

In the early days of Israel’s existence it was David surrounded by the Goliath of 250 million Arabs. I, as well as, I imagine, Jews everywhere took seriously the Arab threat to drive the Jews into the sea. Coming so soon after Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ one would have to stand behind the Jews of Israel, even if one wasn’t a Zionist per se. I was surprised at the prejudice against Jews that still existed in America in the fifties: Don’t they have any sympathy for what we went through?

As a teenager I immersed myself in the horrors of the Holocaust – it wasn’t even called that then. The level of cruelty and sadism displayed by the Nazis was almost too great to grasp. The Germans, being good at most things, definitely perfected the macabre arts. In fact, I’ve often thought they might’ve more successfully prosecuted the war if they hadn’t devoted so much energy to killing Jews. Even right at the end, when Allied forces were advancing on Germany, they emptied out the concentration camps and put the remaining Jews on forced marches that brought death to most of the remnant. They could’ve abandoned the camps and let the Jews be rescued and thus had additional troops to fight the enemy, but instead couldn’t bring themselves to let the last few alone.

One can only imagine what good Israel could’ve done with the billions they’ve spend on their military and colonization programs; how easily they could’ve fully compensated the Palestinians instead of occupying and repressing them.

It’s hard to imagine any nation ever approaching Germany’s monstrous deeds, though others have tried in their own little ways. The Hutus, the Serbs, even America indulged in massacring whole villages, a la Mai Lai. Now it’s Israel’s turn to join the ranks of tainted nations. Nations who will never be forgotten for their lapse from humanity.

In Israel’s case it gained a foothold when it began to colonize conquered land. It continues in its nasty, hard-hearted ways day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year, decade-to-decade. More than 700 Arabs killed in the latest conflict, a significant percentage civilians. Many of the non-civilians were in fact police officers who took the job to feed their families. Israel’s near total blockade of Gaza has destroyed the private economy, the only jobs left are with the Hamas government or NGO’s.

If you keep up with the numbers, you’ll hear that Israel (out of the goodness of its heart) is letting in 80 truckloads of essential goods, but were you also aware that 1.5 million people require a minimum of 400 truckloads per day? One of Hamas’s conditions for agreeing to a cease fire was the opening of the crossings to bring a semblance of normal life to the people of Gaza. It never happened; the blockade was maintained full force.

Israeli Jews would not stand for one minute the treatment they mete to the Palestinians every day. In the West Bank, an area the size of Delaware, America’s second smallest state, there are about 620 checkpoints where Palestinians are routinely made to wait, sometimes for hours, for passage – babies have been born at them, elderly and ill have died for want of passage. Maybe it was only to a nearby town or to a field they own. No matter, Israeli soldiers will not let them through without dosing out a little humiliation first.

Every bit of forceful opposition to occupation is called terrorism. Jews know all about terrorism, they used it famously, productively and ruthlessly to foster and speed the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Ah but now the roles are reversed. Now Israel is Goliath avenging the death of four of its own by killing 700 of the enemy. ‘We’ll show them who has the power’ – paraphrasing PM Ehud Olmert. Did the Palestinians sorta not know Israel has one of the world’s largest, best equipped armies? Were they maybe unaware that Israel is not afraid to kill large numbers of civilians, as in Lebanon in 2006?

Hamas made a chilling warning to Israel as it invaded Gaza. They said they have more than 200 suicide bombers, both male and female, ready for martyrdom. Israel has stolen all hope from those young people, they feel they have nothing to live for. There is no normal life for them on the horizon.

If you listen to unfolding events in the conflict, you often hear references to refugee camps. Same when Israel waged its war against Lebanon. Does Israel think those Palestinians it displaced at the birth of its nation in 1948 will just eventually disappear? That it can allow generations to fester in hopelessness without consequences? That it can ignore the needs and rights of those people without staining its national morality and psyche?

The Biblical David won out over Goliath because he had God on his side. There is no God within my conception of a supreme being that would cheer Goliath on or take Israel’s side in this conflict. Whatever fears I might have had for Israel’s safety or survival in its early years were laid to rest in 1973. Since then its belligerent ten-eyes-for-an-eye violence has been totally gratuitous. It has been necessitated not by survival but solely to fend off legitimate opposition to its occupation and theft of Palestinian land.

The worst part is I see no cause whatever for optimism, though there’s always a tiny smidgen of hope that Obama will work some of his magic to force an equitable outcome to this most intractable of situations.

Siege of Gaza

After five months of a cease fire in which Hamas fired no rockets into Israel from Gaza, Israel invaded and killed 6 militants and then proclaimed that they didn’t think that constituted a breach of the cease fire. Since the Palestinian militants didn’t quite agree that their compatriots could be killed without repercussions, they resumed their crude rocket attacks. Crude because they have no way to accurately aim them and only cause damage when they are lucky.

This led to a tightening of the siege of Gaza by Israel; one that began when Hamas won Palestinian elections nearly two years ago. There were two good reasons why Hamas won: 1. Fatah was hopelessly corrupt whereas Hamas was noted for its honesty, efficiency and fairness, 2. Fatah’s attempts to negotiate a fair peace deal with Israel had achieved exactly nothing.

To Israel and the US, its strongest backer diplomatically and financially, democracy is only acceptable when the electorate chooses leaders to their liking, so they began to try to destroy Hamas. The thinking goes that the Palestinians will eventually vote in someone else more pliable to Israel’s demands if Israel makes their life difficult. The fact that repression and humiliation and siege have never succeeded in bending the Arabs to their will has never been a deterrent to Israel’s need to act tough and take revenge.

Now Israel is churning up a bloodbath ostensibly to defeat Hamas once and for all and concurrently turn the people against Hamas for causing all the death and destruction that’s being wreaked upon them. This sounds to me a lot like the war against Lebanon in 2006 where Israel was going to get its two captured soldiers back and Hezbollah was going to be crushed once and for all. The result? Hezbollah was strengthened and 1000 innocent Lebanese civilians were killed along with billions of dollars worth of civilian infrastructure destroyed. Once Israel launched a ground invasion, they began to lose soldiers so fast they turned tail and ran.

Israel is like a broken record; no matter how many times its violent reactions have not worked to bring the Palestinian people to their knees, it’s the only trick they have up their sleeve. A recent poll reported on BBC had 67% of Israelis supporting the attack on Gaza, but only 44% thinking it would do any good. In other words, nearly a quarter of Israelis are in favor of killing Palestinians and destroying infrastructure for no good reason: blood lust seems to be the only motivation. We have to do something, they say, but that never seems to include negotiating a fair peace.

The idea that Palestinian militants will cease their rocket fire into Israel because they see the great destruction wrought by Israel and feel sorry for what they have done is pure delusion and nonsense. The militants, along with every Islamic radical in the world, couldn’t be happier about Israel’s disproportionate reaction. Bin Laden is unquestionably thrilled, since he could ask for no better recruiting tool for his jihad. What more obvious way to display to the world Israel’s cruelty and ruthlessness?

We hear over and over again how Israel has a right to defend itself: very true, but the other side of the same coin is that every people has a right to resist military occupation, and do it by any means necessary. Israelis point to how they left Gaza to the Palestinians, but seem not to be aware that they control every access point on land, sea and air and as a matter of policy have been denying 1.5 million Gazans the essentials of life: food, medicine, fuel. Gazans regularly die from lack of medicine or from lack of fuel to provide electricity to life-necessary medical equipment. They also don’t have fuel to keep sewage treatment and water treatment plants functioning. Forty six percent of Gaza’s children are malnourished, stunting their physical and mental growth. Can you imagine anything much lower on the humanity scale than purposely denying adequate sustenance to innocent children?

Israel has boxed itself into a corner. They can’t bring themselves to make a fair peace deal because they can’t give up the idea of Jewish hegemony over historic Palestine. They adamantly refuse to consider compensation for Palestinian refugees while still demanding reparations for holocaust victims. As a nation they seem to lack a basic sense of fairness.

Israel is doing everything in its power to preclude the possibility of a two-state solution by continuing to expand the Jewish population of lands conquered from the Arabs in 1967; which by all standards is contrary to international law and morality. I happened to be in Israel in 1994 just as the Oslo Accords began to take effect. It was a time of heady optimism. There were then 125,000 Jews living on colonized land.

Digression: The term settlement is really not appropriate for what Israel is building in Palestine. The term congers up the image of a smallish number of people living on a frontier, whereas some West Bank “settlements” are lush, gleaming, modern cities of 30,000 people. It’s important to note that while the majority of Jewish settlers are religious zealots who are there to claim the land for Jews because God said it was theirs thousands of years ago, about 40% are economic migrants; that is, people who moved to the colonies because housing is subsidized by the state to encourage people to migrate there. Subsidized, I might add, by the US taxpayer, since Israel could not afford to be building there if not for the billions of aid given by America.

Between the time the Accords were signed in 1994 and 2000, when Israel made its final offer - one which was so unbalanced and unfair the Palestinians couldn’t possibly accept - the settler population had nearly doubled to 225,000. If the Jewish state actually wanted to make an honest peace deal, that’s the last thing they would’ve done. Now, only eight years on, that population is approaching 500,000. Once again a trampling of the potential for peace. Once again practically precluding a two state solution for Palestine/Israel.

The Arab population of the area is now about equal to the Jewish population, yet Israel cannot bring itself to give only 22% of the land to the Palestinians. Every day the Jewish population of the West Bank increases. The wall that Israel is ostensibly building for self-protection often encroaches on Arab land and is essentially confiscating another 6% of Palestinian territory.

The Jews of the West Bank – ok, a small minority – also delight in making life hell for neighboring Palestinians. B’Tselem, an Israeli peace group, has been trying to document abusive settler actions by handing out video cameras to Palestinians. One of the first videos to appear on Youtube showed three masked Jews clubbing a fifty-year-old Arab woman. Not long back I came across a picture on the net of a six-year-old Palestinian boy from Hebron beaten bloody by Jewish thugs. Only six-years-old yet he must pay the price for living on land coveted by crazed fundamentalist Jews. Hebron is the one place in the West Bank where Jews live among Arabs. There about 600 Jews, protected by about the same number of Israeli soldiers, live in the middle of 170,000 Arabs.

Not saying the Palestinians don’t do everything in their power to harm Israelis in their midst, but they at least have just cause on their side. To repeat: Every people has the right to oppose military occupation.

What exactly so riles Israel about Hamas that would lead the Jewish state to collectively punish 1.5 million Gazans? For one, they were supposed to renounce violence. Coming from Israel, one of the most violent countries in the world, a macabre joke. The occupied should be non-violent while the occupier invades, imprisons and murders at will? Nevertheless Hamas did propose a long term truce, which Israel rejected out of hand.

They were supposed to accept previous agreements. Every agreement Israel has made with the Palestinians has required it to cease settlement building, so to ask Hamas to accept accords which Israel has regularly broken is disingenuous.

Finally, the most complex problem is the insistence that Hamas recognize Israel’s right to exist. Hamas has stated its goal of destroying the Jewish state, however they are not talking about destroying the Jewish people, only the state. In an interview with a Hamas spokesman I heard on BBC (something I can’t imagine you’d ever hear on American media) he made that point clear by saying they recognized that the Jews of Palestine were there to stay. Just in practical terms, they have to know that removing the Jews would be impossible.

On the point of destroying Israel as it’s currently organized I wholeheartedly agree: There’s no room in the 21st century for a sectarian state where one group is singled out for special privilege and all others are relegated to second class citizenship. That would not be considered acceptable in any other place in the world.

Since Israel has made a two-state solution to the conflict impossible the only alternative is a single, strictly secular state with separate Jewish and Arab components where all citizens are treated equally and all have the right to live everywhere.

That is the pattern that was imposed on Bosnia after the conflict there and the pattern used by Belgium for a long time. Whatever good the state of Israel has done in the past for the Jewish people, it has long past worn out its raison d’etre.

Today it is a black mark on the name of the Jews, a thorn in the side of all Muslims and an embarrassment to all civilized nations.

There is no need for Jews to have a separate state that removes them from the progressive mainstream of humanity. Jews are valued and productive citizens in many countries around the world. With the exception of rare incidents, mostly provoked by the actions of Israel, Jews are safe from harm everywhere they live outside of Israel itself. Prejudice may be alive but only in small isolated and inconsequential pockets; discrimination is a relic of the past.

Israel, through its unbridled arrogance and disregard for simple truths of humanity, has made a fair and equitable two-state solution impossible. A one state solution is now the only alternative.

Not that I think that is any more likely than the goal of two states, but it’s really the only equitable, 21st century way to make a fair deal for everyone and needs to brought into the discussion.