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.

Apartheid or ?

Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, made a surprising statement recently and in the process broke an unspoken taboo by saying the choice for Israel was either two states or apartheid. No matter how obvious the situation is to reasonable observers outside of Israel, no one in Israel has before had the courage to use the word apartheid.

In the latest manifestation of Israel’s dual legal system, there’s a campaign afoot to bring to light the plight of the 300 or so Arab children behind bars in Israeli jails. It turns out the minimum age for Arabs to be tried as adults is 16, whereas Jews are not adults for that purpose until 18. How is that difference justified? Most of those incarcerated kids are there for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. They don’t have tanks and missiles and fighter jets but they do have lots of stones (because Israel likes to keep them in poverty and thus there is lots of rubble around) to use to express their displeasure at living under military occupation.

The apartheid analogy is most obvious as pertains to the West Bank. Though they are ruled by Israel they have no power in that country’s government. Day by day, month by month, their land is being confiscated and they are being squeezed into ever smaller ghettos. The word ghetto, by the way, is derived from the practice during the Middle Ages in what’s now Italy to round up all the Jews and restrict their movements to small enclaves.

However, the word apartheid is equally valid for the status of Arabs in Israel itself. For instance, though Palestinians make up about 20% of Israel’s population they have only 5% of the seats in Israel’s parliament. How does the great democracy we are always hearing about account for that underrepresentation?

As stated previously, Israel’s relationship to democracy is akin to that of the American South during segregation. Maybe not even since the South paid lip service to separate but equal. In Israel there is not even a pretext of equality: Israel is a Jewish state, everybody else is a second class citizen. For instance, when Israeli citizens of Arab descent marry someone from the West Bank, they are not permitted to live with their spouses in Israel. Jews enjoy subsidies when living in occupied territory. Arabs are denied building permits on property they’ve owned for decades or longer.

Meanwhile, Israel is so infatuated with its self-importance, it spit in the face of its only patron in the international community. It’s easy to see how that attitude came about. First, Obama says all colonization of Palestinian land must stop. Then when it doesn’t stop and Netanyahu offers a temporary, limited, partial freeze, Hillary calls it a great gesture toward peace talks. At about the same, America politicked against the entire world to scuttle UN approval of the Goldstone Report and condemned it as biased and poor quality. Trashing Richard Goldstone, one of the most respected jurists in the world, not to mention a Jew and Zionist, to try to protect Israel from well-deserved criticism was a shameful, craven, cowardly act.

With that backdrop why would Netanyahu or any Jew in Israel think they needed to respect American opinion? Why bother? The tail wags, the dog obeys.

Ah, but the scene seems to be changing. Two top ranking American generals, including David Patreus stated recently that America’s lock-step support of Israel, regardless of its actions, is putting American troops at risk. America, therefore, has a real stake in peace.

Netanyahu on the other hand is powerless to stop the colonization project. Pandora was let out of her box the first time a Jew took up residence in Arab territory. Settlers will not leave without a fight, they will take up arms against their own army.

The two recent announcements of settlement expansion that came in the midst of American attempts at peacemaking were made by fundamentalist Jews for the purpose of embarrassing Netanyahu and asserting the right of Jews to own Samaria and Judea, the Israeli name for the West Bank. Their intent is to drive Arabs from their land. They don’t recognize Arab sovereignty over historic Israel. God said its theirs and they are going to take any way they can.

The first time Netanyahu actually tried to make a fair peace deal (he has no intention or desire to do so of course) his coalition would break apart and any other politician who tried to do the right thing would find a civil war on their hands.

Apartheid lives, but Ehud Barak’s other option, the two-state solution has been rendered impossible by the settlement project. There’s no way, after spending tens of billions of dollars building cities for 500,000 people Israel can or will want to walk away from them. There’s also no way that it will be willing to give up equivalent parts of what’s now Israel to compensate Palestinians for the land it’s taken from them.

The only option left (as long as we assume deportation and/or extermination are beyond the pale) and the only solution that is fair and makes sense in the 21st century, is a single secular state where all citizens are treated equally and all are able to live anywhere. There are several states divided by ethnicity that have learned to, or been forced to cohabitate; Belgium, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Rwanda, for example.

What makes Israel different that gives it license to discriminate? What gives it special privilege to create different classes of citizens? Well, nothing. It has no exception to the rules of humanity. Institutionalized racism can not be abided by the international community.

Finally, finally it looks like major international players are beginning to call Israel to account and get serious about fair treatment of the Palestinians. Personally, I harbor little optimism that Obama has the will to get real with Israel. Time will tell.

Israel on a Roll

If there’s one topic sure to get my blood boiling it’s Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people. Several significant and emblematic events have taken place recently that deserve discussion so I’ll just have to deal with the depression and despair that always accompanies dealing with the topic.

The first, about two months ago, involved the eviction of a family in Arab East Jerusalem from a house they had lived in for more than 50 years. It seems that a deed for the property was found showing it had been owned by a Jew back in Ottoman times, that is, about a century ago. The Israel Supreme Court decided that the extended family of about 18 people spanning three generations had to vacate the property, evidently, so that Jewish settlers could move in. In fact, it only took a couple of hours before Jews moved in to occupy the house.

The Arab family, as I understand it, has been camped out in tents across the street since the eviction. I’m sure the Jews who took over the property were proud of their actions, thinking they were doing a great thing, securing additional land for Jews in the ‘Holy Land’. Israel’s courts and the majority of its population must also be happy to see Arabs thrown onto the streets, but everyone else in the world, and especially non-Israeli Jews, should be ashamed of such a cruel and heartless act. I marvel at how Israelis are able to separate ‘holiness’ from common human decency.

We hear over and over how Israel is a bastion of democracy, a shining light in a despotic region. Well then, what of the 750,000 Arabs driven from their homes at the birth of Israel? Can they show up with 100-year-old deeds and get their properties back? Hardly. Israel is a democracy for Jews, everyone else can eat shit.

In another telling event Amnesty International recently put out a report describing how Israel is denying Palestinians access to clean water. I had heard recently of that situation; that is, where many people in the West Bank have to purchase water from tanker trucks. Such water is not only expensive but very low quality to the point of many people and especially young children being sickened by it.

West Bank Arabs living in dusty villages cannot get permits to dig wells to supply their own water but meanwhile, in their midst, there are lush green Jewish colonies graced with swimming pools and gardens. I saw, when I was in the West Bank in 1994, that very situation.

Regarding water supply in Gaza, Israel, which maintains a stranglehold on Gaza because it doesn’t like Hamas, the party that won the last Palestinian elections by a wide margin, doesn’t allow import of equipment or materials necessary to repair the damage caused by its ravaging of Gaza’s infrastructure in its recent offensive.

Terrorists drink water so water systems had to be destroyed and cannot be rebuilt. Terrorists shit in toilets so sewage treatment systems were also legitimate targets. If Gazans have to deal with raw untreated sewage, tough shit, they’re only Arabs. Bad guys use electricity to plot their homemade rocket attacks so power stations had to go. If a million and a half non-terrorist Gazans have to suffer without power, too bad, it’s not Israel’s fault. Roads, bridges, farms, factories, all part of terrorist infrastructure so had to be trashed.

In the Israeli mindset, Palestinians have to be taught hard lessons so they tire of resisting occupation and the theft of their land and resources. BTW: targeting civilian infrastructure is considered collective punishment and a war crime. Factually inaccurate was the Israeli government’s response to the Amnesty report.

The cropper is the Goldstone Report. Richard Goldstone was commissioned by the UN to look into possible war crimes committed by both sides in the Gaza war and is a damning indictment of Israel’s actions. Israel’s standard response in these situations is to slander the messenger – they referred to the work as shoddy – but in this case they picked a near impossible target for their mudslinging. Might as well accuse Mother Teresa of being a pimp or Martin Luther King of child abuse.

Richard Goldstone is a South African Jew with strong ties to Israel and Zionism. He has impeccable credentials. He was chief prosecutor at the war crimes trials in Rwanda and Yugoslavia and is highly respected in the legal world. Needless to say, when the puppetmaster (Israel) pulls the strings, the puppet (America) dances to the master’s tune so Hillary characterized the report as being unfair. Now the congress is about to chime in with overwhelming support for Israel’s dastardly, bloody and indefensible actions.

Where is the humanity? What about justice, fairness, equality? Why is there no sympathy for a people who’ve had their land stolen from them, and have increasing amounts being taken even today? Colonization of conquered lands is fundamentally contrary to international law. Why is the US so quick to rail against other countries when they breach international laws or treaties, but so eager to cast a blind eye to Israel’s arrogant flouting of same? The Palestinian people have lived under a brutal and oppressive occupation for 60 years; how can there be so little feeling for their plight in the halls of American power? How can the US throw its weight behind the occupier and so easily blow off the tragedy of the occupied?

Now in the latest twist to this sordid saga, after being firm about the need for Israel to cease all settlement activity, Hillary now says the Palestinians should go into peace talks without preconditions. Israel on the other hand has made it absolutely clear, amongst other things, that it won’t negotiate on the status of Jerusalem and will never give up the majority of its settlements, but I guess preconditions aren’t preconditions to peace talks when Israel makes them.

Palestinians currently control less than half the West Bank. The separation wall has a dual purpose. In addition to the obvious desire to keep suicide bombers out, in many places it was built deep into Palestinian territory so in effect serves to separate 6% of the West Bank from a Palestinian state. Many Arabs now have to go through Israeli checkpoints to go from their homes to their fields.

The settlements take a large chunk of the West Bank. Maale Adumin, the largest settlement, with 30,000 people, occupies 32 square kilometers (about 13 sq. mi.). For perspective, I live in a town in Cambodia which has about the same number of people but uses only about 4 or 5 sq. kilometers, so Israel has confiscated far more land than necessary for its colonies. The West Bank is crisscrossed with Jewish only roads that allow settlers to go between the settlements and connect them to Israel, and are one reason why Arabs have to go through so many Israeli checkpoints to go anywhere in the West Bank.

Finally there are large Israeli military bases in the West Bank. BTW: Israel does not use the name, West Bank, but instead refers to the area as Judea and Samaria, biblical names which place the area firmly within ‘Greater Israel’. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Arab population, when Israeli Arab citizens and refugees are included, now about equals the Jewish population. Even though the 1967 borders give Jews 78% of the land area they still aren’t satisfied. They are hungry for real estate. God said it was theirs and presumably said they could use any means necessary, including wanton bloodshed and devastation, to take it.

As stated previously, what Israel wants for Palestine is a demilitarized state with the West Bank divided into three Bantustans. Palestine would have no international borders so Israel could control all access. That way they could deny the fundamentals of life - food, water, sanitation, livelihood - as they are now doing in Gaza, anytime they felt the need to turn the screws, for whatever reason. Might as well bring back slavery.

The one bright spot in the story is that many prominent Israelis are no longer able to travel abroad for fear of prosecution for committing war crimes. It’s called universal jurisdiction and was first used by Israel in prosecuting Nazis, though the crimes were committed elsewhere and not against its own citizens (obviously it wasn’t a state yet). Thus an Israeli accused of war crimes in Palestine can be arrested in a country like England or Spain and turned over to an international tribunal. They may have felt their bloody wars against (mostly) innocent civilians were justified, now if they leave Israel, they may well have to defend their actions in a court of law. A small step forward.