Yet another Christmas of pain

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Yet another Christmas of pain

(Friday 26 December 2008)



STUART LITTLEWOOD looks at the West's shameful disregard for the Geneva conventions in the besieged Gaza Strip.

WHO is holding the governments of Britain, the EU and the US to account this Christmas for aiding and abetting the deliberate starving of 1.5 million in Gaza? Hardly anybody.

Our Foreign Secretary David Miliband, our very Christian Prime Minister Brown and our even more pious peace envoy Mr Blair have done nothing to insist that Israel's blockade is ended. The "zionist tendency" in Whitehall still goes unchallenged.


Our politicians need to be reminded of the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is supposed to protect civilians under military occupation.


It prohibits violence to life or person, murder, torture, taking of hostages, outrages upon personal dignity and collective punishment.


Article 33 says that no protected person may be punished for an offence that he or she did not personally commit.


Collective punishment is a war crime. In World War II, the nazis practised collective punishment to suppress resistance.


Entire villages, towns or districts were held responsible for any resistance activity that took place there.


Isn't this what the Israelis and their Western collaborators are doing to Gaza?


The Israeli regime doesn't seem to have heard of the Geneva conventions, although it has been instructed to observe them in various UN resolutions. Nor does it respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.


We have seen the remnants of Palestine become so fractured by the occupation that they cannot possibly be drawn together to form a cohesive, viable, independent state.


Why international leaders cling to the idea of a two-state solution is therefore a mystery, unless they plan to make the Palestinian state a permanently impoverished dumping ground for dispossessed Arabs, which will remain forever crippled, subservient, totally under Israeli control and unable to prosper.


Unfortunately, Gaza, with its freely elected government of resistance, is an obstacle to the plan for total Israeli domination and needs to be crushed.


The way to bring the Gazan population to its knees is to blast them with high-tech weaponry, wreck their infrastructure, trash their economy, threaten reinvasion, impose a starvation siege and stunt the growth of their children.


For many Israelis, it's a price worth paying to eliminate Hamas.
Brown's thoughts right now are with the Jewish community, wishing them a happy Chanuka from Number10.gov.uk and recalling how he celebrated with them Israel's 60th birthday.


The flip side of of the celebrations is the 60th remembrance of el Nakba, "the catastrophe," in which nearly a million Palestinians were driven from their homes and lands by Israeli terrorists.


Of course, Brown has no festive greeting for the Gazans. And no word of cheer, either, for the Christian communities in Gaza and the West Bank who are endlessly persecuted by his Israeli friends.


If our thoughts are not with the children of Gaza, Muslim and Christian alike, at this season of goodwill, they ought to be.


I'm told that many people packed into the ravaged Strip are having to scavenge through rubbish tips for food to survive.


What sort of Christmas is this for their little ones while the criminals who inflict on them such unspeakable hardship and torment and who deny them their human rights have their snouts in the Yuletide trough and enjoy a warm bed?


Decent people would not let this happen.

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Speak out for Palestine

[Redoubt]

Many of us look at the Israel/Palestine issue like we do our politics, with one side being the good guys and the other being the bad guys. And it’s an easy thing to do because we, as a species, do like to tribalize our affairs by stereotyping groups to create adversaries and allies.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is one borne on the wings of mutual hate. Both sides talk about living in peace but neither show much inclination to practice what they preach. To wit: Hamas showers the Israeli countryside with rockets and mortars, Israel retaliates with air attacks. It’s an old story.

While all this is going on, we act like an audience at a Jerry Springer Show... or even a sporting event; rooting for one side while booing the other. Oh yes, it is a perfectly bloody affair with full-time media attention and folks packing the seats to watch the spectacle.

The antagonists in this arena are old actors; the animosities go back millennia so... you’ll forgive me if I resist joining anybody's cheering section. If and when these career enemies decide to bury the hatchet, break bread (as it were) as neighbors and co-owners of history and the dirt they have turned into a mass graveyard, there will be peace.

But certainly not a day, not a minute before.

...

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

The main thing to remember, when it's stones against tanks and fireworks against F16s, is that Israel, an occupying nuclear power existing only on Washington's support, has an election in a few weeks. As usual, it's about careerist, opportunists looking after themselves.

[Redoubt]

Sitting on a park bench, a bullet, mortar round, missile, rocket or even a squarely placed stone will all kill with equal impunity.

The issue here is that neither side appear to want peace. If so, there would be no blockade, there would be no rockets... there would be thinking, feeling human beings sitting and talking instead of looking for ways to further inflame the situation by antagonizing their opposites.

I've heard all the bluster from both sides and none of it holds water. If even one of these two wanted peace, there would be peace. But neither do and everything else is rhetorical babblecrap.

...

[ZingPao]

I think Redoubt just scored.

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Originally Posted by ZingPao

I think Redoubt just scored.

Israel has definitely scored Zing. Might is right. What has this got to do with equality, justice and democracy.

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

The Qassam rockets myths

I warned you months ago: the magic word is 'Sderot'. Any amount of barbarism can be justified by the frankly risible rocket attacks on southern Israel. The Israeli propaganda line, repeated with dogged fanaticism by its apologists everywhere, is that Israel performed an immense act of goodness in withdrawing its colonies from Gaza, and the native ingrates actually responded by sending a spray of Qassam rockets aloft in celebration. To add insult to injury, the bleeders even used former 'settlement' buildings to launch the rockets from. Such beliefs have to be encouraged to justify such outrageous proposals as the levelling of Gaza. Before this gets out of hand and people start using the rockets to justify some sort of "holocaust", let us at least bear the facts in mind for a while.

The Qassam rockets were being used as one component of an array of military tactics deployed by Gazan groups before the pull-out, the Gush Katif colonies being the prominent target. This was a response to a wave of violence and expulsions in which, for example, 13,350 residents of Rafah had their homes and life belongings destroyed in the year preceding the withdrawal, courtesy of Israeli tanks and Caterpillar bulldozers. Parts of Gaza came to resemble Grozny. The Israelis frequently attacked ambulances, at one point using the argument that UNRWA had allowed Qassam rockets to be loaded on board one such vehicle (this turned out to be a lie, but it is still repeated on many a media outlet and website). The vast majority of casualties from their use date back to the period of formal colonialism. After the withdrawal, the rate at which these were used diminished dramatically. Their use has spiked in response to serial atrocities against Palestinians, such as the slaughter of the Ghaliya family on the Gaza beach, (in which Hamas broke an eighteen month unilateral ceasefire).

There were few such rockets fired during the six-month ceasefire, even though Israel didn't respect its terms, but their use was increased again as Israel broke the truce on November 4th (burn that date into your brain and remember it next time someone tells you that those nasty Hamas thugs wouldn't renew the ceasefire). Now, there are legitimate arguments about both the efficacy and ethics of using such weapons. To my mind, they have very little going for them as a tactic of resistance. But the apparently widespread belief that Qassam rockets are the vindictive and jubilant response of sneering Palestinian jihadists to Israeli mushiness is not justified by any evidence. In fact, if the aim were truly to end Qassam rocket fire, the logical option would to be engage in a unilateral ceasefire and invite Hamas to enter into a process of dialogue. But that brings us to another myth, the myth of Hamas rejectionism, which is for another post.Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, qassam rockets, sderot, zionism

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

The myth of Hamas rejectionism

Israel's opponents are always rejectionist, refusing to acknowledge the Jewish state's repeated olive branches and fanatically insisting on a maximalist programme. Thus, the late Yasser Arafat could never be Israel's much sought after 'partner in peace'. This image was never accurate. The PLO spent the 1990s engaged in a drastic reduction of its aims and aspirations, eventually coming close to negotiating a two-state settlement at Taba, before Ehud Barak called off the discussions. Former Clinton aide Robert Malley pointed out that far from Arafat rejecting a 'generous offer' from Israel (as has been alleged), "it could be said that Israel rejected the unprecedented two-state solution put to them by the Palestinians, including the following provisions: a state of Israel incorporating some land captured in 1967 and including a very large majority of its settlers; the largest Jewish Jerusalem in the city's history [and] security guaranteed by a US-led international presence".

Still, the myths persisted throughout the assaults on Jenin and Rafah, throughout the bulldozings and massacres, until Arafat died under seige. Mahmoud Abbas is so craven that it is difficult to depict him as a sinister rejectionist. Instead, Sharon insisted that Abbas use the scant resources of the Palestinian Authority to pursue a war against Hamas, even as the settlement building continued and the wall was erected, with Palestinian farmland being destroyed and the economy crushed. This was itself one of the causes of the surge in support for Hamas which, contrary to prevalent misconceptions, was far more pragmatic in its ability to work with other forces, such as the PFLP (despite the latter's occasional sectarianism).

Since Hamas sees the whole of historic Palestine as an Islamic waqf, and does not concede the legitimacy of Zionism's claim to any part of the territory, it was easy to construe them as rejectionist. They adhere to the principles of the old Palestinian national movement, before the PLO embarked on its long swerve to accomodation, those of Palestinian nationalism and popular armed struggle. So, when Ismail Haniyeh was sworn in as Prime Minister of Palestine, it was simple to dismiss him and the movement he represents as a terrorist, enemy of peace, etc. Yet, everything about Hamas' subsequent conduct demonstrates their pragmatic attitude, including the attempts to forge a national unity government with Fatah despite the latter's acceptance of Israeli weapons and money in its pursuit of a civil war against Hamas.

Despite an international blockade and opprobrium from the Israeli leadership, Hamas repeatedly signalled its willigness to accept a two-state settlement. It imposed a unilateral ceasefire on its own cadre, refusing to be drawn by repeated Israeli provocations. A crippling blockade, habitual violence and naked attempts to destabilise the elected government did not deter Hamas from this course. Only this year, after a US-Israeli sponsored armed coup attempt in Gaza, a successful putsch in the West Bank, and repeated incursions by the IDF, Hamas offered Israel a ten year ceasefire if it could abide by the terms of a two-state settlement: this offer, just like every other peace overture, was contemptuously dismissed. And now, most recently, a ceasefire agreed on in June has been flagrantly overturned by Israel. No one noticed, at least no one who writes for a newspaper. The myth that Hamas ended the truce as just the latest example of its innate rejectionism now underwrites a depraved assault which has killed 300 people and is about to become a ground invasion. Israel's intransigence, brutality, recklessness, refusal to work with anyone or negotiate in any meaningful way, will continue to be projected onto its opponents for as long as Israel has the superior propaganda resources, and for as long as the colonial trope of 'native fanaticism' governs discursive responses to occupation and resistance.

Update: Dennis Perrin notes "how all the excuses for slaughtering Palestinians when the PLO was Hitler are now being used to tar Hamas. They reject compromise, are bottomless Jew haters, are addicted to death, want to drive Israel into the sea, etc."Labels: colonialism, fatah, hamas, Israel, native fanaticism, plo, rejectionism