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ellenrr

(3,864 posts)
Mon Jul 21, 2014, 05:29 AM Jul 2014

Dennis Kucinich: Israel Invades Gaza Because It Can

Israel invades Gaza because it can. Gazans, in the face of an invasion, have no ability to strike back, while Israel strikes forward. Israel has total military superiority, an air force which can knock and then bomb, a navy which can shell Gazans from miles off shore, an army which can roll tanks into Gaza nonstop. Gazans have no army, navy, or air force with which to defend. Israel, as any nation, has a right to defend itself, but it confuses offense with defense. It is on the offensive in Gaza.

Israel, with its overwhelming military strength, is attacking and invading Gaza in violation of international and U.S. law. Its construction of settlements violates the Oslo agreement. Its Central Bank dries up the Gaza economy and blocks payments to Gazan civil servants. Its total control brings the Palestinians to utter subjection and total despair.

Israel can kill, injure, and humiliate Palestinians at will, with impunity, which is exactly what gave rise to Hamas and strengthens Hamas' hold in Gaza, even as the IDF advances. Israel will go door to door in Gaza in the hunt for Hamas, which comprises the government of the Palestinians and is therefore a necessary party to any peace talks. It is axiomatic that if you kill your partner for peace, you will have no partner for peace.

There will be no peace, for now, as Gaza is turned into an abattoir, to collectively punish Gazans for supporting Hamas. Israel, in its attempt to divide Hamas from the Gazans, will actually multiply Hamas' strength in Gaza and elsewhere. Israel may indeed find and kill Hamas officials. But it is not the current individuals who make up Hamas who constitute Israel's deep dilemma, which threatens its long term security. It is Israel's policies which gave rise to Hamas and which, if left unaltered, will spawn increased resistance no matter how many members of Hamas Israel is successful in apprehending or killing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-j-kucinich/israel-invades-gaza_b_5598535.html

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Dennis Kucinich: Israel Invades Gaza Because It Can (Original Post) ellenrr Jul 2014 OP
I have new found respect for Dennis Kucinich 4now Jul 2014 #1
I was never as enthusiastic about him as some, but this also raises him in my eyes. nt ellenrr Jul 2014 #2
Dennis, telling it like it is! InAbLuEsTaTe Jul 2014 #12
Thank You For Sharing cantbeserious Jul 2014 #3
It takes courage to take a strong stand on such a controversial issue. Chemisse Jul 2014 #4
I like Kucinich, but not here Shemp Howard Jul 2014 #5
This message was self-deleted by its author cerveza_gratis Jul 2014 #6
Documentation of Israeli policies which give rise to Hamas. Divernan Jul 2014 #7
It was so nice when that twrep vanished from view. iandhr Jul 2014 #8
Yeahhh right. mikeysnot Jul 2014 #10
K&R DeSwiss Jul 2014 #9
How Israel helped to spawn Hamas (WSJ from 2009) RufusTFirefly Jul 2014 #11
Israel didn't force Gazans to vote Hamas. n/t shira Jul 2014 #14
but Israel is punishing Palestinians for their votes noiretextatique Jul 2014 #15
... awoke_in_2003 Jul 2014 #13

4now

(1,596 posts)
1. I have new found respect for Dennis Kucinich
Mon Jul 21, 2014, 05:42 AM
Jul 2014

I was wrong about him and I am sorry for any bad things I ever said about him.
Maybe getting out of congress allows someone to speak the obvious truth.

Shemp Howard

(889 posts)
5. I like Kucinich, but not here
Mon Jul 21, 2014, 07:02 AM
Jul 2014

I'm a huge fan of Dennis Kucinich. I find his honesty and candor refreshing. And I agree with almost everything he says in this article.

But yet I am very disappointed in Kucinich here. He does not say one word about Hamas firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel. Those rockets are undeniably a major part of the picture. To ignore the rockets is to turn a thoughtful article into a propaganda piece.

Response to ellenrr (Original post)

Divernan

(15,480 posts)
7. Documentation of Israeli policies which give rise to Hamas.
Mon Jul 21, 2014, 07:30 AM
Jul 2014

Here's an article which expands on what Kucinich refers to, i.e., the Israeli policies which have given and continue to give rise to Hamas. This article (from the UK, not the US, of course) documents an Israeli policy of violent colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Just this February, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories – Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law at Princeton University – submitted his final report to the UN Human Rights Council. Presenting his findings at a news conference in March, he said that Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza bore “unacceptable characteristics of colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/israels-attack-gaza-culmination-66-years-settler-colonialism/

Headline: Israel’s attack on Gaza is the culmination of 66 years of settler-colonialism

Israel claims its latest onslaught against the population of Gaza is a response to Hamas rocket-fire, targeted at "terrorists" and motivated to "restore quiet." However, an analysis of the IDF's public relations points and war doctrines as well as the historical context of the events, shows the root cause of the crisis to be Israel's decades-long programme of violent settler colonialism. . . . .

(Just one of the documented examples of Israeli policies from this article - thanks Wikileaks!), subtitled,
Calibrating the Gaza starvation diet

A US diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks in 2011 quoted Israeli officials saying they wanted to “keep Gaza’s economy on the brink of collapse.” The idea was to ensure the economy was “functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.”

One of the mechanisms to do this was what veteran Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook called Israel’s “starvation diet” for Gaza. Israeli Defence ministry documents obtained by the Israeli human rights group Gisha showed that Israeli officials had calculated the minimum number of calories – so-called ‘red lines’ – needed by Gaza’s population to avoid malnutrition. But as Cook reports, while this figure required allowing in 170 trucks a day, in practice Israeli military officials permitted an average of just 67 trucks per day into Gaza (compared to a daily 400 before the blockade).

“The facts on the ground in Gaza demonstrate that food imports consistently fell below the red lines,” said Robert Turner, operations director of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). No wonder a 2012 UNRWA report forecasts that if Israel’s policies toward Gaza continue, the strip will be uninhabitable by 2020.

RufusTFirefly

(8,812 posts)
11. How Israel helped to spawn Hamas (WSJ from 2009)
Mon Jul 21, 2014, 08:33 AM
Jul 2014
Surveying the wreckage of a neighbor's bungalow hit by a Palestinian rocket, retired Israeli official Avner Cohen traces the missile's trajectory back to an "enormous, stupid mistake" made 30 years ago.

"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel's destruction.

Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins," primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.

...

A look at Israel's decades-long dealings with Palestinian radicals -- including some little-known attempts to cooperate with the Islamists -- reveals a catalog of unintended and often perilous consequences. Time and again, Israel's efforts to find a pliant Palestinian partner that is both credible with Palestinians and willing to eschew violence, have backfired. Would-be partners have turned into foes or lost the support of their people.


WSJ from 2009: How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas
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