Gaza massacres must spur us to action

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 27 December 2008



"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing." Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel's latest massacres were broadcast around the world.

A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel's attacks, and others will follow.

Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers. Among those Israel labels "terrorists" were more than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training. An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school.

Shmerling's joy has been echoed by Israelis and their supporters around the world; their violence is righteous violence. It is "self-defense" against "terrorists" and therefore justified. Israeli bombing -- like American and NATO bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan -- is bombing for freedom, peace and democracy.

The rationalization for Israel's massacres, already being faithfully transmitted by the English-language media, is that Israel is acting in "retaliation" for Palestinian rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since the six-month truce expired on 19 December (until today, no Israeli had been killed or injured by these recent rocket attacks).

But today's horrific attacks mark only a change in Israel's method of killing Palestinians recently. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin, cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from reaching them by Israel.


What the media never question is Israel's idea of a truce. It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce, Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for schoolchildren.

As John Ging, the head of operations of the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), told The Electronic Intifada in November: "there was five months of a ceasefire in the last couple of months, where the people of Gaza did not benefit; they did not have any restoration of a dignified existence. We in fact at the UN, our supplies were also restricted during the period of the ceasefire, to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position and with a few days of closure we ran out of food."


That is an Israeli truce. Any response to Israeli attacks -- whether peaceful protests against the apartheid wall in Bilin and Nilin in the West Bank is met with bullets and bombs. There are no rockets launched at Israel from the West Bank, and yet Israel's attacks, killings, land theft, settler pogroms and kidnappings never ceased for one single day during the truce. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has acceded to all of Israel's demands, even assembling "security forces" to fight the resistance on Israel's behalf. None of that has spared a single Palestinian or her property or livelihood from Israel's relentless violent colonization. It did not save, for instance, the al-Kurd family from seeing their home of 50 years in occupied East Jerusalem demolished on 9 November, so the land it sits on could be taken by settlers.


read on and weep...

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10055.shtml

Unfortuantely, they have continued the insane path of thinking they can annihilate Israel by violent resistance.

It is really unfortunate that some people do not understand Israel's restraint, and how willing and eager Israeli citizens are to live in peace, side by side, with the Palestinians.

They have given up and compromised much in the last 60 years, but have never gotten anything but bombs, rockets and terrorism in return.

It didn't have to be this way, and still doesn't, but I don;t see a change on the horizon.

I mean, to ignore the history of the region as you do, and to put all blame on palestine? I have to ask. What are you smoking?

The Israelis have always accepted partitions, peace plans.

They have returned territory, supplied money, weapons, food, fuel.

The Palestinians have offered not an ounce of compromise.

They still want ALL of Israel, while some claim that they will settle for "full right of return" (translation, overrunning Israel with 4.5 million Palestinians and putting Jews back in the dhimmi position that Arabs prefer them in, if around at all).

Who writes your stuff? Paul Wolfowitz? Dick Cheney? Richard Perle? Doug Feith?

I doubt you have to live with daily terrorism.

that the Palestinians lack an effective government. Its doubtful that an agreement, no matter how well and honestly meant, could actually be carried out like the one with Egypt.

doesn't work in Israel any better than it does here. The Israeli citizens who wish to live in peace are not who's running the country.

Like supplying funds for schools and hospitals, and providing food for the starving. Killing just begets killing, and condoning killing does as well.

Are they getting lazy or anxious?

If you have a weapon, and don't use it, especially against stone throwers, the weapon can spoil and go bad.

The Israelis are actually responding to actual threats and terrorism, not made up ones.

I yelled and screamed at him.
told him he was endangering my family (I never believed in smoke detectors]
so I had to go over to his house and kill him and his family.
and the Jury sentenced Me to Death?
that argument doesn't work in America.

I think Israel learned its lesson about urban warfare in Lebanon. They won't likely be sending in ground troops anytime soon.

Best bet is that the Isrealis are using laser guided bombs targeted via UAVs or manned aircraft.

Israel has for some time been building up a list of locations and their corresponding functions. They have been working that list, and I recall reading that there was 3 days worth of targets on it. Obviously they started with the highest priority ones first. After that it will be popups and targets of opportunity, mostly detected by UAVs. There was some videos on U-Tube showing how that worked from the last flail in Lebanon.

Its not clear if there will be any ground action at this time, or if it will be needed. Its been reported that the PA is ready to move back in when Hamas capitulates.

And I assume they are launching and designating out of manpad range.

Why are they starving? Why doesn't Egypt sell food?
Why are their mind starving? Why doesn't Egypt sell pens, paper, supplies?
Why are the unable to provide for their future? Why doesn't Egypt work to allow employment opportunities near the Egypt-Gaza border?
Why is their runaway inflation by smuggling (through Egypt)? Why doesn't Egypt allow an orderly flow of goods?

The truth is the rest of the Arab world considers Gazans less than "dogs". They are good sub human cannon fodder for annoying & terrorizing the Jews. The idea of actually helping them actually educating them, actually employing them is disgusting.

Long ago the Arab states could have made Israel irrelivent. Isreal closing the border crossing... WHO CARES.
There could be a thriving Gaza-Egypt trade going on. A flow of supplies, electricity, water, food, ideas. They have chosen not to for a reason......

They NEVER want the issue resolved. Why? Most Arabs states consider Palestinians like a 2nd class human. They are worthy of guns, explosives, lies about martyrdom, and a cycle of never ending violence but a real life are you kidding? They don't want them in their country. They don't want them with a democracy or living peacefully with the Jews. What if people in their own country start asking questions?

Until that fact is confronted and confronted hard there will never be an incentive for peace. Palestinians will NEVER have a reason to put the rockets and suicide bombs down and thus Israel will NEVER have a reason to stop airstrikes & raids. That is EXACTLY the status quo that the Arab powers WANT and have helped to achieve for last 40 years.

That is not going to change anytime soon. There are also some treaty entanglements at this point. Checkout http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL34346.pdf for more details.

The U.S. had plenty of excuses for it's massacres of natives too