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Once again Israel unleashed its killing machine in Gaza as part of its long term strategy to drive out Palestinians from there in the same way Palestinians were driven out around seven decades ago. The ultimate purpose is to annex Gaza into greater Israel.
A 14 November New York Times article reports on the death of Hamas military commander Ahmed Jabari, killed by one of Israel’s recent (“pinpoint,”* according to the article) airstrikes. Naturally, the article makes sly non-mention of the others—including the children—killed in the strikes. One phrase in the article reflects the Israeli government’s logic regarding the matter: “The ferocity of the airstrikes, in response to what Israel called repeated rocket attacks by Gaza-based Palestinian militants…”
The article goes on to bolster this logic when considering the always-tenuous ceasefire between Hamas, the governing body of Gaza, and Israel:
The question posed is, Who started it? When one reads the above words, one gets the sense that the “starting” of “it” amounts to a recent phenomenon, and that the question’s answer is to be found in recent events, circa last weekend. This logic upheld by the Israeli government and the U.S.’s “newspaper of record” is also upheld by—I apologize in advance for the astonishing lack of surprise here—the U.S. government.
At the end of his presidency, George W. Bush** justified Operation Cast Lead—Israel’s massacre of around 1,400 Palestinians—by saying Hamas started it by breaking a ceasefire with rocket fire.
First of all, that was never even true. Israel broke the ceasefire on November 4th, 2008, when it raided the Gaza Strip and killed six Hamas members. The raid was reported by the Guardian at the time. The event wasn’t really mentioned in the mainstream discussion of the U.S., which reveals something about the predominant U.S. attitude towards Israel and Gaza. Thus concluded Patrick Higgins.
Killing Palestinians always failed to prick the conscience of so called champions of human rights in the West. They promptly throw their political, military and diplomatic weight in defending Israel .The world has become so indifferent to Israeli crimes that killing Palestinians have now become a common and frequent occurrence.
For example the US President Barack Obama who turned a blind to Israeli massacres and destruction as president elect during Israel’s 2008/2009 invasion of Gaza declared that “Israel has the right to defend itself.” This statement from the president of the most powerful sole super power in known human history was quite shameful. This also showed that US presidents do not think for their own country independent of Jewish lobbies which ruthlessly promote Israel’s interest often at the expense of American interests.
Reiterating President Obama’s view Tony Blair, accused of war crimes, called on Hamas, and not Israel, to stop firing rockets into Israel which would react to defend itself. Palestinians cannot expect anything from Tony Blair in view of his crime against Muslims.
As expected the United Nations which becomes completely ineffective and even paralyzed in the face of Israeli crimes called for de-escalation of tension on the part of both sides-Israel with one of the most sophisticated military machines in the world and the Palestinians in Gaza struggling for their next meal in their makeshift houses destroyed by Israel.
On Thursday 15 November Al Jazeera television interviewed American diplomat Denis Ross involved for long in the deceptive Israeli Palestinian peace talks. Listening to him one cannot help ask whether he was an American diplomat or Israeli public relations officer. That was the lowest depth to which he descended in defending Israeli atrocities parroting Israeli slogan of describing Palestinians as terrorists responsible for Israeli military strikes.
Palestinians in Gaza
Gaza is a small beach side strip of around 365 sq. miles by the Mediterranean Sea. Sandwiched between Egypt and Israel this territory of about 1.6 million Palestinians is one of the most densely populated in the world. Most of the inhabitants are refugees who were chased out at gun point by Jewish terror gangs, such as Irgun and Hagana and their lands grabbed to set up the Jewish state of Israel in 1948.
During the June 1967 Israeli war of aggression Gaza was brought under Israeli occupation. Since then the people there were subjected to untold oppressions, cruelties and daily killings besides arbitrary arrest and torture.
Unable to face the fierce Palestinian opposition, Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005 after 38 years and handed over control of the Rafah border, Gaza's sole contact with the outside world, to Egypt while Palestinian forces, monitored by European Union officials, too were stationed.
Almost four decades of systematic Israeli oppression and repeated border closures have driven Gazans to poverty and inevitably around 80 percent of them depend on food aid without which they would die in a matter of days.
Israel, under the guise of trying to free a captured soldier, bombed Gaza Strip in June 2006 with its F-16 fighter planes, helicopter gunships
and artillery fire from tanks and turned Gaza into a virtual slaughter house. Within days roads, bridges, power plants, water supply, universities, schools, hospitals, play grounds, mosques and even tombs and ministry buildings were bombed and destroyed causing untold misery to the people already starving. In an unprecedented lawlessness, and the violation of international law, Israel started mafia-style abduction of Hamas cabinet ministers, mayors and parliamentarians.
As usual there was deafening international silence in Washington, London, Paris, Moscow and Arab capitals while Egypt under its deposed President Hosni Mubarak joined Israel in closing the border and virtually sealing and cutting off Gaza from the rest of the world.
Since June 2007, 90 percent of Gaza's local industries too were forced to shut down, leaving 70,000 laborers jobless. There was no fuel to keep the plant running because Israel imposed a complete lock-down with no movement in or out of the Gaza Strip for people, or any kind of shipments in of vital food, fuel supplies and medicines. It was a slow death. Palestinians in Gaza and even in the West Bank were made virtual prisoners in their own homes and in a dire economic situation while Israel continued its air strikes. This was a grave war crime and in fact after World War II German leaders were sentenced to death for lesser crimes.
This situation continued for 20 long months until 17 January 2008 when Israel imposed a complete blockade and shut down Gaza’s only power plant plunging the entire territory into chaos. They were only allowed to breathe the air which Israel could not blockade.
People started queuing for bread, but there was no bread as it cannot be made without electricity. Connections with the outside world started fading as mobile phones and laptops ran out of battery power. There was no water because the pumps needed electricity. People could not go to work because there was no fuel for cars and buses. Hospitals with generators ran out of fuel to power them, halting all surgery procedures. In desperation, Palestinians tried to enter Egypt through the Rafah crossing, but the Egyptian border guards drove them out. Over 1000 Palestinians went out to the streets begging the world to end this cruel enforced starvation to death.
It was on these Palestinians that Israel unleashed its military might between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009 in its latest carnage.
During the 22 days of its carnage in December 2008 and January 2009 Israel killed, 1,334 Palestinians ,one-third of them children ,injured 5,450 , one-third of them children, displaced 100,000 , made homeless 50,000 ,destroyed 4,100 residential homes and buildings ,damaged 17,000 damaged (together accounting for 14 percent of all buildings in Gaza),destroyed 29 educational institutions ,destroyed or damaged 92 mosques, destroyed 1500 shops, factories and other commercial facilities,20 ambulances, ruined 35-60% of agricultural land and caused an estimated damage of $1.9 billion in total estimated damages.
It was from these Palestinians in Gaza that President Obama and Tony Blair said that Israeli has the right to defend itself-perhaps by indiscriminate killings.
Commenting on the latest Israeli killings in Gaza respected intellectual Noam Chomsky, himself a Jew, and a very loud protestor of the oppressive policies of Israel had this to say in an article dated 9 November 2012 under the title My Visit to Gaza, the World's Largest Open-Air Prison “.
It hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world's largest open-air prison, where some 1.5 million people on a roughly 140-square-mile strip of land are subject to random terror and arbitrary punishment, with no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade.
Such cruelty is to ensure that Palestinian hopes for a decent future will be crushed, and that the overwhelming global support for a diplomatic settlement granting basic human rights will be nullified. The Israeli political leadership has dramatically illustrated this commitment in the past few days, warning that they will "go crazy" if Palestinian rights are given even limited recognition by the U.N.
This threat to "go crazy" ("nishtagea") – that is, launch a tough response – is deeply rooted, stretching back to the Labor governments of the 1950s, along with the related "Samson Complex": If crossed, we will bring down the Temple walls around us.
Prominent military-political analyst Yoram Peri wrote that the Israeli army's task was not to defend the state, but "to demolish the rights of innocent people just because they are Araboushim (a harsh racial epithet) living in territories that God promised to us."
Of course, there were pretexts – there always are. The usual one, trotted out when needed, is "security": in this case, against homemade rockets from Gaza.
In 2008, a truce was established between Israel and Hamas. Not a single Hamas rocket was fired until Israel broke the truce under cover of the U.S. election on Nov. 4, invading Gaza for no good reason and killing half a dozen Hamas members.
The Israeli government was advised by its highest intelligence officials that the truce could be renewed by easing the criminal blockade and ending military attacks. But the government of Ehud Olmert rejected these options, resorting to its huge advantage in violence: Operation Cast Lead.
A necessarily superficial impression after spending several days in Gaza is amazement, not only at Gazans' ability to go on with life but also at the vibrancy and vitality among young people, particularly at the university, where I attended an international conference. But one can detect signs that the pressure may become too hard to bear. Reports indicate that there is simmering frustration among young people – recognition that under the U.S.-Israeli occupation the future holds nothing for them.
A visitor to Gaza can't help feeling disgust at the obscenity of the occupation, compounded with guilt, because it is within our power to bring the suffering to an end and allow the Samidin to enjoy the lives of peace and dignity that they deserve.
The car in which Ahmed Jabri, second in command of Military Wing of Hamas, after being bombed by Israel
