Gaza massacres are the price of a Jewish state

As the Israeli army pauses its shelling of neighborhoods, hospitals, and ambulances in Gaza, Ali Abunimah distills the situation to its essence:

Israel cannot exist “as a Jewish state” without violating the rights of all Palestinians to varying degrees... The massacre in Gaza is at the extreme end of the spectrum of abuses necessary to maintain Jewish sectarian rule in Palestine, but it is part of the same policy that requires employment and housing discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and outright land theft and ethnic cleansing in the Naqab (Negev) and the occupied West Bank.

If you support Israel’s “right to exist as a Jewish state” in a country whose indigenous Palestinian people today form half the population, then you ... must come to terms with the inevitability of massacres. If you oppose the horrific, repeated massacres in Gaza, then join the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), a movement that aims to decolonize Palestine and restore to all the people all their legitimate and inalienable rights.

Resources: Abunimah's book The Battle for Justice in Palestine. The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation holds its annual conference for organizers September 19-21 (wish it were closer than San Diego). The Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions. A more recent petition calling for international arms embargo to Israel.

Photo: Shejaiya neighborhood in Gaza 26 July 2014, destroyed this week by Israeli shelling and aerial bombing. Photo via Kate Benyon-Tinker (@katebt3000), Middle East producer for BBC.

Israel's Lies

Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network.

I am not aware of a single major American newspaper, radio station or TV channel whose coverage of the assault on Gaza questions this version of events. Criticism of Israel’s actions, if any (and there has been none from the Bush administration), has focused instead on whether the IDF’s carnage is proportional to the threat it sought to counter, and whether it is taking adequate measures to prevent civilian casualties.

Middle East peacemaking has been smothered in deceptive euphemisms, so let me state bluntly that each of these claims is a lie.

Israel's Lies, Henry Siegman, January 15, 2009
Siegman is director of the US Middle East Project in New York and a visiting research professor at SOAS, University of London. He is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America.

h/t Eric Williams at Wampum, who also provides a list of links for relief contributions for Gaza. Eric's Gaza posts have been consistently insightful, starting with one on Christmas day that essentially predicted the events about to unfold.
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Snowballs in hell

In a Ha'aretz analysis that by turns examines and displays the cynicism and delusions of all parties to the slaughter in Gaza, this passage actually made me laugh out loud, but not in a good way:

In just 11 days, president-elect Barack Obama will take office. On Tuesday he was asked about the war between Hamas and Israel. He said he was concerned about the civilian casualties on both sides. That concern could turn into anger at Israel in the course of the inauguration ceremony. Washington expects - though it is not saying so out loud - that Israel will end the war before Obama is sworn in as president. [my emphasis]

Anger at Israel in the course of the inauguration ceremony is about as likely as 80-degree temperatures on Inaugural Day. No, there's nothing for the Israelis to fear from the new administration, or from Congress. If the Israeli government ends its assault before Obama is sworn in, it will be for their own internal political reasons.

It certainly won't be because they've run out of bullets, bombs, and shells with which to bury Gazans in the rubble of their houses. Those have our names on them. Anyone who wants to pretend that the current Israeli onslaught wasn't green-lighted by the U.S. government needs to explain the unusually large, irregular, commercial shipments of weapons and ammunition from Sunny Point, NC to Ashdod, an Israeli port 20 miles from Gaza -- 3000 tons in December, another 1000 tons planned for this month.

But the ice is cracking. The discussion of the occupation can no longer be shut down or controlled here as it used to. The spectacle of active political support for Israel's latest atrocities is increasing the disconnect between the American people and our elected "representatives" and media elite.

As with so many things, the change seems to be coming too late to do much good, but you never know where it will end up. The important thing is to push it along when you can.

Launching Qassam rockets over the Gaza border is a war crime. Over a period of years, the rockets have killed dozens of Israeli civilians and a few Palestinians, injured others, caused damage, and fostered a climate of fear and uncertainty.

Years of U.S.-Israeli blockade and economic strangulation, "targeted assassinations", an attempted coup against the elected government, with periodic and ever-more-savage aerial bombing, missile and tank assaults on densely populated areas: these constitute a far greater war crime, one in which we are directly complicit. More than a third of the 800+ killed since December 27 are women and children; well more than half are civilians and noncombatants. It is simply wrong to characterize the Israeli actions as self-defense.

Tell your Senators and your House member how you view their active cheerleading for Israel's assault on Gaza. If you're represented by one of the 27 House representatives who voted 'no' or 'present', please thank and encourage them.

Update: 2:10 pm, 12 January - Rep. Dennis Kucinich speaking [4 min video] in opposition to the House resolution on Jan. 9. David Luban post on the legalities and illegalities of Israel's current assault on Gaza. Pat Lang's comments on IDF ground forces.
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A farewell feast

My friends are always preparing a farewell feast for me,
A soothing grave in the shade of oak trees
A marble epitaph of time
And always I anticipate them at the funeral:
Who then has died...who?

From Under Siege

Mahmoud Darwish, buried today in Ramallah

Polite and deadly silence

Discussion of the U.S. role in the factional war now raging in Gaza puts one beyond the pale in U.S. politics. But ignoring it doesn't make it disappear.

We're arming and supporting a faction of Fatah in order to end the Palestininan governing coalition and bring down the elected Hamas government. Even if it fails to bring about such a collapse, this policy achieves a host of subsidiary goals: dividing Palestinians, driving the population to a point where they will be willing to accept rule by anyone as long as the fighting stops and the economy is allowed to function, and painting Palestinians to the world as inherently violent and unstable.

This crime, facilitated by a despicable man as part of a policy with a long, vile history, makes me so angry and sick that I have to struggle to avoid letting it paralyze me. One way to do that is simply not to stay quiet.

The results on the ground in Gaza are pushing Palestinians over the edge into despair. Read one mother's personal account here, and her journalistic and political analysis here. Most of all I recommend the excellent, linkful overview by Tony Karon. Update: 19 May 10:45 am - Another worthwhile piece by Paul Woodward and Mark Perry on the news coverage (and suppression) of the plan. End update.

The unwillingness to talk about this use of our tax dollars allows liberals to read the news from Gaza and tut-tut to themselves about "those people." Let's end the polite silence and averted eyes. As Laila El-Haddad says:

"The most troubling part is how this is unfolding with such purpose, and yet with so little protest.

Footnote: Although for the last year and a half I've been expecting and tracking the usual U.S. government reaction to the wrong party winning an election held with its approval, it took Jonathan Schwarz applying his gift of dark comedy to make me realize that my own silence about it is a big part of why the situation eats at me so. I aspire to post again someday without being prodded by A Tiny Revolution, but in the meantime: read him daily.

Update: 20 May 6:00pm - Coverage on the front page of Friday's Washington Post means that media silence on this U.S. policy is over: 'Fatah Troops Enter Gaza With Israeli Assent; Hundreds Were Trained in Egypt Under U.S.-Backed Program to Counter Hamas'. It's in the open; when is anyone in a position to affect it going to speak up?