When George W Bush hailed the Palestinian elections a victory for “democracy” no one would have expected those who claim to represent Western democracy to then wage a war against it. For the Palestinians however this would came as no surprise. As soon as Hamas was sworn into Government they immediately called for a Government of national unity. The so called “International Community” enforced a policy of isolation and Israel in turn maintained its policies of assassinations, arrests, torture, settler expansion and house demolitions. Hamas remained silent even though Israel was murdering and arresting its members. It was not until the US sponsored Fatah party attempted to overthrow Hamas in Gaza [1] that the resistance movement began pro-actively arming itself in preparation for intensified armed resistance. Fatah’s failure to destroy Hamas meant that Israel had plans as Ehud Barak himself admitted before the current offensive, to destroy the newly democratically elected Palestinian Government.
The recent slaughter is Gaza has for me been all too consuming, demanding my anger, helplessness, bitterness and sorrow. What has become ever more apparent is the reality in which we live. The ‘clash of civilizations’ is a reality, which no amount of intellectual debate can escape, ignore or reject. Of course depending on your perspective the slaughter of over 1000 Gazans is either justified or unjustifiable; the two intrinsically linked depending on where your sympathies lay. Looking at the events in Gaza more broadly reveals two striking realities, which again are not really up for debate. Not in my mind anyway. For example the Gaza Genocide (which I have just decided to call it) is a totally different war in the US press. Western politicians from George Bush, Gordon Brown, and Nicolas Sarkozy and practically all other western leaders have blamed Hamas for the disgusting actions of the Israeli Government and military. Tzipi Livni was also reported to have told the French president that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza [2]; Mr Sarkozy was all too willing to accept this lie. However as I am about to write, there cannot be any debate as far as the grave human rights violations in Gaza are concerned. There are no real ifs or buts when the obvious injustice perpetuated by cause and effect, occupation & resistance are concerned. Those who believe whole heartedly that Hamas rockets are responsible for the Gaza Genocide are either deluded or brainwashed by the powerful propaganda machine Israel deploys during their genocidal campaigns. How can Hamas be responsible for the barbarity of the Israeli “Defence” Forces, which has from its very beginnings been a cruel and murderous institution since the days of the Haganah? [3]
The Israeli occupation of Palestine came into existence long before the Quassim rockets & suicide bombings. Resistance is a natural right each and every human being is entitled to, especially when their ability to live as human beings is under grave threat. To blame Hamas rockets for the Gaza Massacre is to deny the obvious truth; that there is no such thing as a “humane” occupation. No colonial power has ever treated their occupied population with any form of human dignity as history has concluded. Israel is no different from the European conquest of the Americas or the British conquest of Australia. If we consider that no rockets have been fired from the Fatah dominated West Bank we can clearly see that Israel’s Apartheid policies are not the results of so called “terror” but inherent in a society founded on colonial principles, and created by means of ethnic cleansing and terror. During the so called ceasefire with Hamas Israel killed at least 50 Palestinians in the West Bank, while their illegal settlements continue to expand, with little or no resistance from the ruling Fatah party who have been complicit in this latest saga. How would anyone feel if they were to slowly watch their homeland reduced to isolated Bantustans, at the hands of foreign settlers who harass the local population with impunity? Israel’s crimes in Gaza are not therefore the results of Qassim rockets, but are in fact the product of a long standing and brutal occupation and the policies, which maintain control over the Palestinians through the use of violence.
Many western leaders and political figures especially in the United States used the following analogy when justifying the Gaza Massacre; ‘would any sovereign country on earth tolerate rocket attacks from their neighbours without reacting as Israel has done in Gaza?’ It is propaganda like this, which has created a reality whereby people (especially here in the West) not only support Israel’s Genocide in Gaza, but also claim that all the blood is on the hands of the Hamas leadership. I sometimes wonder how some clearly intelligent people come to draw such absurd conclusions based on the lies coming from the Israeli Government with backing from their allies (mainly the US, UK & France). It should be remembered that Gaza is part of occupied Palestine no one mentions that the vast majority of Gazans are refugees or decedents of refugees who were forced by use of terror from their Palestinian homeland in what is now Israel. It has also conveniently been ignored by world leaders and international press that Gaza was already suffering a humanitarian crisis long before the latest siege due to Israel’s blockade on the narrow strip of coastal land. It has also been widely reported that those who require life saving medical care are unlikely to even be granted permission to leave Gaza by the Israeli authorities. Those lucky enough to get the green light are often turned away from check points by racist power hungry Israeli soldiers.
Israel’s crimes have throughout history been covered up by the lies of their leaders, which filters through to Israeli society, turning lies into “truth”. The massacre at Deir Yassin [4] where dozens of Palestinian men, women and children were rounded up and executed was dismissed by the Israeli Government as a fabrication created by the Arabs in order to win world sympathy. This is still believed today even though there are eye witness accounts of the massacre from both those Palestinians who survived the horror and those Israeli ‘soldiers’ who showed enough humanity to come out a speak of the evils committed by their comrades. The Gaza Massacre is no different to the countless massacres, beatings, torture and overall colonial injustice perpetrated by the Israeli state against a largely defenceless population. Hamas rockets are a product of Israel’s occupation just as suicide bombings were back in the 1990’s when Israel suffered many casualties.
The six months truce between Hamas and Israel is another element of the propaganda war, which Israel has lied about outright. I find it enraging that the vast majority of western journalists still echo the myth that Hamas were the first to break the ceasefire. Hamas, like the PLO, Syria, & Egypt during the 1960’s and 70’s have taken the accomodationist approach to the conflict between the two parties by requesting that Israel adhere to International Law in return for a true lasting peace deal, which included withdrawing to it’s 1967 borders. Israel rejected Hamas’ proposal for a 60 year ‘Hunda’ (ceasefire) in their typically rejectionist approach and opted instead at isolation, assassinations arrests and torture. A sixty year guaranteed peace between the Israelis and Palestinians would have ensured the next generation would be devoid of the feeling of hatred currently imbedded in both societies. For those who are sceptical consider that 40 years was enough time to heal the racial tension in the United States so much so that now they have a black President. The six months truce between Hamas and Israel was under strain not because of rocket attacks, but because Israel continued its violent policy by killing six members of Hamas on the 4th November [5], which was the catalyst for the subsequent tit for tat violence which followed. Israel’s policy of collective punishment using the blockade on Gaza to continuously starve the civilian population was the other main reason as to why the ceasefire broke down. The Israeli Government have a knack for appeasing international concern as far as humanitarian issues are concerned. There are 1.5 million Gazans crammed into the small coastal strip of Gaza. When Israel claimed that they were ‘allowing in humanitarian aid’ not many were aware that what they were allowing in, would not meet the needs of 1.5 million desperate Gazans, leaving them little better off than before the ceasefire began. However it was enough for many who support Israel to re-affirm their misguided belief that the Israeli Government have moral superiority over Hamas who fire rockets ‘indiscriminately’ at neighbouring Israeli towns.
As I read reports on the continued massacre in Gaza I feel a mixture of emotions burn inside of me, not only because of the obvious human suffering in Gaza, but the indifference Israeli society and western nations at large has toward the pain of my people. These attitudes are not only racist in context, but parallel the hatred which manifested the anti-Semitism of 1930’s Europe. It is as if human compassion does not apply to Arabs who according to Zionist mythology ‘understand only violence’ and ‘glorify’ death, as if Palestinian mothers do not mourn the death of a child. Video footage of the suffering in Gaza depicts the reality facing Gazans; the Palestinian children who were found crying next to their mother’s corpses, or the father who carried his maimed daughter to the hospital only for her to die in his arms. The elderly Palestinian women who tried fleeing her home from the shelling and was holding up a white flag only to be shot in the head by the Israelis. This picture of the conflict is often silenced in Europe and totally eclipsed in the US. Mainstream media outlets of course paint a different story as to appease the Zionist Lobby for fear of being branded anti-Semitic.
There is another smoke screen used by Israel and their allies in masking the reality of the occupation; the demand that everyone, including Hamas recognise Israel’s “right to exist”, as the main factor in achieving peace. Such absurd notions are not only an insult to the Palestinians who lost their homeland to foreign Jewish immigration and ethnic cleansing, but are also hypocritically cynical. Israel as you may or may not know does not actually have any defined borders and have not declared their borders as they continue with their settlement expansion cutting deep into Palestinian territory. To demand that Hamas recognise Israel’s “right to exist” is frustrating for Palestinians and adds to the already overwhelming pain and torment, which we Palestinians have had to endure since Israel’s creation. Take this analogy as a simplified example; a family moves into your home by force and evicts 1/3 of the people already living there, they then proceed in forcing your family to one corner of one room in your five bedroom house. The invading squatters then expect you to acknowledge their right to live there, while denying yours. When you mention to this newly arrived family that your family have lived here for generations, they decide to deny your existence, claiming instead that you just appeared out of nowhere or that you climbed through the window from the neighbour’s house at exactly the same time as we decided to move in even though all your furniture and family photos prove otherwise. To further add to this analogy the illegally settled family denies you food, demands permission from you to use the toilet or have a shower (often refusing your requests) and refuses to share the house with you even when you ask for only 20% of your former home. When you then decide to rebel against these unwelcome guests, they decide to brutally kill your brother, any act of aggression sees you arrested by the police (IDF) and condemned as a mad man (terrorist) by the rest of the neighbourhood (international community). Not only should all Palestinians refuse the right of Israel to exist, they should not accept anything less than full equal rights, an official apology from the state, repatriation of all refugees, the dismantlement of the Apartheid wall and justice to be served by all war criminals including Israeli leaders and military generals for their genocidal crimes over the years, in the same way Nazi war criminals are still be arrested today. A single democratic state where Jews and Palestinians live as one over all of historic Palestine would be the only suitable realistic solution to this conflict.
Another irony in this current crisis are the views expressed by Israelis, that Israel’s actions are not colonial or racist in nature, but that of a nation which desires a Palestinian state, a “peace loving” nation who is fighting violence by butchering women and children indiscriminately. Israeli society at large holds the belief that the Quassim rockets are to blame for Israeli actions. Israeli society does not question the intentions of their Government. They wish to live their lives as if there was no occupation, as if the daily brutality and humiliation inflicted on the Palestinians by their fellow Israeli’s did not exist. When the effects of over 60 years of Israeli terror against the Palestinians results in desperate acts of violence such as rocket attacks or suicide bombings, the Israeli’s scream victim, as if they were victims of irrational violence committed against them by an irrational people who have no reason to act in this way. When I hear or read the opinions of Israelis that they support this genocide in Gaza, ensuring they mention that their hatred is aimed at Hamas not the civilian population, I cannot help but feel utter contempt for Israeli society as a whole. In effect Israeli society condones genocide based on acts of resistance caused by the very atrocities we are seeing coming out of Gaza. Israel has just recruited 1000’s of future resistance fighters, who will find better more effective way at attacking the state. The children of Gaza who witnessed their parents being butchered at the hands of Israeli soldiers will grow up under the same humiliating Israeli policies, preferring death over the prospect of seeing another Gaza massacre – dangerous acts of resistance will for many Palestinians become a means to avenge the death of a loved one and to escape the reality of Israeli oppression. The bombing of a UN compound in Gaza, which resulted in the massacre of 40 children, the destruction of mosques, schools, and hospitals in Gaza all war crimes, which Israeli society and sympathizers refuse to acknowledge are part of Israel’s indifference to the lives of Palestinians. The ample evidence which has proved that no Hamas fighters were near these targets (including testimonies of UN personnel and civilians witnesses) [6] is not enough to change the minds of those who are unable to face up to the truth. It has to also be considered that the Palestinian resistance are fighting in the most densely populated place on earth - had no Palestinian resistance put up a fight, Israel’s bombardment would not have been any less relentless, as their butchering of nearly 100 Palestinian civilian police officers proved on the first day of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza – not to mention the bombing of Palestinian civil structures and ministry buildings housing Palestinian civil personnel none of whom were responsible for attacks on Israel. Nazir Rayyan who was assassinated by the Israeli’s in Gaza when an Israeli warplane dropped a bomb on his home not only killed him, but wiped out his entire family. Such policies have and still are common practice for Israel, even though they know that they are wilfully killing innocent women and children when they decide on levelling the homes of Palestinian leaders.
There will come a time when the Palestinian population of Gaza, the West Bank and Israel will outnumber the total population of world wide Jewry. If Israel wishes to secure the future of their people tomorrow they will have to secure the future of the Palestinians today, as demography, not Quassim rockets is the greatest threat to Israel. This latest Genocide will eventually come back to haunt Israel in the same way the Holocaust came back to haunt the Nazi’s. I read an article in the Daily Mail (15/1/2009) which commented on the experiences of Israeli soldiers returning from Gaza. One comment, which spoke volumes was when one soldier said “…we were ordered to shoot anything that moves, and ask questions later”. Unfortunately for the Palestinians this has means that 100s of their children are now dead.
Vanity Fair Magazine online www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804 [1]
Al Jazeerra online (see: www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804 ) [2]
“The Birch of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Benny Morris) [3]
Deir Yassin Remembered (see: www.deiryassin.org) [4]
The Guardian (see: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians) [5]
The Guardian (see: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel-death-un) [6]
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