Beatings and Abuse Of Palestinians By Israeli Security Forces

“Do you know what it means to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories?” With these words, Breaking the Silence released stunning testimonies from former soldiers, six Israeli women.

Some of the ghastly headlines: “Slap,” “Collective Punishment,” “Flak Jackets with ‘Death to Arabs Written on Them’” “Throwing them into the sewage pit,” “Because I’m bored,” “Settler violence.”

Brutalization,  debasement, degradation! Israeli society has lost its soul.

In this video, a women describes the brutalization of the Palestinians, enforced by debasing peer pressure among the soldiers:

“You can’t think that they’re good hardworking people trying to survive in a closed, place.”

“Later I realized that in order to be there you have to break them, break their spirit. Breaking them means  making them wait, blindfolding them, treating them badly, writing ‘Death to Arabs’ on their vests.”

“Putting cigarettes out on them.”

Several describe routine thefts from Palestinians: of prayer beads, pottery, food. What is wrong with taking gifts? one said to herself.

One stated: “We could do whatever we wanted.” “People don’t know what’s going on there.”

“We Invented The Car Bomb”

Car bombing has become synonymous with the Middle East in recent years, so few people would be surprised to realise that this most destructive and indiscriminate form of terror became established in this part of the world.

However, less well known is the fact that this was originally a Jewish weapon used against the Arabs.

The method of killing and destruction was actually pioneered in 1920 in New York, and in a cart rather than a car. An Italian anarchist called Mario Buda packed a horse-drawn wagon with explosives and killed dozens of innocent bystanders on Wall Street in a protest against capitalism.

However, the first bomb to be transported to a target in a motorised vehicle was created by two fighters of the Lehi movement in pre-state Palestine.

These pioneers of a uniquely horrible form of warfare are still alive and were interviewed by the presenter, former CIA agent Bob Baer.

Yaakov Heruti and Eliezer Ben-Ami explained how they chose their target, the Soraya building in Jaffa, used as the headquarters of the armed Arab resistance. They parked their truck bomb outside the building and set it off, killing 28 people including innocent bystanders, and injuring hundreds more.

The two 83-years-old were unrepentant about the operation but regretted the non-combatant casualties. Said Heruti:

“We never wanted to kill innocent civilians and children, it happened by bad luck.”

Perhaps, but it must have crossed their minds that by exploding a truck packed with explosives in a crowded street without any warning, civilians and children were likely to be blown away along with enemy fighters.

This was not a film that set out to make any moral points – indeed most of those interviewed showed little remorse for their actions – but it did demonstrate that in every single case, the reverberations of the explosions had a negative impact on those who planted the bomb as much as on those who were attacked.

After the Lehi bomb, an Arab called Fawzi El Kuttub set about wreaking vengeance on the Jews. Trained by the Nazis in bomb-making, he aped the Jewish fighters by setting off car bombs which killed Jewish civilians in Jerusalem, and came close to assassinating future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. When the smoke eventually cleared, eight car bombs had been set off – four Arab, four Jewish – claiming 120 lives.

Source: The Jewish Chronicle

The Irgun: Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?

On Sunday, the 9th of 2014, I posted an article with appeared in the Jerusalem Post (Israeli) and The Telegraph (UK), stating that Tzipi Livni stated that her father, considered her father Eitan – who was the Irgun Zva’i Leumi’s director of operations during the pre-state days and fought British rule – as as freedom fighter.

Tom Segev responded to  her claim in a 2006 article in Haaretz Newspaper (Israeli):

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated that there is a difference between Palestinian freedom fighters who act against soldiers and terrorists, who act against civilians.

The Livni test is interesting, of course, both because the foreign minister was basically talking about her father, Eitan Livni, who was the chief operations officer in the Irgun and later a Knesset member.

Naturally, Livni does not view the Irgun people as terrorists, but as freedom fighters. And so says the Irgun’s official history, too: It operated against military and government facilities, not against civilians.

Livni most likely was raised on this myth, on the lofty self-image nurtured by Menachem Begin even before his organization fell apart.

The Truth Was Different:

On July 6, 1938, Irgun people snuck a bomb into the produce market on Hamelachim Street in Haifa. Two Irgun veterans reported later, in a book that was printed with the aid of the Defense Ministry, that 18 Arabs were killed and 38 wounded in the operation.

Two days later, Irgun people carried out an attack in Jerusalem; four Arabs were killed. Ten days after that, the Irgun returned to the Haifa market: 27 Arabs were killed and 47 wounded.

In their book, “Divrei hayamim le’milhemet hashihrur” (“Chronicles of the War of Independence”), editors Yaakov Amrami and Arie Melitz described how the attacks were carried out:

Twice, the bombs were brought in inside baskets of vegetables. One bomb was placed inside a crate of shoe polish. Over the years, the organization also struck at buses, coffee shops and movie houses. People from the Haganah and Palmach also carried out actions against Arab civilians. Both were terrorists, also according to the criteria presented by Livni on “Nightline.”

Livni focused on the targets of the attacks, for a moment it seemed that she ruled out in principle any harming of civilians. This also makes for a nice historic lesson: Indeed, there is no justification for harming civilians. Never: Not in Dresden or Hiroshima or Hanoi or Beirut or Ramat Gan or Gaza.

But Livni also justified the artillery fire on Gaza, and then the definition game requires other participants: state-sponsored terror, harming civilians during wartime.

Neither Israelis nor Palestinians have ever forsworn terror. Both have used it and found on occasion that it advances their goals. Arab terror in the 1930s almost led to the expulsion of the British from Palestine, on the eve of World War II; Jewish terror gave a push to their expulsion in the late 1940s. There is a generation of Israelis that grew up not only admiring the terror used by the underground organizations prior to the state’s founding, but also on a whole ethos of wars against colonialist regimes everywhere.

Yitzhak Shamir called himself “Michael” after Michael Collins, the famed leader of the Irish underground.

Naturally, Israelis also grew up admiring the partisans who fought against the Nazis.

In the 1950s and ’60s, they identified with the liberation movements in Africa and South America. Along with their admiration for Che Guevara and Steve Biko – a leader of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

Israelis also nurtured friendships with leaders who had sat in jail up to then as terrorists: Israel gave them weapons and money, invited them to Israel and showered them with great honor. Their books were translated into Hebrew and published by national publishing houses. Nothing offended Israelis more than the pejorative “imperialists.”

Moshe Dayan compared the Fatah to the Irgun; in this comparison, Israel took the role of the despised British.

Many years later, Ehud Barak said that if he were a Palestinian, he would have joined the terror organizations. 

Fatah hijacked planes and thereby put the Palestinian problem on the world map – Who knows if anyone would have heard about their distress if it weren’t for their terror?

It’s doubtful if Ariel Sharon would have initiated the dismantling of the settlements in the Gaza Strip if not for Palestinian terror.

This is the same Ariel Sharon who in the 1950s stood at the head of a renowned paratroop unit that committed acts of terror in Palestinian villages across the border.

By Tom Segev
Apr. 20, 2006
12:00 AM

Dutch Man Renounces “Righteous Among The Nations” Honor

Saved Jews During Nazi Holocaust, Now Returns His Medal To Israel

He saved Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, but now a 91-year-old Dutch man who was declared a Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Yad Vashem Holocaust museum has given his award back.

During the German occupation of his nation, Henk Zanoli had bravely risked his life for the sake of others. But on Thursday returned his medal and certificate to Yad Vashem because six of his relatives were killed by an Israeli Defense Forces bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip last month.

 

Back in 2011, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum awarded both Henk Zanoli and his late mother, Johana Zanoli-Smit, the Righteous Among the Nations award for having saved a Jewish child, Elhanan Pinto, when the Nazis occupied Holland. Zanoli’s own father was sent to the Dachau concentration camp in 1941 as a result of his politically outspoken opposition to the occupation.

 

He eventually would die at the Mauthausen concentration camp in the month of February 1945. Zanoli’s brother-in-law was executed as well, for resistance against the Nazi war machine. One of his brothers, as well, had a Jewish fiancée, and was killed by the Nazis.

 

But Zanoli’s great-niece, Angelique Eijpe, is a Dutch diplomat. She is the head of her nation’s diplomatic mission in the country of Oman. Her husband is the economist Isma’il Ziadah, who was born in the al-Bureij refugee camp located in central Gaza. Ziadah’s parents were born in now renamed town of Fallujah, which is now known as town of Kiryat Gat.

 

On Sunday, July 20, an Israeli jet bombed the Ziadah family’s home in al-Bureij. Zanoli’s relatives: Muftiyah, 70; three of her sons, Jamil, Omar and Youssef; Jamil’s wife, Bayan; and their 12-year-old son, Shaaban were all killed. None of them were terrorists. All of them were civilians.

Now, Zanoli has returned his award to the Israeli Embassy in The Hague – exactly where he received them in an official ceremony three years ago. He sent the following letter, addressed to Ambassador Haim Davon.

 

Zanoli opened by explaining the high price his family paid for fighting for the lives and rights of the Jewish people.

 

“Against this background it is particularly shocking and tragic that today, four generations on, our family is faced with the murder of our kin in Gaza. Murder carried out by the State of Israel,” he explained.

 

Read the full letter, embedded, below: 

 

Ambassador Haim Davon

Embassy of Israel

Buitenhof 472513 AH

The Hague

 August 11 2014

Subject: Return of medal of honour

Excellency,

It is with great sorrow that I am herewith returning the medal I received as an honour and a token of appreciation from the State of Israel for the efforts and risks taken by my mother and her family in saving the life of a Jewish boy during the German occupation of The Netherlands.

My mother and her nuclear family risked their lives fighting the German occupation. My mother lost her husband who was deported to Dachau as early as 1941 because of his open and outspoken opposition to the German occupation. He eventually perished in Mauthausen Concentration Camp. My sister lost her husband who was executed in the dunes of The Hague for his involvement in the resistance. In addition to this my brother lost his Jewish fiancée who was deported, never to return.

My steadfast and heroic mother nevertheless continued the struggle, amongst others, by taking in an 11 year old Jewish boy in her home risking both her own life and that of her children. This boy survived the war under the wings of my mother and eventually moved to Israel.

Against this background it is particularly shocking and tragic that today, four generations on, our family is faced with the murder of our kin in Gaza. Murder carried out by the State of Israel.

The great- great grandchildren of my mother have lost their grandmother, three uncles, an aunt and a cousin at the hands of the Israeli army. Their family apartment building in Bureij Refugee Camp in Gaza was bombed on July 20 from an Israeli F16, turning the four storey building to rubble, leaving every single family member inside it dead.

I understand that in your professional role, in which I am addressing you here, you may not be able to express understanding for my decision. However, I am convinced that at both a personal and human level you will have a profound understanding of the fact that for me to hold on to the honour granted by the State of Israel, under these circumstances, will be both an insult to the memory of my courageous mother who risked her life and that of her children fighting against suppression and for the preservation of human life as well as an insult to those in my family, four generations on, who lost no less than six of their relatives in Gaza at the hands of the State of Israel.

On a more general note the following. After the horror of the holocaust my family strongly supported the Jewish people also with regard to their aspirations to build a national home. Over more than six decades I have however slowly come to realize that the Zionist project had from its beginning a racist element in it in aspiring to build a state exclusively for Jews. As a consequence, ethnic cleansing took place at the time of the establishment of your state and your state continues to suppress the Palestinian people on the West Bank and in Gaza who live under Israeli occupation since 1967.

The actions of your state in Gaza these days have already resulted in serious accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. As a retired lawyer it would be no surprise to me that these accusations could lead to possible convictions if true and unpoliticized justice is able to have its course. What happened to our kin in Gaza will no doubt be brought to the table at such a time as well.

The only way out of the quagmire the Jewish people of Israel have gotten themselves into is by granting all living under the control of the State of Israel the same political rights and social and economic rights and opportunities. Although this will result in a state no longer exclusively Jewish it will be a state with a level of righteousness on the basis of which I could accept the title of ‘Righteous among the Nations’ you awarded to my mother and me together with the medal.

Today I am a 91 year old man who does not expect radical change with regard to the current sad reality within my, most likely, still limited lifetime. If your state would be willing and able to transform itself along the lines set out above and there would still be an interest at that time in granting an honour to my family for the actions of my mother during the second world war, be sure to contact me or my descendants.

Sincerely,

H.A. Zanoli

“The great- great grandchildren of my mother have lost their [Palestinian] grandmother, three uncles, an aunt and a cousin at the hands of the Israeli army … For me to hold on to the honor granted by the State of Israel, under these circumstances, will be both an insult to the memory of my courageous mother who risked her life and that of her children fighting against suppression and for the preservation of human life as well as an insult to those in my family, four generations on, who lost no less than six of their relatives in Gaza at the hands of the State of Israel.”

 

Israel’s actions in Gaza, he said further, “have already resulted in serious accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. As a retired lawyer it would be no surprise to me that these accusations could lead to possible convictions if true and unpoliticized justice is able to have its course. What happened to our kin in Gaza will no doubt be brought to the table at such a time as well.”

The Palestinians’ Right To Self-Defense

If Israel insists, as the Bosnian Serbs did in Sarajevo, on using the weapons of industrial warfare against a helpless civilian population then that population has an inherent right to self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

 

The international community will have to either act to immediately halt Israeli attacks and lift the blockade of Gaza or acknowledge the right of the Palestinians to use weapons to defend themselves.

 

No nation, including any in the Muslim world, appears willing to intervene to protect the Palestinians. No world body, including the United Nations, appears willing or able to pressure Israel through sanctions to conform to the norms of international law. And the longer we in the world community fail to act, the worse the spiral of violence will become.

 

Israel does not have the right to drop 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs on Gaza. It does not have the right to pound Gaza with heavy artillery and with shells lobbed from gunboats. It does not have the right to send in mechanized ground units or to target hospitals, schools and mosques, along with Gaza’s water and electrical systems. It does not have the right to displace over 100,000 people from their homes. The entire occupation, under which Israel has nearly complete control of the sea, the air and the borders of Gaza, is illegal.

Violence, even when employed in self-defense, is a curse. It empowers the ruthless and punishes the innocent. It leaves in its aftermath horrific emotional and physical scars. But, as I learned in Sarajevo during the 1990s Bosnian War, when forces bent on your annihilation attack you relentlessly, and when no one comes to your aid, you must aid yourself. When Sarajevo was being hit with 2,000 shells a day and under heavy sniper fire in the summer of 1995 no one among the suffering Bosnians spoke to me about wanting to mount nonviolent resistance. No one among them saw the U.N.-imposed arms embargo against the Bosnian government as rational, given the rain of sniper fire and the 90-millimeter tank rounds and 155-millimeter howitzer shells that were exploding day and night in the city.

The Bosnians were reduced, like the Palestinians in Gaza, to smuggling in light weapons through clandestine tunnels. Their enemies, the Serbs—like the Israelis in the current conflict—were constantly trying to blow up tunnels. The Bosnian forces in Sarajevo, with their meager weapons, desperately attempted to hold the trench lines that circled the city. And it is much the same in Gaza. It was only repeated NATO airstrikes in the fall of 1995 that prevented the Bosnian-held areas from being overrun by advancing Serbian forces. The Palestinians cannot count on a similar intervention.

 

The number of dead in Gaza resulting from the Israeli assault has topped 650, and about 80 percent have been civilians. The number of wounded Palestinians is over 4,000 and a substantial fraction of these victims are children. At what point do the numbers of dead and wounded justify self-defense? 5,000? 10,000? 20,000? At what point do Palestinians have the elemental right to protect their families and their homes?

 

Article 51 does not answer these specific questions, but the International Court of Justice does in the case of Nicaragua v. United States. The court ruled in that case that a state must endure an armed attack before it can resort to self-defense. The definition of an armed attack, in addition to being “action by regular armed forces across an international border,” includes sending or sponsoring armed bands, mercenaries or irregulars that commit acts of force against another state. The court held that any state under attack must first request outside assistance before undertaking armed self-defense. According to U.N. Charter Article 51, a state’s right to self-defense ends when the Security Council meets the terms of the article by “tak[ing] the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

 

The failure of the international community to respond has left the Palestinians with no choice. The United States, since Israel’s establishment in 1948, has vetoed in the U.N. Security Council more than 40 resolutions that sought to curb Israel’s lust for occupation and violence against the Palestinians. And it has ignored the few successful resolutions aimed at safeguarding Palestinian rights, such as Security Council Resolution 465, passed in 1980.

Resolution 465 stated that the “Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem.” 

 

The resolution went on to warn Israel that “all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and that Israel’s policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”

Israel, as an occupying power, is in direct violation of Article III of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. This convention lays out the minimum standards for the protection of civilians in a conflict that is not international in scope. Article 3(1) states that those who take no active role in hostilities must be treated humanely, without discrimination, regardless of racial, social, religious or economic distinctions.

The article prohibits certain acts commonly carried out against noncombatants in regions of armed conflict, including murder, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture. It prohibits the taking of hostages as well as sentences given without adequate due process of law. Article 3(2) mandates care for the sick and wounded.

 

Israel has not only violated the tenets of Article III but has amply fulfilled the conditions of an aggressor state as defined by Article 51. But for Israel, as for the United States, international law holds little importance. The U.S. ignored the verdict of the international court in Nicaragua v. United States and, along with Israel, does not accept the jurisdiction of the tribunal. It does not matter how many Palestinians are killed or wounded, how many Palestinian homes are demolished, how dire the poverty becomes in Gaza or the West Bank, how many years Gaza is under a blockade or how many settlements go up on Palestinian territory. Israel, with our protection, can act with impunity.

 

The unanimous U.S. Senate vote in support of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, the media’s slavish parroting of Israeli propaganda and the Obama administration’s mindless repetition of pro-Israeli clichés have turned us into cheerleaders for Israeli war crimes. We fund and abet these crimes with $3.1 billion a year in military aid to Israel. We are responsible for the slaughter. No one in the establishment, including our most liberal senator, Bernie Sanders, dares defy the Israel lobby. And since we refuse to act to make peace and justice possible we should not wonder why the Palestinians carry out armed resistance.

 

The Palestinians will reject, as long as possible, any cease-fire that does not include a lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. They have lost hope that foreign governments will save them. They know their fate rests in their own hands. The revolt in Gaza is an act of solidarity with the world outside its walls.

It is an attempt to assert in the face of overwhelming odds and barbaric conditions the humanity and agency of the Palestinian people. There is little in life that Palestinians can choose, but they can choose how to die. And many Palestinians, especially young men trapped in overcrowded hovels where they have no work and little dignity, will risk immediate death to defy the slow, humiliating death of occupation.

 

I cannot blame them.

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

“We Are Declaring Israel A Terrorist State”

Bolivia renounced a visa exemption agreement with Israel in protest over its offensive in Gaza, and declared it a terrorist state.

President Evo Morales announced the move during a talk with a group of educators in the city of Cochabamba.

It “means, in other words, we are declaring (Israel) a terrorist state,” he said.

The treaty has allowed Israelis to travel freely to Bolivia without a visa since 1972.

Morales said the Gaza offensive shows “that Israel is not a guarantor of the principles of respect for life and the elementary precepts of rights that govern the peaceful and harmonious coexistence of our international community.”

Bolivia broke off diplomatic relations with Israel in 2009 over a previous military operation in Gaza.

In mid-July, Morales filed a request with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to prosecute Israel for “crimes against humanity.”

Gaza The Broken Hearted

The Language Of Death

World Can’t Wait helped produce a town meeting last night, sponsored by Revolution Books in New York City.

 

Chris Hedges gave the main address.

 

The incursion and bombardment of Gaza is not about destroying Hamas. It is not about stopping rocket fire into Israel. It is not about achieving peace. The Israeli decision to rain death and destruction on Gaza, to use the lethal weapons of the modern battlefield on a largely defenseless civilian population, is the final phase in the decades-long campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. The assault on Gaza is about creating, squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos in the West Bank and Gaza where life for Palestinians will be barely sustainable. It is about building a series of ringed Palestinian enclaves where the Israeli military will have the ability to instantly shut off movement, food, medicine and goods to perpetuate the misery.   

 

Privilege and power, especially military power, is a dangerous narcotic. Violence destroys those who bear the brunt of its force, but also those who try to use it to become gods. Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command and control, no army, and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is murder.

Images of dead Palestinian children, lined up as if asleep on the floor of the main hospital in Gaza, are a metaphor for the future. Israel will, from now on, speak to the Palestinians in the language of death. 

Those who orchestrate such sieges do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. Families who carry the broken bodies of their children to hospitals do not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of those they love do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said they wanted to be a “martyr”?

 

The refusal by our political leaders, from Barack Obama to all but five members of Congress, to the major media to speak out in defense of the rule of law and fundamental human rights exposes our cowardice and our hypocrisy. 

 

The public debate about the Gaza attack engages in the absurd pretense that it is Israel, not the Palestinians, whose security and dignity is being threatened. This blind defense of Israeli brutality towards the Palestinians is a betrayal of the memory of those killed in other genocides from the Holocaust to Cambodia to Rwanda to Bosnia. 

 

The lesson of the Holocaust is not that Jews are special. It is not that Jews are unique. It is not that Jews are eternal victims. The lesson of the Holocaust is that when you have the capacity to halt genocide, and you do not — no matter who carries out that genocide or who it is directed against — you are culpable.   And we are very culpable. 

 

The F-16 jet fighters, the Apache attack helicopters, the 250-pound “smart” GBU-39 bombs are all part of the annual $2.4 billion in military aid we give to Israel. Palestinians are being slaughtered with American-made weapons. They are being slaughtered by an Israeli military we lavishly bankroll. But perhaps our callousness indifference to human suffering is to be expected. We, after all, kill women and children on an even vaster scale in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

 

[End of Speech]

 

The bloody hands of Israel mirror our own.

 

“It seems,” wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe recently, “that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system… Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology – in its most consensual and simplistic variety – has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide].”

 

Israel operates under the illusion that it can crush Hamas and install a quisling Palestinian government in Gaza and the West Bank. This puppet government will be led, Israel believes, by the discredited Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abass, now cowering in the West Bank after being driven out of Gaza. Abbas, like most of the corrupt Fatah leadership, is a detested figure. He is dismissed as the Marshall Pétain of the Palestinian people, or perhaps the Hamid Karzai or the Nouri al-Maliki. He is as loathed as he is powerless. 

 

Israel’s destruction of Hamas and reoccupation of Gaza will not bring peace or security to Israel. It will merely obliterate the only internal organization with enough stature and authority in Gaza, an organization elected to power in free and fair elections, to maintain order. The Israeli attack empowers the Islamic movements across the regime who one day may well ring Israel like a vice. It reduces all communication to the language of force. The violence unleashed on Palestinian children will be the violence unleashed on Israeli children. This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of Israel. 

 

Forty plus years after W.H. Auden described the dumb ogre loose in the streets of Prague, he lopes, still dumb, again through the alleyways of Gaza City:

 

The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master speech.

 

About a subjugated plain,

 

Among it’s desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.

“The Liquidation Of An Entire Nation”

Spokesman for Fatah, Dr Husam Zomlot tells the BBC News that Israeli PM Netanyahu is Guilty Of ‘ Liquidation Of An Entire Nation’.

“There Are No Children Left In Gaza. Gaza Is A GraveYard!!”

With English Subtitles:

With Arabic Subtitles:

In her latest post, my colleague Rania Khalek makes reference to “a new racist chant mocking the more than two hundred children slaughtered by Israel’s merciless bombing campaign in Gaza: ‘Tomorrow there’s no school in Gaza, they don’t have any children left.’”

 
This video shows an Israeli mob actually singing in celebration of children’s deaths in the style of a soccer fans’ song: “In Gaza there’s no studying, No children are left there, Olé, olé, olé-olé-olé.”

 
The mob also incites directly against Ahmed Tibi and Haneen Zoabi, two prominent Palestinian citizens of Israel who are members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

 
The video of the 26 July event in Tel Aviv was published by Israeli journalist Haim Har-Zahav.

 
The words of the repulsive song have been translated for The Electronic Intifada by Dena Shunra:

Tibi – Ahmed Tibi
I wanted you to know
The next kid to be hurt will be your kid
I hate Tibi
I hate Tibi the terrorist.
Tibi – is dead!
Tibi – is dead!
Tibi – is dead!

Tibi is a terrorist.
Tibi is a terrorist.
Tibi is a terrorist.

They’ll take their papers away.
They’ll take their papers away.
They’ll take their papers away.
Olé, olé, olé-olé-olé
In Gaza there’s no studying
No children are left there,
Olé, olé, olé-olé-olé,

[Three lines, not entirely clear]

Who is getting nervous, I hear?
Zoabi, this here is the Land of Israel
This here is the Land of Israel, Zoabi
This here is the Land of the Jews
I hate you, I do, Zoabi
I hate all the Arabs.
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Gaza is a graveyard
Gaza is a graveyard
Gaza is a graveyard
Gaza is a graveyard

 

Via: The Electronic Intifada

Genocide Permissible In Gaza

Judging by the numbers of casualties on both sides in this almost one-month old war one would be led to the conclusion that Israel has resorted to disproportionate means in fighting a far less- capable enemy. That is as far as what meets the eye. But, it’s now obvious that the US and the UN are completely out of touch with the nature of this foe and are therefore not qualified to dictate or enforce the rules of this war – because when it comes to terror there is much more than meets the eye.

I wasn’t aware of this, but it seems that the nature of warfare has undergone a major shift over the years. Where wars were usually waged to defeat the opposing side, today it seems – and judging by the number of foul calls it would indicate – that today’s wars are fought to a draw. I mean, whoever heard of a timeout in war? An NBA Basketball game allows six timeouts for each team during the course of a game, but last I checked this is a war! We are at war with an enemy whose charter calls for the annihilation of our people. Nothing, then, can be considered disproportionate when we are fighting for our very right to live.

The sad reality is that Israel gets it, but its hands are being tied by world leaders who over the past six years have insisted they are such good friends with the Jewish state, that they know more regarding its interests than even they do. But there’s going to have to come a time where Israel feels threatened enough where it has no other choice but to defy international warnings – because this is life or death.

Most of the reports coming from Gazan officials and leaders since the start of this operation have been either largely exaggerated or patently false. The truth is, it’s not their fault,falsehood and deceit is part of the very fabric of who they are and that will never change. Still however, despite their propensity to lie, when your enemy tells you that they are bent on your destruction you believe them. 

 

Similarly, when Khaled Meshal declares that no physical damage to Gaza will dampen their morale or weaken their resolve – they have to be believed. Our sage Gedalia the son of Achikam was given intelligence that Yishmael Ben Nesanyah was plotting to kill him. However, in his piety or rather naiveté Gedalia dismissed the report as a random act of gossip and paid no attention to it. To this day, the day following Rosh Hashana is commemorated as a fast day in the memory of Gedalia who was killed in cold blood on the second day of Rosh Hashana during the meal. They say the definition of insanity is repeating the same mistakes over and over. History is there to teach us lessons and the lesson here is that when your enemy swears to destroy you – you take him seriously.

Hamas has stated forthrightly that it idealizes death as much as Israel celebrates life. What other way then is there to deal with an enemy of this nature other than obliterate them completely?

News anchors such as those from CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera have not missed an opportunity to point out the majority of innocent civilians who have lost their lives as a result of this war. But anyone who lives with rocket launchers installed or terror tunnels burrowed in or around the vicinity of their home cannot be considered an innocent civilian. If you’ll counter, that Hamas has been seen abusing civilians who have attempted to leave their homes in response to Israeli warnings to leave – well then, your beginning to come to terms with the nature of this enemy which should automatically cause the rules of standard warfare to be suspended.

Everyone agrees that Israel has the right to defend itself as well as the right to exercise that right. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has declared it, Obama and Kerry have clearly stated that no one could be expected to sit idle as thousands of rockets rain down on the heads of its citizens, placing them in clear and present danger. It seems then that the only point of contention is regarding the measure of punishment meted out in this situation.

 

I will conclude with a question for all the humanitarians out there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly stated at the outset of this incursion that his objective is to restore a sustainable quiet for the citizens of Israel. We have already established that it is the responsibility of every government to ensure the safety and security of its people. 

 

 “If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals?”

 

By Yochanan Gordon