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Israel On Killing Spree In Gaza
This is a most important article Peter. A gangster state engaged in bloody and horrific terrorism and territorial robbery.

There will be a day of reckoning and the great danger is that it will take us all down when it arrives.

I am posting the piece in full for it will doubtlessly be removed from the Guardian website in due course.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan...-palestine



How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions
Avi Shlaim
The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009

[Image: A-wounded-Palestinian-pol-003.jpg]
A wounded Palestinian policeman gestures while lying on the ground outside Hamas police headquarters following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.

Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

• Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
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Peter Lemkin Wrote:There are now 1000+ dead and 4,500 wounded. Many of the dead - in fact most - are civilians by any definition! For a very intelligent and calm analysis of what led up to this listen or watch here: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/14/le...aim_israel

These are really sad times. The people of Gaza a suffering horribly - they can hide nor go nowhere. They are trapped/caged 'rats' surrounded - much as was the Warsaw Ghetto. It pains my heart to think that my fellow Jews who suffered in that way, can now turn around and inflict this on others......

Peter,

"in fact most"... (civilians) make up the dead. Facts being what they are, you haven't a clue if that accusation is correct. Your outrage is noted!

Insofar as you've brought up "body count" here's a few simple facts concerning a race that we know for sure faced extermination, all while the world did nothing (not even wringing their collective hands), NOTHING and that "world" knew what was going on.... your (as you say) race, Peter.

Fact: between 1936-45, 5.6 and 6.2 million Jews were literally erased, their ashes rose over and now mixed with the very soil you stand upon, European soil (a scene, never before seen displaying mans inhumanity to his fellow man). That'll never happen again, to the JEWS anyway!

And their battle to survive has not ceased...

How many countries is it again, in that geographical neighborhood, that are on the record wanting Israeli extinction and annihilation? Having demonstrated, spewed hate speeches on their streets calling for same...

The lid is still on, for the moment... Hezbollah, what say you?

All the Arab, Hamas, Hezbollah and Muslim pissing and moaning about this operation belies a simple, *reported* fact..... Hamas was/is stunned at the ferocity of this operation, they've been rocked back on their collective feet...

So it's time to get Hamas leaders to the table, for every day their rockets fly over the border, I expect this will continue.

Hamas can't rely on a President Obama to get Israel to back off. Obama won't tacitly endorse Hamas foolishness... going against its only ally in the immediate area

For the record: considering internet blogsters re: Gaza operation, some if not most photos posted on the net, I question nearly every image I've seen. With the exception of city (wide shots) perimeter and mainline press photos, such as those showing WP over Gaza locals...

Most street 'wounded', hospital room photos that I've seen, shot by unknown or not well known sources... most appear staged. Therefore 'all' the sources photos are questioned (happened more than once)...

I'm sure war crime accusations are mounting, the world court will deal with it when the time comes. For me, I'm glad the Iraelis don't have a Vlad the Impaler in their roles. I suspect one could find a few radical Muslim types that would relish that role, though...
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David Guyatt Wrote:This is a most important article Peter. A gangster state engaged in bloody and horrific terrorism and territorial robbery.

There will be a day of reckoning and the great danger is that it will take us all down when it arrives.

I am posting the piece in full for it will doubtlessly be removed from the Guardian website in due course.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan...-palestine

take a look at this articles tug-your-heart photo, all those (how many?) on the ground, a mortar round or bomb went off, droppping all those "wounded" or dead folks, eh?

When bombs and mortar rounds go off they're 360 degree inclusive

The building in the scene behind the alleged carnage should be riddled with shrapnel holes, windows broken, plants uprooted.

Come on..... I've seen better makeup on third rate B-movies...
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David Healy Wrote:[quote=Peter Lemkin]

Fact: between 1936-45, 5.6 and 6.2 million Jews were literally erased, their ashes rose over and now mixed with the very soil you stand upon, European soil (a scene, never before seen displaying mans inhumanity to his fellow man). That'll never happen again, to the JEWS anyway!

And their battle to survive has not ceased...


I thought you said in post #96 that you were ending your participation in the Israel/Gaza discussion, David.

With some misgivings about engaging in debate with you, I must point out the plain fact that while the Jews were victims of a massive genocide in Europe, it wasn't the Palestinians who were the perpetrators. I can't see the justice in the Palestinians paying the price for past injustices inflicted upon the Jews. I think this is what Peter was trying to say but I stand to be corrected.

Further, the current genocide in Gaza is hardly a battle for Israel's survival. As the regional superpower, and the only nation in the ME with nuclear capacity, I would think their survival is guaranteed. The current genocidal campaign in Gaza actually threatens Israel's long term security.

I don't expect you to see that. You seem to have the Zionist propaganda line wired into your head.
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Mark Stapleton Wrote:
David Healy Wrote:[quote=Peter Lemkin]

Fact: between 1936-45, 5.6 and 6.2 million Jews were literally erased, their ashes rose over and now mixed with the very soil you stand upon, European soil (a scene, never before seen displaying mans inhumanity to his fellow man). That'll never happen again, to the JEWS anyway!

And their battle to survive has not ceased...


I thought you said in post #96 that you were ending your participation in the Israel/Gaza discussion, David.

With some misgivings about engaging in debate with you, I must point out the plain fact that while the Jews were victims of a massive genocide in Europe, it wasn't the Palestinians who were the perpetrators. I can't see the justice in the Palestinians paying the price for past injustices inflicted upon the Jews. I think this is what Peter was trying to say but I stand to be corrected.

Further, the current genocide in Gaza is hardly a battle for Israel's survival. As the regional superpower, and the only nation in the ME with nuclear capacity, I would think their survival is guaranteed. The current genocidal campaign in Gaza actually threatens Israel's long term security.

I don't expect you to see that. You seem to have the Zionist propaganda line wired into your head.

Frankly Mark, what I agreed to was ending pissing matches with those that can't quite understand the difference between propaganda, disinformation and PR...

What you think and what the Israelis think as to their survival guarantees, are probably two different things.... At this point in time, I suspect the folks of Gaza would probably agree with me.... I damn sure know Hamas knows the difference (and right now, they're the ONLY ones that know that count)....

As an Irishman who supported the IRA, as well as a card carrying member of Vietnam Vets AGAINST the War, a member too in the NRA, called a Zionist, humfh! LMFAO!

But I do know biblical history, and pounded a street or two in the area.... You're a hoot!
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I really don't know what rational argument you are trying to make here. The IRA, Vietnam, biblical history etc. None of it addresses the central point about Gazans being the victims of Israeli genocide.

I think you just like arguing for the sake of arguing.
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I'm glad to see David has returned, he's like a dog with a bone. I now fear for him as I'm sure his government has special camps set up for supporters of terrorist groups.

Maybe David's view of the conflict is correct. Maybe instead of finally sitting down to talk to the Irish we should have engaged in similar operations in Northern Ireland. I wonder what David's stance would be if the British were bombing the Irish into the stonage in order to rid itself of a small minority of people who kept planting their little bombs. I think he would be on the side of the victims, the innocent people who after suffering years of persecution, and brutality now had to endure this horror. Luckily we'll never know, the British sat down with Sinn Fein and agreed a truce, a truce we honoured... Unlike the Isralei's who never honoured the ceasefire in the first place, leaving Hamas with little choice but to resume it's pathetic little rocket attacks hoping to get Israel to either come back to the table and renegotiate, or to actually do as they had promised the first time round.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=f4ZgJ1icu0s
Here is Karen Abuzayd UN relief and works agency commisioner general explaining (whilst trying not to blame Israel) how the truce broke down.
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I have to say that I am sick to my heart at what is going on in Gaza.

I don't think I can stomach another Israeli spokesman being trotted on to the TV news to spin and lie as they have been daily doing. The latest news of 3 rounds of (Willy Pete?) falling into (being targeted at?) the UN compound just goes to show, in my modest opinion, that Israel is an out of control rogue state engaging in what Jews once themselves suffered at the hands of the Nazis. In fact I can't barely prize away the feeling that we are witnessing the exact same psychological attitude. It's awful. It's evil in full rampage.

I am also glad David is back. I feel that we need a viewpoint that forces us to be careful in our analysis. But that still does not, imo, detract from the fact of the wholesale butchery of the most cynical kind is taking place and because the outgoing Bush Administration tacitly supports, it's set to continue.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
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Israel seems to be remarkably indifferent to global opinion this time, despite the hapless talking heads they employ on the MSM. Could they be underestimating the power of the internet?
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Mark Stapleton Wrote:Israel seems to be remarkably indifferent to global opinion this time, despite the hapless talking heads they employ on the MSM. Could they be underestimating the power of the internet?

I believe they are underestimating the power of the internet as you say Mark. After all, good old fashioned MSM-powered propaganda, and selective reporting, served them well for decades.

However, I don't think they much care about global opinion as long as war is profitable for them. And prior to the Oslo accords the only reason they cared about public opinion was their belief that peace was profitable.

As Ike said...
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