[News] The Myth of Israeli Retaliation
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Dec 31 11:27:30 EST 2008
The Myth of Israeli Retaliation
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20099
December 31, 2008 By Dan Freeman-Maloy
With the Palestinian death toll from Israel's latest air and naval
assault on Gaza passed 350 and steadily climbing (an estimated 1500
more have been wounded), diplomats, advocates and journalists the
world over appear prepared to continue facilitating the massacre.
Noting that "success or failure of the media effort can affect the
window which the IDF has to fulfill its operational objectives," the
Jerusalem Post
<http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1230456523464&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull>on
Tuesday quoted former Israeli ambassador Dan Gillerman expressing his
satisfaction on the diplomatic front. "We haven't seen dramatic
condemnations [from world leaders], only the expected and generic
calls for calm and ceasefire." (Though UN General Assembly president
Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann has been a laudable exception to this
rule.) While the Post attributed "this welcome window" to "a new
culture of coordination among the agencies responsible for managing
Israel's media message in times of crisis," it is far too charitable
to downplay the culpability of Western political classes by taking
their feigned ignorance at face value.
Meanwhile, within the Israeli political system, the prospect of an
escalating slaughter of Palestinians is meeting scattered opposition,
mostly on logistical and diplomatic grounds. Still, the logic of the
Israeli elections cycle is pushing in the direction of greater
violence, and war planners are
<http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051025.html>reportedly
incorporating into their calculations strong calls from the Hebrew
press for Israeli forces to abandon "restraint" and broaden
operations. Indeed, one needn't look further than the liberal Israeli
daily Ha'aretz to encounter crass appreciation of the violence. Yoel
Marcus <http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051031.html>writes
unapologetically that "I will not conceal my enjoyment of the flames
and smoke rising from Gaza that have poured from our television
screens. The time has finally come for their bellies to quiver and
for them to understand that there is a price from their bloody
provocations against Israel."
"Their bloody provocations against Israel." Because once again,
Israel has been provoked, and is within its rights to retaliate.
If it were not for its endless, mindless repetition, this nonsense
wouldn't deserve a moment's attention. But the farce of "Palestinian
provocation/Israeli retaliation" presently frames not only mainstream
news coverage, but also the official diplomatic statements emanating
from the United States, the UK, France, Germany, Australia and
Canada. Such historical amnesia cannot possibly be genuine.
Under these circumstances, it is worth recalling some very basic
information about Gaza and the timeline of the conflict surrounding it.
Consider the description provided by the late Canadian Lt.-Gen.
E.L.M. Burns, chief of staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision
Organization from 1954-1956, who in this capacity was responsible for
monitoring Israel's oft-violated armistice arrangements with adjacent
countries. Burns, hardly a political activist or anti-colonial
figure, was a professional soldier appointed by a Canadian diplomat
quite friendly towards Israel, Lester B. Pearson. Published in 1962,
his account of his service includes the following description of Gaza:
"The Strip is about forty kilometres long, and averages eight and a
quarter kilometres in width; thus it contains about 330 square
kilometres [360 is currently the accepted figure]. There are about
310,000 Arab residents in the Strip, 210,000 of them refugees from
the southern parts of Palestine now occupied by Israel. Thus there
are about 1500 persons to the square kilometre of arable soil --
about 3900 to the square mile ...
"One does not see people starving or dying of disease in the streets;
nevertheless the Gaza Strip resembles a vast concentration camp, shut
off by the sea, the border between Palestine and the Sinai near
Rafah, which the Egyptians will not permit them to cross, and the
Armistice Demarcation Line which they cross in peril of being shot by
Israelis or imprisoned by the Egyptians. They can look east and see
wide fields, once Arab land, cultivated extensively by a few
Israelis, with a chain of kibbutzim guarding the heights or the areas
beyond. It is not surprising that they look with hatred on those who
have dispossessed them."[1]
Five years after this was published, in 1967, Israel invaded Gaza and
subjected it to direct military rule. Decades later, Hamas emerged,
and decades later still, fired some rockets at such cities as
Ashkelon -- an Israeli city which just incidentally had supplanted
the Palestinian community of Majdal, the last of whose inhabitants
were ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1950, its former
residents mostly driven into Gaza. And now, "retaliating" against
suggestions that Hamas might use its limited military leverage to
open crossings from the Gaza Strip and achieve a broadened ceasefire
including the West Bank, Israel is hammering at Gaza from the skies
and the sea with advanced military equipment, while Israeli ground
forces assemble amidst threats of a broadened assault.
For all their disigenuous diplomatic rhetoric, Israeli planners know
full well that the future they are offering Palestinians in Gaza --
one of peaceful, acquiescent starvation -- is simply not viable.
Indeed, the point was made recently at the Weinberg Founders
Conference (organized by the AIPAC-affiliated Washington Institute
for Near East Policy) by Maj. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, former head
of the Strategic Planning Branch and the Operations Branch of the
IDF. Eiland
<http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC07.php?CID=423>observed
that "Gaza is an extremely small piece of land, 300 square
kilometres, in which today there are 1.5 million people who live
there. In the year 2020 there will be 2.5 million people. Does anyone
really believe that those 2.5 million people who will live in Gaza in
12 years will live happily only because there is a peace agreement?"
Even taken alongside his proposed solution (enlarge Gaza into Egypt,
establish a regional security framework which would operate
independent of and over Palestinians, etc.), Eiland's comments point
to the extremely dangerous future facing Palestinians in Gaza.
In the short term, it remains unclear for how long Israel will
subject this densely populated prison to air strikes and naval
bombardment, whether a massive ground invasion will materialize (or
perhaps the "localized cleansing operations" advocated by the
<http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051031.html>Marcus article
cited above), and just how suffocating a ceasefire arrangement Israel
will receive international license to pursue. But the idea that a
shift from slaughter back to mere economic suffocation would be a
reasonable Israeli concession needs to be forcefully wiped away, or
the prospects for the coming period will be horrifically bleak.
In the meantime, as the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel (the
remnant from the ethnic cleansing of 1948) commit the heresy of
asserting the humanity of Israel's Palestinian victims, the politics
of Israeli racism are turning inward in accord with longstanding
trends. In her speech to the Knesset on Monday, Israeli foreign
minister and Kadima candidate for prime minister Tzipi Livni declared
that the Gaza massacres were "a test of the leadership of the Arab
public in Israel. You are leading the Arab population here on a thin
rope. The thin line between what is allowed and what is forbidden
must not be crossed -- between legitimate and illegitimate, between
right and wrong. Each of you must choose a side, and the choice is
between Arab and Jew."[2] Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu
<http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051032.html>promised that if
elected, he would know how to deal with "Hamas' supporters from
within -- with an iron fist," referring to demonstrations in
predominantly Arab communities against the ongoing assault. Avigdor
Lieberman, head of the far-right Israel Beiteinu and an avid advocate
of racism against Palestinian citizens,
<http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051011.html>called for Arab
parliamentarians in Israel (who are voicing principled criticism of
the Gaza slaughter) to be "exiled," alleging they form part of a
"fifth column" responsible for "acts of treason at a time of war".
At this point, shifting blame to Hamas or other Palestinians for
these Israeli atrocities is not just a mistake, it is an alibi. And
the fact that it's a common one shouldn't make it any more tolerable.
Notes:
[1] E.L.M. Burns, Between Arab and Israeli. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin &
Company Limited, 1962. (pp. 69-70)
[2] "Israeli foreign minister addresses Knesset, justifies Gaza
operation," December 30 2008, BBC Monitoring Middle East.
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