[News] The Myth of Israeli Retaliation

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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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