[News] Separating the Truth from the Hype

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney01062009.html

January 6, 2009


Separating the Truth from the Hype


The Gaza Bloodbath

By MIKE WHITNEY

In a rare moment of honesty, the New York Times 
divulged the real motive behind the bombardment 
and invasion of Gaza. In Ethan Bronner's article, 
"Israel Weighs Goal: Ending Hamas Rule, Rocket 
fire, or Both", Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon 
said, "We need to reach a situation in which we 
do not allow Hamas to govern. That is the most 
important thing. If the war ends in a draw, as 
expected, and Israel refrains from reoccupying 
Gaza, Hamas will gain diplomatic recognition...No 
matter what you call it, Hamas will obtain legitimacy.”

  According to the Times: "In addition, any truce 
would probably include an increase in commercial 
traffic from Israel and Egypt into Gaza, which is 
Hamas’s central demand: to end the economic 
boycott and border closing it has been facing. To 
build up the Gaza economy under Hamas, Israeli 
leaders say, would be to build up Hamas. Yet 
withholding the commerce would continue to leave 
1.5 million Gazans living in despair." (Israel 
Weighs Goal: Ending Hamas Rule, Rocket fire, or Both; Ethan Bronner)

If Israel wants to prevent Hamas from "obtaining 
legitimacy," than the real objective of the 
invasion is to either severely undermine or 
topple the regime. All the talk about the qassam 
rockets and the so-called "Hamas infrastructure", 
(the new phrase that is supposed to indicate a 
threat to Israeli security) is merely a 
diversion. What really worries Israel is the 
prospect that Obama will "sit down with his 
enemies"--as he promised during the presidential 
campaign--and conduct talks with Hamas. That 
would put the ball in Israel's court and force 
them to make concessions.  But Israel does not 
want to make concessions. They would rather start 
a war and change the facts on the ground so they 
can head-off any attempt by Obama to restart peace process.

Just days ago, Obama advisor, Zbigniew 
Brzezinski, said in a televised interview, that 
the last eight years proves that resolving the 
Palestinian/Israeli conflict is critical to US 
interests in the region. He added that the recent 
fighting shows that the two parties cannot 
achieve peace without US involvement. 
Brzezinski's comments suggest that, at the very 
least, the Obama camp is considering low-level 
(secret?) talks with Hamas representatives. Every 
day that Hamas abstains from violence; its 
legitimacy as a political party grows and the 
prospect of direct negotiations becomes more 
likely. This is Israel's worst nightmare, not 
because Hamas constitutes a real threat to 
Israeli security, but because Israel wants to 
install its own puppet regime and unilaterally 
impose its own terms for a final settlement. 
Neither Ehud Olmert or any of the candidates for 
prime minister have any intention of getting 
bogged down in another 8 years of fruitless 
banter like Oslo where plans for settlement 
expansion had to be concealed behind an elaborate 
public relations smokescreen. No way. The Israeli 
leadership would rather skip the pretense 
altogether and pursue their territorial aims 
openly as they have under Bush. And the goal is 
the same as always; to integrate the occupied 
territories into Greater Israel and leave the 
Palestinians trapped in bantustans. Negotiations just make that harder.

Ariel Sharon's senior advisor, Dov Weisglass, 
clarified Israel's position three years ago when 
he admitted,  "The disengagement [from Gaza] is 
actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of 
formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will 
not be a political process with the 
Palestinians... this whole package that is called 
the Palestinian state has been removed from our 
agenda indefinitely." "Formaldehyde"; that says 
it all. The point of the Israeli withdrawal from 
Gaza was to silence critics and to make it appear 
as though the Palestinians had achieved some type 
of statehood. It was a complete sham. Sharon 
believed that disengagement would stop foreign 
leaders from badgering him to sit down with the 
Palestinians and work out a mutually-acceptable 
agreement. He never expected that elections would 
throw a wrench in his plans and raise the 
credibility of Hamas to the extent that it has 
today. In the last two years, Hamas hasn' t 
launched one suicide mission in Israel, which 
shows that it has abandoned the armed struggle 
and can be trusted to negotiate on its people's 
behalf. That scares Israel, which is why they 
initiated hostilities. Now, they need to seal the 
deal by either removing Hamas before Obama is 
sworn in or face pressure from the new 
administration for dialogue. Meanwhile, Israeli 
troop movements indicate that a plan may be in 
place to divide Gaza into three parts, thus 
making it impossible for Hamas to rule.

The UK Guardian confirms that the invasion was 
really about regime change not rockets or Hamas infrastructure.

According to the Guardian: "A couple of days into 
the assault on Gaza, Israel's ambassador to the 
UN, Gabriela Shalev, said it would continue for 
'as long as it takes to dismantle Hamas 
completely'. Infuriated Israeli officials in 
Jerusalem warned her that such statements could 
set back the diplomatic offensive.

Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the UN 
until a few months ago, was brought in by the 
Foreign Ministry to help lead the diplomatic and 
PR campaign. He said that the diplomatic and 
political groundwork has been under way for months.

"This was something that was planned long ahead," 
he said. "I was recruited by the foreign minister 
to coordinate Israel's efforts and I have never 
seen all parts of a very complex machinery - 
whether it is the Foreign Ministry, the Defence 
Ministry, the prime minister's office, the police 
or the army - work in such co-ordination, being 
effective in sending out the message."

In briefings in Jerusalem and London, Brussels 
and New York, the same core messages were 
repeated: that Israel had no choice but to attack 
in response to the barrage of Hamas rockets; that 
the coming attack would be on "the infrastructure 
of terror" in Gaza and the targets principally 
Hamas fighters; that civilians would die, but it 
was because Hamas hides its fighters and weapons 
factories among ordinary people.

Hand in hand went a strategy to remove the issue 
of occupation from discussion." (UK Guardian, "Why Israel went to war in Gaza")

The invasion was mapped out months ago, right 
down to the bullet points that were passed out to 
friends in the media. Nothing was left to chance. 
That said, the public relations campaign was on 
full display over the weekend when Israeli ground 
troops and armored divisions swept into Gaza 
unopposed. CNN had a coterie of ardent Zionists 
on hand to justify the invasion in a carefully 
scripted analysis of developments. Retired 
Brigadier Gen. David Grange accompanied the 
blatantly pro-Israel Wolf Blitzer saying that the 
IDF had been "lured" into Gaza by Hamas so that 
Hamas could execute its plan for "urban warfare". 
Utter nonsense. Grange implied that the 
subsequent slaughter of civilians was the work of 
Hamas, not Israel. Even by CNN's abysmal standards, this is new low.

The media has worked in concert with the IDF 
throughout, spinning a rationale from whole cloth 
and cheerleading from every available soapbox. 
But recent polls show that the public has 
remained skeptical. Anti-Israel protests have 
sprung up in capitals across the world, and 
support for Israel is at its nadir. . Many people 
are simply shocked to see the most advanced, 
technological weaponry in the world being used in 
densely populated areas where collateral damage 
is bound to be heavy. It just makes Israel look 
like a bully while the media looks like an 
enabler. So far, the war has been a public 
relations catastrophe. Over 500 Palestinians have 
been killed and 2,400 wounded in a debacle of 
Biblical proportions. Every day, new photographs 
circulate on the internet showing the carnage 
produced by the steady bombardment. On Monday, 
the IDF killed two more Palestinian families, in 
two separate incidents.  The mother, father and 
eight children were killed when their house was 
bombed by an American made F-16 early Monday 
morning. Another family in the Shati refugee 
camp, west of Gaza City, was butchered when their 
home was struck by a shell from an Israeli ship 
off the coast. The civilian toll continues to balloon with no end in sight.

Here's how one Gaza resident summed up the 
bombing in an interview with an AP journalist: 
"The Israeli forces attack everywhere. They have 
gone crazy. The Gaza Strip is just going to die 
... it's going to die. We were sleeping. Suddenly 
we heard a bomb. We woke up and we didn't know 
where to go. We couldn't see through the dust. We 
called to each other. We thought our house had 
been hit, not the street. What can I say? You saw 
it with your own eyes. What is our guilt? Are we 
terrorists? I don't carry a gun, neither does my 
girl. What does Israel want? There's no medicine. 
No drinks, no water, no gas. We are suffering 
from hunger. They attack us. Can it be worse than 
this?" All of Gaza has been traumatized.

The "invasion"--which is a word none of the 
Israeli-centric media dares to use--(Israel 
"entered" Gaza) is the equivalent of rampaging 
through a concentration camp. (similar to the 
massacre at Sabra and Shatilla) Still, 
newspapers, like the New York Times, provide 
cover for the attack by referring to Hamas 
"bases" within Gaza. In truth, there are no bases 
nor military installations of any kind. It's just 
more lies. They have no army, no navy, and no air 
force. The only threat that Gaza poses to Israel 
is its people's unshakable commitment to end the occupation.

On CNN, Alan Dershowitz and other prominent 
Zionists defend the invasion in their most 
polished, lawyerly prose, but the public remains 
unconvinced. What observers are seeing on the 
internet is the broken bodies of children pulled 
from the rubble of their homes and the terrifying 
explosions in a city that languishes in complete 
darkness. Nothing Dershowitz says can match the 
imagery splattered minute by minute on the 
screen. Israel has bombed mosques, ambulances, 
bridges, tunnels, even a terrorist girls 
dormitory. Since when is a girl's dormitory part 
of "Hamas infrastructure"? Five sisters and their 
mother were blow apart as they sat peacefully in 
their own living room. Does Dershowitz really 
believe he can elicit sympathy for the 
perpetrators of these crimes? American support 
for Israel is being tested; and that support is quickly eroding.

War is a blunt instrument for achieving one's 
political objectives, and the costs can be 
enormous for winner and loser alike. If Israel 
manages to incite Hamas to the point where they 
deploy suicide bombers to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem 
then, perhaps, attitudes will shift in Israel's 
favor. It is impossible to predict. But, clearly, 
retaliation with suicide missions would be the 
worst possible strategy for Hamas at this point. 
Israel has lost the moral high-ground, but one 
suicide bomber can change all that in a flash. 
Besides, the bombings alienate the people who 
sympathize with the Palestinian cause and make it 
harder for them to be openly supportive. The only 
people who benefit from suicide missions are the 
right-wing fanatics within the Israeli political 
establishment. Every Israeli civilian that's 
killed just strengthens the Likudniks and their ilk.

ENDING THE CEASEFIRE: Who's to blame?

The media has made a big issue of the fact that 
Hamas ended its ceasefire with Israel just days 
before the bombardment of Gaza. But as Johann 
Hari points out in his article "The True Story 
Behind this War Is Not The One Israel Is Telling" 
Hamas offered to maintain the ceasefire if Israel agreed to lift the blockade.

According to Hari:

"The core of the situation has been starkly laid 
out by Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad. 
He says that while Hamas militants – like much of 
the Israeli right-wing – dream of driving their 
opponents away, "they have recognized this 
ideological goal is not attainable and will not 
be in the foreseeable future." Instead, "they are 
ready and willing to see the establishment of a 
Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 
1967." They are aware that this means they "will 
have to adopt a path that could lead them far 
from their original goals" – and towards a 
long-term peace based on compromise.....Halevy 
explains: "Israel, for reasons of its own, did 
not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of 
a diplomatic process with Hamas."

Why would Israel act this way? The Israeli 
government wants peace, but only one imposed on 
its own terms, based on the acceptance of defeat 
by the Palestinians. It means the Israelis can 
keep the slabs of the West Bank on "their" side 
of the wall. It means they keep the largest 
settlements and control the water supply. And it 
means a divided Palestine, with responsibility 
for Gaza hived off to Egypt, and the broken-up 
West Bank standing alone. Negotiations threaten 
this vision: they would require Israel to give up 
more than it wants to. But an imposed peace will 
be no peace at all: it will not stop the rockets 
or the rage. For real safety, Israel will have to 
talk to the people it is blockading and bombing 
today, and compromise with them. (Johann Hari, 
"The True Story Behind this War Is Not The One Israel Is Telling")

Hari's article further confirms our basic thesis 
that the aggression in Gaza has nothing to do 
with terrorism, security, or Hamas 
infrastructure. In fact, Hamas appears to be 
ready to settle for much less than they 
originally hoped for.  In this particular case, 
all they wanted was a promise from Israel to end 
the blockade, but Israel refused. Collective 
punishment of Palestinians has become a habit, 
like smoking or taking drugs. Israel can do what 
it wants. If it decides to cut off the food and 
medicine to 1.5 million people or bomb them into 
oblivion; no one can stop them. The UN and 
Washington just roll over and play dead. Why 
should they negotiate; they can do whatever they 
want. The world is their apple.

ISMAIL HANIYEH: "We do not wish to throw the Jews into the sea".

"Oh...who will stop the windmills in my head?
Who will remove the knives from my heart?
Who will kill my poor children...?
In order that they do not...grow up in the red
furnished apartments..."

("Ending" by Amal Dunqul; translated by Angry Arab News Service)

On Monday, Israeli warplanes bombed the offices 
of a man who has helped to save the lives of more 
Jews than anyone in the Knesset. That man is 
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. 
Haniyeh has supported the ban on suicide missions 
which has lasted for more than two years despite 
the blockade of food, medicine, fuel, and 
electrical power to the Gaza Strip and despite 
the daily bombings, incursions, arrests, 
assassinations and countless other humiliations 
associated with occupation. Hundreds of Israeli 
civilians are alive today because Haniyeh and his 
Hams colleagues abandoned the armed struggle and entered politics.

On Friday, Israeli spokeswoman, Major Avital 
Leibovich, announced that "Hamas leaders were 
also marked men. We have defined legitimate 
targets as any Hamas-affiliated target." That 
means that Haniyeh is now on Israel's hit list.

In a February 2006 interview with the Washington 
Post, Haniyeh dispelled many of the lies 
circulating in the western media about Hamas. He 
said that he wanted to see an end the "vicious 
cycle of violence" and vehemently denied the 
claim that "Hamas is committed to destroying 
Israel". He said, "We do not have any feelings of 
animosity toward Jews. We do not wish to throw 
them into the sea. All we seek is to be given our 
land back, not to harm anybody....We are not war 
seekers nor are we war initiators. We are not 
lovers of blood. We are oppressed people with rights."

Wa Post: "Would Hamas recognize Israel if it were 
to withdraw to the '67 borders?"

Haniyeh: "If Israel withdraws to the '67 borders, 
then we will establish peace in stages... We will 
establish a situation of stability and calm which 
will bring safety for our people.

Wa Post: "Do you recognize Israel's right to exist?"

Haniyeh: "The answer is to let Israel say it will 
recognize a Palestinian state along the 1967 
borders, release the prisoners and recognize the 
rights of the refugees to return to Israel. Hamas 
will have a position if this occurs."

Wa Post: "Will you recognize Israel?"

Haniyeh: "If Israel declares that it will give 
the Palestinian people a state and give them back 
all their rights, then we are ready to recognize them."

Haniyeh's answers are straightforward and 
rational. He asked for nothing that isn't already 
required under existing United Nations 
resolutions; a return to the 1967 borders, basic 
human rights, and settlement of the final status 
issues. An agreement could be facilitated 
tomorrow if Israel was willing to conform to 
international law. Instead, Israel has chosen to 
invade Gaza. For 60 years it has employed the same failed strategy.

Haniyeh again:

"Israel's unilateral movements of the past year 
will not lead to peace. These acts -- the 
temporary withdrawal of forces from Gaza, the 
walling off of the West Bank -- are not strides 
toward resolution but empty, symbolic acts that 
fail to address the underlying conflict. Israel's 
nearly complete control over the lives of 
Palestinians is never in doubt, as confirmed by 
the humanitarian and economic suffering of the 
Palestinians since the January elections."

"We want what Americans enjoy -- democratic 
rights, economic sovereignty and justice. We 
thought our pride in conducting the fairest 
elections in the Arab world might resonate with 
the United States and its citizens. Instead, our 
new government was met from the very beginning by 
acts of explicit, declared sabotage by the White 
House. Now this aggression continues against 3.9 
million civilians living in the world's largest 
prison camps. America's complacency in the face 
of these war crimes is, as usual, embedded in the 
coded rhetorical green light: "Israel has a right to defend itself."

Haniyeh's efforts for reconciliation are doomed. 
Israel will not bargain or compromise. The 
Israeli state is driven by an ideology which 
requires continuous expansion and subjugation. 
There's nothing Haniyeh can do to change that. 
The answer to the present crisis lies within 
Zionism itself, the philosophical underpinning of Jewish nationalism.
In his recent article, "Israel's Righteous Fury 
and its Victims in Gaza", Ilan Pappe, the chair 
in the Department of History at the University of 
Exeter, explains Zionism in terms of its effect 
on Israeli policy vis a vis the invasion of Gaza:

"There are no boundaries to the hypocrisy that a 
righteous fury produces. The discourse of the 
generals and the politicians is moving 
erratically between self-compliments of the 
humanity the army displays in its "surgical" 
operations on the one hand, and the need to 
destroy Gaza for once and for all, in a humane way of course, on the other.

This righteous fury is a constant phenomenon in 
the Israeli, and before that Zionist, 
dispossession of Palestine. Every act whether it 
was ethnic cleansing, occupation, massacre or 
destruction was always portrayed as morally just 
and as a pure act of self-defense reluctantly 
perpetrated by Israel in its war against the 
worst kind of human beings. In his excellent 
volume The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics 
and Scholarship in Israel, Gabi Piterberg 
explores the ideological origins and historical 
progression of this righteous fury. Today in 
Israel, from Left to Right, from Likud to Kadima, 
from the academia to the media, one can hear this 
righteous fury of a state that is more busy than 
any other state in the world in destroying and 
dispossessing an indigenous population.

It is crucial to explore the ideological origins 
of this attitude and derive the necessary 
political conclusions form its prevalence. This 
righteous fury shields the society and 
politicians in Israel from any external rebuke or 
criticism. But far worse, it is translated always 
into destructive policies against the 
Palestinians. With no internal mechanism of 
criticism and no external pressure, every 
Palestinian becomes a potential target of this 
fury. Given the firepower of the Jewish state it 
can inevitably only end in more massive killings, 
massacres and ethnic cleansing.

The self-righteousness is a powerful act of 
self-denial and justification. It explains why 
the Israeli Jewish society would not be moved by 
words of wisdom, logical persuasion or diplomatic 
dialogue. And if one does not want to endorse 
violence as the means of opposing it, there is 
only one way forward: challenging head-on this 
righteousness as an evil ideology meant to cover 
human atrocities. Another name for this ideology 
is Zionism and an international rebuke for 
Zionism, not just for particular Israeli 
policies, is the only way of countering this 
self-righteousness." ("Israel's Righteous Fury 
and its Victims in Gaza", Ilan Pappe)

It wouldn't make a bit of difference if Hamas 
surrendered tomorrow and handed-over all its 
weapons to Israel, because the problem isn't 
Hamas; it's Zionism, the deeply-flawed ideology 
which leads to bombing children in their homes 
while clinging to victim-hood. Ideas have consequences. Gaza proves it.

Mike Whitney lives in the Pacific Northwest and 
can be reached at <mailto:fergiewhitney at msn.com>fergiewhitney at msn.com




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