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August 13, 2014<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/13/why-gaza-fought-back/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/13/why-gaza-fought-back/</a><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><b><big><big>Hashtag Genocide</big></big></b></div>
<h1 class="article-title">Why Gaza Fought Back</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by RAMZY BAROUD</div>
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<p>My old family house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza was
recently rebuilt by its new owner, into a beautiful
three-story building with large windows adorned by red frames.
In Israel’s most recent and deadliest war on Gaza, the house
sustained significant damage. A large hole caused by Israeli
missiles can be seen from afar, in a part of the house where
our kitchen once stood.</p>
<p>It seems that the original target was not my house, however,
but that of our kindly neighbor, who had spent his entire
working-life toiling between manual jobs in Israel, and later
in life as a janitor for UN-operated schools in Gaza. The
man’s whole lifesavings were invested in his house where
several families lived. After “warning” rockets blew up part
of his house, several missiles pulverized the rest.</p>
<p>My entire neighborhood was also destroyed. I saw photos of
the wreckage-filled neighborhood by accident on Facebook. The
clearance where we played football as little kids was filled
with holes left by missiles and shrapnel. The shop where I
used my allowance to buy candy, was blown up. Even the
graveyard where our dead were meant to “rest in peace” was
anything but peaceful. Signs of war and destruction were
everywhere.</p>
<p>My last visit there was about two years ago. I caught up with
my neighbors on the latest politics and the news of who was
dead and who was still alive underneath the shady wall of my
old house. One complained about his latest ailments, telling
me that his son Mahmoud had been killed as he had been a
freedom fighter with a Palestinian resistance movement.</p>
<p>I couldn’t fathom the idea that Mahmoud, the child I
remembered as running around half-naked with a runny nose, had
become a fierce fighter with an automatic rifle ready to take
on the Israeli army. But that he was, and he was killed on
duty.</p>
<p>Time changes everything. Time has changed Gaza. But the strip
was never a passive place of people subsisting on hand-outs or
a pervasive sense of victimhood. Being a freedom fighter
preceded any rational thinking about life and the many choices
it had to offer growing up in a refugee camp, and all the
little kids of my generation wanted to join the Fedayeen.</p>
<p>But options for Gazans are becoming much more limited than
ever before, even for my generation.</p>
<p>Since Israel besieged Gaza with Egypt’s help and
coordination, life for Gazans has become largely about mere
survival. The strip has been turned into a massive ground for
an Israeli experiment concerned with population control.
Gazans were not allowed to venture out, fish, or farm, and
those who got even close to some arbitrary “buffer zone,”
determined by the Israeli army within Gaza’s own borders, were
shot and often killed.</p>
<p>With time the population of the strip knew that they were
alone. The short stint that brought Mohammed Morsi to power in
Egypt offered Gaza some hope and a respite, but it soon ended.
The siege, after the overthrow of Morsi became tighter than
ever before.</p>
<p>The Palestinian leadership in Ramallah did very little to
help Gaza. To ensure the demise of Hamas, Mahmoud Abbas’
Palestinian Authority carried on with its “security
coordination” with Israel, as Gaza suffered a Draconian siege.
There was no question, that after all the failed attempts at
breaking the siege and the growing isolation of Gaza, Gazans
had to find their own way out of the blockade.</p>
<p>When Israeli began its bombardment campaign of Gaza on July
6, and a day later with the official launch of the so-called
Operation Protective Edge, followed by a ground invasion, it
may have seemed that Gaza was ready to surrender.</p>
<p>Political analysts have been advising that Hamas has been at
its weakest following the downturn of the Arab Spring, the
loss of its Egyptian allies, and the dramatic shift of its
fortunes in Syria and, naturally Iran. The “Hamas is ready to
fold” theory was advanced by the logic surrounding the unity
agreement between Hamas and Fatah; and unity was seen largely
as a concession by Hamas to Abbas’ Fatah movement, which
continued to enjoy western political backing and monetary
support.</p>
<p>The killing of three Israeli settlers in the occupied West
Bank in late June was the opportunity for Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to test the misleading theory on
Hamas’ weakened position. He launched his war that eventually
mounted into a genocide, hoping that Hamas and other
resistance groups would be forced to disarm or be completely
eradicated – as promised by various Israeli officials.</p>
<p>But it didn’t. From the very first days of the war it became
clear the resistance could not be defeated, at least not as
easily as Netanyahu had expected. The more troops he invested
in the war on Gaza, the more Israeli army casualties
increased. Netanyahu’s response was to increase the price of
Palestinian resistance by inflicting as much harm on
Palestinian civilians as possible: He killed over 1,900,
wounded nearly 10,000, a vast majority of whom were civilians,
and destroyed numerous schools, mosques, hospitals, and
thousands of homes, thus sending hundreds of thousands of
people on the run. But where does one run when there is
nowhere to go?</p>
<p>Israel’s usual cautious political discourse was crumbling
before Gaza’s steadfastness. Israeli officials and media began
to openly call for genocide. Middle East commentator Jeremy
Salt explained:</p>
<p>“The more extreme of the extreme amongst the Zionists say out
loud that the Palestinians have to be wiped out or at the very
least driven into Sinai,” he wrote, citing Moshe Feiglin, the
deputy of the Israeli Knesset, who called for “full military
conquest of the Gaza strip and the expulsion of its
inhabitants. They would be held in tent encampments along the
Sinai border while their final destination was decided. Those
who continued to resist would be exterminated.”</p>
<p>From Israeli commentator Yochanan Gordon, who flirted with
genocide in “when genocide is permissible,” to Ayelet Shaked,
who advocated the killing of the mothers of those who resist
and are killed by Israel. “They should follow their sons.
Nothing would be more just. They should go as should the
physical houses in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise
more little snakes are raised,” he wrote on Facebook.</p>
<p>References to genocide and extermination and other
devastatingly violent language are no longer “claims” levied
by Israeli critics, but a loud and daily self-indictment made
by the Israelis themselves.</p>
<p>The Israelis are losing control of their decades-long
hasbara, a propaganda scheme so carefully knitted and
implemented, many the world over were fooled by it.
Palestinians, those in Gaza in particular, were never blind to
Israel’s genocidal intentions. They assembled their resistance
with the full knowledge that a fight for their very survival
awaited.</p>
<p>Israel’s so-called Protective Edge is the final proof of
Israel’s unabashed face, that of genocide. It carried it out,
this time paying little attention to the fact that the whole
world was watching. Trending Twitter hashtags which began with
#GazaUnderAttack, then #GazaResists, quickly morphed to
#GazaHolocaust. The latter was used by many that never thought
they would dare make such comparisons.</p>
<p>Gaza managed to keep Israel at bay in a battle of historic
proportions. Once its children are buried, it will once again
rebuild its defenses for the next battle. For Palestinians in
Gaza, this is not about mere resistance strategies, but their
very survival.</p>
<p><i><strong>Ramzy Baroud</strong> is a PhD scholar in People’s
History at the University of Exeter. He is the Managing
Editor of Middle East Eye. Baroud is an
internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an
author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest
book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story
(Pluto Press, London).</i></p>
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