I have refrained from commenting on the current atrocities in Gaza because I keep searching for some comforting news, only to come up goose eggs. Clearly, the Hamas kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit -- a predictable and justifiable response to the Israeli massacre of a Palestinian family -- has played drirectly into the hands of Israeli hawks.And do not ever expect me to apologize for the word "justifiable." I refuse to operate under the hallucination that Israeli lives have greater worth than do the lives of their victims. Nor do I believe that one can placate mass-murdering monsters with docility and pleas for tolerance. Taking a military man hostage in retaliation for the killing of seven civilians is, if anything, far too measured a response.
Every rational person should now understand that Israel's ultimate goal for the Palestinians is the mirror image of Hitler's ultimate goal for the Jews: Physical annhilation. Israeli hawks will use every incident available to them to bring about this all-too-foreseeable bloodbath. They comprehend that the time for genocide is now, while a compliant madman like Bush remains in office and his Jesusmaniac hillbilly followers remain mired their sick Apocalyptic fantasies.
I direct readers to this piece by Steve Clemons -- and especially to a reader's commentary:
Israel will NEVER allow a truly democratic Palestine, because the FACTS ON THE GROUND are that Israel has murdered, enslaved, minimized, starved, caged, and abused the Palestinians for so long that entities such as Hamas are seen by the Palestinians as champions and saviours.Perhaps the only ones who can salvage the situation are American Jews. They are permitted to criticize the genocidal Israeli government; all others are not. They must understand that, when the time comes to apportion blame for the coming murder of all Palestinians, most people in this world will not see the important distinction between Israel's hawks and the Jewish people as a whole. The world will never forget.
Once the Israelis have their holocaust, they will find themselves in a precarious situation, for they have chosen unreliable allies. If (as they say) Jesus tarries, America's hillbillies will once more turn against the people they have always -- secretly or openly -- considered guilty of deicide. Southern fundamentalists may now proclaim their love for Israel, but Gerald L.K. Smith's Christ still rules the Ozarks. Outside hillbilly-land, Israeli-sponsored genocide will erase memories of Nazi-sponsored genocide. The friendless Israelis will find themselves gathered in one small, easily-nuked nation, without the Palestinians acting as human shields.
Israelis think they are hated because they are Jews. In fact, if anyone other than Jews ran that country, it would already have met with the same fate as apartheid South Africa.
5 comments:
Thank you, Joseph. Someone needs to say these things. We have got to stop being afraid to criticize Israel- doing so does not mean we hate Jews any more than it means we hate Americans when we criticize Bush. The time has come for all good men, and women, to come to the aid of.. humanity- by speaking out, and saying enough is enough. What is going on can only be called atrocities-crimes against humanity. Have they gone mad?
Read this account of what is happening It will break your heart.
Here is why it is happening now.
Israel's second reason for striking at Gaza is political. It is seeking to destroy the Hamas government by all possible means - including physical liquidation - because it knows that Hamas's terms for a settlement would be stiffer than it could possibly accept.
It abhors the recent Hamas-Fatah accord, which implicitly recognises Israel, because it threatens to produce a Palestinian partner ready to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Israel has no intention of ever returning to those borders. It is no accident that its assault followed immediately on the Palestinian accord.
Israel will do everything to avoid a negotiation. Hence, it deliberately inflicts inhumane hardships on the Palestinians in order to radicalise them and drive the moderates from the scene. Moderates, who are prepared to talk, are Israel's real enemies.
PA justice minister to file a lawsuit against the Israeli occupation government and the IOF before the international criminal court
Jews can't criticize these policies either, without being on the receiving end of the same charges which dog anyone else who questions Israeli policy. The loudest critics of Israel in this country *are* Jews (e.g., Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, etc.) and they're both routinely attacked as anti-Semitic ("self-hating Jews", "Holocaust deniers", etc.).
Our own government is what makes these policies possible. Israel is a client state paid to keep the lid on Arab nationalism. Pull the plug on the money, and Israeli policy would have to shift, despite the racism which seems to animate Israeli society at the moment.
Thanks largely to the occupation, Israel has taken on the worst features of both client and rogue states -- institutionally corrupt, increasingly stratified economically, driven by extremist positions not always shared by the majority, and (like all oppresors) apt to to view itself as "victim". Sound familiar?
Much of the moral rot is directly attributable to the occupation itself, whose ravages have served select Israeli interests, and kept the right-wing in power. And it didn't help that in 1967 Israel attracted the tender loving care of U.S. "We" didn't want a viable Palestinian state (and, of course, still don't), in part out of fear that an Arab state run on decent principles, unresponsive to U.S. interests, would be a terrible precedent. No less than Donald Rumsfeld justified the Israeli occupation with the notion that "to the victor go the spoils", apparently unaware that, under international law, wars (and occupations) undertaken for the conquest of land or resources are illegal.
Short-sighted "strategic thinking", built on a political base of religious mania, corporate greed and mass fear, can cause quite a lot of damage, before it unravels.... Barring a complete change of policy in Washington, which is currently driven by exactly the same destructive forces, there isn't much hope for it, whatever American Jews may say or do.
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