Standing up to evil

The video above shows a brave teenaged girl -- American, to judge from her accent -- risking her life to stop Israeli monsters from killing children. I do not know the origin of this video, and I do not know who the girl is. But her courage shames me.

I strongly urge you to watch this footage. This beautiful young woman should be more famous than the Chinese man who stood up to those tanks.

From the Guardian, we learn that the Israeli army in a Gaza suburb called Zeitoun evacuated more than 100 Palestinians -- mostly children -- to a single-story house "for their own safety." The army then fired rockets into the house.

The little girl in the photograph to your left is one of the victims.

There is no escape for these civilians. Any avenue of escape presented to them soon stands revealed as an evil Israeli ruse -- a massacre trap.

The UN said there had been extensive destruction in Zeitoun. For three days, from 3-7 January, the Israeli Defence Force prevented Red Cross medical teams from entering the area to evacuate the wounded.

I hope everyone will read these thoughts from a recently retired United States Marine who saw service in Iraq:

I am dismayed by the rhetoric from US politicians and pundits to the effect that "if the US were under rocket attack from Mexico or Canada, we would respond like the Israelis." This a gross insult to US servicemen; I can assure you that we would NOT respond like the Israelis. In fact, US armed forces and adjunct civilians are under attack constantly in Iraq and Afghanistan by people who are much better armed, much better trained and far deadlier than Hamas (I'll ignore for now that the politicians seem to be oblivious to this fact). Israel has indeed taken a small number of casualties from Hamas rocket fire (about 20 killed since 2001), but we have taken thousands of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, including many civilian personnel. Hundreds of American casualties have occurred due to indirect fire, often from mortars. This is particularly true in or near the Green Zone in Baghdad. This fire often originates from densely populated urban areas.

Americans do not, I repeat DO NOT, respond to that fire indiscriminately. When I say "indiscriminately," I mean that even if we can precisely identify the source of the fire (which can be very difficult), we do not respond if we know we will cause civilian casualties. We always evaluate the threat to civilians before responding, and in an urban area the threat to civilians is extremely high. If US servicemen violate those rules of engagement and harm civilians, I assure you we do our best to investigate -- and mete out punishment if warranted. There are differing opinions on the conflict in Iraq, but I am proud of the conduct of our servicemen there.

With that in mind, I find the conduct of the Israeli army in Gaza to be brutal and dishonorable, and it is insulting that they and others claim that the US military would behave in the same way.

Obviously, we should disregard all Israeli claims that their soldiers are simply responding to fire. That excuse is nothing more than a "cover" for genocide.

The Israeli approach in Gaza strikes me as uncontrolled and vengeful. My objective analysis is that it has little tactical effectiveness; my opinion is that its main goal is to whip the entire Gaza population into submission. This is disturbingly similar to the Israelis' conduct in Lebanon in 2006, so I feel obliged to say that the Israeli military displays a concerted pattern of disregard for civilian lives.

The Israelis deliberately fired on a UN relief truck, halting relief efforts.

Clearly, the Israeli leadership has decided upon enacting "Final Solution" to the Palestinian problem.

A Vatican official has compared Gaza to a concentration camp:

“Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp,” Cardinal Renato Martino, the head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said in an interview published Wednesday in Il Sussidiaro.

He defended his comments in the center-left Italian daily La Repubblica on Thursday. While noting that Hamas rockets into Israel were “certainly not sugared almonds,” he called the situation in Gaza “horrific.” Israel sharply condemned the cardinal’s use of World War II imagery. “We are astounded that a spiritual dignitary would have such words that are so far removed from truth and dignity,” said Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

But Martino used Holocaust imagery, not World War II imagery -- and this is precisely what causes synapses to fry within the minds of many Jews. Although they cannot admit the truth to themselves, they know full well that Israel is doing to the Palestinians as Hitler's Germany did to the Jews.

Hamas rocket attacks, though far fewer in number than Israeli-American propaganda would have us believe, were perfectly justified. Imagine how Americans would respond if they had to live under pre-attack circumstances, as documented by Oxfam:

Movement in and out of Gaza is all but impossible and supplies of food and water, sewage treatment, and basic healthcare can no longer be taken for granted. As a result of the blockade and collapse of the economy, there is little money to buy food and limited food to buy. Food prices are rising and wheat flour, baby milk, and rice, among other essential goods, are increasingly scarce. During the period of May-June 2007 alone, these commodity prices rose 34%, 30% and 20.5% respectively.

The blockade is destroying public service infrastructure in Gaza. The Israeli government prevents the repair and maintenance of the electricity and water service infrastructure in Gaza by prohibiting the import of spare parts. The impact of this is amplified by Israel’s parallel punitive restrictions on fuel and electricity to Gaza. Hospitals cannot generate electricity to keep lifesaving equipment working or to generate oxygen, while 40-50 million litres of sewage continues to pour into the sea daily.

In June 2007, there were 748 truckloads of exports leaving Gaza for Israel and other countries. A month later there were none.

Writers Jean Bricmont and Diana Johnstone have some sound advice, although the do not go nearly far enough:

Many people, especially on the left, persist in thinking that Israel is only a pawn in an American capitalist or imperialist strategy to control the Middle East. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Israel is of no use to anybody or anything but its own fantasies of domination.

For the pro-Western petro-monarchies and the "moderate" Arab regimes, Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands is a nightmare, which radicalizes much of their populations and threatens their rule. It is Israel, by its absurd policies, that provoked the creation of both Hezbollah and Hamas and that is indirectly responsible for much of the recent growth of "radical Islam".

Allow non-Jews to speak their mind about Israel

The notion of collective guilt was already very questionable in 1945, but the idea of transmitting that collective guilt to subsequent generations is quite simply a religious notion.

The fact that we are not all guilty of the crimes of the Third Reich is simple and obvious, but needs to be driven home to allow non-Jews to speak up freely about Palestine. As it is, non-Jews who often feel they must leave it to Jews, as the only people who have the "right" to criticize Israel, to defend the Palestinians. But given the relationship of forces between the Jewish critics of Israel, and the influential Zionist organizations claiming to speak for the Jewish people, there is no realistic hope that Jewish voices alone can save the Palestinians.

However, the main reason for the silence is surely not guilt precisely because it is so artificial, but rather fear. Fear of "what will they think", fear of slander and even of being taken to court for "anti-Semitism". If you are not convinced, take a journalist, a politician or a publisher to some spot where nobody is listening and there is no hidden camera or microphone, and ask whether he or she says in public all he or she thinks of Israel in private.

The practical initiatives are summed up in three letters : BDS- Boycott, disinvestment, sanctions

What is important about sanctions, especially on the cultural level, is their symbolic value. It is a way of telling our governments that we do not accept their policy of collaboration with a state that has chosen to become an international outlaw.

Juan Cole now seems to agree that the two-state solution is dead. I've long felt that way. Forgive a bit of self-quotation:

I support eradication of the Jewish state -- of the very concept of a state devoted to the supremacy of one race or religion. For the same reason, I also support the eradication of Saudi Arabia. (I would except Vatican City only because it is one-third the size of the Los Angeles Zoo; its status as an independent state is really an agreed-upon fiction.)

I do not speak of physical annihilation of the people; I speak of annihilating a government and an ideology. Just as the Germans had, through their crimes, lost the right to self-determination (in my view, they should not have regained sovereignty until the passing of every single German alive during the Nazi era), so too have the Israelis. The civilized world must impose a solution upon them -- by force if necessary, though non-violent means are, of course, preferable.

A pluralist, open, non-racist society -- a single-state solution -- is the only option for that patch of real estate. If any Jews in Israel cannot stomach such an outcome, then I say let the bigots find a new home in the sea.