On July 7, 2014 Israel began a massive assault on the Gaza strip of Palestine. In the first week alone Israel dropped over 400 tons of bombs, killing over 130 Palestinians. Most were civilians, about half of them were women and children. By the time you are watching the the number will be higher.
Israel's official justification for this wholesale slaughter: the murder of three Israeli teenagers which Israel blames on Hamas. That's not the real reason. First of all Israel has not produced one single piece of evidence implicating Hamas or even a Palestinian in the murders, and in fact the the evidence we do have indicates that that murderers were Israeli. You see on Tuesday July 1st, The Jerusalem Post released the audio of the kidnapped teen's distress call to police, and in that call the kidnappers can be heard telling the boys to put their heads down in HEBREW. According to the Jerusalem Post prior to being leaked to the public this audio was being held under a gag order by the Israeli government.
So why is Israel really attacking Gaza? It's not about self defense and it's obviously not about avenging those three teenagers. Those are just cover stories for the naive. What this is really about is natural gas.
It turns out that Gaza has quite a bit of natural gas on its coastline. One of the largest sources in the region. British Gas, which holds a joint exploration agreement for the area estimates that the fields hold at least 1 trillion cubic feet of gas. That gas belongs to the Palestinian people and they should be the ones to benefit from it. Israel disagrees.
(An interesting side story on this issue: at one point Russia was bidding for a chance to develop Gaza's gas fields.)
After the death of Yasser Arafat, under questionable circumstances, Israel has controlled those fields, and British Gas has negotiated with Tel Aviv.
With power divided between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the Palestinians have been too weak to put up any meaningful ,resistance and Israel would like to keep it that way. The Unity Government between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority threatens Israel's control of those fields, and as such it has to be destroyed.
It's pretty basic really. These are the real motives of all wars: resources, territory and power. They'll always come up with an excuse, and it's easy to fall for them if you don't do your research, but there's also a really easy way to avoid getting duped: always stand against wars of aggression. Period. Make it a matter of principle, and the facts and morality will always end up being on your side.
And speaking of morality, even if those teenagers had been killed by Hamas, what kind of psychopath thinks that this gives Israel the right to go and kill over a hundred people who had nothing to do with it? We're talking about little kids here.
I'm not going to show you the pictures of the dead or dying children here in this video, but I have looked at them, and as a father it's almost unbearable to see. If hearing about those bombs falling doesn't phase you emotionally, if this is just a political debate for you, then go look at the pictures (these for example). You have no right to defend what Israel is doing, if you don't have the courage to even glance at the consequences.
And anyone who would justify these crimes after seeing the civilian casualties should be ashamed of themselves.
The bombing heavily populated residential areas is a war crime, and the U.S. government is funding it with your tax dollars. That's right. Israel receives over 3 billion dollars in foreign aid from the U.S. each year. (But hey, it's not like the American people actually need that money, the national debt is only 17 trillion dollars.)
Of course it's no accident that you've never had face what's being done to the Palestinian's in your name. If you turn on the mainstream media at any point during this crisis all you'll see is constant stream of reports focusing on the Palestinian rockets being fired in response. These reports conveniently fail to mention that as of yet these primitive rockets have not killed one single Israeli.
The Obama administration is also running with this artificial narrative.
But the rockets, the rockets! Let's all bring this back to the puny homemade rockets that the Palestinians are launching out of desperation and frame this as a question of Israel's self defense.
Pretend for a moment that this wasn't happening in the Middle East, but rather in the south west of the United States. Hey, just for kicks let's say it was happening in Palestine Texas. So three teenagers from Mexico are visiting Palestine Texas and they get killed, by somebody, we don't know who. Mexico of course takes this as an invitation to launch airstrikes, on the entire on the entire region. For ten days the Mexican air force dutifully pummels Palestine Texas, and the surrounding villages, but unfortunately these darn rednecks were unaware that this was perfectly within Mexico's rights, so they started taking pot shots at Mexican fighter jets with their shotguns and deer rifles, and some started shooting in the general direction of the Mexican border. The bullets didn't reach their targets, but still they tried to defend themselves, and THAT is unacceptable.
Sound absurd? That's what you people sound like when you parrot the mainstream media and talk show pundits without thinking. Totally incoherent.
Israel isn't defending itself against the Palestinians any more than the Europeans were defending themselves against the natives of the Americas. Year after year the Israelis have taken more Palestinian land, bulldozed more homes, set up new settlements, and systematically expelled the inhabitants. You can make up justifications or deny it all you want, but the maps don't lie.
This isn't defense, this is ethnic cleansing.
Of course there are those who are actually ok with what these maps tell us. There are people who like to assert that Israel has the right to steal every square inch of Palestinian land because supposedly one thousand five hundred or so years ago their Jewish ancestors were expelled. They call this the right of return.
Ok, let's go with that.
Rights are an interesting topic. The thing about rights, is that if human right actually exists then it would have to universal to all of humanity.
So what about the Palestinian's right of return?
Don't you find it a bit odd that one of the primary stipulations that Israel always imposes upon the Palestinians during negotiations is that in order to reach a peace agreement the Palestinians have to accept that they have no right to return to the land that was taken from them in the past 50 years? We're not talking about people who have some kind of abstract ancestral claim, these are the actual people who lost their homes, and their farms, and their businesses in this lifetime.
So is the right of return an actual right or is it not? You can't have it both ways without exposing the dirty underbelly of this issue: which is that Zionism is a fundamentally racist and fascistic ideology.
The video below is an extreme display, but it's not unique in Israel these days. If you do a little research on the topic you'll find that hardline Zionism very much resembles a neo-nazi movement.
And no, Zionism is not inseparable from Judaism, and it has nothing to do with who you are genetically.
So what can we do to help the Palestinians? Start by actively engaging this debate everywhere it comes up. Don't avoid the conversation just to be polite. Women and children are being massacred in Gaza right now, and silence in the face of oppression is to take the side of the oppressors.
It's time to start confronting those who support what Israel is doing right now. This isn't a matter of opinion or preference. To defend the use of the military against civilian populations, is shameful, it's immoral and it has consequences.
A particular weight of responsibility sits on the shoulders of those in the so called conservative churches of the United States, because this is where the bulk of the support for Israel is found. It's up to you who see what is really going on to wake the people in your church up. If the Pastor in your church defends bombardment of Gaza, or any war for that matter, you need to confront him, and if he doesn't respond when you confront him in private then confront him publicly. If that sounds extreme to you, then go look at those pictures of the little kids who are on the receiving end of this. Go take a glimpse, but understand that the horror of seeing a photo of a dismembered child is nothing like what their parents are feeling.
And to the people of Israel, you need to do some serious soul searching. Is this the image you want the world to have when they think of Israel? An image of a brutal oppressor that murders civilians without hesitation? But more importantly, is this what you want to be?
Bonus Videos
1. Miko Peled Son of a high ranking Israeli general tells the real story of the Palestinian occupation:
2. Norman Finkelstein ends the argument properly:
We are given two narratives. The mainstream media, and indeed, the alternative media is telling you to choose from one or the other.
The first narrative is the neocon, Christian-right Zionist narrative. In this narrative, the (Jewish) Israelis are innocent of all wrongdoing. After all, they offered Palestinians the right to live as Arab Israelis or to accept the state of Israel, which the Arab Palestinians refused. (Well, actually the state of Israel limits the rights of Palestinians). This narrative tells us that all of the Palestinians are terrorists (even children?), that the land was legally won in a defensive war, that the Palestinians don't want peace, and that the Palestinian Mufti himself calls on his people to kill all Jews. The problem with this narrative is that the people who tell it won't even USE the word "Palestinian", claiming that there is no such thing. This is a semantic argument. If I suddenly decide to call myself "Maria", then that's my choice- if a group call themselves "Palestinians", it's facetious to refuse to do so.
The other problem with this narrative is that it is often based on a mishmash of political reality (the many aggressive wars against Israel, Palestinians during the the Intifada blowing up pizza parlor, a disco, a bus of children) and religious prophecy- a bad combination, especially if you are, like me, a believer in secular democracy.
The rightwingers simply do not want to acknowledge the existence of the Palestinians as people, and seem to want the problem to "magically" go away.
So in the first narrative, the Palestinians are collectively evil, Israelis are collectively good (because they are the Chosen People!) and in the happy, magical ending, somehow the Palestinians will vanish and everyone will live happily ever after. Not likely.
The other narrative is presented above. In this narrative, there were few Jews in Israel and the Middle East, and there was a country called Palestine in which everyone got along fine. (Actually, in British Palestine, the BRITISH ruled!) Then the evil Zionists came and stole land (actually, much land was bought by absentee landlords). For some reason, Israel's evil existence provoked wars (which Israel, due to its evilness and weapons, won), and when they marched in to Jordan and parts of Egypt, they refused to give back the land. (Actually, Israel DID trade land for peace at least twice- with Egypt and in this last deal to give the Palestinians the Gaza strip).
According to this narrative, the Israelis are congenitively evil, and cannot do good, and the Palestinians- by virtue of being "victims"- cannot do evil. This, ironically, is exactly the charge that is made against Jews- that they play the role of the victim to cover up crimes!
Of course, if anyone gets killed in Israel, it must be Israel's fault, since no one could ever possibly conceive of Palestinians doing anything violent- so I guess an Israeli killed those teens, in order to blame it on Palestinians! If we believe that all of the kids in school shootings were fake, we must also believe that this is fake. It only requires us to believe that a government (US, Israel or another) is so nefarious that they will stoop to extremes to do evil. We also must suspend disbelief in random violence or normal human motivations (like revenge). Calling the "enemy" a psychopath is a tactic, however, that is often misused by fascists or psychopaths themselves- Hitler used similar language.
According to this narrative, if only Israel would give more land, or magically cease to exist, there would be peace in the Middle East (despite the fact that the Sunnis and Shiites hate each other, and Palestinian Christians have never been fully accepted) and everyone will live happily ever after.
So there we have it- two narratives, both with a simplistic black/white thinking that makes Batman comics seem profound by comparison.
BEING A THINKING PERSON, with an IQ over 80, I refuse to believe EITHER simplistic narrative. Demonizing a group of people, especially a group as diverse and international as Israelis- who come from Russia, Iraq, Yemen, France, Canada, Ethiopia, etc- not to mention non-Jewish Israelis- is unfair. Not all Jews think alike, and not all Israelis.
It's also unfair to judge Israel harshly for war and oppression, then allow Hamas and other groups to preach hatred and launch rockets on civilians. Which group's rockets are more efficient is, to me, a moot point. If we have laws that only apply to those who can do a lot of damage, then all men under 5 foot 7 would be allowed to beat their wives (because, presumably, they can only do a little damage!) International laws must apply for all.
I'm sure that many in the Israeli government ARE psychopaths. Hamas has more than a few, as well. What kind of nutjob would allow his own people to suffer and DIE out of a lack of willingness to compromise? Many on both sides want peace, but their voices are drowned out by hatred.
I recommend this link (from Jerusalem Institute of Justice), for those who still have brains:
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For an intelligent analysis of Middle East conflicts from Kali Sayyid, check this out:
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