Tag Archives: Israel Palestine

How much is enough?

Israel continues to pound the people of Gaza to a pulp, bombing yet another UN school and killing many as they slept. The Palestinian death toll is nearing 1,400 as of this writing. How is our mainstream media handling this? They’re basically ripping and reading Israeli government press releases.

Outrage upon outrageToday (Thursday 7/31), it’s been all about the “sophisticated” network of tunnels through which the diabolical Hamas can infiltrate Israel at will and attack the innocent. I heard a bloodless report on NPR in which a correspondent talked about the improved combat capability of Hamas, which they argued, surpassed that of Hezbollah during Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon. “Hezbollah is watching this closely,” we’re told. Cue the fright music.

It’s no mystery why most Americans don’t understand this conflict; they simply never get the facts from their news sources. This attack is completely unjustified; it is a bald attempt to destroy any opportunity for a united Palestinian front, the prospect of which emerged over the past few months. As usual, the Israeli government is not responding to the threat of war, but rather, the threat of peace. When there appears a chance that a credible diplomatic effort might emerge, they shift the ground to military conflict, something they cannot fail at. They have the fifth largest military in the world; Hamas is a bunch of guys with guns and 10-20 pound artillery charges. Does the media report that? Never.

Take the so-called “iron dome” defense system. According to Ted Postal at MIT (who appeared on Democracy Now! this week), this system, like the Patriot Missile batteries of the first Gulf War (1990-1),  is almost certainly less than 5% effective. But the United States government and our incredibly feckless media merely accept the Israeli governments unverified claims without comment. Again, it’s rip and read — if it’s coming from the Netanyahu government, it has to be right. In the midst of all this carnage, they simply can’t resist raising Raytheon’s stock a little bit.

I could say more, but suffice to say, this has to stop. I know Netanyahu and his ministers are shooting for total capitulation on the part of the Palestinians. They may get part of their wish. But there’s no way in hell we should fail to hold them accountable for what has been a really major crime against humanity, made worse by the fact that we could pressure them to stop, and yet we won’t. We have no leverage in Syria. We do in Israel, and we should use it.

Stop. the. killing. now.

luv u,

jp

Target Gaza.

Gaza is a little sliver of land along the Mediterranean; it’s 136 square miles of impoverished territory and one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Exit and entry for the 1.8 million people who live there is strictly controlled by Israel on three sides, Egypt (in cooperation with the Israeli and U.S. governments) on the fourth. It is basically an open-air prison; that’s why when the world’s fifth most powerful military unleashes its killing machinery on the place, you get hundreds dead in a short stretch of days. That’s what we’re seeing now.

Maybe this would help at the HagueIndeed, what we are seeing now is collective punishment of the Palestinians, not the Israel vs. Hamas conflict that the U.S. media constantly refers to. Let us be clear: the Israeli government, in the normal course of screwing the Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, took the opportunity of the kidnapping and murder of the three yeshiva students to go on a rampage in the West Bank, arresting hundreds of people, including Hamas operatives released under previous ceasefire agreements, and killing about a dozen Palestinians. It should surprise no one that that would result in a response from Gaza in the form of some very ineffective missiles.

Let’s talk about self-defense. The Netanyahu government has an option for stopping the rocket fire: cease the rampage against Palestinians you started weeks ago.  The concept of self-defense does not encompass bombing hospitals, ambulances, and U.N.-run schools. Even if the Israeli government’s extremely dubious claims about hidden caches of weapons in such places were true, it would be no justification for striking medical facilities. Just the order to evacuate from northern Gaza itself amounts to a probable war crime – if the International Criminal Court were anything other than a venue for victors’ justice, Bibi and friends would be standing in the dock at the Hague alongside Barry and John Kerry … and Bush and Cheney, for that matter.

But there is no justice, except that which we bring about ourselves through collective action. So I urge you to contact your representatives in the federal government at every level and make your opposition to this attack known in no uncertain terms. So long as the Israeli government feels it can act with complete impunity, it will continue to heap outrage upon outrage.

luv u,

jp

All hell.

This is a week for the books. Two major conflicts going to hell in a handbasket at the same time; god help us. One at a time …

Re: Israel / Palestine: See all previous commentsPalestine. The IDF ground war has begun. At least “war” is what our media in the U.S. call this, but it’s a very misleading term. This is an attack by one of the most powerful military machines in the world against an impoverished, stateless, poorly armed populace. Our television, radio, and newsprint journalists typically describe it as a conflict between Israel and Hamas, but the attack is on the Palestinian people, and it is they who suffer, with over 200 dead as of this writing. Four boys blown to bits on a beach, and Netanyahu is just getting started.

The act of telling civilians in northern Gaza to flee their homes in itself is a flagrant violation of the U.N. charter. What does our constitutional lawyer, Nobel laureate president have to say? The same three statements he always makes in these circumstances: (1) Israel has the right to defend itself; (2) No nation can tolerate having missiles targeting their cities; (3) Isn’t that “Iron Dome” defense shield we helped them build totally awesome? Here’s how to order yours.

I’m not certain, but I think (2) galls me the most. Couldn’t you say that about Palestine? They get bombs dropped on them all the time, not to mention settlements built on their land, checkpoints everywhere they go, regular killings of its citizens by a vicious foreign army of occupation, etc. What “state” would tolerate that?

Ukraine. I won’t say too much about this; only that the shooting down of the airliner is horrible beyond belief, and it’s just the sort of thing that happens when conflicts spin out of control. This story has sucked all of the air out of the room with regard to the news media. Chris Matthews on MSNBC was practically frothing at the mouth, playing tapes of Reagan excoriating the USSR on national television and saying the “Gipper” spoke for all of us back in 1983. The hell he did. At that time, his minions in Central America were eviscerating more innocents each week than were killed on KAL 007, so he can stow the high moral tone.

Hope to post next week … if our liberal friends don’t get us blown up before then.

luv u,

jp

Kids’ crusade.

The Israeli war machine is cranking at nearly full bore now, with something approaching 100 Palestinians killed in several days of air strikes, a ground invasion and re-occupation of Gaza threatened, and I’m sure quite a bit else that doesn’t rise to the level of mainstream reportage here in the United States. This is being characterized as a “war”, albeit an “asymmetric” one, but I don’t know how you call something a war when only one side has an actual military … that is, the fourth or fifth most powerful military in the world. The other side has very primitive rockets that they obviously can’t hit the broad side of a barn with.

Targeted.I’ll be clear, for what it’s worth: firing rockets into southern and central Israel is not only wrong, it’s strategically idiotic. But this nearly uncontrolled act of violence is a response to the ongoing assault against Palestinians, from the massive crackdown in the West Bank on the pretext of the 3 Israelis being kidnapped and murdered, to the continual expansion of settlements and other occupation infrastructure, to the steady incarceration, wounding, and yes, killing of Palestinians, young and old, in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

This assault on Gaza is just the latest chapter of the Israeli government’s practice of demonstrating their willingness to kill Palestinians in large numbers. Netanyahu has built his entire career on this, catering to some of the worst tendencies of his electorate.  More than 1,500 children under the age of 18 have been killed by the IDF since 2001. Several more have died in the last few days. Netanyahu blames Hamas, but it is he who drops bombs on one of the most densely populated place on Earth. You should expect to be held responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions. All Bibi’s government talks about is self-defense, but this is a very one-sided “war”. Must you survive by murder?

Netanyahu is a lot like Assad: He only knows one thing, and that thing is violence. This is not an intractable problem. It can be solved if the Israeli government acts responsibly, and abandons its claim to the 22% of historic Palestine that is not Israel.

luv u,

jp

Rest for one.

After an eight-year coma, Ariel Sharon died this past week. I say good for him. I am glad that he’s gone, and I say that without malice. No one deserves what he went through as a result of that stroke, not even a heartless killer. And I regret to say that that is exactly what he was, despite the graveside accolades.

Starting with the Qibya massacre in 1953, when troops led by Sharon killed almost 70 Palestinians, as well as destroying 45 homes and a mosque, Sharon made it his business to make the Arab inhabitants of Israel/Palestine miserable, homeless, or dead. He earned his title “The Bulldozer” Sharon: Gone but not forgotten.after the 1967 war when he pacified Gaza by destroying thousands of homes. While Sharon is hailed as a hero of the 1973 war – a war resulting from the stalemate policy encouraged by super-genius Henry Kissinger – he is probably best remembered for his role in the murderous 1982 invasion of Lebanon, in the midst of that country’s civil war, culminating in the massacre of Palestinians by Israeli-allied Christian militias in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, then under the control of the IDF.

That might have ended his public career, but it’s hard to keep a good killer down. Even though he was found to be substantially responsible for the deaths of the refugees in Beirut, he was back in subsequent Likud governments as minister without portfolio, then later as housing minister under Netanyahu’s first government in the mid-nineties. I recall his exhortation to settlers on the West Bank at one point during that period that they should “take every hilltop” – this from a man now hailed as one who was willing to trade land for peace.

Sharon’s tenure as Prime Minister was launched by his provocative visit to the “Dome of the Rock” in East Jerusalem, sparking the second Intifada. He used massive force to crush the uprising, reaching into his bulldozer bag of tricks, sending IDF soldiers into neighborhoods and schools in the West Bank, and basically burning the place down. Sharon pushed the separation wall, which is designed to lock in the Israeli government’s maximalist land claims on the West Bank. His much heralded evacuation of settlers from Gaza was a farce – those settlements were never anything more than a chip to be traded away in negotiations. And it was Sharon who chose the current PA leader Abu Mazen – insisted upon it, once Arafat was out of the way.

Rest in peace, big fella. Your legacy lives on.

What law?

This will be a quickie – I’m kind of pressed this week, for a variety of reasons.

It’s always astonishing to me to watch how issues in foreign affairs are reported in our nation’s mainstream media. This week there was a major network interview with the new president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani. This was broadly characterized as part of a “charm offensive” that will include his appearance at the U.N. Any discussion of Iran is couched in the context of what is uncritically reported as their drive toward building nuclear weapons or a “nuclear weapons capability,” which the U.S., Israel, and some European allies oppose. We have imposed very punishing economic sanctions, which cause tremendous misery amongst the Iranian population, and we and the Israeli government regularly threaten Iran with military aggression. So the reporting on the “charm offensive” is a bit like trash-talking the victim after kicking them in the gut (and promising worse down the road).

I think if we’ve learned anything over the last thirty-five years it’s that the United States does not want any detente with the Iranian government, no matter how accommodating they become. We saw this with the Khatami government, which was very moderate and reformist and yet ended up on the “Axis of Evil” shortlist. Frankly, our leaders much prefer it when Iran elects presidents like Amedinejad, who are conveniently cartoon-like, racist, and easy to demonize. It’s the Rouhani’s who give them a belly ache.

Try for a moment to imagine a scenario in which we stop confronting Iran. There are two compelling reasons why it is unlikely to happen, so long as we remain an empire. First, it would put us squarely on the wrong side of Saudi Arabia in the great ongoing war against the Shi’ia. Second, it would further compel Israel to make peace, to deal, and that cuts against more than 35 years of stalemate strategy in which we have been a primary participant.

So, peace with Iran? Don’t hold your breath. It will only happen if we insist upon it … and you can’t do that without breathing deeply.

luv u,

jp

Into the fray.

The Bush… I mean, Obama administration announced today that it would be providing arms to the Syrian opposition, whoever that may be. Not too hard to see that coming, I suppose. When a man draws a red line, it’s because he’s already all too eager to step across it. The Syrian conflict is like that shiny new car our government and our corporate media (including its NPR/PBS sidecar) just want, want, WANT more than anything. They’re ready to let the old Afghan clunker go, were able to pawn off their Iraqi wreck, and they just keep driving by that showroom lot, looking at that awesome Syrian number.

Already, I have heard more about the numbers of killed in Syrian than I ever heard about the Iraq catastrophe. Again, no surprise. The government and the press meticulously count the victims of official enemies, but when it comes to the corpses generated by our misguided policies, we don’t do body counts. They still won’t put a realistic number on the lives lost in Iraq, hovering around the casual 30K guess Bush made in 2007 or so. I suppose once we have both legs in the mire of this conflict they will stop counting again. But for now, the statistics are useful – they are trying to push the American people closer to intervention, and it’s evident that the effort isn’t working very well. Less than one in four is in favor of intervention.

Not hard to see why. Two wars over the past twelve years, with more than 6,700 Americans killed. The very real probability that our sophisticated and destructive weapons will wind up in the hands of fanatical militants. Skepticism over the case for chemical weapon use by the regime. Who can blame us, right? The scare talk about Hezbollah is probably a bridge too far for most, as well. Frankly, they are engaged in something close to an existential struggle. If their patron Assad falls and is replaced by a Sunni-dominated regime, that puts an enemy on their eastern flank. They already have Israel to their south. Forget religion, politics, propaganda for a minute – if you were one of their strategists, what would you do?

Then there’s the small matter of the overwhelming majority of Americans being against this. But then, we were in favor of background checks, too. So long as McCain is happy, we can pound salt, apparently.

luv u,

jp

 

Gaza misery.

All-out war has been averted in Gaza. That’s a good thing. The bad thing? More than 160 Palestinians were killed over the last week, more than half of them (in excess of 90 individuals) were civilians. Speaking on Public Radio International, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that “most of the people hit in Gaza deserved it“. Earlier today, with the cease-fire in place, a Palestinian man was shot along the border of Gaza inside what the IDF terms a “no-go” zone, but also in an area transited by Palestinian farmers on the way to their fields. This is not an unusual occurrence and is probably only being reported in the U.S. because of the conflict/cease fire story. This happens all the freaking time.

You don’t have to be a cynic to believe that Netanyahu wanted this flare-up, with elections just weeks away. He is following in a long tradition of Israeli political leaders who know that the iron fist earns votes. Already he has reconfigured his political coalition from a center-right to a more extreme right grouping, including the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party headed by current Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, a man who wants all Israeli Arabs – 20% of Israel’s population – to sign loyalty oaths and who has openly advocated for their expulsion. The bet appears to have paid off politically – a large majority in Israel favored the attack on Gaza. They have their problems, we have ours, it seems.

I am encouraged, at least, that the Palestinians in Gaza are getting their story told to some degree in the United States, the land where the money for Israel’s military comes from. I have heard in-depth commentary and reporting on Gaza over the last week that simply did not exist on cable television four years ago when the last murderous campaign (“Cast Lead”) ensued. Still, I’m doubtful that the majority of Americans understand the degree to which this is not a conflict between equals. Israel has had the Palestinians in Gaza under sustained attack for six years now, not that what came before was any bed of roses. Hamas may have a rudimentary offensive missile capability, but it’s nothing against the fourth most powerful military in the world. And anyone who distinguishes the lot of Gazans from that of Palestinians on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, who are being steadily bereft of their land, acre by acre, day by day, is simply not confronting reality.

In Gaza, the battle may be over, but the war is their daily life. They deserve our attention and our non-violent support.

luv u,

jp

Mitt’s excellent adventure.

Did you hear it last week, over the noise emanating from the London Olympics? That collective groan from points east? That was the world reacting to the man who might be president next January. There are, I’m sure, millions in Europe and the Middle East thinking, Really, America? So soon after Bush, you’re going to elect yet another ham-fisted idiot? Really? In many respects, our president is president of the world, if only because he (and thus far, it’s always been “he”) wields enormous power – military, economic, and diplomatic – over virtually everyone else. (They should probably get a vote in the matter, but then here in America we’re not even guaranteed that right, depending upon which state we live in.)

Though his spinmeisters have been working overtime to put a positive gloss on it, Mitt’s softball trip to friendly nations was an unmitigated (or un-Mitt-igated, perhaps) disaster, from the crypto-racist tone of the adviser referencing our shared “Anglo-Saxon heritage” with the British, to the Olympic gaffe, to name-checking MI6 (psst, Mitt: it’s supposed to be a secret), to blaming Palestinian poverty on their “culture” or lack of same. That last comment is something of a bookend to the Anglo-Saxon trope he started off with, making Romney seem strangely fixated on issues of ethnic identity. (He later doubled down on the Palestinian remark in an essay in National Review online.)

Of course, the stop was another opportunity to signal his willingness to countenance war with Iran, whether started by Israel or by the United States. In this we hear his neocon Bush-era advisors speaking, such as Dan Senor, former military flack during the early days of the Iraq invasion, who said on Romney’s behalf that the governor would “respect that decision” if Israel chose to strike Teheran militarily. No doubt. I hope everyone over here is listening closely to what Romney and his campaign are saying about foreign policy. They seem anxious to get another war started, having tasted what they seem to consider “success” in the Iraq catastrophe. And for those who say the economy is the only issue that matters, it’s worth considering what yet another pointless war would do to the federal budget.

Mitt’s got FoxNews syndrome – too much time spent with friendly media. He just doesn’t know how to behave in the real world. Ergo, his press availabilities were practically zero during this trip. I’ll bet he’s glad to be back home, in the comforting embrace of Sean Hannity.

luv u,

jp

More of the same.

Israel has been knocking the living hell out of Gaza again this week. This round of bloodshed began with the killing of Zuhair al-Qaissi, head of the Popular Resistance Committees, a militant Palestinian group. Rockets fired into southern Israel in response were supposedly shot down by their new anti-missile system. I will reserve comment on that until I see convincing confirmation that the system worked, having lived through bogus claims about Patriot missile batteries during the Gulf War. I can say, anecdotally, that the one thing I hear repeated by defenders of the Israeli government here in the U.S. is missiles, missiles, missiles. It’s like the G.O.P. candidates talking about gas prices. A million Israelis are under the threat of missile attack, they say.

Little is said about the fact that more than a million and a half Palestinians live constantly under the far more credible threat of attack from the fourth most powerful military in the world. Well over a thousand have been killed in attacks by the IDF over the past three years. Rockets from Gaza have killed about 30 Israelis – too many, clearly, but losses at a whole different order of magnitude from what’s happening on the other side of the Green line. Palestinian deaths have equaled that number just over the past week to ten days. Add this to the fact that, even without being shot or blown up, Palestinians live like dogs in Gaza mostly because it is under a constant state of siege by Israel and a U.S.-led coalition of powerful nations. At the very least, Israelis have some kind of a life between the missiles. Palestinians, not so much.

The fact that Hamas has, in essence, broken with Syria and Iran and are aligning themselves more with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which is in that country’s ruling parliamentary coalition, may seem to offer hope of some progress in this bloody standoff. The Egyptian group, a progenitor of Hamas, is no longer a militant organization; it appears to be having a moderating influence on Hamas. Prelude to a peace agreement? Don’t bet on it. If there is one thing the Israeli government fears more than anything else, it is the threat of a negotiated settlement. They prefer to settle things on the battlefield, where they hold a distinct advantage. Negotiations mean giving something up of value, like the 22% of historic Palestine that lies outside of the Green Line, including the West Bank – namely, the territory that would make up a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu, like Sharon, Shamir, and Begin before him, will never allow diplomacy to get in the way of Israel’s expansion of settlements on the West Bank. Expect more IDF attacks in Gaza as negotiations grow more likely.

luv u,

jp