The Score So Far in Latest Israeli Attack on Gaza: 238 to 1

That’s the tally of dead bodies that Israel has racked up so far. Hamas’ 1,000 rockets, about which much hysteria is beamed to international publics through Israeli-aligned Western propaganda systems, has killed a grand total of ZERO Israelis. The sole Israeli death so far was caused by a mortar shell. So much for the “terror” being inflicted on the Israeli population, according to U.S. Emperor Obama, who apparently doesn’t think the Palestinians have human feelings. I would say the relentless Israeli bombardment with their U.S.-provided arsenal, is creating a lot more fear among Palestinians than what the Israeli public is experiencing. In fact, anyone in Israel experiencing more than anxiety is a scaredy-cat. The vast majority of the rockets fired into Israel land on dirt, too far from anyone or anything to do any damage or cause any casualties. Furthermore, their U.S.-financed Iron Dome missile defense system is reportedly shooting down a sizable fraction of those rockets. Finally, Israelis have air raid shelters to go to- Palestinians don’t.

As for the wounded, there are over 1,600 on the Palestinian side, about a dozen on the Israeli. 50 Palestinian children have been killed in ten days by Israel’s oh-so-accurate aerial attacks. (Israeli shills have boasted about how accurate they are- so let’s take them at their word and not assume the slaugher of civilians is “accidental” or “mistaken”.) The UN says 80% of the Palestinian dead were civilians. (But everybody knows the UN is anti-Semitic, right?)

But let us review how this started. Three Jewish colonizer teenagers were kidnapped. One called the police on his cellphone and reported they had been seized. It turns out that the police then heard gunshots over the phone. This fact was suppressed on orders of Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, under Israeli censorship laws that give the government the power to muzzle the media, using the standard excuse, “security.” Then for several weeks a frantic, bogus “search” ensued, which was a pretext for the Israeli army and secret police to smash into hundreds of Palestinian homes (destroying property and looting some, for good measure), round up several hundred Palestinians, and KILL eleven Palestinians. This cynical operation of a bogus search for “missing” teens has been kept hidden by the venal U.S. establishment media, who are NOT subject to Israeli government censorship. (Apparently the self-censorship imposed by their own iron ideological discipline serves just as well as government control.)

Eventually civilian Israeli colonists found the three slain teens’ bodies, buried near the surface. At least that’s the story they’re telling us now. (Could be true.)

Then, not satisfied with the eleven Palestinians already killed by Israeli “security forces,” “settlers” tried to kidnap an 8-year old Palestinian boy, slashing his throat in the process (superficially- photos have been published) then finding a 16 -year old Palestinian victim, who they sadistically burned alive (according to the Israeli autopsy). After that, Israeli “Border Police” brutally beat the face and head of the victim’s 15-year old cousin at a protest against the murder.

Naturally, the puppet “Palestinian Authority,” at this point virtually a wholly-own creature of the U.S., was passive through all this. (The PA’s “security services” are creations of and proteges of the CIA, which trains and guides them) Finally Hamas responded to the provocation the arrests of numerous Hamas members, including the Speaker of the Palestinian parliament, by firing rockets at Israel. Literally just at the country. Apparently these homemade rockets can’t hit the broad side of a barn.

This gave Israel the excuse it was looking for to start its third aerial bombing campaign on the Gazan open air concentration camp in 6 years.

Since then, another 221 (as of today) Palestinians have been killed, and over 1,600 wounded, some grievously maimed or burned, trapped in a prison with a dearth of medical supplies, much less advanced treatment and rehabilitation facilities. There are already numerous amputees.

Netanyahu’s main motive is to break up the newly-formed coalition government between Hamas and the PA. Israel reacted hysterically to this tentative Palestinian unity. Naturally Israel wants to keep the oppressed Palestinian population divided.

A couple of days ago, U.S. Secretary of State John “Skull and Bonesman” Kerry called Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and told him to call Netanyahu to cook up a scheme to guard the Israelis on the public relations flank. They came up with a “ceasefire” deal, without telling Hamas, which Hamas rejected, as the three conspiring parties knew they would. [1]

Sure enough, Netanyahu followed up by saying Hamas had “shut the door” to a diplomatic “solution.” In other words, he can pretend HE TRIED to stop bombing Gaza, after over a thousand air sorties, plus naval bombardment, but Hamas JUST WON’T LET HIM. So he has NO CHOICE to continue the slaughter and destruction, and maybe invade again for good measure.

How very clever!

Not that Hamas isn’t playing right into Netanyahu’s hands. But in a way, he’s playing into theirs too. Their refusal to say uncle, their continued defiant (if militarily futile) rocket firing at Israel, builds up their stature in the eyes of Palestinians, who see them resisting (at great cost to the Palestinians) Israeli occupation, imprisonment, and endless oppression. So once again Israel undercuts the very puppet PA regime it relies on to deliver the Palestinian people to the surrender table. (I’m being a bit unfair to the PA; it’s more complicated than a simple puppet relationship, largely because the PA has to try and maintain SOME credibility with the people it misrules as surrogate for Israel and the U.S., but it will take up too much time and space to explain all the nuances here.)

The fundamental “problem,” from the point of view of Israeli imperialism and its U.S. and European backers, is that the Palestinian people stubbornly refuse to surrender. They refuse to recognize their status as a defeated people doomed to be perpetually oppressed. The “peace process” has always been a disguised surrender process- but the Palestinians won’t surrender. Thus, they must be made to suffer until they resign themselves to defeat. Oddly, they persevere, despite their hopeless situation. It’s enough to remind one of Jewish perseverance over the centuries. (Is that idea “anti-Semitic”? Ask a Zionist!)

1] For an explanation of why the phony “ceasefire” deal arranged by Israel and Egypt behind Hamas’ back was rejected, the history of Israeli treachery and double crosses, and a deeper understanding of the Palestinian situation and perspective, see the interviews with Norman Finkelstein and with Haaretz journalist Amira Hass -two people of unusual personal integrity, principle, and grit. “After Palestinian Unity Deal, Did Israel Spark Violence to Prevent a New ‘Peace Offensive’?” Democracy Now! interview with Finkelstein, July 15^th, and “With 192 Dead in Gaza, Is Lasting Ceasefire Possible Under Israeli Occupation?” Democracy Now! interview with Amira Hass, July 15^th.

Notes for another essay:

7/17/14 Israeli gunboat slaughters 4 children, cousins, ages 9-11, in broad daylight on a beach in Gaza. This was done in full view of the international media, whose personnel were in a hotel right on the beach. First the gunboat blew up a shack on the beach, then 30 seconds later lobbed a shell at the fleeing kids, killing four of them, wounding others, and wounding a man, with shrapnel. The beach was otherwise empty, and the children were clearly children playing soccer, visible to the reporters’ naked eyes hundreds of yards away (and certainly easily identifiable to the Israelis with their binoculars an sophisticated surveillance equipment).

BBC covers up these details, instead feeding us Israeli president Shimon Peres’ propaganda. Slying combining crocodile tears with shifting the blame onto the Palestinians, Peres, a lifelong Zionist bigwig and top overseer of the creation of Israel’s nuclear arsenal, said this:

“It wasn't intentional and we are really sorry to see four children being killed. I think the air force [sic-this particular atrocity was by an Israeli navy gunboat] is taking the maximum care not to hit children. And it was an accident because it was an area that we warned would be bombed, because there was a great concentration of weapons. And unfortunately they didn't take out the children.”

First, it very obviously WAS intentional, as numerous eyewitnesses from the international media can attest. Second, the Israelis aren’t sorry at all. They have been killing Palestinian children, deliberately, for decades. They don’t want them to grow up. This is part of their population control of the Palestinians, along with stunting their growth by limiting food supplies (“keeping them on a diet,” in their own cynical insider phrase).

Third, there were NO weapons there, much less “a great concentration.” And finally he blames the Palestinians, for not hiding their children in an underground bunker or something, I guess. Reminds one of the sneering, laughing comment by one of the U.S. Apache helicopter murderers in the infamous “collateral murder” video that Chelsea Manning gave to WikiLeaks. After shooting up a van full of children, he says to his fellow crewmen something like That’s what they get for bringing their children to a firefight.” (This was the murder of a Reuters camera crew walking in Baghdad, along with other civilians. You can search youtube.com for “collateral murder video” for numerous versions of it.)

The attack on Gaza is what the Israeli military police state calls “mowing the lawn,” the need to periodically stomp down on the Palestinian people.

For two eyewitness journalists’ accounts, see “Witness to a shelling: first-hand account of deadly strike on Gaza port,” the guardian, 16 July 2014, and an interview with New York Times photographer and eyewitness Tyler Hicks, “Horror on Gaza Beach: New York Times Photographer Witnesses Israeli Killing of 4 Palestinian Boys,” Democracy Now!, July 17^th.