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 15th,
and “With 192 Dead in Gaza, Is Lasting Ceasefire Possible Under Israeli Occupation?” Democracy Now! interview with Amira
Hass, July 15th.
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 17th.
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