AERIAL HOLOCAUST IN GAZA

Language can seem inadequate to deal with mass murder. Donald McIntyre reports for The Independent that Israeli air strikes kill 200 people and have wounded another 700. Now ABC Online reports that 270 people have been murdered in the second day of attacks.

It is reasonable to conclude that the leaders of Israel have lost their moral compass, consumed by the what in their eyes would seem the rectitude of violence and murder. They have coldly and calculatedly launched aerial missile attacks into densely populated Gaza, as if the long economic strangulation was not sufficient for their murderous satisfaction, whatever lies they may wish to offer as pretext. The aerial attacks have had the predictable results. Nobody seems to ask if any of the people murdered – men, women and children – had anything to do with the launching of rockets or the firing of mortals.

Sara Roy, in The London Review of Books (via Juan Cole) notes that “Israel’s siege began on the 5th of November.” She concludes her thoughts:

The breakdown of an entire society is happening in front of us, but there is little international response beyond UN warnings which are ignored. The European Union announced recently that it wanted to strengthen its relationship with Israel while the Israeli leadership openly calls for a large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip and continues its economic stranglehold over the territory with, it appears, the not-so-tacit support of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah – which has been co-operating with Israel on a number of measures. On 19 December Hamas officially ended its truce with Israel, which Israel said it wanted to renew, because of Israel’s failure to ease the blockade.
How can keeping food and medicine from the people of Gaza protect the people of Israel? How can the impoverishment and suffering of Gaza’s children – more than 50 per cent of the population – benefit anyone? International law as well as human decency demands their protection. If Gaza falls, the West Bank will be next.

We are supposed to believe that nation states are abstract entities, perhaps machines, and that those that make decisions resulting in murder are thereby free of criminal responsibility. Like Cheney, like Bush, they believe they have immunity. If so they are claiming to be a special kind of human being that makes nonsense of the rule of law – or a rule of law based on violence nonsense.

The Independent editorializes balance, seeing both sides, saying:

The recent story of Israeli public opinion is one of retreat from the possibility of a two-state solution. Most Israelis were willing to negotiate in principle, but have become increasingly convinced that they have no one with whom to negotiate. The Fatah faction, led by Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, cannot deliver Gaza; and Hamas, which can, refuses to negotiate.

At some point, this cycle must be broken. It will not be this weekend, however. The most that can be done today is to urge the Israelis not to follow up their air strikes on targets in Gaza with a ground assault. In doing so, the word “counter-productive” is more likely to appeal to Israeli self-interest than the word “disproportionate”.

There are, in any case, problems with the notion of proportionality in situations such as these. No state can be expected to tolerate rockets being launched at its civilians. No leader of such a state can be expected to shrug and say that it is not worth trying to stop small mobile rockets being fired from high-density residential areas. On the other hand, the persuasive argument against too heavy a military response is that it is counter-productive.

Some Israelis and Palestinians must surely see the futility of this history that has been conceived and developed in violence. Where do you look to stop violence?

The leaders of Israel are waging, among others, a war of terror and murder. It seems to be the case that about “470 Qassam rockets and mortals” had been fired into Occupied Palestine, killing it seems one person, and doubtless terrorizing many others. The time, and the electoral cycle are ripe for the people supposedly leading the Israeli government to rise to the bate, and seek righteous, indifferent murder in retaliation.

The authors of the aerial holocaust apparently care nothing for those they kill. The dead ones are distant, incidental and can be characterized as a form of non-human. There are human perpetrators but it is a great game for them. For some participants it is a great game of politics, in which human beings are merely pawns on the chess boards of their fantasies. Others get the video games experience of firing the weapons. They do not get to experience the suffering they inflict, and less we forget, there are noble patriotic purposes and needs of inclusion, so they have every reason to feel good about murder.

The deeper problem is the resort to violence, even beyond the cynicism of politics, democratic or otherwise. Seen in this light, it is as much a problem for the Palestinians as for the Israelis. Weapons technologies provides the human distance that violence requires. Sometimes anger is associated with violence, but not in this instance. There is a presumption of reason, of calculation that applies to both parties, and therefore of intent.

On planet Earth, we have no institutions to bring the participants to account. And in Palestine we have a rerun, it seems, of the final solution, although this time it is not the minority Jews to be banished from human consideration, but the indigenous Arab people. Similarly, nobody seems to be paying any attention to what is happening before their eyes. Propaganda again is the paying the role of comfiter, blinding playes and spectactors alike, to morality and common humanity.

ELSEWHERE:

Barak Ravid in Haaretz suggests that the operation has been long in preparation, and the truce with Hamas was part of an elaborate process of deception, which he suggests the Egyptian government was party. Along with other references, Paul Woodward becomes jaundiced about motivations, if not bitter and twisted, at War in Context.

Ellen Cantarow, writing in CounterPunch, describes the circumstances in Gaza prior to the carefully planned campaign of murder, and perhaps it is unsurprising that people in Gaza subject to the inhuman treatment dealt them by the Israelis and the Egyptians would seek to strike back, however ineffectually.

We are supposed to believe, without evidence, that Hamas is responsible for the rocket attacks, and that, despite the incidental deaths, the Israelis have aerial attacks are focused on the rocket sites.  But then the murders (a fair description based on the facts) of the Israeli Government are careful to identify Hamas as a terrrorist organization.

The truth exists beyond the lies and propaganda.

Juan Cole identifies a record of Israeli war crimes:

Israel blames Hamas for primitive homemade rocket attacks on the nearby Israeli city of Sederot. In 2001-2008, these rockets killed about 15 Israelis and injured 433, and they have damaged property. In the same period, Gazan mortar attacks on Israel have killed 8 Israelis.

Since the Second Intifada broke out in 2000, Israelis have killed nearly 5000 Palestinians, nearly a thousand of them minors. Since fall of 2007, Israel has kept the 1.5 million Gazans under a blockade, interdicting food, fuel and medical supplies to one degree or another. Wreaking collective punishment on civilian populations such as hospital patients denied needed electricity is a crime of war.

The Israelis on Saturday killed 5% of all the Palestinians they have killed since the beginning of 2001! 230 people were slaughtered in a day, over 70 of them innocent civilians. In contrast, from the ceasefire Hamas announced in June, 2008 until Saturday, no Israelis had been killed by Hamas. The infliction of this sort of death toll is known in the law of war as a disproportionate response, and it is a war crime.

Flagrant violations of international codes require determination by impartial tribunals. Heedless to observe such a process cannot be conducted by media of any kind, much less the propaganda imbued corporate media.

UPDATE: 29 December 2008.

ABC Online News reports that the number of people murdered has now increased to over 300 people following three days of Israeli aerial terror. I notice that early reports noted that the Israelis took the opportunity to bomb underground tunnels used we were told to “smuggle” goods between Egypt and Gaza.

The ABC, as its wont, endeavouring in these matters to be even handed and objective, is reporting Israeli propaganda, which no doubt is what the charter of the national broadcaster specifies.

On the question of tunnels, it is worth quoting from Ewa Jasiewicz at Common Dreams:

There is a saying here in Gaza – we spoke about it, jokily last night. ‘At the end of the tunnel…there is another tunnel’. Not so funny when you consider that Gaza is being kept alive through the smuggling of food, fuel and medicine through an exploitative industry of over 1000 tunnels running from Egypt to Rafah in the South. On average 1-2 people die every week in the tunnels. Some embark on a humiliating crawl to get their education, see their families, to find work, on their hands and knees. Others are reportedly big enough to drive through.

Last night I added a new ending to the saying. ‘At the end of the tunnel, there is another tunnel and then a power cut’. Today, there’s nothing to make a joke about. As bombs continue to blast buildings around us, jarring the children in this house from their fitful sleep, the saying could take on another twist. After today’s killing of over 200, is it that at the end of the tunnel, there is another tunnel, and then a grave?’, or a wall of international governmental complicity and silence?

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