July 29, 2014
Ill begin with a quote from Jesse Rosenfeld
This narrow strip of land that used to be called the Gaza Strip, already one of the more densely populated places on Earth, is growing dramatically smaller. The Israeli military, relentlessly and methodically, is driving people out of the 3-kilometer (1.8 mile) buffer zone it says it needs to protect against Hamas rockets and tunnels. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the buffer zone eats up about 44 percent of Gazas territory.
What that means on the ground is scenes of extraordinary devastation in places like the Al Shajaya district approaching Gazas eastern frontier, and Beit Hanoun in the north. These were crowded neighborhoods less than three weeks ago. Now they have been literally depopulated, the residents joining more than 160,000 internally displaced people in refuges and makeshift shelters. Apartment blocks are fields of rubble, and as I move through this hostile landscape the phrase that keeps ringing in my head is scorched earth.
Given the effectiveness of Israels Iron Dome missile shield and the utterly pawnshop-like construction and accuracy of the the Qassam rockets being fired into Israel (easily one of the worlds worst munitions), 2 Israeli civilians have been killed and 23 have been wounded.
Those are excellent numbers.
Of course, Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid on the planet, so they have at their disposal state of the art munitions, aircraft, armour, naval assets, and so forth. So while militants lob rockets that are propelled using a sugar and potassium nitrate mixture featuring warheads filled with scavenged or smuggled TNT and urea nitrate that are triggered by a firearm cartridge, a spring and a nail, the IDF shoots back with 155mm and 203mm self-propelled Howitzers, PB500A1 laser-guided hard-target penetration bombs, M-85, CBU-58, and Mk-20 Rockeye cluster bombs, AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missiles, Delilah cruise missiles, and BLU-117s - just to name a small few.
As of this July, 28 Israelis have been killed by Qassam rockets - since 2001. So, in 13 years, there have been 28 Israeli deaths. During this current Israeli invasion of Gaza, in excess of 1,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed and possibly in excess of 5,000 Palestinian civilians have been wounded. And thats beyond the fact that entire swaths of the strip have been reduced to rubble.
No matter what the United Nations says, the Israelis will claim the UN bias. That would be why Israel ignores UN mandates, such as the status of the wall and illegal settlements. Of course, for example, throw the Iranians into the mix and Israel has absolutely no qualms about running to the IAEA (a UN body) like a hysterical school girl claiming that every stone in that country, no matter how small, be overturned by a team of 10,000 inspectors to ensure that the Iranians dont secretly have the bomb - which, of course, they dont. Israel, on the other hand, does. But unlike Iran, its somehow allowed to exercise whats known as nuclear opacity - which means that it will neither confirm nor deny the fact that it has between 100 and 300 nuclear weapons, making it possibly the worlds third largest nuclear power behind Russia and the United States. Further, Israel will not allow that same body, the IAEA, to inspect any Israeli nuclear facility. In fact, the one man brave enough to blow the whistle on Israels nuclear program, Mordechai Vanunu, was abducted after he spoke to the British press in 1986 by the Mossad in Italy. He was returned to Israel where he was tried in secret and then sentenced to 18 years in prison, spending 11 of them in solitary confinement. To this day, he is not allowed to leave Israel, is barred for speaking to foreign media, and remains under constant surveillance.
Ironically, Jonathan Pollard, an American civilian intelligence analyst that was caught passing classified information to the Israelis in 1985, is considered a hero in Israel - even though Israel refused to admit that it was involved in any operation involving Pollard until 1998. They then granted Pollard Israeli citizenship and every Israeli Prime Minister since that time has lobbied the White House for his release - which has been denied by three Presidents. He is eligible for parole next year, though even if successful would not be able to leave the country under the terms of parole - which, of course, the highest levels of the Israeli government will lobby to alter.
Hamas is, by no means, an organization that the Palestinian people need representing them to the world. None of the numerous militant factions are. Nor is their ideology regarding Israels right to exist acceptable. But when the majority of Gazas population is under 20, unemployed, and trapped in the worlds foremost ghetto that has been subjected to economic warfare for years, the combination of being a pissed off youth with little hope manufactures precisely the sort of willing participants that militant groups need.
You want to defeat Palestinian militants? Give Palestinian youths a reason not to pick up a gun.
When Gazan fishermen cant fish more than a stones thrown off their own coast, where they have fished for the better part of 1,500 years, what sort of mindset do you expect to cultivate? When you steal land, when you displace communities, when you build walls and roads that only Israelis can drive on, when you treat a people as second class citizens that are all viewed as a potential threat, what does that do to a people? When scores have lived in camps for decades waiting to return to lands that they will never see again, what does that do to a people?
Remove religion from the equation and that reality is something that, were it to happen here in the West, would be looked upon as prerequisites for justified revolution.
I have said as much before - those that would see all of this end are so drowned out by the bullshit emanating from both sides that the latter has become the narrative and the former laughable.
Peace, though many claim it so, is not a perspective. It is an absolute. One that we confuse with the absence of conflict rather than the existence of solution.
Today people will die. Men, women, children, soldiers. Well sit here and wax on about it, taking sides, trying to justify this and that. But the reality remains that where there exist people that are capable of ripping 5-year-olds to shreds, their innards and blood painting the rubble where they stood only moments before, compassion nor reason are to be found.
Only evil.
