The Coin of #Israel - by Diane V. McLoughlin - August 3 2014
by Diane V. McLoughlin, August 3, 2014
Journalist Sima Kadmon, of ynetnews.com, approvingly reports of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to pull back the military operation in Gaza. [''Netanyahu's Brave Decision'; August 3, 2014]
Operation Protective Edge, is Israel's third bombing campaign of Gaza in the short space of five years. The others are Operation Cast Lead [2008]; and Operation Pillar of Cloud [2012].
Gaza is a small, long, narrow strip of land that is walled in on three sides: The Mediterranean Sea, guarded by the Israeli navy; it borders Egypt on one short end; and Israel's high cement walls, armed guard towers and coil upon coil of barbed wire close off the rest - an impoverished, oppressed, walled ghetto.
The 1.8 million men, women and children living in Gaza, are refugees from Israel who were forced from their homeland from places like Sderot, Israel, in 1948. The refugees in many instances retain the keys to the doors of their rightful homes. And they have a right, morally as well as in law, to go home. Because they are of the 'wrong' ethnicity, Israel is doing everything in its power to prevent their return.
During 'Operation Cast Lead', Israel and Hamas each accused the other of committing war crimes. Findings were detailed in the United Nations' document the, Goldstone Report, produced after six independent, esteemed judges were tasked with conducting a fact-finding mission to investigate - including, note allegations typically made by Israel of Hamas, that the Israeli military had used Palestinians as human shields. Of Israel's well-oiled propaganda machine, volumes will no doubt be written.
Recall, too, that one of the six jurists, Richard Goldstone, felt the need to try to backpedal somewhat in his own opinion regarding who did what to whom in a Washington Post Op Ed, after the local South African Jewish community caused him to fear for the safety and well-being of his family.
Netanyahu is willing, according to Ms. Kadmon, to accept going back to what Israeli politicians like to call, 'quiet for quiet'; Israel maintaining the siege of Gaza, the people of Gaza refraining from resisting the siege or any other funny business like tunneling in Kentucky Fried Chicken or trying to export flowers or other farm produce to foreign markets, or get university-bound scholarship students off to school.
It is apropos to point out here that Palestinian political leaders are, as I write, in Cairo, Egypt, availing all parties of the opportunity to hammer out terms for a ceasefire along with the broad outlines of a peace agreement. Israel refused to attend.
It is an instructive exercise comparing what it is that Israel chooses to do, what Israel chooses not to do, and Israel's expressions of intent.
The hasbara (Israeli for propaganda) 'quiet for quiet' is genius in the psychology of deflecting concern.
It is not 'quiet' for the people of Gaza to be forced to continue under the crushing eight-year military blockade which has destroyed the local economy and has been compared as being worse than the Great Depression for the abject poverty and want.
It is a farce to propose that Israel will construct for itself a secure quiet by continuing to oppress the Palestinians in Gaza; the occupied West Bank; East Jerusalem; Israel; or the Palestinian refugees scattered in other countries denied the right to come home - we can dispense with that canard.
Pro-Israel people - and I have no doubt that they have big hearts and they are convinced that Israel is the underdog and that they are fighting Nazis, and that they are defending vulnerable Jewish lives - argue that Hamas is bent on Israel's destruction.
But the truth of the matter is that Hamas was voted to power as a reaction to discrimination, racism, and violence directed toward the Palestinian people for 65 years.
Palestinian leadership in the occupied West Bank have achieved nothing in their peaceful negotiations with Israel other than relentless efforts by settlers to take their land and drive them out.
Muslims do not hate Jews. Jews and Muslims have been neighbors living peacefully side by side with each other in Palestine for millennia before the events of 1948 when Zionist terrorists forced 750,000 Palestinians to run for their lives.
The Likud is the current political party in power in Israel. The Likud Charter explicitly claims ownership of all Palestinian land. Any discussion of who is responsible for what without forthright acknowledgement of this fly in the soup is not contributing to an honest discussion that might lead to constructive proposals. It will ultimately lead to a thin broth of no substance as far as any hope for peace is concerned.
Israel has, in this latest ethnic cleansing exercise in Gaza, bombed thousands of family homes; bombed six United Nations-run children's schools where newly homeless families were sheltered who were ordered to shelter in the UN schools by Israel after Israel bombed their homes.
Israel has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians depopulating a vast swath of Gaza estimated in geographic area to be approximately 44% of the entire Gaza Strip. In short, Israel has been forcing families out in the elements while destroying absolutely everything.
As of this writing, almost two million people have no drinking water due to Israel's deliberate targeting of the civilian infrastructure - a war crime. If humanitarian efforts are not able to respond with all haste, the scenario will elevate to status of crime against humanity.
In times of conflict, governments are not always forthcoming with the full truth. Israel is no exception.
That Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldier Hadar Goldin was ever kidnapped? This particular fiction was used to provide diplomatic cover when breaking the first ceasefire agreement within just a few short hours of its implementation.
While having freshly riled the citizenry over the missing soldier, Israel then continued massacreing people in Gaza. Hadar Goldin, via uncensored reports in the West, was more likely killed by his own under something called the Hannibal Directive, to prevent his capture by the enemy.
*The New York Times has disclosed that they complied with an IDF military censor directive to get clearance on their reporting of the Goldin incident.
Israel admitted, only after bombing another hospital, more family homes, snipers picking-off civilians ordered to move, an emergency appeal sent out that the medical authorities were overrun and bodies littered the streets - that Hadar Goldin was not kidnapped, after all.
It should be noted that soldiers are taken prisoner, they are not kidnapped, in conflict. This, too, is meant to mislead and arouse sympathy, inflame public opinion and suppress questions.
Goldin, a British citizen, was a willing party to waging war on a captive civilian population, shooting at people who are entitled under international law to shoot back in self-defense.
*A direct quote from the New York Times:
Israel's violence against Gaza is wanton. It is a country at imminent risk of degenerating into a racist, moral morass. [1]
Rising to the top politically, are those who, like Israeli Knesset Deputy Speaker Moshe Feiglin, openly avow genocide of the Palestinian people because they want more land for Jews.
In the streets below, armed Jewish gangs roam the streets at night seeking Arab-Israeli citizens to beat to a pulp. A slightly-built sixteen year-old, named, Mohammad abu Khdeir, was recently kidnapped, beaten with a tire iron, had gasoline forced down his throat and they burned him alive.
Supporters of this most recent atrocity in Gaza, with whole Palestinian neighborhoods being bombed out of existance, argue that Hamas kidnapped three Jewish teens and murdered them in the West Bank. First, they believe, wrongly, that this would ever justify such a massively violent response which is nonsense. Second, with speed of light acceptance that everything Israel tells them is Gospel Truth, that Hamas had anything to do with it. After Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, the quiet admission that, no, it appears it was not Hamas, passes by largely unnoticed.
A month before the three Jewish teens' murders, two Palestinian youths were shot and murdered by the IDF in cold blood [2], reported by CNN at the time. [2a] But you, and certainly Israeli citizens, most likely did not hear about that, either.
In the search for the three missing Jewish teens, Israel's occupying army tore the Palestinian West Bank apart. Blowing in doors of family homes in the middle of the night with explosives, destroying the furniture, stealing family possessions, scaring people, roughing up people, arresting hundreds without charge including many in Palestinian political leadership; wounding some; killing others.
It is in the vicinity of this juncture in the unfolding of events that the Hamas rockets from Gaza, rockets described as primitive and small began to sail over, after an extended period of calm in which, calm or no calm - there has been no difference in behavior from Israel - the constant is the crushing military blockade.
Evidence for the extent to which Israeli passions are inflamed - by the ruling right-wing, and in some cases by religious extremists - we might need look no further than at a clip of joyous young people who sing, on the top of their lungs as raucous youths might at a football championship, that there is no school in Gaza tomorrow, because there are no children left.
There are many other examples from which to choose, however, for the black mood and amorality of the current time, none of which bears little resemblance to anything to do with self-defense. Israel is a run-away train with conductors soused on dogma, and conceit, spouting KKK-type crap about cleansing the land of inferiors for Jews. [3]
On background, Israel deliberately transplanted 600,000 Zionist Jews on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank, in a deliberate effort to create demographic facts on the ground. Stealing Palestinian land has dramatically escalated in recent years.
Russian Jew Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's minister of Foreign Affairs, himself a squatter on Palestinian land, continues to espouse a 'population transfer'. [4]
Prime Minister Netahyahu was caught, surreptitiously, on-camera [2001] talking to settlers, wherein he boasts that he single-handedly scuttled the last formal round of peace talks, at Oslo.
An inclusive society constructed on a foundation of justice, equality and civil rights is the way forward toward security and peace. The Jews who suffered so, under Nazi Germany's version of hell on earth would have fought for such a golden reality; for such a clear morally true vision of sanity.
Netanyahu's camp - pushing for quiet occupation, apartheid, racism, ethnic cleansing and even genocide - might win; maybe they will win. But it will be a sorry day for progress, human rights and world peace if the Israel coin lands on its head.
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Statistics regarding destruction in Gaza from July 8, 2014 to August 3, 2014: 1,743 Palestinians killed [396 children; 230 women]; 9,100 injured [2,767 children; 1,814 women]; 10,080 houses targeted [1,556 totally destroyed; 8,424 partially]; 24 hospitals and medical clinics partially damaged; 167 schools targeted; 6 universities destroyed; 20 charities destroyed; 118 mosques shelled; total number of internally displaced [rendered homeless]: 450,000; 8 water pumping and sewage stations bombed - 700,000 people now without water. For a complete list, see, HERE and HERE
Statistics regarding Israel: 64 soldiers killed, 2 civilians and 1 non-citizen from Thailand killed; 1 serious, 21 moderately to lightly injured; one gas station hit; moderate damage to a few homes.
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Reading Room
[2a] Source: Israel suspends soldier after 2 Palestinians die in shooting; by Ivan Watson, Michael Schwartz and Kareem Khadder; CNN; May 29, 2014;
[3] Terrifying Tweets of pre-army Israeli teens (with images, tweets) by @davidsheen; July 10, 2014; 'Some of these calls for genocide were from young men, but a majority of them seemed to be authored by young women.'
[4] Plan to transfer Arab-Israelis to new Palestinian state seeks legal approval; Peter Beaumont; The Guardian; March 25, 2014;
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