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Gaza And Afghanistan
by Juan Moment
lifted from comments
Although the article concerns itself with civilian deaths in
Afghanistan, I thought it is befitting the mass murder unfolding in
Gaza. Via Uruknet:
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday condemned the
reported killing of 17 civilians, including women and children, in a
US-led coalition operation in eastern Afghanistan, the presidential
palace said in a statement….
Unable to seek revenge independently, many Afghan men in southern
and eastern Afghanistan have joined the Taliban ranks after losing
members of their families in international military operations,
according to Afghan officials.
At least 1,500 civilians were among the 4,000 people killed in the
first eight months of 2008, according to United Nations officials in
Afghanistan.
Just like Afghani men in many cases are joining the Taliban, not due to
their firm believe in the Taliban's extreme Islamic dogma, but to
enlist with the only force out there that is fighting the invaders that
killed their loved ones, so will Hamas be strengthened by USrael's
despicable attacks on Gaza's civilian population.
Israeli analysts have been studying the Palestinian resistance for
more than half a century and by now have surely figured out that any
military counter-insurgency measures against an opponent that actually
lives in the warzone, is like punching your fist into a bucket of water
– the moment you pull it out its back to how it was. My bet is that
Israel's strategists know full well that the bloodshed will not bring
about the end of Hamas, quite contrary, if anything their current
onslaught will increase the groups popularity amongst the huddled up
masses in Gaza’s basements. So why, if not to feed the flames, this
gruesome Israeli military incursion?
Just like the many Arab dictatorships need Zionist Israel to provide
the diversion needed to keep their own citizens under control, does
USsrael need Hamas's and the various martyr brigades existence, their
sporadic suicide bombs and mortar attacks. Without them, without the
constant fighting, they’d have no more excuse to continue the illegal
land grab they are engaged in, and are getting away with under the
cover of war. The way those assholes see it, the more civilians die in
the onslaught the better, it means more enraged Palestinians, more
olive groves and houses that can be annexed while whimpering about the
raging Palestinians.
With all our focus on Gaza, it's also worth remembering that our
troops, US and allied forces around the world are just as barbaric as
the IDF's henchmen. Looking at the numbers quoted in the Uruknet
article, 1500 civilians killed in 8 myths in Afghanistan, pretty much in
the same fashion as their Muslim brothers in Palestine, leaves one in
no doubt that our own governments, people we elected, are just as
guilty as Livni or say, Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Minister for
Palestinian Deaths. One has to wonder if the Allies' strategic planning
in Afghanistan isn't in line with Israel's strategy of antagonizing the
civilian population in order to create the conflict needed to justify
ones presence in Pipelineistan.
So whilst I understand that people could do with a stiff drink, it
should not be to help us forget our frustrations and to numb the anger,
but to warm us up for the cold outside, where we will have to march
till our feet start bleeding. Lets not succumb to the feeling of
hopelessness and our insignificance. We are not powerless, quite the
opposite, WE are the power, we are the people. Should enough of us make
a stand, putting for a change our money where our mouths and keyboards
are, marching hand in hand by the tens of millions against the system,
show enough courage to engage in civil disobedience and withholding war
taxes, we will make a difference. 10 million people giving $100 each, and
there is a billion dollars to fight this insanity. And when the money
runs out in three months time, we do it all over again, until those
fuckers learn that we are serious. We, not Obama, have to get the
snowball rolling. He won’t, we must.
Short from traveling to Palestine ourselves to oppose in Rachel Corrie’s spirit
the crimes against humanity committed against nearly helpless people,
we can also do our bit from wherever we are, in multiple different
ways. Donate to any organization that is dedicated to easing the
Palestinian suffering, whilst at the same time boycotting any goods and
services coming from Israel, or firms associated and in business with
Israel. Seeing that there are only three links allowed per comment, I
will put some links and tips on how to get active in my next comment.
Any old way, no more time to waste, the people in Gaza and Afghanistan
are counting on us, desperately.
—
There are ways you and me can convey our
message of disgust to the Israeli government slash establishment.
Changing our consumer habits, making sure that no hard earned cent of
ours is making its way to this in large parts morally corrupt nation.
Let your wallets and purses do the talking, speak out with your check
books and credit cards.
Why not send your English-language article or letter to the editor
Once you’ve send your letter to the editors join the global Consumer BDS movement and Boycott, Divest and Sanction for Palestine
Find out about Which companies to boycott and protest against
Read about Which brands and labels to boycott
Give generously to The Olive Tree campaign
Write, march donate, sponsor, purchase, participate, we all must do our bit. People, united, can never be defeated.
Bea, thanx for the link to Marcy’s excellent blog “Body On The Line” in the previous thread. When I read through the comments, I found a link to Diane Mason’s “Lawrence of Cyberia” site, which I also recommend highly to anyone interested in anything Middle East.
Here an excerpt from her writings:
The stupidest defense of what Israel is doing to Gaza has to be, “But what would Americans do if Canadians were firing Qassams from Quebec over the border into the U.S.?”. Well, I dunno. Flesh out your scenario for me. While these imaginary rockets are falling on the U.S. from Quebec, is the U.S. blockading Quebec and conducting a violent, repressive military occupation of Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and all points north, that has been going on for 41 years, and involves the forcible dispossession of the Canadians in those provinces so that Americans can steal their choicest land and the U.S. can annex it (without the inconvenience of having to give citizenship rights to the Canadian people who live there)? Because that’s what it would take for your comparison to have meaning. And if you tell me “Yes, actually we are doing all that to the people who are launching home-made, sugar-fueled rockets at us”, then I think the answer to the question “What would Americans do?” might well be that if I were doing that to Canada and only getting a bunch of Qassam rockets in return, I might just shrug my shoulders and think maybe I’d gotten off lightly.
Beyond the occupation as the immediate context for the inherently violent and unstable relationship between the Gaza Strip and Israel, there’s a broader context that is unmentionable in U.S. news media, but got an airing yesterday in the Hebrew-language version of Ha’aretz (via skyredoubt, via the incomparable Mondo Weiss). Returning to our Canada analogy, there’s something else I need to ask if I really want to know why those nasty Canadians are lobbing rockets at me. I need to know not only whether the U.S. is occupying and blockading the people who fire the rockets, but whether in your analogy the very existence of the United States depends on the continuous expulsion, dispossession and disenfranchisement of Canadians, as Israel’s does in regard to the Palestinians. If you leave that bit out of the comparison, then you’re really only telling me half a story about why these people might want to fire rockets at me.
In the U.S., all our TV pundits and major newspapers ever tell us about the Gaza Strip is that 1. it’s a Hamas stronghold, and 2. it’s the most densely-populated piece of real estate on earth. But they don’t tell us that it wasn’t always like that. They don’t mention that Gaza wasn’t a stronghold of Islamic nationalism till Israel’s occupation administration in Gaza funded Hamas as a counterweight to the secular nationalism of the PLO, then engaged in a phony 15-year “peace process” that hopelessly compromised the secular nationalist parties that had supported a compromise peace with Israel, leaving Hamas as the only credible resistance to the continuing occupation.
They don’t tell you either about the time before the Gaza Strip became the most densely-populated place on earth; when Gaza was a small coastal city, rather than a moon scape,and its environs were wheat fields and orchards – cultivating citrus products, dates, grapes, figs and mulberries – rather than refugee camps.
And they DEFINITELY don’t mention how the transformation in Gaza’s fortunes came about. They don’t tell you where those 1.5 million people now squashed into the Gaza Strip came from. Because they come from what is now Israel, and they didn’t leave their homes there voluntarily in order to spend their days in an overcrowded, bombarded slum. Eighty per cent of the people in the Gaza Strip are refugees. These are the people who have been expelled from Israel since 1948, and always had to be expelled according to the logic of Zionism, if a Jewish state was to be created in Palestine, where most people happen not to be Jewish. The vast majority of the people in the Gaza Strip are the original inhabitants of the towns and villages of southern and coastal Israel, who took refuge from Zionist armies in Gaza City because it was the last southern city left in Palestinian hands in 1948.
In short, the people in the Gaza Strip who are today firing rockets at the towns of southern Israel are, overwhelmingly, the children and grandchildren of the Palestinian people who were expelled by Israel from those very same towns in order to gerrymander a Jewish majority where one did not naturally exist.
Yesterday, rockets from Gaza fell on the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Benny Tziper in the Hebrew-language version of Ha’aretz online was the only person I saw publicly mention that the Israeli city of Ashkelon was, until quite recently, the Palestinian city of Majdal al-Asqalan whose Arab population was expelled within the lifetime of many present-day Israelis to the refugee camps of the Gaza Strip:
[…]A nice man was there at the entrance to the museum, an invalid of IDF from the Yom Kippur War, who was born and lived all his life in Ashkelon. From his knowledge and enthusiasm one could tell that he loves the city very much. He had no problem telling me how in 1953 the Arabs were expelled, and the long process of looking for a new name for the place started (the Arab name was Majdl), till it was decided to call the place Ashkelon. The entire communications between the authorities regarding the cleansing of the city of Arabs and Hebrewisation of the name is exhibited in the museum. I think that nobody makes the connection today between the fact that the Qassams land on Ashkelon and the fact that poor Arabs who did nothing wrong to anybody were put on trucks and expelled from their city to Gaza fifty five years ago, and since then they are there and Ashkelon is here. And this did not happen in wartime or as a result of hostilities, but from a cold calculation that the area must be cleansed of Arabs. There is a picture in the museum that shows the Arabs sitting and waiting in front of the of Israeli military government building. It sends shivers down my spine because it happens in the year I was born. And it is really, really hard for me to realize that at the time that my parents were happy with my birth, other people were put on trucks and expelled from their homes.[…]
Those “poor Arabs who did nothing wrong to anybody” yet “were put on trucks and expelled from their city” because of a “cold calculation that the area must be cleansed of Arabs” are people like Salim al-Damagh and Sayyed al-Sharief,who are now aged 70 and 76 respectively and who, 55 years after being expelled, are still unable to return to Ashkelon because Zionism says they have the “wrong” ethnic-religious background to be allowed to live in their own homes.
Also yesterday, Qassam rockets again fell on the oft-bombarded Israeli town of Sderot. Sderot was built as an Israeli town in the early 1950’s to house Jewish immigrants from the Maghreb, who were told they were coming to a land without a people for a people without a land. But they weren’t; they were coming to the ruins of the Palestinian town of Najd.
A little town by the name of Sderot became home to poor immigrants in the early ’50s, only years after it had been cleared of Palestinians living in what was the village of Najd. [A] resident of Sderot told me that when he got there in 1989 he thought he was in “the safest place in the world, in the middle of nowhere.” And yet, it was not the middle of nowhere, he had moved onto what was once someone else’s land and adjacent to where that displaced person and their displaced descendants were held imprisoned. There, his displaced neighbors daily face the consequences of the past. This past is what is allowing for the hell of that very town, Sderot.
Najd was completely destroyed, and its 719 inhabitants expelled to Gaza, by troops of the Israeli Negev Brigade, on 13 May 1948. Among those inhabitants expelled to the Gaza Strip were Muhammad Jasser, a former mayor of Najd, and his son, Ahmed.
They lived the rest of their lives in the Jabalya Refugee Camp, unable to return to Najd because Zionism said they had the “wrong” ethnic-religious background to be allowed to live in their own homes.
By 1998 there were an estimated 4,417 people living in Gaza Strip refugee camps who were either expelled from Najd, or the children/grandchildren of people expelled from Najd. Conceivably, some of them are among the people firing Qassams at Sderot right now.
That sort of background information makes the Canada analogy sound really dumb, doesn’t it? And you can learn it from a newspaper in Israel, but not here. At least not yet. But you will. And the reason you will hear more and more even in the U.S. about the unacknowledged history of 1948 is because of the demise of the two state solution. Israel has spent 40 years doing everything it can to erase the Green Line of 1967, in order to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. But what it has actually ended up doing by refusing to settle for the borders of 1967, is to return its conflict with the Palestinians to 1948, by unraveling the demographically Jewish state that it went to such trouble to establish through the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba. Forty years of trying to absorb the Occupied Palestinian Territories of 1967 into an expanded Jewish state of Israel, have resulted instead in the restoration of the bi-national state of Israel/Palestine that existed before 1948. A bi-national state under sectarian rule, which presently reserves the benefits of citizenship to only one of the state’s nations, but a de facto bi-national state nonetheless.
And as Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper has pointed out, the real irony is that Israel has no-one to blame but itself for throwing away the Jewish super-majority it created for itself on part of Palestine in 1948. Israel’s own inability to untangle itself from the mirage of a Jewish state in all Palestine, has brought it to where it is today – on the verge of losing a Jewish state even on part of it:
[I]f it was we who eliminated a viable two-state solution – the creation of a truncated Palestinian prison-state on 15% of historic Palestine a la South Africa’s Bantustans will not solve the conflict – then how shall we end our century-old conflict? How shall we deal with the bi-national entity that is Israel/Palestine, largely our own creation?
In order to avoid these questions, we have developed a number of mechanisms, delaying forever a political solution being only one of them. It is enough for us to merely assert our support for a two-state solution in order that we be considered peace-minded and reasonable. Two-state supporters require only the notion of a Palestinian state, a never-ending process towards it, to escape confronting the reality we created. As long as a Palestinian state can be held out as a possibility, the pressure’s off. Thus many Israelis, Diaspora Jews and others – including such searching and otherwise radical figures as Noam Chomsky and Uri Avnery, together with Peace Now, Brit Tzedek, Rabbis Michael Lerner and Arthur Waskow and members of Rabbis for Human Rights – cling tenaciously to the two-state solution, all refusing to admit it is no longer viable.
The 40th anniversary of 1967 had to do with occupation. Had we dealt with that issue wisely and justly, Israel today could have been a Jewish state living at peace with its neighbors on 78% of the Land of Israel, a true cause for celebration. This year’s focus on 60 Years, on 1948, is a different matter entirely. If we want to salvage a national Jewish presence in Palestine/Israel, nothing remains but to courageously confront what we did in 1948 and the bi-national reality we have fostered since 1967. No longer can we blame the Palestinians for our dilemmas; they accepted the two-state solution way back in 1988. No, it is we, the triumphant, those who believed (and still believe) that military power combined with Jewish victimhood can defeat a people’s will to freedom, who carry the burden of responsibility for this most anti-Zionist, yet wholly predictable, situation…
Posted by: Juan Moment | Jan 10 2009 0:03 utc | 8
Into the third week of the horror and the most confusing aspect is that the israeli strategy still appears to have no apparent purpose.
While the long term goal of israel’s treatment of all Palestinians is their extermination, and in the case of the long term second and third generation displaced Palestinians of Gaza , where Palestinian populations are still increasing at a greater rate than the corrupt and decadent israeli society can manage, the need to make a sizable reduction is numbers is becoming urgent, the rate of killing by this campaign, horrifying as it is, is not sufficient to make a sizable dent in Gazaain numbers.
So is the long term strategy to drive the desperate and demoralised Gazaains into the arms of Egypt? Maybe Mubarak is up for it because he and his greedy elite can cream the top off the pitiful grants of money and food to the refugees that amerika and israel will extort from the rest of the world?
That may seem like an effective strategy to some of the zionists, but it does freshen up the whole Palestinian refugee thing so for at least another 10 years ‘right of return’, which time had eroded from the minds of all the outside players sticking their self interested noses into the plight of the Palestinians, will become a viable issue once more.
Oh, I know for anyone who believes in justice, right of return never lost it’s viability, but there is no doubt that in the minds of most of the european negotiators who have been playing nice cop to amerika and israel’s bad cop, the rights of 40 year refugees had become a side issue. A million and a half Gazaains taking refuge in Egypt would move right of return right back to the top of the agenda, and that can’t be something that the zionists will favour. That would mean delaying any final settlement for another 50 years and by that time the Palestinians that remain within the rest of the occupied territories will have made an increase in size greater than the population of Gaza now.
Maybe the plan was to ‘surgically remove’ Hamas’ leadership. If that was the case then the israelis have largely failed. The IDF has brutally smashed it’s way through Gaza’s residential areas trying to lure Hamas fighters out into some sort of showdown at the OK corral and they have failed in this so badly that leaks on that failure have been coming from the IDF leadership for a week now. At the same time they have made few successful assassinations of Hamas’s legitimately elected leadership. This has caused them to finally rouse the previously tame ‘watchdogs’, UN High Commissioner for human rights, and the international Red Cross.
Even that apologist for zionist murder the Guardian has been forced to acknowledge the depth of israeli depravity.
The Israeli military may have committed war crimes in Gaza, the UN’s most senior human rights official said tonight, as Israeli troops pressed on with their increasingly deadly offensive in defiance of a UN security council resolution demanding a ceasefire.
Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, singled out the killing this week of up to 30 Palestinians in Zeitoun, south-east of Gaza City, when Israel shelled a house where its troops had told about 110 civilians to take shelter.
Pillay, a former international criminal court judge from South Africa, told the BBC the incident “appears to have all the elements of war crimes”. She called for “credible, independent and transparent” investigations into possible violations of humanitarian law. . .
With the Palestinian casualty toll rising to around 780 dead and more than 3,100 injured, fresh evidence emerged today of the Zeitoun killings.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said in a report it was “one of the gravest incidents since the beginning of operations” against Hamas militants in Gaza by the Israeli military on 27 December.
OCHA said the incident took place on 4 January, a day after Israel began its ground offensive in Gaza. According to testimonies gathered by the UN, Israeli soldiers evacuated about 110 Palestinians to a single-storey house in Zeitoun. The evacuees were instructed to stay indoors for their safety but 24 hours later the Israeli army shelled the house. About half the Palestinians sheltering in the house were children, OCHA said. The report also complains that the Israeli Defence Force prevented medical teams from entering the area to evacuate the wounded. . .
Among the dead were nine members of the Samouni family; a picture of three of the family’s children in blood-stained clothing laid on a morgue floor and in front of their grieving father was shown in the Guardian on Tuesday. The father, Wael Samouni, said dozens of people had been sheltering in the house after Israeli troops ordered them and neighbours to stay inside.
“Those who survived, and were able, walked two kilometres to Salah Ed Din road before being transported to the hospital in civilian vehicles,” the UN said.
Rescuers from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said they were able to reach the area on Wednesday only after being allowed safe passage by Israel.
The ICRC issued a statement on the incident yesterday, accusing the Israeli military of “unacceptable” delays in allowing medics safe access to injured Gazaains. . .
The ‘window of opportunity’ for israel to achieve anything out of this conflict other than a boost in the polls for incumbent murderers is closing rapidly.
It isn’t only the guardian whose reporters have become effected by the awful reality of what zionism’s lofty statements about the ‘rights of israel’ mean when translated into action ‘on the ground’. Even BBC World’s reporters have joined in. Those dreadful careerist oxbridge exemplars of the ‘me-ness’ of corporate capitalist societies have begun to be overcome by the emotions that are stirred when one sees the bodies of little children reduced to so much mush by the huge guns of the IDF. Seeing the IDF day after day, laugh and joke whilst the horror continues – making their bows and acknowledgements to the redneck israeli audience perched safely outta range on the hills outside Gaza, has stirred up even the coolest of the ‘new BBC’ bliar squad.
For example – The reporters on the ground are interviewing many more Palestinian journalists and objective non professionals within Gaza. For a change no one has played around with the audio and the reporters are using talent taken from the large pool of easily understood english speakers. This is a major change from putting a polished zionist PR person with an easily understandable mid-atlantic accent up against a barely intelligible but highly emotional Palestinian. For the moment that cruel stratagem has been taken off the menu in a number of media outlets – such is the power of witnessing humans reduced to soft rubble.
The contagion has spread far beyond the front line of news organisations. Some may remember Alan Johnston the BBC ‘man in Gaza”. Johnson was the last correspondent of a major non Arab media outlet who was permanently based in Gaza. Just before israel and fatah made their ill fated attempt at a coup to overthrow the democratically elected government of Gaza, a bunch of Gazaain smugglers who worked in concert with the Israeli intelligence service, kidnapped him. israel didn’t want any voices of Gaza getting out when the coup attempt got underway At that time fatah still had control of security services such as army and police. Remember how amerika and israel backed the totally undemocratic refusal by fatah to cede control of those services (and aid honey pots) to the newly elected Hamas government? Anyway the fatah dominated police made no progress in getting Johnston back, numerous reasons including a blood feud between some fatah officials and the smuggling clan – which of course, was why the israelis selected them for the kidnapping.
Shortly after Hamas defeated fatah and chased their corrupt asses outta Gaza, Johnston was found and rescued by Hamas forces. He was put on a plane flown straight out of Palestine and apart from some ‘specials’ on the horror of his kidnapping, has been barely sighted since. The new bliar-ed BBC didn’t want anyone like Johnston who had a great rapport with Palestinians anywhere near the ongoing criminal enterprise that is Israel. The new BBC believes it’s place is lodged firmly up shrub’s asshole.
Last night Alan Johnston re-appeared on bbc news screens on a long piece about what is happening to all the humans trapped in Gaza. He made good use of his myriad contacts amongst all factions in and outside Gaza and more importantly was given the space to comment on why it was his long experience of Gaza and it’s people led him to believe that israel’s action would prove to be ultimately self defeating. About how the diverse factions and political groupings in Palestine as a whole not just Gaza, had become united again for the first time since the divisive electoral process which had trapped them into warring with each other instead of the zionists.
Of course the sea change in the media’s commentary has become neither far enough away from the genocidal pro-zionist policies of before nor complete, the same edition of the guardian I linked to above has a lengthy piece emanating from new york which seeks to blame the failure of the latest u.n. promoted ceasefire, on Hamas. 100% nowhere in this lengthy article does it discuss the real reasons Hamas rejected the ceasefire(that the siege of Gaza would become more intensive with fewer holes in it therefore they would be agreeing to starve) nor does it mention that israel rejected this ceasefire long before Hamas passed judgement on it.
Nevertheless despite the exceptions there is no doubt that Israel will not be able to continue this awfulness at the current rate of Palestinian attrition for much longer. Their strategy wasn’t one that could continue for ever.
The israelis and their zionist agents throughout the world had examined the failings in Lebanon in 06 and have taken major steps to address them. Firstly in the mainstream media where even more zionist shills were made available to spout the day’s talking points. In particular on the net where huge numbers of assholes with no qualifications other than an assertion they were a jew, prepared to shout down any reasonable query about the horror with ad hominem attacks, threats against isp’s and a continuous stream of lies, distortions and hate. This is failing now. One of the BBC’s most steadfastly unquestioning of zion’s excesses asked one of the many “israeli government spokesmen’ about the morality of this current horror, then curled his lip in disdain at the same threadbare “rockets attacks haven’t stopped” excuse of two weeks ago, being rolled out yet again. The rest of the piece featured an interviewer whose words dripped with disbelief and contempt.
In the main the israeli strategy was effective for the first two weeks but I believe now they have burned their bridges, no media outlet will be as willing to let this happen again either, (the zionist juggernaut is careening off the rails), because whilst the stream of poisonous invective claiming to be from the public at large, in support of the genocide hasn’t grown in either number or variety (it is mainly the same redneck zionists screeching now as it was two weeks ago), the input from viewers and readers appalled by what they see, so calling the media outlet to task for their shameless zionist bias, has increased. Greatly in number but most importantly in variety.
It isn’t just us at MoA and points left, any longer, more and more of the citizenry have been roused from their slumber by this continuing horror. They are used to foulness like that appearing on their screens for a couple of nights, then thankfully going away to be replaced by stories about rescued cats or evil real estate rip offs down the road. The audience will put up with most things for a while. As long as they don’t stay around for so long that closer attention and analysis can no longer be avoided.
The relentless rape of Gaza doesn’t seem to be heading for the redemption which Bruckheimer and the rest of Hollywood’s manipulators developed as their key for selling evil to the masses. Hollywood has been pumping out awfulness saved by virtue for so long most consumers have been lulled into the rhythm of the cycle, so will tolerate a Fallujah if it is framed in the correct modern mythology.
Speedy redemption is one, as discussed above, but in certain cases it can be trumped for a while with ‘support for the troops’ ‘amerika love it or leave it’ and unquestioned shared realities such as the inherent goodness of the prez. None of that came into play for most non-amerikans during Fallujah – which is why the opposition from outside amerika was initially far more fervent that that within.
None of that comes into play over Gaza for amerikans, despite aipac’s ongoing work to equate israeli institutions and objectives with amerikan ones.
Once again israel has misread the situation and overplayed it’s hand, the people of Egypt have powerfully demonstrated that any move by Mubarak for egypt to take it up the ass from israel will cause a social disruption that no amount of ‘levied’ donations and aid could hope to ameliorate. Egypt’s dictatorship has been at ‘tipping point’ for too long. As well as inciting his opponents Mubarak’s sympathy for zionism makes it increasingly difficult for him to keep the low level police and security services agents onside. As Sadat discovered to his cost ordinary Egyptians will only tolerate so much.
Hamas know the game and thus far have protected their leadership from murder. Unlike fatah, Hamas is much less penetrated by mossad and the rest of the torturers’ agencies, so it will take longer to work up the Hamas chain of command than the 40+ years it took to assassinate Yasir Arafat.
Unless a modern easily delivered from current weapons platforms version of Zyklon-B can be implemented within the next couple of days, the numbers game is going to stymie Olmert, Livni, and Barak just as it stymied Himmler, Heydrich, and Hitler. It just isn’t possible to kill a million and a half people quickly using ‘traditional methods’.
DU is just too slow. By the time the population of Gaza is overwhelmed by cancer, Palestinians’ determination to reproduce in the face of this horror will mean that the numbers of Palestinian people have increased beyond the rate of carcinogenic destruction.
‘Barak the malleable’, who was almost certainly consulted about the invasion before it occured, is getting restless. Inauguration is creeping closer and his position of wanting to engage with Hamas at a low level (almost certainly one of the zionist’s motivations for begining the massacre) has just been restated.
The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush’s doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.
The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush presidency’s ostracising of the group. . .
The Guardian has spoken to three people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.
So whatever attempts to getObama to resile from this position, have thus far foundered. I guess he will have been told that iunless he promises not to talk with Hamas officialy, at any level, israel will continue the genocide.
My guess is that Obama will agree to that stupidity eventually. He will be under incredible pressure to do so, not the least of which will be the unspoken accusation that his obstinacy is what is killing children. He may even inmagine that he will be able to break that undertaking later but aipac will make that difficult. Nevertheless Hamas will win access to other nations which had previously refused to engage, and Hamas does have every reason to conclude that the cost of talking with amerika (ongoing extortion and corruption) is just too high for the rewards such contact claims to offer.
Maybe there is a plan to sterilize the people of Gaza with some form of easily deploy-able media such as an invisible tasteless and odourless gas, but really there is no such thing. The risk of discover would be very high and the backlash from outside Israel, particularly from the fundie xtian right to lifers who have been onside with zionism, huge.
From where I am it looks like israel has shot it’s wad far too early in their rape of Gaza and even though Gazaains have paid an incredibly high price, a criminal price, they will come out of this horror with far more say in Palestine’s eventual destiny than they had before.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 10 2009 0:30 utc | 9
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