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In a recent Real News piece, senior editor Paul Jay objected to talk of lesser evilism: “… I think this whole terminology lesser evil, it’s a terrible mistake to use such terminology. The problem is it’s turning this whole thing into some kind of moral debate, and neither Romney nor Obama are evil. They are the products of a social-economic system. They represent different sections of the elite…”1
I still think Real News is the best progressivist video fare available, and Jay is one of the best news anchors, but Jay’s assertion still leaves me astounded. That his assertion is unfounded is fully refuted by Obama holding the US hand over Israel to prevent it from UN censure.
Evenhandedness is out the window on this slaughter as well. According to the Obama administration, Hamas is to blame.2
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney had this to say: “Well, we strongly condemn the barrage of rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, and we regret the death and injury of innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians caused by the ensuing violence. There is no justification for the violence that Hamas and other terrorist organizations are employing against the people of Israel. We call on those responsible to stop these cowardly acts immediately in order to allow the situation to deescalate.”
“… Hamas claims to have the best interest of the Palestinian people at heart, yet it continues to engage in violence that is counterproductive to the Palestinian cause. Attacking Israel on a near daily basis does nothing to help Palestinians in Gaza or to move the Palestinian people any close to achieving self-determination.”3
It appears, at least, that Obama administration officials are reading from the same script.
AP reports US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice had mouthed nearly identical words to the UN Security Council prior to the utterances by Carney at his press gaggle.4
What exactly is Israel’s 24/7 siege on Gaza, if not violence that is counterproductive to peace between Israel and Gaza?
Do Carney, Rice, and Obama insist that if the Gazans sit on their hands that the siege will be lifted?
The following video (purportedly from the Israeli assault on Gaza) depicts, what is undeniably, evil.
- WARNING -
The video is very graphic.
Scroll Down For Video
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33080.htm
Obama is not a lesser evilist; he is the man who enables evil. If this does not — in Paul Jay’s mind — call for a moral debate, then one wonders what does call for such a debate. The ongoing, repeated carnage and slaughter in Gaza (Syria, Bahrain, Afghanistan …) underscores the utter futility of pandering to lesser evilism. If one votes for a degree of evil, then one should not be surprised when evil results.
Progressivism demands that social justice activists repudiate evil. Consequently, insofar as media plays along within the parameters set by the socio-economic system and its evil, how progressivist can it legitimately claim to be?
Notes
See Kim Petersen, “No Such Thing as Lesser Evilism?” Dissident Voice, 6 November 2012.
Of course there was never any doubt which side the Harper government would back. On 14 November 2012, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird issued the following statement:
We fundamentally believe that Israel has the right to defend itself and its citizens from terrorist threats.
Far too often, the Jewish people find themselves on the front lines in the struggle against terrorism, the great struggle of our generation. Just last weekend, more than 100 rockets rained down on civilians in southern Israel from positions in the Gaza Strip.
Canada condemns the terrorist group Hamas and stands with Israel as it deals with regional threats to peace and security.
See also Bruce Campion-Smith, “Prime Minister Stephen Harper backs Israel in Gaza conflict,” Toronto Star, 16 November 2012.
Office of the Press Secretary, Press Gaggle by Press Secretary Jay Carney en route New York, NY, 11/15/2012,” The White House, 15 November 2012.
“Hamas claims to have the best interest of the Palestinian people at heart, yet it continues to engage in violence that does nothing but set back the Palestinian cause. Attacking Israel on a near daily basis does nothing to help Palestinians in Gaza not to move the Palestinian people any closer to achieving self-determination and independence,” Rice said. See Peter James Spielmann, “Palestinians ask Security Council to stop Israel,” boston.com, 14 November 2012.
Kim Petersen is co-editor of Dissident Voice. He can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org
This article was originally posted at Dissident Voice
A related article with very graphic photos:
http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/11/13/israels-war-on-children-part-i-murdering-children-for-sport-the-jewish-holocaust-against-arab-children/
Israel’s War on Children: Part I Murdering Children for Sport – The Jewish Holocaust Against Arab Children
The world needs to be awakened to Israel’s deplorable and reprehensible slaughtering of the citizens of Gaza, and their practice of deliberately targeting children, and to condemn this internationally in the strongest possible terms. The war crimes committed by the Jews in Israel are almost unimaginable to most of us.
The photos attached to this article are graphic and sickening. It is almost impossible to believe that human beings are capable of such evil and callousness as that being perpetrated daily upon the civilians in Palestine.
Small Palestinian children burning to death, following the phosphor explosives bombardment by Jewish soldiers on their school.
We present photographic evidence to counter outrageous denials of one of Israel’s more reprehensible actions: the use of White Phosphorus shells as a weapon against Gaza’s civilian population.
The Jewish military, the Israeli government, and the (largely Jewish-owned and controlled) Western media have all conspired to deceive the world and supress this information.
Jewish forces repeatedly fired artillery and phosphor shells into densely populated residential areas, knowing that such imprecise weapons would kill and injure civilians.
According to Amnesty International, “The scale and intensity of the attacks were unprecedented, even in the context of the increasingly lethal Israeli military campaigns in Gaza in previous years.”
During Operation “Cast Lead” Israeli forces made extensive use of white phosphorus,in residential areas. Homes, schools, medical facilities and UN buildings – all civilian objects – took direct hits.
“Everything caught fire. My husband and four of my children burned alive in front of my eyes; my baby girl, Shahed, my only girl, melted in my arms.”
The Children of Palestine:
A Photo Essay on Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza
Jewish Israeli Child Killers: Documentary Proof: From Research by Michael Hoffman and other sources
We have here some text taken from various news reports, along with some very graphic photos of the horrors that the Jews in Israel are inflicting on the entire civilian Arab population of Palestine.
Israel would like the world to believe that the pictures of these children serve as further indictment and evidence of Hamas terrorism. What a clever propaganda ploy: blame the deaths of women and children on the enemy.
There is commentary on one of Israel’s more reprehensible lies: the use of “human shields” by the Palestinians. The Jews try to tell the world that Hamas is using their own people as human shields so that, when the photos of mangled babies, children and women arrive over the news wires, it can all be blamed on Hamas, not on Israel’s bombs, which are blasting Gaza’s hospitals, mosques, universities and homes into oblivion.
But Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch claim there is no evidence whatever that Hamas has ever done this, but they have presented considerable documented evidence that Jewish soldiers do in fact use Palestinians, primarily children, as human shields.
Palestinian women protesting against the Jews’ deliberate targeting of children and families. “Ali Murad Abu Shaweesh was 12 when Israeli soldiers shot him in the back.
Ali was killed on the same day in June, 2001 that Sharon refused to let the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, meet with Yasir Arafat, yet his death also went unnoticed by American television news.
But not entirely unnoticed, since the Israeli soldiers, who taunted the Palestinian boys over loudspeakers outside the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, goading them to come out and throw rocks, did so under the gaze of Chris Hedges, a reporter for the New York Times.
“Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered – death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights . . in Sarajevo.
But I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport,” Hedges wrote. His account, coolly factual yet full of passionate intensity, was written not for his own paper but for Harper’s Magazine, which sent Hedges to Gaza on his vacation.” The Nation, March 11, 2002
Killing children is no longer a big deal
From Haaretz Oct. 17, 2004; by Gideon Levy
A Palestinian child with all his limbs blown off, most likely by a DIME explosive fired by Jewish soldiers. These are experimental explosives created by the US and likely sold to Israel. They create violent short-range explosions with this effect. How would you feel if this were your child? “The plain fact, which must be stated clearly, is that the blood of hundreds of Palestinian children is on our hands.”
Oct. 29, 2000: A Palestinian boy, Fares Udah, 13, confronts an Israeli tank, during an Israeli attack on the outskirts of Gaza City.
According to the boy’s mother, Enaam Udah, 41, her son survived the encounter with the tank only to be shot dead by the Jews a week later.
More than 30 Palestinian children were killed in the first two weeks of Operation Days of Penitence in the Gaza Strip (beginning September 30, 2004). It’s no wonder that many people term such wholesale killing of children “terror.”
Whereas in the overall count of all the victims of the intifada the ratio is three Palestinians killed for every Israeli killed, when it comes to children the ratio is 5:1.
According to B’Tselem, the human rights organization, even before the current operation in Gaza, 557 Palestinian minors (below the age of 18) were killed, compared to 110 Israeli minors.
Palestinian human rights groups speak of even higher numbers: 598 Palestinian children killed (up to age 17), according to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, and 828 killed (up to age 18) according to the Red Crescent.
Take note of the ages, too. According to B’Tselem, whose data are updated until about a month ago, 42 of the children who have been killed were 10; 20 were seven; and eight were two years old when they died.
The youngest victims are 13 newborn infants who died at checkpoints during birth.
With horrific statistics like this, the question of who is a terrorist should have long since become very burdensome for every Jew everywhere, especially those living in Israel.
Severed head of a 4-year-old Palestinian “terrorist” buried in rubble after an air attack by Jewish forces in Gaza. Yet it is not on the public agenda. Child killers are always the Palestinians, the soldiers always only defend us and themselves, and the hell with the statistics.
The plain fact, which must be stated clearly, is that the blood of hundreds of Palestinian children is on our hands.
No tortuous explanation by the IDF Spokesman’s Office or by the military correspondents about the dangers posed to soldiers by the children.
No dubious excuse by the public relations people in the Foreign Ministry about how the Palestinians are making use of children will change that fact.
An army that kills so many children is an army with no restraints, an army that has lost its moral code.
As MK Ahmed Tibi (Hadash) said, in a particularly emotional speech in the Knesset, it is no longer possible to claim that all these children were killed by mistake.
An army doesn’t make more than 500 day-to-day mistakes of identity.
No, this is not a mistake but the disastrous result of a policy driven mainly by an appallingly light trigger finger and by the dehumanization of the Palestinians.
Shooting at everything that moves, including children, has become normative behavior.
Even the momentary mini-furor that erupted over the “confirming of the killing” of a 13-year-old girl, Iman Alhamas, did not revolve around the true question.
The scandal should have been generated by the very act of the killing itself, not only by what followed.
Two dead Palestinian children, one burned to a crisp by phosphor, the other blown apart by a grenade or DIME bomb fired by Jewish soldiers. Iman was not the only one. Mohammed Aaraj was eating a sandwich in front of his house, the last house before the cemetery of the Balata refugee camp, in Nablus, when a soldier shot him to death at fairly close range. He was six at the time of his death.
Kristen Saada was in her parents’ car, on the way home from a family visit, when soldiers sprayed the car with bullets. She was 12 at the time of her death.
The brothers Jamil and Ahmed Abu Aziz were riding their bicycles in full daylight, on their way to buy sweets, when they sustained a direct hit from a shell fired by an Israeli tank crew. Jamil was 13, Ahmed six, at the time of their deaths.
Muatez Amudi and Subah Subah were killed by a soldier who was standing in the village square in Burkin and fired every which way in the wake of stone-throwing.
Radir Mohammed from Khan Yunis refugee camp was in a school classroom when soldiers shot her to death.
She was 12 when she died. All of them were innocent of wrongdoing and were killed by soldiers acting in our name.
At least in some of these cases it was clear to the soldiers that they were shooting at children, but that didn’t stop them. Palestinian children have no refuge: mortal danger lurks for them in their homes, in their schools and on their streets.
Not one of the hundreds of children who have been killed deserved to die, and the responsibility for their killing cannot remain anonymous. Thus the message is conveyed to the soldiers: it’s no tragedy to kill children and none of you is guilty.
A Palestinian father, carrying his dead child after another Jewish air attack. Note the child’s left side, arms and legs, and part of his head, all blown away by another DIME weapon. Who are the “terrorists”? Death is, of course, the most acute danger that confronts a Palestinian child, but it is not the only one.
According to data of the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 3,409 schoolchildren have been wounded in the intifada, some of them crippled for life.
The childhood of tens of thousands of Palestinian youngsters is being lived from one trauma to the next, from horror to horror.
Their homes are demolished, their parents are humiliated in front of their eyes, soldiers storm into their homes brutally in the middle of the night, tanks open fire on their classrooms.
And they don’t have a psychological service. Have you ever heard of a Palestinian child who is a “victim of anxiety”?
The public indifference that accompanies this pageant of unrelieved suffering makes all Israelis accomplices to a crime.
Even parents, who understand what anxiety for a child’s fate means, turn away and don’t want to hear about the anxiety harbored by the parent on the other side of the fence.
Who would have believed that Israeli soldiers would kill hundreds of children and that the majority of Jews would remain silent?
Even the Palestinian children have become part of the dehumanization campaign: killing hundreds of them is no longer a big deal.
Israeli Soldier Gets 49 Days for Murdering Palestinian Teen
A dead Palestinian child, shot in the face by a Jewish soldier – who was sentenced to 49 days in jail for “violating rules” on killing children – i.e. being photographed while doing it. An Israeli soldier who shot and killed an unarmed Palestinian teen-ager in the Gaza Strip has been sentenced to 49 days in jail for violating the army’s rules on when a soldier can open fire, the army said Sunday.
The Palestinians have repeatedly accused Israeli troops of war crimesand atrocities against civilians, but punishments meted out to Jewish soldiers have been extremely rare.
The soldier fired a .22-caliber rifle, hitting 14-year-old Issa Ibrahim al-Amur in the stomach as he was walking near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip on Feb. 3.
Al-Amur later died of his wounds. The soldier was identified as Daniel Stempler by an Israeli newspaper, Kol Hair.
”The soldier will serve out his sentence in a military prison,” the Israeli army said in a statement. Source: Associated Press-NY-Feb. 25, 2001
Shooting Arab Kids: Just Business as Usual for the Israeli Army
On March 13, 1998 an Israeli soldier was photographed in Hebron, aiming his assault rifle at a group of Palestinian children, a few of whom were “armed” with stones.
The Israeli army (IDF) routinely shoots Palestinian children in the head.
Carried by her grandfather, a dead Palestinian child, with her legs blown off by a Jewish mortar during Operation “Cast Lead” in Gaza. This shooting spree has transpired since the 1980s, with a dearth of sustained outcry from the “international community” or the Western media, who do not consider it terrorism.
Imagine however if the soldier in the photograph was a German and the children he was taking aim at were Jewish, would his act then be considered terrorism? Of course!
Or what if the soldier had been a white southerner in the U.S. and the children in the photo were American black youths? Would the soldier’s aim be considered terrorism? Certainly.
The Palestinians boil with rage in the face of this double standard.
There can be no doubt that Palestinian children are a sub-human species in the eyes of the West.
The Israeli troops can gun them and their parents down with near impunity and the West treats it as business as usual, the “inevitable result of sectarian hostilities.”
But when the Palestinians take revenge on the Israelis for these murders, by bombs or others means, suddenly the whole machinery of condemnanion and outrage is brought to bear on the Palestinian killers of Israelis.
Everyone is expected to “speak out” and “not be complacent” in the face of the “terror attacks on the Jewish people.”
This sly racism informs the establishment’s reporting of the Middle East.
Arab blood is cheap. Israeli army terrorism against Palestinians is met with overwhelming complacency in America. When Israelis shed the blood of Arab children, the West shrugs.
Another Palestinian child, horribly burned by phosphor bombs fired on Gaza by the Jews. The child died soon after. These heinous attacks on children, part of an endless cycle of tragedy, can be averted only when the Jewish aggressors who have stolen the Palestinians’ land and shot thousands of them to death, begin to treat them as human beings with inviolable human rights.
The murder of adult Palestinian civilians and Palestinian children must cease being business as usual.
It is state terror pereptrated by the Israeli government and made possible by American tax dollars, weapons and munitions.
Let us have the courage and integrity to call it terrorism and condemn it in the halls of Congress and the columns of our newspapers as forcefully as we condemn the crimes of Hamas against Jewish civilians.
Otherwise our talk of human rights and safety for Israelis is little more than hypocritical racism; a cover for Israeli supremacy–concern only for the suffering of a “Master Jewish Race” and not for the native Arab semites. Such behavior is the real “anti-semitism.”
Another beautiful Palestinian baby killed when Jewish soldiers shelled his home in the middle of the night.
Yet Another Palestinian Child Gunned Down by Israeli Jews
BEITUNYA, West Bank –Israeli motorists sprayed a group of Palestinian high school students with bullets from American-issued assault weapons on Thursday, Sept. 17, killing one youth and wounding another, witnesses and doctors said.
The eyewitnesses said the motorists shot without provocation. The shooting occurred around noon in the West Bank village of Beitunia.
Witnesses said about 10 high school students were walking along the main road on their way home from school when a vehicle with Israeli license plates pulled up near them.
The passengers rolled down their windows and began firing from a pistol and an assault rifle, said Raed Abdel Rahman, 17, one of the students who escaped injury. “Everybody started to jump and take cover,” said Rahman.
A Palestinian father mourning his dead child, only weeks old, shot dead by a Jewish soldier. A high school student who was also on the scene, Hassan al-Qadi, told reporters, “They were shooting randomly.”
The wounded were taken to nearby Ramallah Hospital. Iyad Rahwa Qarabsi, 17, a high school senior described as an outstanding student, was shot in the stomach.
He died at the hospital about an hour later, according to Ramallah hospital director Shauke Harb.
A doctor described the cause of death as bullet wounds from an M-16, an American-made, military assault rifle that Israeli settlers and soldiers carry.
15 year-old Mahmoud Issa Jabarin was in stable condition; also with a stomach wound, hospital officials said.
At the family home, Qarabsi’s mother collapsed on the floor and wept over the murder of her teenage son.
“My beloved, you didn’t come home with your schoolbooks today!” she sobbed.
Ibrahim Murar, the principal of Beitunya’s 700-student Palestinian high school said, “”He was one of the very best students in the school. School was more important to him than anything else.”
After being held in custody for three days, the Jewish gunman, Avshalom Ladani, 35, a member of the West Bank settlement of Dolev, was released by Israeli authorities. Ladani immediately joined a party at a Jerusalem hotel where he was feted as a hero.
Another 2-year-old Gaza child with his body blown to bits.
“We call on all [Jewish] residents to view Avshalom’s behavior as upstanding citizenship,” declared an advertisement placed in Israeli newspapers by the Yesha Council, a settlers’ group.
The ad said the Jewish killer was being “persecuted.”
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu refused to condemn the shootings of the Palestinian students.
According to the Sept. 21 Washington Post, “His aides pleaded extenuating circumstances…” They said the killer had been “provoked.”
Israeli officials said the shooting was not an act of Jewish terrorism; they termed the settler’s action merely “carelessness,” and “violence that was disproportionate.”
“This sounds to me like it was really an act of self-defense, if perhaps a careless one,” said David Bar-Illan, an adviser to Netanyahu.
A second Israeli gunman remains at large.
A 10-year-old Palestinian child shot and burned to death by Jewish soldiers – punishment for “throwing stones”.
This is the second shooting within two days in which Israelis killed or wounded Palestinian youths.
On Tuesday, Sept. 15, a Jewish settler shot and wounded 16-year-old Mohammed Musa Dweik in the Palestinian village of Zatara.
In America, one of the most zealous supporters of the gun-toting Israeli settlers and their right to automatic weapons banned in the U.S., is Brooklyn Congressman Charles E. Schumer.
Schumer helped promote and pass the the Federal government’s assault weapons ban, which outlawed the sale to the American people of 19 types of semiautomatic weapons, many of which are possessed by Israeli settlers.
Schumer has stated, “I have made it (gun control) one of my life’s works…”
Except in Israeli-occupied Palestine.
Israeli Soldiers Murder 13 Year Old Palestinian Boy
The mother of Samer Karameh weeps in her home in Hebron, Palestine, over the bullet-ridden corpse of her thirteen year old son, who died on March 17, 1998, after being shot in the head by Israeli soldiers, during protests against the murder on March 10 of three Palestinian construction workers.
If you found your child dead, shot in the head by a Jewish soldier while playing outside your house, would you want to retaliate and become a “terrorist” too?
Hundreds attended Samer’s funeral. Ahmed Karameh, his 23-year-old cousin, declared: “They killed him in cold blood.”
No Israeli government action was taken against the Jewish soldiers who murdered the 13 year old.
“Israeli soldiers can kill Palestinians with impunity. They take innocent lives and get away with it.” Hanan Ashrawi, Palestinian spokeswoman.
Elsewhere, Israeli army (IDF) and Border Police commanders met with Palestinian reporters in Hebron yesterday to discuss the events that led to the shooting of eight Palestinian journalists March 13 by the IDF.
IDF Hebron Commander Col. Yigal Sharon said the soldiers and Border Police were unable to discern that those they were shooting were journalists because of conditions at the scene.
Sharon said he would do everything in his power to enable journalists to cover Hebron and advised them to avoid standing among Palestinian protestors (because the IDF shoots them at will).
9-year-old Palestinian boy shot to death in his home by Israeli Army
The boy, Obei Darraj, age nine, was killed on Friday March 2, 2001 in his family’s home, in El Bireh. The little boy was watching his father paint the wall of a brother’s bedroom when gunfire crashed through its window, and hit the child in the chest.The Israeli army took credit for the killing, saying: ” The gunfire came in retaliation to Palestinian shots aimed at the Psagot settlement” (Ha’aretz, March 4, 2001).
Only Jewish Children’s Lives Count
A Palestinian child with his head blown away by a Jewish military high-powered weapon. Do you think this father wants retaliation? Would that make him a “terrorist”?
The world perpetually mourns the death of one Jewish child at the hands of the Nazis, Anne Frank.
She is commemorated in several books, eight separate movies and documentaries (including one now in production by Steven Spielberg) and countless shrines and museums.
Will the thousands of Arab children who have been slaughtered by the Israelis since 1948 be remembered by the West?
Will there be a single memorial, or will the memory of the atrocities against these “un-Chosen” people be extinguished?
All people must present and disseminate this evidence until the conscience of the West can be awakened from its Jewish supremacist slumber.
Until it commemorates all the victims of all the holocausts, including those perpetrated by Jews.
Jewish Soldiers Shoot for the Head
A dead Palestinian child, shot in the head by a Jewish soldier.
Many small young boys were shot by cowardly Jewish while they were playing in front of their homes.
This is the story of one of them; his name was Khaled Waleed.
He was playing next to his home in Balata district, east of Nabulis town, and some Jewish soldiers aimed at him and shot him in the head.
Another 12-year old Palestinian, Muhind Nizar Muharb, was killed April 23 in Khan Yunis refugee camp, in the Gaza Strip.
Most of the 68 Palestinians killed and hundreds wounded by Israeli gunfire during demonstrations against the opening of the Hasmonean Tunnel in September of 1996 were shot in the head or chest.
A list of the dead published by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center, citing medical sources, showed all but one was killed by a bullet to the head or chest.
Over half were by headshots, with most of the casualties killed by a single shot, the Palestinian health ministry said in a report quoted by the daily Al-Ayyam.
Around 60 percent of the 1,665 injured were wounded by shots to the head or chest, the same report said.
Israeli Army Uses Live Ammunition, Not “Rubber Bullets” on Palestinian Civilians
Press Release – September 25, 1996
B’Tselem urges the Israeli government to direct its security forces to cease immediately the widescale use of live ammunition against Palestinian demonstrators and to refrain from deploying large military forces in heavily populated areas in the Occupied Territories.
This beautiful baby was shot in the heart by a Jewish sharpshooter. Note how carefully he centered his aim.
In a violent confrontation today in Ramallah, the Israeli Army (IDF) reinstituted a policy that failed time and again and led to bloodshed.
This is the policy of deploying large numbers of troops in heavily populated Palestinian communities, and the widescale use of live ammunition.
Since implementation of the peace agreements began, a certain degree of separation between Israeli security forces and the Palestinians had developed, resulting in a substantial reduction in the number of casualties.
The actions taken by the security forces today will likely cause the situation to deteriorate, and return confrontation between them and the Palestinian population to a level of violence reminiscent of the intifada.
In handling the recent demonstrations of ultra- orthodox Jews, the Minister for Public Security, Abraham Kahalani, urged police officers to act with restraint, and to refrain as much as possible from using force when dispersing demonstrations.
This policy must also be implemented when dealing with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Israel’s security forces must act in an unbiased manner when handling demonstrators, giving no consideration to their nationality or religion.
Israeli Army Opens Fire on Children’s Playground
Ibrahim Al-Mugrabi weeps over his 11-year-old son, Khalil Ibrahim, who was slain in the Rafah section of the Gaza ghetto after the Israeli army strafed the boy’s playground with machine gun fire.
A little Palestinian girl shot in the head by a Jewish soldier. She died soon after this photo was taken.
Khalil Ibrahim al-Mugrabi, 11, was shot in the head and killed July 7, 2001 near Rafah in the Gaza ghetto.
Two other Arab children playing with him were wounded, one seriously, after the Israeli army sprayed machine gun fire at a crowd of Arab children.
The children were gunned down by Israeli soldiers from a Jewish guard tower as they were playing.
Doctors said the dead Palestinian boy was shot in the head and that a 10-year-old boy was seriously wounded with a gun shot to the stomach.
A third Palestinian boy, age 12, was injured less seriously.
Mohammed Abu-Shikadem, 29, who was nearby when the shootings took place, said that a group of some 30 children were playing near the refugee camp when he heard a burst of machine gun fire from the Israeli guard tower.
“Two of the children fell in front of my eyes,” Abu-Shikadem said.
“In the Old City of Hebron, (March 15, 2001), Israeli soldiers lobbed a stun grenade into a schoolyard during an elementary students’ demonstration.
The students were throwing stones at Israeli cars, Israeli officials said.
Six students suffered moderate or light wounds, including burns, broken bones and blisters, Palestinian officials said.
The Israelis said five Palestinian children had experienced ‘light impact injuries from the grenade.’
“The army sees the removal of children from the circle of violence as extremely important,” an Israeli army statement said.
The army will “continue to act against anyone trying to compromise the security of Israeli citizens,” it said.
Israelis Kill Baby Girl and School-Teacher, Wound Ten other Children in Refugee Camp
Palestine, May 7, 2001; Israeli troops shelled homes in Khan Yunis Refugee Camp and fired large-caliber machine guns, killing a 4-month-old baby girl and wounding 24 civilians. Doctors said 10 Palestinian children were among the injured.
Lying in a bloodied schoolyard, this is all that’s left of a 4-month-old Palestinian girl whose body was blown away. How would you feel?
One Israeli cannon shell hit the shack of the Hijo family in the refugee camp, instantly killing 4-month-old Iman Hijo, with shrapnel tearing a hole into the infant’s back.
The girl’s 19-year-old mother, as well as three brothers and sisters, were wounded, including 18-month-old Mahmoud Hijo, was in intensive care at Nasser Hospital with shrapnel wounds, doctors said.
The slain infant’s uncle, Wael Hijo, carried the girl’s body from the hospital’s autopsy room to the X-ray department.
In the emergency room, Iman’s 7-year-old aunt, Dunya, sat on a bed with a dazed look on her face, her frilly white-and-green dress pulled up above scraped and bandaged legs.
“They killed the baby,” Dunya said, then burst into tears.
Israeli troops also fired on the refugee camp’s Khaldieh School in the West Bank, killing a Palestinian school-teacher.
Source: N.Y. Times, March 16, 2001, p. A-10
Group prayers for Palestinian children and babies killed by Jewish soldiers in Operation “Cast Lead”. Do you think these parents were terrorists before these killings of their children? Do you think they are now?
“Six Palestinian children suffered burns on March 15, 2001 when Jewish soldiers threw a stun grenade into a West Bank schoolyard.
The Jews began new violence after making a pledge to ease the blockade on Gaza.
Doctors in Hebron said three of the six children sustained burns to the head, hands and back and the other three were suffering from blisters and shock. “Why did they throw the grenade into the yard? This is only a provocation,’ said teacher Mohammed Hawaismah as parents carried children out of the school and into ambulances.
Source: Reuters, March 15, 2001
An 8-year-old Palestinian boy shot in the head by a Jewish soldier. The child died, of course. How much longer will you keep silent about the atrocities committed by the Jews in Israel? How much longer?
And Now, a Fetus;
From Haaretz; May 15, 2007, by Gideon Levy
Memorial posters decorate the walls of the Rafidiya government hospital in Nablus, covering earlier posters of countless young people who have been killed.
But this poster is like nothing we have seen before: a fetus covered in its own blood, its tiny head blown up by the bullet that struck its mother, and the caption – “Who gave you the right to steal his life?”
The killing of the unborn child, Daoud, by Israel Defense Forces troops raises a series of moral, legal and philosophical questions.
Is the killing of a fetus manslaughter? Is it murder? And how old is the victim?
But all these questions are dwarfed by the woman lying stunned and injured in the maternity ward of the hospital in Nablus, in agony, with all kinds of tubes attached to her, refusing to answer a single question.
A Palestinian father carrying his dead terrorist child, shot in the head and throat by Jewish soldiers. How much longer will you remain silent?
It is obvious that Maha Katouni is still in a state of trauma. Wounded in the abdomen, she lies in bed, her elderly mother by her side.
The tube in her nose makes it hard for her to speak.
She is 30 years old and was in the seventh month of pregnancy, a mother who got up in the middle of the night to protect her three small children, sleeping in the other room, from the bullets that were whistling by outside.
As soon as she got out of bed, the bullet struck her. Bleeding, she fell on the nightstand by her bed.
Maha survived, but Daoud – as she and her husband planned to name their son – was removed from her womb with a bullet wound to the head.
“And babies?” a reporter once asked an American soldier who had taken part in the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War. His succinct answer was just as chilling as the question. “Babies.” And now, a fetus.
A 10-year-old Palestinian boy shot in the head by a Jewish soldier. Who are the terrorists? Why do you support Israel?
The day before, I had been in Soweto, near Johannesburg, South Africa, accompanied by the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour.
We were comparing the horrors of apartheid to the Israeli occupation in the territories.
The next afternoon I was here, in the Rafidiya maternity ward, standing before the bed of the wounded Maha, who had lost her baby.
The sister of Palestinian mother-to-be Maha Katoumi cleans her face at the intensive care unit in Rafeedia hospital, in the West Bank city of Nablus, May 11 2007.
The biggest hospital in the territories is practically deserted, barely functioning. It has been this way for two months now.
Like the other hospitals in the West Bank, Rafidiya accepts only emergency cases, because of the economic boycott of the Palestinian Authority.
This also prevents the workers here from being paid. Only 20 of the hospital’s 168 beds are currently occupied, and only about a third of the hospital’s 380 staff members show up for work.
In the emergency room we saw just one patient, who had arrived that morning.
The rest of the beds were empty. In the past two and a half months, the workers have received just NIS 1,500 per person, from funds provided by the European Union.
Hospital director Dr. Khaled Salah says that the staff and patients don’t come to the hospital because of the difficulties in getting to Nablus and the cost of the trip, which has risen significantly because of the checkpoints.
A Palestinian father with his son, shot in the head by a Jewish sniper, while playing on the roof of his house. Do you think this man will become a “terrorist” now? Would you? The Hawara checkpoint and the Beit Iba checkpoint, the two checkpoints on the city’s outskirts, are relatively deserted, because of the difficulty in getting past them.
Maha lies in bed, her eyes closed. A green headscarf covers her head. Her skin is ashen. Every once in a while she opens her eyes but then quickly closes them again.
Once in a while she also murmurs a few words in a feeble voice and then goes quiet again. How are you? Silence.
Maha is a resident of the Ein Beit Ilma refugee camp on the outskirts of Nablus.
She is married to Rifat, a 36-year-old school janitor, and the couple have three children: Jihad, 10; Jawad, 7; and Jad, 3.
Two uncles and her mother watch over her, not budging from her bedside. For the father of the family, it’s too hard to be here. He’s still in shock.
A grieving father, carrying his horribly phosphor-burned child. If this were your child, what would you do?
Last Wednesday was an ordinary day in the Katouni household.
The father went to work, the kids went to school, and in the evening everyone went to bed – the parents in their bedroom and the three children in their room in the third-floor apartment.
Shortly after two in the morning, Maha was startled awake by the loud sounds of gunfire from the street.
She didn’t even manage to turn on the light when she got up to run to the kids’ room next door, to reassure her three little boys and keep them from getting scared.
The gunfire was very heavy. The window of her room was open and her bed was close to the window.
Maha got out of bed, took one step, and then the bullet struck her in the lower back. She fell onto the nightstand.
Another bullet struck the nightstand. Soldiers from the Nahal patrol battalion were standing on the roofs of the surrounding buildings.
“Wherever we are sent – to there we go,” the poet Yaakov Orland once wrote in “The Nahal Anthem,” sung by the Nahal entertainment troupe, which also sang “The Song of Peace.”
Rifat rushed to call an ambulance.
Another group funeral for Palestinian children killed when Jewish soldiers shelled their homes. Israeli Jews killed hundreds of Palestinian children during their Operation “Cast Lead”. Most were targeted killings, not “collateral damage”.
The children, who had awakened, were hysterical, especially the youngest, 3-year-old Jad, at the sight of the blood trickling from the front and back of their pregnant mother, who lay wounded on the floor.
The bullet had struck her from behind, passed through the fetus’ head and the mother’s intestines and exited through the abdomen.
Maha Katoumi’s mother Umm Ibrahim says that her son, who tended to Maha, could see through the hole in her abdomen that the fetus had been wounded in the head and was dead.
Family members say that about 45 minutes went by before the ambulance from the Medical Relief organization was permitted to approach.
In the meantime, Maha’s mother, Umm Ibrahim, tried to leave her home nearby to come to her daughter’s aid.
Umm Ibrahim says that when she tried to leave her house there was gunfire; she hurried back inside. “It’s a miracle that I was saved,” says the woman in the white headscarf.
A Palestinian child burnt to a crisp by the Jews’ use of phosphor in Gaza. This is what Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ethan Bronner of the New York Times, calls “humane and appropriate” treatment of children in Palestine.
She could not reach her injured daughter and would not see her until two hours later, in the hospital.
The pain is written all over Maha’s face. One of her brothers somehow managed to cross the line of fire and get to her house; he tried to stanch the gaping wound in her stomach with a towel.
Her husband, Rifat, was paralyzed with shock. Umm Ibrahim says that her son, who tended to Maha, could see through the hole in her abdomen that the fetus had been wounded in the head and was dead.
The gunfire finally subsided at around three in the morning and they were able to take Maha out to the street, carried by her brother and the paramedic from the ambulance that had parked in the nearby alley.
The brother says that on the way to the hospital they were stopped twice by soldiers, who wanted to check the wounded woman’s identity and to make sure there were no wanted men hiding in the ambulance.
Maha was barely conscious when she reached the hospital, but her mother says she understood right away that she had lost the baby.
The family says the IDF enters the camp nearly every night and that there is almost always gunfire.
Umm Ibrahim managed to get to the hospital at four in the morning, when her daughter was in the operating room and the dead fetus had already been removed.
Dr. Ihab Shareideh was the surgeon who was summoned to the hospital in the middle of the night to operate on Maha. He says that her recovery has been more difficult and slower than usual, not only because of her injuries, but because of her traumatized mental state.
Fortunately, not many blood vessels were injured, so the delay in getting her to the hospital did not cause further damage. It is too soon to gauge the extent of the damage to her digestive system, or to say whether she will be able to get pregnant again.
The fetus died as a result of the bullet that penetrated its brain on the way to the mother’s intestines.
A Palestinian baby girl, burned to a crisp and with her limbs blown away by a Jewish soldier firing phosphor explosives. Who is the “terrorist here?
The anesthesiologist, Dr. Iyad Salim, a resident of nearby Hawara, roams the hospital corridors.
On his cell phone camera is a video of the operation and the removal of the fetus. So close to being a fully developed baby, with a bullet wound to the head.
The memorial poster shows the fetus bleeding from the head. The image is unbearable.
They were going to call him Daoud, after an uncle, and also after a resident of the camp who was killed.
At home they had everything ready: new clothes, diapers and a crib passed down from his older brothers. Daoud was buried in the camp cemetery.
Only a few close family members attended the funeral of the unborn baby.
At press time, no response had been received from the IDF Spokesperson’s Office.
Photo captions reprinted from a Gaza newspaper. These appear daily.
How much longer can a people endure such barbaric atrocities? How long will it take for the world to face openly the monstrosity of the Jewish state that not only permits, but encourages, these actions?
As his father attempts to shield him, Jewish soldiers shoot at 12 year old Mohammed Al Doura. He was killed shortly after this photo was taken.
Israelis Kill 13 Year Old Boy;
As his father attempts to shield him, Jewish soldiers shoot at 12 year old Mohammed Al Doura. He was killed shortly after this photo was taken.
The Islamic equivalent of the American Red Cross, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) offers emergency medical services in occupied Palestine.
Emergency medical technician (EMT) Bassam Balbeisi was shot and killed as he tried to rescue the boy, Mohammed Al Doura, and the boy’s father, shown under fire in the picture above. (The Jewish soldiers killed the boy on Sept. 30, 2000. The father was shot and wounded).
Israelis Kill 13 Year Old Boy
Little Ahmed Ghanem bids a final farewell to the remains of his big brother, Mahmoud, 13, in the village of Sara in the West Bank. Mahmoud was shot in the head March 10, 2002 by Israeli troops, west of Nablus.
A father rescuing the dead body of his 2-year-old child, whose lower limbs have been blown off, by a Jewish DIME explosive.
Jewish soldiers open fire on an ambulance;
. . in the Jenin refugee camp and killed a doctor, 57 year old Khalil Suleiman. Three medics and a nine year old girl were wounded in the Israeli army attack.
Commenting on the preceding Israeli army “raids” of March 4, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stated: “Anyone wishing to conduct negotiations with Palestinians must first hit them hard…We must inflict heavy losses on their side.” Source: Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2002
Jewish Soldiers Murder 12 year old boy;
Mohammed Houmeduk, 12, shot and killed in cold blood Dec. 18, 2001 in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, by Israeli soldiers.
Jewish Soldiers Murder Two Palestinian Boys: a 2 year old and a 13 Year Old;
Hebron, Dec. 10, 2001. Editor’s note: We have no post-mortem photo of the two year old victim, Burhan Sidir. The Israelis blew him apart. His head was found in the street. His legs were in different places. Two brothers, aged 8 and 10 were also seriously injured in the Dec. 10 Israeli attack.
A Palestinian father, carrying his 4-year-old child, shot in the head by a Jewish soldier who was “only following orders”.
Jewish Soldiers Target and Kill 3-year-old old boy;
Zahra Sidir said her son Burhan’s third birthday was to be March 27. “Can you think of a crime uglier than this?” she asked. “A targeted person? My two year old son?”
Israeli explosive kills 5 school children;
On Nov. 22, 2001, five Palestinian school boys ages 7 to 14 were on their way to classes in the Gaza strip when they were killed by a booby-trapped bomb planted on the path to their school by the Jewish military.
Israel “….places explosive charges where children are likely to pass and then claims that only the other side practices terrorism?” – Gideon Levy,”On The Way To School,” Ha’aretz, Nov. 26, 2001. Also cf. NY Times, Dec. 11, 2001, p. A12
These are not terrorist acts? The settlers who attack anyone they can get near, burn down olive groves, attack Palestinian kids on the way to school, throw fire on Palestinian houses. Israeli Air force dropping one tone bombs in Gaza residential neighborhoods.
Israelis Murder 13 Year Old Palestinian Boy;
The sister of 13-year-old Mohammed Abu Libda, who was shot to death by Israeli troops, cries during his funeral as her brother’s body is brought home in southern Gaza, September 9, 2001
Palestinian children killed when Jewish soldiers shelled their home with artillery. The pregnant wife died, too.
Israelis Murder 11 Year Old Palestinian Boy;
The remains of Mohammed Zurub. Jewish soldiers shot dead the 11-year old Palestinian boy in the Gaza ghetto on August, 23, 2001. Haaretz newspaper reported: “Witnesses said that Mohammed Zurub was shot in the heart after throwing stones at IDF (Israeli) troops.”
Israelis Murder 14 Year Old Palestinian Boy;
The body of Mohammed Abu Arrar, 14, is caressed by a relative prior to burial. The boy was shot to death in the Gaza ghetto by Israeli soldiers, August 19, 2001.
Israelis Murder 8 Year Old Palestinian Girl;
Israeli soldiers shot this eight-year-old Palestinian girl, Sabreen Abu Sneineh, in the head, in Hebron, Aug. 12, 2001
Israelis Murder Two Palestinian Brothers;
Two Palestinian brothers, Bilal Abu Khader, 8, and Ashraf Abu Khader, 5, were killed in the West Bank town of Nablus, July 31, 2001 by Israeli helicopter gunships, which rocketed the center of a Palestinian population center in the middle of the day. Six other Palestinians were killed during the Jewish-sponsored assassinations.
A Palestinian father, grieving over the bodies of his three children, killed when Jewish soldiers fired tank rounds into their home.
Israeli Settlers Murder Three Month Old Palestinian Baby;
The body of murdered 3-month-old Palestinian infant Diya Tmaizi, center, is flanked by murdered Palestinian civilians Mohammed Hilmy Tmaizi, 20, right, and Mohammed Salameh Tmaizi, 22, left, in the West Bank village of Idna, near Hebron.
The Palestinian baby and the other civilians were shot and killed, and at least four other Palestinian civilians were injured late Thursday, July 19, 2001, near Idna. According to Israeli radio, a Jewish “settler” group took responsibility for the murders.
Israelis Murder Palestinian Family: Mother and three children;
The body of Mohammad Abu Kweik, 8, is lifted from the carnage after the Mitsubishi pick-up truck he was travelling in was bombed by Israeli forces in the West Bank Palestinian ghetto of Ramallah, March 4, 2002.
Six Palestinian civilians, including the boy’s mother, Bushra Kweik, 38, and two sisters, Bara, 14, and Aziza, 16, were killed when Israeli troops bombed their truck after their mother had picked them up from school. The car behind them was also hit. The man the Israelis were attempting to assassinate was not in either vehicle. Two Palestinian children, ages 4 and 16, were killed in the second vehicle.
There are many reports, by individuals and by UN and other human-rights agencies, documenting the claims that the Jews in Israel refuse passage to ambulances after their devastating air raids in Gaza. Also, there are repeated documented claims that the Jews attack the ambulances and often kill the passengers – including the injured patients and the resident doctors.
9-year-old Palestinian boy shot to death in his home by Israeli Army;
The boy, Obei Darraj, age nine, was killed on Friday March 2, 2001 in his family’s home, in El Bireh. The little boy was watching his father paint the wall of a brother’s bedroom when gunfire crashed through its window, and hit the child in the chest.The Israeli army took credit for the killing, saying: ” The gunfire came in retaliation to Palestinian shots aimed at the Psagot settlement” (Ha’aretz, March 4, 2001).
A beautiful Palestinian baby, shot in the head by Jewish soldiers. The child is dead. How much longer will you remain silent? If you’re Canadian, send this page to Stephen Harper so he can see what it means to be “Israel’s best friend in the world”.
The Jews bomb Gaza, then refuse to admit ambulances;
On Sept. 30, Bassam, 45, attempted to get his clearly-marked ambulance to the boy and father, but was shot in the chest and killed by Israeli soldiers. Mr. Balbeisi is from Gaza city and leaves behind a wife and 13 children.
Jewish Soldiers attack a child’s funeral rites;
Jewish soldiers opened fire on Palestinian demonstrators at the funeral of a slain Palestinian. At least ten other Palestinians were injured. (Source: Ha’aretz, April 24, 2001)
27 December. Amid thousands of images of civilian casualties of the Jewish airstrikes in Gaza, the solemn stare of one child appears to have stood out more than any other. Newspapers and broadcasters across the world selected the image of a young girl looking into a camera lens outside the Shifa hospital hours after a Jewish air strike.
Epilog
The photos you have seen on this page represent only a very small sample of our collection.
Frankly, we don’t have the stomach to continue reproducing these, and can only marvel at the courage of the Palestinian people to have survived the uspeakable cruelty and barbarism of the Jews in Israel for so many decades.
Only the other day, we read a report of a new degradation created by the Jewish military to practice at their checkpoints.
When a Palestinian couple approach the checkpoint, a Jewish soldier gives the wife a “security examination” by fondling her breasts while her husband is forced to watch.
If that doesn’t provoke a reaction, said soldier will then take out his penis, display it to the wife and then urinate all over the husband’s shoes.
Then, when the man retaliates, the soldier’s companion shoots him dead. Such nice folks. God’s Chosen People.
The list of atrocities, of humiliations, offences, committed by the Israeli Jews, would require a 24-volume encyclopedia. It is our fervent belief that such a publication should be created so the world would never forget the unforgivable sin of turning the other way in the face of such injustice.
And if we had the power, we would make people like George Bush, Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Tony Blair, Stephen Harper, and many more, read every page and write an exam on every chapter. Sadly, that is unlikely to happen.
The Series: Israel’s War on Children
The Jewish Holocaust Against Arab Children
This is a set of 3 articles, dealing with the tragedy in Palestine today, specifically with the targeted deaths of Palestinian children by the Jewish military in Israel. It is an attempt, hopefully not in vain, to bring these events to the attention of more of the world.
The inhumanity of the Jews’ brutality and savage treatement of Palestinian children must be brought to consciousness in all countries, until the groundswell of public opinion cannot be ignored.
It is not enough to put pressure on the Jews to cease their insane killing of small children. Those who have perpetrated these atrocities must be brought to justice.
PLEASE forward this page to anyone you know who might be receptive, and who might care about what is happening in Palestine.
The first article is a photo-essay documenting the atrocities being committed against childlren by Israeli Jews. It contains graphic and disturbing photos, drawn from a variety of sources.
The second article is a photo-essay based on news reports of the brutal arrests, interrogation and torture of Palestinian children.
The third article is also a photo-essay documenting the almost absolute destruction the Israeli Jews have wrought on Palestine’s educational system – targeting and deliberately destroying hundreds of schools, the universities, even the Ministry of Education in Gaza.
You may care to read these in order:
Israel’s War on Children – Part 1: Murdering Children for Sport: Click Here
Israel’s War on Children – Part 2 – Revenge: Brutal Interrogation of Young Palestinians: Click Here
Israel’s War on Children – Part 3: In Gaza, the Schools are Dying Too Click Here
龙信明 , http://www.bearcanada.com/fae/israel/murderchildrenforsport.html
http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/11/19/israel-slaughters-gaza-evil-plain-and-simple/
What is Israel Really Up to in Gaza?
In response to a recent upsurge in tit for tat strikes between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel decided to ratchet up the violence even further by assassinating Hamas’s military chief, Ahmad Jabari. Hamas, which had been playing a minor role in these exchanges and even appears to have been interested in working out a long-term ceasefire, predictably responded by launching hundreds of rockets into Israel, a few even landing near Tel Aviv. Not surprisingly, the Israelis have threatened a wider conflict, to include a possible invasion of Gaza to topple Hamas and eliminate the rocket threat.
There is some chance that Operation ‘Pillar of Defence’, as the Israelis are calling their current campaign, might become a full-scale war. But even if it does, it will not put an end to Israel’s troubles in Gaza. After all, Israel launched a devastating war against Hamas in the winter of 2008-9 – Operation Cast Lead – and Hamas is still in power and still firing rockets at Israel. In the summer of 2006 Israel went to war against Hizbullah in order to eliminate its missiles and weaken its political position in Lebanon. That offensive failed as well: Hizbullah has far more missiles today than it had in 2006 and its influence in Lebanon is arguably greater than it was in 2006. Pillar of Defence is likely to share a similar fate.
Israel can use force against Hamas in three distinct ways. First, it can try to cripple the organisation by assassinating its leaders, as it did when it killed Jabari two days ago. Decapitation will not work, however, because there is no shortage of subordinates to replace the dead leaders, and sometimes the new ones are more capable and dangerous than their predecessors. The Israelis found this out in Lebanon in 1992 when they assassinated Hizbullah’s leader, Abbas Musawi, only to find that his replacement, Hassan Nasrallah, was an even more formidable adversary.
Second, the Israelis can invade Gaza and take it over. The IDF could do this fairly easily, topple Hamas and put an end to the rocket fire from Gaza. But they would then have to occupy Gaza for years to come, since if they left Hamas would come back to power, the rocket attacks would resume, and Israel would be back where it started.
An occupation of Gaza would trigger bitter and bloody resistance, as the Israelis learned in southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. After 18 years of occupation they conceded defeat and withdrew all their forces. This experience is the reason the IDF did not try to invade and conquer southern Lebanon in 2006 or Gaza in 2008-9. Nothing has changed since then to make a full-scale invasion of Gaza a viable alternative today. Occupying Gaza would also place another 1.5 million Palestinians under formal Israel control, thereby worsening the so-called ‘demographic threat’. Ariel Sharon withdrew Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005 to reduce the number of Palestinians living under the Israeli flag; going back now would be a huge strategic reversal.
The final, preferred option is aerial bombardment with aircraft, artillery, missiles, mortars and rockets. The problem, however, is that the strategy does not work as advertised. Israel used it against Hizbullah in 2006 and Hamas in 2008-9, but both groups are still in power and armed to the teeth with rockets and missiles. It is hard to believe that any serious defence analyst in Israel thinks another campaign of sustained bombardment against Gaza will topple Hamas and end the rocket fire permanently.
So what is going on here? At the most basic level, Israel’s actions in Gaza are inextricably bound up with its efforts to create a Greater Israel that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Despite the endless palaver about a two-state solution, the Palestinians are not going to get their own state, not least because the Netanyahu government is firmly opposed to it. The prime minister and his political allies are deeply committed to making the Occupied Territories a permanent part of Israel. To pull this off, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will be forced to live in impoverished enclaves similar to the Bantustans in white-ruled South Africa. Israeli Jews understand this quite well: a recent survey found that 58 per cent of them believe Israel already practises apartheid against the Palestinians.
Creating a Greater Israel will produce even bigger problems, however. In addition to doing enormous damage to Israel’s reputation around the world, the quest for a Greater Israel will not break the will of the Palestinians. They remain adamantly opposed not only to the Occupation, but also to the idea of living in an apartheid state. They will continue to resist Israel’s efforts to deny them self-determination. What is happening in Gaza is one dimension of that resistance. Another is Mahmoud Abbas’s plan to ask the UN General Assembly on 29 November to recognise Palestine as a non-member state. This move worries Israel’s leaders, because it could eventually allow the Palestinians to file charges against Israel before the International Criminal Court. Thus, the dream of a Greater Israel forces Tel Aviv to find ways to keep the Palestinians at bay.
Israel’s leaders have a two-prong strategy for dealing with their Palestinian problem. First, they rely on the United States to provide diplomatic cover, especially in the United Nations. The key to keeping Washington on board is the Israel lobby, which pressures American leaders to side with Israel against the Palestinians and do hardly anything to stop the colonisation of the Occupied Territories.
The second prong is Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s concept of the ‘Iron Wall’: an approach that in essence calls for beating the Palestinians into submission. Jabotinsky understood that the Palestinians would resist the Zionists’ efforts to colonise their land and subjugate them in the process. Nonetheless, he maintained that the Zionists, and eventually Israel, could punish the Palestinians so severely that they would recognise that further resistance was futile.
Israel has employed this strategy since its founding in 1948, and both Cast Lead and Pillar of Defence are examples of it at work. In other words, Israel’s aim in bombing Gaza is not to topple Hamas or eliminate its rockets, both of which are unrealisable goals. Instead, the ongoing attacks in Gaza are part of a long-term strategy to coerce the Palestinians into giving up their pursuit of self-determination and submitting to Israeli rule in an apartheid state.
Israel’s commitment to the Iron Wall is reflected in the fact that its leaders have said many times since Cast Lead ended in January 2009 that the IDF would eventually have to return to Gaza and inflict another beating on the Palestinians. The Israelis were under no illusion that the 2008-9 conflict had defanged Hamas. The only question for them was when the next punishment campaign would start.
The timing of the present operation is easy to explain. For starters, President Obama has just won a second term despite Netanyahu’s transparent attempt to help Mitt Romney win the election. The prime minister’s mistake is likely to have hurt his personal relations with the president and might even threaten America’s ‘special relationship’ with Israel. A war in Gaza, however, is a good antidote for that problem, because Obama, who faces daunting economic and political challenges in the months ahead, has little choice but to back Israel to the hilt and blame the Palestinians.
The Israeli prime minter faces an election of his own in January and as Mitchell Plitnick writes, ‘Netanyahu’s gambit of forming a joint ticket with the fascist Yisrael Beiteinu party has not yielded anything close to the polling results he had hoped for.’ A war over Gaza not only allows Netanyahu to show how tough he is when Israel’s security is at stake, but it is also likely to have a ‘rally round the flag’ effect, improving his chances of being re-elected.
Nevertheless, Pillar of Defence will not achieve its ultimate goal of getting the Palestinians to abandon their pursuit of self-determination and accept living under the heel of the Israelis. That is simply not achievable; the Palestinians are never going to accept being consigned to a handful of enclaves in an apartheid state. Regrettably, that means Pillar of Defence is unlikely to be the last time Israel bombards Gaza.
Over the long term, however, the bombing campaigns may come to an end, because it is not clear that Israel will be able to maintain itself as an apartheid state. As well as resistance from the Palestinians, Israel has to face the problem that world opinion is unlikely to back an apartheid state. Ehud Olmert said in November 2007, when he was prime minister, that if ‘the two-state solution collapses’ Israel will ‘face a South-African-style struggle’, and ‘as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.’ One would think Israel’s leaders would appreciate where they are headed and allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own. But there is no sign that is happening; instead, Israel foolishly continues to rely on military campaigns like Pillar of Defence to break the Palestinians.
John J. Mearsheimer is an American professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is the co-author of The Israel Lobby.
This essay originally appeared in the London Review of Books.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/19/what-is-israel-really-up-to-in-gaza/