Wafa – December 21, 2023
Dozens killed and wounded in the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip
GAZA, Thursday, December 21, 2023 (WAFA) - Dozens of people, including children and women, were killed and others were injured since dawn today, and dozens of homes and buildings were destroyed in the ongoing Israeli occupation bombing of the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air.
Local sources reported that dozens of people were killed and others were injured in the ongoing occupation attacks on Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, and on several areas in the central Gaza Strip.
During the past 24 hours, 55 people were killed in Israeli raids on homes in the city of Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip.
The occupation boats intensively bombed the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, causing dozens of deaths and injuries.
The Shujaiya neighborhood and the Jabalia area, east and north of the Gaza Strip, are also witnessing violent bombardment by occupation warplanes.
The Civil Defense in the northern Gaza Strip reported that its crews were unable to reach the dead and wounded due to the intense Israeli bombing.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said that the occupation forces are still besieging the Jabalia Ambulance Center, threatening the safety of 127 citizens, including medical personnel, and 22 wounded.
Medical sources announced the death of three wounded people due to a lack of medical supplies at al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City.
The World Health Organization recently said that the emergency department at al-Shifa had turned into a bloodbath and needed rehabilitation after it was severely damaged by the Israeli bombing.
It explained that tens of thousands of displaced people took refuge in this complex, which lacks water and food, noting that the team that visited the complex described the emergency services as a “bloodbath”, with hundreds of infected patients inside it and new patients arriving every minute, noting that patients suffering from trauma receive treatment on the floor and that measures to relieve pain are very limited and even unavailable.
The occupation forces meanwhile continue to cut off communications and Internet services in the Gaza Strip for the second day in a row.
According to medical reports, 20,000 people were killed in the Israeli bombardment, including 8,000 children and 6,200 women, while the number of wounded has reached 52,600.
https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/140226
Anadolu Agency – December 21, 2023
Hamas demands release of 3 top Palestinian leaders in any hostage deal with Israel
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Cairo amid Egyptian efforts to mediate new hostage deal with Israel
Abdelraouf Arnaout
Hamas demands the release of three top Palestinian leaders in any hostage swap deal with Israel, according to Israeli media on Thursday.
Hamas insists Marwan Barghouti, Ahmed Saadat and Abdullah Barghouti be on the list of prisoners to be released in any new deal, Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported.
Barghouti, 64, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, is most favored to chair the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority after President Mahmoud Abbas, according to Palestinian opinion polls.
He was arrested by Israel in 2002 and slapped with five life sentences.
Barghouti “can change the face of the Palestinian Authority,” the newspaper said.
Saadat, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was arrested in 2008 and slapped with a 30-year jail term in connection with the killing of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi in 2001.
Abdullah Barghouti is a top Hamas leader and was slapped with multiple life sentences for a spate of attacks against Israelis.
Israel refused to include the three leaders in a previous prisoner exchange deal with Hamas in 2011, which saw the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in return for over 1,000 Palestinian detainees.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli government on the report.
Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh arrived in Cairo on Wednesday amid Egyptian efforts to mediate a new hostage swap deal between the Palestinian group and Israel.
During a week-long humanitarian pause in Gaza last month, Hamas released 81 Israelis and 24 foreigners in exchange for 240 Palestinians, including 71 women and 169 children.
Nearly 130 Israelis are held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip following its cross-border attack on Oct. 7.
Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since the Hamas attack, killing nearly 20,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 52,586, according to health authorities in the enclave.
Anadolu Agency – December 21, 2023
The future of Gaza: Post Israeli war scenarios
Irrespective of the post-war scenarios for Gaza, it is imperative to recognize the broader context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, encompassing issues of occupation, settlement expansion, and the denial of Palestinian self-determination
By Ali Bakir
-Sustainable peace hinges on holding Israel accountable for its crimes against humanity, preventing impunity provided by the US and some European countries, and subjecting Tel Aviv to international law
The 2023 Israeli war on Gaza has ignited a flurry of speculations about the future of the Gaza Strip and who will hold sway there once the dust of the Israeli aggression settles. These questions are not only pivotal for the immediate future of Gaza and the Palestinians but also have far-reaching implications for the broader Middle East region and international diplomatic efforts.
At the heart of the unfolding catastrophe lies the fate of Hamas, the de facto governing authority in Gaza following the 2006 elections. Since its decision to put boots on the ground in Gaza on October 27, Israel's officials have asserted that the goal is to “destroy” Hamas. However, the action of defeating Hamas, in this case, is not defined, which makes it almost impossible.
However, regardless of this declared goal, Tal Aviv has been vocal about its intention to transfer Palestinians to Gaza, many of whom are already refugees who came to Gaza from different parts of the occupied Palestinian lands to the Sinai Desert in Egypt. The aftermath of this military operation opens up a spectrum of scenarios, each with its own set of complexities and challenges.
The return of the Palestinian Authority (PA) scenario
This option is a non-starter, given Israel’s leverage over the PA and the PA's diminished credibility among the Palestinians under Mahmoud Abbas. To be sure, Israel has continuously and consistently sabotaged and undermined the authority of the PA to both derail the two-state solution and claim that there is no adequate partner on the Palestinian side.
The Biden administration in the United States (US), for instance, has hinted at a desire to see a "revitalized" Palestinian Authority (PA) return to power in Gaza. However, the practicality and acceptability of such a suggestion are questionable. Additionally, the formula for “revitalization” is vague and might be influenced by foreign powers to ultimately insert an Israeli puppet at the helm of the PA.
In this sense, there have been some plans in recent years to substitute Mahmoud Abbas with Mohammad Dahlan. Following the Israeli invasion of Gaza, the “Economist” published a story about Dahlan that was meant to promote him as an option for a post-war Gaza. However, Dahlan denied that he wanted the role. The majority of Palestinians see Dahlanas a corrupt Israeli element anyway.
Hamas's endurance and popularity surge
Hamas was founded in 1987 after the outbreak of the First Palestinian Intifada against the Israeli occupation. The group remains deeply entrenched in Palestinian society and politics. In this sense, it seems unrealistic to expect Hamas to be eradicated entirely. Furthermore, following Israel’s ongoing war against the Palestinians in Gaza, Hamas's popularity has reportedly increased, especially in the wake of recent events, suggesting that it continues to hold substantial influence and support within Palestinian society as a resistant force against Israeli occupation.
In this scenario, the possible involvement of Hamas in a revitalized PA could be more feasible if Marwan al-Barghouthi, a national liberation leader imprisoned by Israel since 2002, takes leadership roles in the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the PA. This would require immediate recognition from the US and Europe of the free, independent, and sovereign Palestinian state, as well as the effective realization of it.
Foreign involvement
During the ongoing Israeli war against the Palestinians, several actors have mulled the idea of an international or Arab military presence in Gaza post-war. The Arab governments rejected this proposal, highlighting that Arabs will not enter on the back of an Israeli tank. Behind closed door meetings, some other ideas might have been mulled such as a potential role for the Abraham Accords’ governments.
A few days ago, Israel’s Netanyahu told Knesset panel that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would finance the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip after the war. The Emiratis, however, said they would condition financial and political support for the reconstruction of Gaza on the advancement of a US-backed initiative toward a two-state solution.
Turkiye proposed a guarantorship system in which countries from the region and beyond act as guarantors for both the Palestinians and Israelis. Turkiye's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan asserted “We are ready to be one of the guarantors of the Palestinian side with our humanitarian, political, and military presence.” adding, “We call on strong-willed countries to consider our offer.''
The problem with all these forms of involvement is the fact that no single country, particularly the US and European nations, is willing to effectively deter Israel, which holds the record for disregarding United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, hold it accountable, or impose consequences when it violates any perceived agreement.
Israeli’s direct military occupation of Gaza
In 2005, Israel claimed to have ended its occupation of Gaza. However, this misleading statement contradicted the realities on the ground in which Israel continued to have “effective control” over Gaza, which, in turn, means in legal terms occupation without boots on ground. Following the land invasion of Gaza last October, Israel indicated that it intends to have overall security control over Gaza. This scenario might manifest in several forms including the reduction of the size of Gaza and its population.
In this sense, Israel reportedly floated the idea of creating a buffer zone between Gaza and Israel from the north to the south to prevent any future “surprise” attacks against Israel. This proposal would be part of a three-tier process that involves “destroying Hamas, demilitarizing Gaza and de-radicalizing the enclave.”
Israel did try these schemes before, both in Palestine and Lebanon, and they failed miserably because, as long as there is occupation, there will be resistance, which they cannot tolerate. Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative Movement (PNI), Mustafa Barghouthi, argues, “That is why Netanyahu's goal is to ethnically cleanse people. He wants to have military control of Gaza without people.”
Irrespective of the post-war scenarios for Gaza, it is imperative to recognize the broader context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, encompassing issues of occupation, settlement expansion, and the denial of Palestinian self-determination. Furthermore, sustainable peace hinges on holding Israel accountable for its crimes against humanity, preventing impunity provided by the US and some European countries and subjecting Tel Aviv to international law. Moreover, if the current Israeli war against the Palestinians will not end up with a free, sovereign, and independent Palestinian State, we should prepare for the worse.
-The author Professor of international affairs, security, and defense at Qatar University, associate fellow at Ibn Khaldon Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s “Scowcroft ME Security Initiative” and Middle East Programs.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/analysis/opinion-the-future-of-gaza-post-israeli-war-scenarios/3088901
Global Research, December 20, 2023
Gaza Genocide: Hezbollah Confronting and “Inflicting Serious Damage” on Israel; “Expect Escalation…”
Expect escalation, resulting in full scale war between Israel and Hezbollah.
By Karsten Riise and Hindustan Times
Israel is declaring genocidal intent to make Gaza look like Auschwitz and kill and drive out all Palestinians from Gaza.
Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Hezbollah is not sitting passively watching Israel completing its genocide on Gaza.
The real and vast scale on which Hezbollah is causing damage on Israel is hidden by the US media, but the Hindustan Times reports on it.
With over 500 attacks so far, Hezbollah is inflicting serious damage on Israel – all the time.
Since October 2023, Israel has had to evacuate whole towns near the border with Lebanon.
Israel cannot sustain this. Israel cannot sustain its hurt pride of being hit daily by Hezbollah.
Israel also cannot sustain the long-term social and economic costs of having a mobilized force of more than 100 thousand soldiers permanently tied up in northern Israel.
And Israel’s citizens cannot bear that their military cannot keep them secure anymore, and never will be able to do so.
Benny Gantz, the First Alternate Prime Minister of Israel, has promised to “do something” about Hezbollah and Lebanon. Israeli Defense Minister Galant is equally foreseeing starting an Israeli war into Lebanon.
Israel’s Netanyahu and his generals have threatened mass-murder in Lebanon by turning Beirut into one more “Gaza”.
Hezbollah knows this and has therefore so far been holding back the scale of its attacks on Israel in order to protect civilians in Beirut from Israeli mass-killings.
But Hezbollah has also received Russian made Pantsir air defense systems. We may speculate, that Hezbollah with more Russian and Iranian supplies of air defense to protect Beirut is making itself ready for a big conflict with Israel, just as Israel on its side is preparing to attack into Lebanon.
This will expand to a very – very – big war.
And not only in the Middle East.
Russia’s president Putin has just made clear, that after dealing with Ukraine, Russia will also do something against Finland for joining NATO and thus breaking with Finland’s treaty-obligation to end the war post-1945 with an obligation that Finland must stay neutral forever. Meanwhile, in Asia, the US is stoking the Philippines to provoke their much-bigger neighbor China in the South China Sea. – and the US continues to build up for a war with China with arms deliveries to Taiwan.
Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/hezbollah-humiliating-pressing-israel/5843753
World Socialist Web Site – December 21, 2023
United Nations reports Israeli forces are carrying out mass summary executions in Gaza
by Andre Damon
On Wednesday, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published a report alleging that Israeli forces carried out a mass execution of civilians in northern Gaza Tuesday, separating 11 men from their families and summarily shooting them.
This report and a similar allegation by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor imply that Israel has moved from murdering civilians through bombing to mass executions.
In its report, the OHCHR in the Occupied Palestinian Territories reports that it “has received disturbing information alleging that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) summarily killed at least 11 unarmed Palestinian men in front of their family members in Al Remal neighbourhood, Gaza City, which raises alarm about the possible commission of a war crime.”
The UN wrote, “On 19 December 2023, between 2000 and 2300 hours, IDF reportedly surrounded and raided Al Awda building, also known as the ‘Annan building’, in Al Remal neighborhood, Gaza City, where three related families were sheltering in addition to Annan family.”
The UN added, “While in control of the building and the civilians sheltering there, the IDF allegedly separated the men from the women and children, and then shot and killed at least 11 of the men, mostly aged in their late 20’s and early 30’s, in front of their family members.” The UN continued, “The IDF then allegedly ordered the women and children into a room, and either shot at them or threw a grenade into the room, reportedly seriously injuring some of them, including an infant and a child. OHCHR has confirmed the killings at Al Awda building.”
The UN statement corresponds to a report published earlier by Euro-Med, which states, “Israeli army forces have carried out field executions against civilians during raids on Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip, according to shocking testimonies received by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.”
It continued, “According to preliminary information received by Euro-Med Monitor, 13 members of the Annan family and their displaced in-laws, the Al-Ashi and Al-Sharafa families, were killed by Israeli gunfire, while other members of the families were seriously wounded and are currently in critical condition.”
A witness told the Euro-Med monitor, “Thirteen persons were shot dead and several more were critically injured. The Israeli soldiers later threw shells at the women, who were being held in one of the rooms.” Euro-Med Monitor also recorded a rise in field executions following reports of attacks on Israeli military vehicles by Palestinian factions. This suggests that the crimes being reported are part of Israel’s unlawful retaliatory policy against Palestinian civilians, which is in violation of international humanitarian law.
The reports of mass summary executions come amid increasingly open demands for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the population of Gaza by Israeli officials and US politicians. In a radio interview Sunday, David Azoulai, head of Israel’s regional Metula Council, called for displacing the population to Lebanon and said that Gaza should be made to look like “Auschwitz.” He said, “Tell everyone in Gaza to go to the beaches. Navy ships should load the terrorists onto the shores of Lebanon. The entire Gaza Strip should be emptied and levelled flat, just like in Auschwitz.”
In a TV interview republished by Middle East Monitor, Miri Golan, Israel’s Women’s Advancement Minister, said “I don’t care about Gaza … for all I care, they can go out and swim in the sea.” She added, “I want to see dead bodies of terrorists around Gaza.” In another widely shared video, Daniella Weiss, the former mayor of an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and a leader of the Israeli settler movement, said in a TV interview that Israel’s goal is to make “Gaza free of Arabs” to prepare “the establishment of Jewish settlements in all of the Gaza Strip.”
This genocidal language is now being embraced in the United States. Speaking at the “Amerifest” fascist conference in the US, Michelle Bachmann, the dean of the Christian fundamentalist Regent University, declared, “It’s time that Gaza ends.” She concluded, “The 2 million people who live there, they are clever assassins. They need to be removed from that land, that land needs to be turned into a national park.”
As of December 19, according to the Ministry of Health, 19,667 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, some 70 percent of whom are women and children. Approximately 7,000 more are still missing, most buried under rubble, bringing the death toll to over 25,000. On Wednesday, Israel ordered residents in areas throughout southern Gaza to evacuate, in a move that will only lead to a surge of the number of people trapped in the southern city of Rafah.
On Wednesday, Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda recorded footage of airstrikes near the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah where she is sheltering. “You are telling us to go to the south, you tell us to evacuate Khan Yunis,” she said. Now the people concentrated in the southernmost tip of Gaza are being relentlessly bombed.
According to United Nations figures, 1.9 million people in Gaza, or 85 percent of the population, are estimated to be internally displaced. According to Gaza’s Government Media office, Israel has attacked over more than 200 health facilities and over 102 ambulances. And 126 government offices and 90 schools and universities were completely destroyed, with 283 more being further damaged.
Amid these relentless atrocities, the United States continues to fund, arm and logistically support the genocide.
In an extraordinary exchange on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked to comment on “much of the world blaming the US and Israel and seeing it as America’s war.” To this, Blinken complained, “I hear virtually no one saying, demanding of Hamas, that it stop hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrender.” He concluded, “How can it be that there are no demands made of the aggressor, and only demands made of the victim?”
The answer to this question is that the vast majority of the world’s population correctly sees the United States and Israel as the aggressors, and the population of Gaza, which is being bombed, starved and massacred, as the victims of imperialist violence.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/12/21/akcl-d21.html
Chris Hedges – December 21, 2023
The Evil Israel Does is the Evil Israel Gets
By Chris Hedges
I knew Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, the co-founder of Hamas, along with Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Yassin. Al-Rantisi’s family were expelled to the Gaza Strip by Zionist militias from historic Palestine during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He did not fit the demonized image of a Hamas leader. He was a soft spoken, articulate and highly educated pediatrician who had graduated first in his class at Egypt’s Alexandria University.
As a nine-year-old boy, he witnessed executions in Khan Younis of 275 Palestinian men and boys, including his uncle, when Israel briefly occupied the Gaza Strip in 1956, the subject of Joe Sacco’s magisterial book Footnotes in Gaza. Scores of Palestinians were also executed by Israeli soldiers in the neighboring town of Rafah, where tens of thousands Palestinians are currently being forced to flee now that Khan Younis has come under attack.
“I still remember the wailing and the tears of my father over his brother,” al-Rantisi told Sacco and me when we visited him at his home. “I couldn’t sleep for many months after that…It left a wound in my heart that can never heal. I’m telling you a story and I’m almost crying. This sort of action can never be forgotten…[T]hey planted hatred in our hearts.”
He knew he could never trust the Israelis. He knew that the goal of the Zionist state was the occupation of all of historic Palestine – Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 along with Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula – and the eternal subjugation or extermination of the Palestinian people. He knew he would avenge the killings.
Al-Rantisi and Yassin were assassinated in 2004 by Israel. Al-Rantisi’s widow, Jamila Abdallah Taha al-Shanti, had a doctorate in English and taught at the Islamic University in Gaza. The couple had six children, one of whom was killed along with his father. The family’s home was bombed and destroyed during the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza known as Operation Protective Edge. Jamila was killed by Israel on Oct. 19 of this year.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza is rearing a new generation of enraged, traumatized and dispossessed Palestinians who have lost family members, friends, homes, communities and any hope of living ordinary lives. They, too, will seek retribution. Their small acts of terrorism will counter Israel’s ongoing state terror. They will hate as they have been hated. This lust for vengeance is universal. After World War Two, a clandestine unit of Jews who served in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, called “Gmul,” – Hebrew for “Recompense” – hunted down former Nazis and executed them.
“I and the public know/What all schoolchildren learn,” W.H. Auden wrote. “Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return.”
Chaim Engel, who took part in the uprising at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in Poland, described how, armed with a knife, he attacked a guard in the camp.
“It’s not a decision,” Engel said. “You just react, instinctively you react to that, and I figured, ‘Let us to do, and go and do it.’ And I went. I went with the man in the office, and we killed this German. With every jab, I said, ‘That is for my father, for my mother, for all these people, all the Jews you killed.’”
What Engel did to the Nazi guard was no less savage than what Hamas fighters did to Israelis on Oct. 7, after escaping their own prison. Taken out of context, it is inexplicable. But set against the backdrop of the extermination camp, or the 17 years trapped in Gaza’s concentration camp, it makes sense. This is not to excuse it. To understand is not to condone. But we must understand if this cycle of violence is to be stopped. No one is immune to the thirst for vengeance. Israel and the U.S. are foolishly orchestrating yet another chapter in this nightmare.
J. Glenn Gray, a combat officer in World War Two, wrote about the peculiar nature of vengeance in “The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle:”
When the soldier has lost a comrade to this enemy or possibly had his family destroyed by them through bombings or through political atrocities, so frequently the case in World War II, his anger and resentment deepen into hatred. Then the war for him takes on the character of a vendetta. Until he has himself destroyed as many of the enemy as possible, his lust for vengeance can hardly be appeased. I have known soldiers who were avid to exterminate every last one of the enemy, so fierce was their hatred. Such soldiers took great delight in hearing or reading of mass destruction through bombings. Anyone who has known or been a soldier of this kind is aware of how hatred penetrates every fiber of his being. His reason for living is to seek revenge; not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but a tenfold retaliation.
To the brutalized, numb with trauma, convulsed by rage, those who relentlessly attack and humiliate them are not human beings. They are representations of evil. The lust for vengeance, for tenfold retaliation, spawns rivers of blood.
The Palestinian attacks of Oct. 7, which left some 1,200 Israelis dead, feeds this lust within Israel, just as Israel’s obliteration of Gaza feeds this lust among Palestinians. Israel’s blue and white national flag with the Star of David adorns homes and cars. Crowds gather to supportﾠfamilies whose members are among the hostages in Gaza. Israelis hand out food at road junctions to soldiers headed to fight in Gaza. Banners with slogans such as “Israel at war” and “Together we will win” punctuate television broadcasts and media sites. There is little discussion in Israeli media of the slaughter in Gaza or the suffering of Palestinians – 1.7 million of whom have been driven from their homes – but a constant repetition of the stories of suffering, death and heroism that took place on the Oct. 7 attack. Only our victims matter.
“Few of us ever know how far fear and violence can transform us into creatures at bay, ready with tooth and claw,” Gray wrote. “If the war taught me anything at all, it convinced me that people are not what they seem or even think themselves to be.”
Marguerite Duras in her book “The War: A Memoir” writes of how she and other members of the French Resistance tortured a 50-year-old Frenchman accused of collaborating with the Nazis. Two men who were tortured in Montluc prison in Lyon strip the alleged informer. They beat him as the group shouts: “Bastard. Traitor. Scum.” Blood and mucus soon run from his nose. His eye is damaged. He moans, “Ow, ow, oh, oh. …” He crumples in a heap on the floor. Duras writes that he had “become someone without anything in common with other men. And with every minute the difference grows bigger and more established.” She watches the beating passively. “The more they hit and the more he bleeds, the more it’s clear that hitting is necessary, right, just.” She goes on: “You have to strike. There will never be any justice in the world unless you – yourself are justice now. Judges, paneled courtrooms play-acting, not justice.” She notes,“Every blow rings out in the silent room. They’re hitting at all the traitors, at the women who left, at all those who didn’t like what they saw from behind the shutters.”
Israel has abused, humiliated, impoverished and wantonly killed Palestinians, provoking inevitable counter violence. It is the engine behind a century of bloodshed. The genocide in Gaza outdoes even the worst excesses of the Nakba, or catastrophe, which saw 750,000 Palestinians driven from their land in 1948 and 8,000 to 15,000 murdered in massacres by Zionist terrorist militias such as Irgun and Lehi.
The Palestinian resistance has little more than small arms and rocket-propelled grenades to battle against one of the best equipped and most technologically advanced militaries on the planet, the world’s 4th strongest military, after the U.S., Russia and China. Palestinian fighters, facing these overwhelming odds, have become demigods with huge popular followings not only among Palestinians, but throughout the Muslim world. Israel may be able to hunt down and kill Hamas’s second-in-command leader Yahya Sinwar, but if they do, he will become the Middle East’s version of Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Resistance movements are built on the blood of martyrs. Israel ensures a continual supply.
The decision by the U.S.to defend, fund and participate in Israel’s carpet bombing, slaughter and ethnic cleansing in Gaza is unconscionable. Its backing for the genocide has destroyed what remained of its credibility in the Middle East, already in tatters from two decades of wars, as well as most of the rest of the world. It has forfeited its right to act as a mediator; that role will be taken by China or Russia. Its refusal to condemn Israeli aggression and war crimes exposes its hypocrisy about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It flirts with the possibility of a regional conflagration. The peace process, a sham for decades, is irrecoverable. The only language left is the language of death. It is how Israel speaks to the Palestinians. It is how the Palestinians are forced to speak back.
The Biden administration has little to gain from the leveling and depopulation of Gaza, indeed it is alienating huge segments of the Democratic Party, especially as it attacks protestors calling for a ceasefire as “pro-terrorist.” Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer led chants of “We stand with Israel” and “No ceasefire” at a pro-Israel rally on Nov. 4 in Washington D.C., despite aﾠReuters/Ipsos survey indicating 68 percent of respondents believed that Israel should implement a ceasefire and negotiate an end to the war. That number rises to 77 percent among Democrats. Biden has a dismal approval rating of 37 percent.
On Friday, the United Nations Security Council voted 13-1 for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and unconditional release of all hostages. The U.S. voted against the resolution. The U.K. abstained. The draft resolution was not adopted due to the U.S. veto.
Biden’s real base is not disenchanted voters but the billionaire class, corporations, such as the weapons industry, which is making huge profits from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and groups such as the Israel lobby. They determine policy, even if it means Biden’s defeat in the next presidential election. If Biden loses, the oligarchs get Donald Trump, who serves their interests as doggedly as Biden.
The wars do not end. The suffering continues. The Palestinians die in the tens of thousands. This is by design.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show On Contact. His most recent book is “America: The Farewell Tour” (2019).
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-evil-israel-does-is-the-evil-df3
Al Jazeera – December 21, 2023
The anatomy of Zionist genocide
What are the motivations behind Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza, and what is the way forward?
By Yoav Litvin
On October 7, Hamas fighters breached the Gaza prison fence, launching a coordinated attack on at least seven Israeli military installations and more than 20 surrounding residential communities. Over 1000 Israeli citizens, both civilian and military, as well as dozens of foreign nationals, were killed in the attack. Some 240 others were taken captive. Caught off guard and in disarray, the Israeli military responded to the attack in a frenzy, firing indiscriminately on breached localities, slaying Israeli captives alongside Hamas fighters in the process. It took the Israeli forces nearly a day to recapture all lost territory and secure the Gaza perimeter.
Following Hamas’s unprecedented incursion, Israel’s public relations apparatus launched a misinformation campaign aimed at inciting fear and fury and began to spread unverified atrocity propaganda. The campaign, involving tales of babies being “beheaded en masse”, “burned” and “hung on a clothesline”, helped transform the Israeli public’s shock into genocidal tribalism and diverted attention from Israel’s political, intelligence and military blunders that paved the way for the attack in the first place. The campaign also helped the government garner crucial public support for mass mobilisation of reserve units which made the consequent full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip possible.
After securing unconditional military, political and diplomatic backing of its imperial sponsors in the West, most notably in Washington, and under the pretext of countering Hamas and rescuing captives, Israel then initiated what has since been accurately described as an AI-guided “mass assassination campaign” in Gaza.
Ten weeks on, most of Gaza is now destroyed, nearly 20,000 Palestinians are dead with many more still under the rubble, and the world continues to watch a genocide unfold in real time. Examining these events through a behavioural-neuroscientific lens could offer insights into the Zionist settler colonialist dynamic in general and the particular motivations behind Israel’s current genocidal acts in Gaza, as well as potential paths forward.
The pillars of Zionist propaganda
In response to historical trauma, Jewish people have a deep fear of anti-Semitism. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this fear, along with disdain for oppressors, led to the formation of autonomous Jewish self-defence groups in various geographies.
Zionism, a European colonial movement, recognised the potential of this dynamic. It syncretised Jewish longing for safety and self-defence with white supremacist, messianic and fascistic ideologies. This synthesis birthed a new, nationalist Jewish identity that equates Jewish safety with the construction of an exclusivist homeland in Palestine through the displacement of the region’s Indigenous populations.
Settler colonial endeavours typically depend on depicting the targeted territory as “uninhabited”, and its existing inhabitants as inhuman barbarians unworthy of any land.
This portrayal allowed Zionists to displace the Indigenous population of Palestine without moral qualms, portraying the establishment of Israel not as the destruction of a people but as the construction of a “villa in the jungle”.
Within the Israeli society grounded in land and resource theft, offensive aggression under the guise of “self-defence” (as in “Israel Defence Force”) has been rewarded and reinforced from the very beginning and consequently became a routine part of life. By reinstating fear and hijacking trauma associated with past and present negative experiences of Jewish people, Zionist leaders ensured the settler population’s continued support for aggressive, expansionist, hegemonic, genocidal policies and shielded their corruption and other criminal endeavours from public scrutiny.
To maintain Israel’s violently oppressive status quo and expand the territory of the settler colony, Zionists opportunistically conflated their colonial ideology with Judaism.
Citing divine dispensation, radical, far-right settlers have been encouraged to seize hilltops on Palestinian land, expel those living there, and form illegal outposts. These outposts are later fortified by the Israeli military and eventually “legalised” by the Zionist state.
Beyond justifying violent land theft, the conflation of Zionism and Judaism serves to delegitimise Indigenous resistance by equating any criticism of Zionism or Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians as an attack on Jews. Further, it hinders anticolonial resistance by portraying a political struggle over land and resources between occupying settlers backed by imperial forces and an Indigenous-occupied people as a supposed ancient religious “conflict” between equals.
This conflation encourages Zionist appropriation and exceptionalisation of Jewish victimhood. Israeli hasbara presents the Holocaust as an unparalleled genocide, granting Jews special victim status. This narrative justifies privileges, discounts and allowances for Israel as the “Jewish state” constructed to ensure the safety of Jews, at the expense of Indigenous Palestinians. Notably, Zionist revisionism often neglects and downplays Nazi crimes against other oppressed groups, including communists, socialists, Roma, disabled individuals, LGBTQI and African Germans.
The liberal wing of Zionism serves to whitewash the reactionary core of the movement and conceal its true objectives – expansionism and apartheid. Misleadingly, Liberal Zionists portray Zionism as an ideology aligned with democratic, progressive values and human rights, falsely projecting a genuine commitment to peace, justice and full integration into the Middle East.
Fear and genocidal fervour
Until October 7, Israel upheld its founding aspiration, enforcing a doctrine of endless occupation while oscillating between implicit and explicit forms of genocide, the latter often described as “mowing the lawn” in reference to Israel’s periodical attacks on Gaza since its 2005 “withdrawal” from the besieged Palestinian enclave. During this time, Israeli Zionists reaped the benefits of Palestinian land and its resources in a modern, affluent, supposedly democratic consumer paradise, fostering robust connections and identification with white US and Europe and oil/cash-rich Gulf monarchies, rather than its immediate neighbours.
On October 7, intense fear and shock gripped Israeli society, presenting Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government with a golden opportunity to quash rising dissent against corruption, and please his coalition membe rs with a genocidal land grab.
Fear in Israel is sustained through militarisation, anti-Palestinian narratives, reframing resistance as “terrorism,” remembering past atrocities, focusing on perceived threats and promoting segregation, ie, apartheid. Chronic fear induces symptoms akin to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), making the Israeli population prone to aggression masked as “self-defence”.
The toxic mix of fear, dehumanising propaganda, rewards for aggression and intense apartheid has bred a lack of empathy in Israelis toward Palestinians. Despite claiming the Gaza conflict as “self-defence”, Israeli leaders openly blame Palestinian society as a whole, essentially sanctioning collective punishment of civilians. Daily, Israeli institutional leaders mock Palestinian culture and cheerlead the torture, displacement and annihilation of Palestinians, revealing a disturbing genocidal mindset.
The path forward
On October 7, the carefully constructed Zionist facade of incremental genocide within a liberal/democratic framework collapsed, exposing Israel’s genocidal and fascistic core. Zionists in Israel and beyond did not mourn the end of this charade, and instead celebrated their newfound freedom to kill and destroy Palestinians without any restraint or pretence. This development not only poses a threat of elimination to the Palestinian people but since the Occupied Territories are used as a laboratory for the development and testing of new military technology and strategies, it could also set the stage for similar violent escalations against oppressed communities in the Global South as well as against BIPOC and immigrant communities within the Global North.
Israel’s genocidal behaviour in Gaza and elsewhere in historic Palestine resonates with patterns seen in the Stanford prison experiment and the Milgram obedience study. In the latter, individuals, swayed by authority, had administered potentially lethal shocks to other participants.
For Israelis to break their addiction to aggression, they would need to go through a process of deprogramming and decolonisation. This would require them to embrace the truth about the history and nature of their country, commit to sincere accountability, recognise the humanity of Palestinians, and empathise with their suffering and plight. Once the oppressive structure, Zionism, is disassembled, it can be effectively dismantled, paving the way for a process of rehumanisation and reconciliation through the use of empathy. Liberation, reconciliation and an end to Israel’s genocidal violence can only be achieved within a steadfast and unwavering anti-Zionist framework that aligns with wider leftist, antiracist, anticolonial values.
Yoav Litvin is an Israeli-American doctor of psychology/neuroscience, a writer and photographer.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/21/the-anatomy-of-zionist-genocide
|
Published since July 2008 |
Your donation
is tax deductable.
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
