People's Democracy

The Holocaust in Gaza

Prabir Purkayastha

THE Israeli slaughter in Gaza continues. The toll exceeds now 900 dead and about 4,000 wounded. It includes more than 200 children and about 60 women. While the Israeli Government flouts the UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, the Americans, the EU and others are openly conniving with its murderous assault on the Palestinians. The world needs to impose immediate sanctions on Israel; Israel will not see reason any other way.

Not only have so many died and have been wounded in Gaza, the rest are facing a hellish existence. There is virtually no electricity, no medicines, no drinking water; sewage plants have collapsed as has the sewage system. The municipal authorities have now suspended their activities making clear that Israeli bombardment and the siege makes it impossible for them to maintain drinking water supply and waste disposal. Gaza faces a total humanitarian catastrophe.

For Israel, its every act of violence is �self defence�. It is always the �victim�, never the aggressor. It only �retaliates�, never �attacks�. That is why in its books, it is entirely justified in killing thousands of Palestinians for the 20 deaths that have taken place in the last 10 years from Al Qassem rockets in Israel. John Berger, the distinguished writer and art critic, termed this for what it is � the twisted logic of racism. �Today, in face of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, the essential calculation, which was always covertly there, behind this conflict, has been blatantly revealed.  The death of one Israeli victim justifies the killing of a hundred Palestinians.  One Israeli life is worth a hundred Palestinian lives. This is what the Israeli State and the world media more or less -- with marginal questioning -- mindlessly repeat.  And this claim, which has accompanied and justified the longest Occupation of foreign territories in 20th C. European history, is viscerally racist.�

Its Foreign minister, Tzipi Livni tells the world that unlike Hamas, who target civilians, Israel only targets Hamas. Note not combatants but all Hamas, even teachers and doctors are targets. The massacre of the civilians, she claims is what happens in spite of Israel�s efforts. The reality is what an unnamed soldier told Haaretz, the leading Israeli newspaper. Their standard tactic is to approach a �suspicious house� by first firing a missile in it, then taking out its sidewall by using a bull dozer and then entering it. This way, they minimise their casualties, without bothering about civilian casualties. Since all houses in Gaza are by definition �suspicious�, we know why the civilian death toll in Gaza has been so high.

HUMANITARIAN  CATASTROPHE

Two incidents stand out even in this litany of butchery. The first incident caused even the International Red Cross to come out openly accusing the Israeli Army of a war crime. In the Zaytun neighbourhood of Gaza City, Red Crescent had been requesting permission to enter and attend to the wounded from January 3, when this neighbourhood was attacked by Israeli forces. Israeli forces allowed them to enter only on the January 7. They found four emaciated children clinging to the dead bodies of their mothers. Not only did the Israeli forces not permit the Red Cross/Red Crescent to enter for four days, they provided no help to the injured or the children in spite of being 80 to 100 metres of these houses.

"This is a shocking incident," said Pierre Wettach, the ICRC's Head of Delegation for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In its Press Statement dated January 8, ICRS stated, �The ICRC believes that in this instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded. It considers the delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable.�

The second incident is the Israeli shelling of the Al-Fakhoura UN School in the Jabalya refugee camp, which killed 40 and wounded 55. Hundreds of Palestinians had taken refuge in the school, hoping that the UN flying over it would protect them from the Israeli attacks. The UN had even given the Israeli army the co-ordinates of the building to the Israeli forces. All this did not help. To justify the shelling, the Israeli propaganda machine first released a video showing that rockets were being launched from the school building. The only problem with the video was that it was taken in 2007 and that too when the school was empty. The next argument advanced was that Hamas were firing mortar shells from inside the school, a claim that the UN has angrily rejected.

Israel�s violence against Palestinians is documented throughout its short and brutal history. It starts from the �ethnic cleansing� of the Palestinians from their homeland in 1948 through massacres such as Deir Yassein. It continued through out its occupation of the West Bank and its repeated invasions of Lebanon.

Robert Fisk writes in the Independent (�Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask�, January 7, 2009)

�Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead � almost all civilians, most of them children and women � in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?�

Israel argues and the international media mindlessly parrots that it is the Hamas who broke the ceasefire in December by firing rockets into Israel. This -- according to this view -- has lead to the current round of bloodletting. They ignore that even in this limited account of the Gaza conflict, it is Israel who broke the ceasefire twice in November, 2008. Both times they conducted targeted assassinations in Gaza. It is only then that the Hamas broke the ceasefire. But even this is only a very partial picture. The real story of Gaza is that the Gaza population has been denied any semblance of a functioning economy by Israel. For the last 18 months, they have faced a complete economic blockade. At times, this blockade has been ratcheted up to deny even medicines, fuel and food. All routes in and out of Gaza � land and sea -- are controlled by the Israel. Ships are not allowed into Gaza port. It is this siege of Gaza and converting it to a vast prison camp for its population that lies at the heart of the Gaza conflict.

To the Zionists and unfortunately the majority today of the Jewish population of Israel, the question is simple. What will it take for the Palestinians to give up all resistance? Deny them any hope of survival, and hopefully they will surrender completely, or even better, leave Gaza. If this succeeds in Gaza, the next target would be the West Bank where also similar plans are being hatched. The only problem is that the Palestinians are refusing to be �rational� and surrender. This is what drives the Zionists into a murderous rage. It is this rage that sustains the Israeli state�s brutal attacks on a defenceless Gaza population.

The supreme irony of the Israeli demand that rockets from Gaza should not fall on its towns such as Askelon is that the true owners of these lands are now refugees in Gaza. Askelon (Askalaan in Arabic) was originally an Arabic neighbourhood, from which they were driven out and herded into refugee camps in Gaza.

WAR PSYCHE NEEDED  TO SUSTAIN ZIONIST STATE

What are Israel�s goals in the Gaza carnage? Israeli forces were planning for this attack for the last two years. One reason given that they needed a weaker enemy they could defeat after having been bloodied by the Hezbollah in 2006. Hamas are much easier to beat, as they have much less resources and are only lightly armed. It is saving of the military�s face, important in a country which prides itself on beating up all its neighbors. Even if this limited aim succeeds temporarily, it is difficult to see Israel being able to destroy Hamas�s military capability, particularly as it would take much higher casualties if it gets into urban warfare in the densely populated Gaza city itself. As even some of the commentators sympathetic to Israel have pointed out, this is a sure way of winning the tactical battle but losing the larger strategic war.

The second possible reason is that Israel believes that siege and economic blockade having failed, the only option to weaken the Hamas politically is to make the civilian population pay for their support to the Hamas � a form of collective punishment. If this is indeed the strategy, it certainly is not working. It has increased the support for Hamas and anger towards Israel. Most of the Palestinians are far angrier at the craven behaviour of the Palestinian Authority. Even Egypt�s Hosni Mubarek is under fire over Gaza, as are other Arab regimes.

The third possible reason is that Israel wants the Rafa crossing, which it controls through Egypt to be put under international control. This will make even more difficult for the Gazans to get food and other supplies, which are currently smuggled through tunnels dug under the border with Egypt. This would get Egypt off the hook every time Israel imposes a fresh blockade and make it possible for the siege of Gaza to be even tighter. The problem here is that it is unlikely that any kind of ceasefire and internationalising of the crossings will allow Israel to continue its siege of Gaza.

The other reason advanced is that there is large gas deposit off-shore in Gaza. If the Hamas can be decisively defeated, Israel could get the rights to this gas through a deal with the Palestinian Authority.

The last argument is that Israeli elections are near and Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and the current Israeli leadership needed this war to win their elections. Since George Bush would support Israel in any case, this was the last window of opportunity before an unknown quantity of Barak Obama takes over. While the Israeli election argument may have an element of truth, it would be foolish to believe that Obama would be more even-handed over Palestine. The sad fact is that his secretary of state is Hillary Clinton, who has been vociferous in her support of the Zionist cause. And Obama�s chief of staff is Rahm Emmanuel, a former Israeli officer, who holds dual citizenship. Rahm Emmanuel, Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni have not only common views on Israel, their fathers were all together in Irgun, the Zionist terrorist organisation that unleashed the brutal violence on the Palestinians in 1948.

Probably, all these factors have gone into the calculations of the Israeli regime in this latest act of war on the Palestinian people. However, there is more to this war than just the above factors. For understanding this, we must understand the psyche of the Israeli state. Militarisation is essential for the survival of the Zionist state. War is a necessity for the continuing militarisation of the Zionist state of Israel. The Zionist state of Israel needs war in the way people need oxygen. It is only with this permanent state of war that it can get its people to dehumanise the Palestinian population. It is only through war that it can run its conscript army. It is only wars that will convince its citizens to be prison wardens in its occupation of the West Bank.

It is the psyche of the people supporting the war that ultimately sustains the Zionist state of Israel. The colonial powers required racism to sustain their empires. Israel needs wars and racism to sustain its occupation. If it cannot have a war or invasion every few years, the unthinkable might happen: the people may actually start asking for peace. In any society that would be considered welcome. For the Zionist state, that would be its worst nightmare.

The dehumanisation of the Palestinian people in Israel can be seen in various ways. Dov Weisglas, Ariel Sharon's chief of staff, referred to the siege of Gaza that preceded this bombing, a siege in which the Israelis prevented the population from receiving essential supplies of food, medicine, electricity and water, by saying, "We put them on a diet." Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai�s in February 2008 talked about Gaza facing a �shoah� -- the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, a word till now the Zionists claimed could only be used for the mass murder of the Jews in Germany. Calls for ethnic cleansing from mainstream political figures in Israel are increasingly common.

At the heart of the conflict is not Israel�s security. As Hanan Ashrawi said, how can Israel have normalcy for its citizens when it is in occupation of Palestine? Security for Israel is easy. If it accepts that the Palestinians have right to their state, if it lifts occupation of West Bank and Gaza, if it dismantles the apartheid state it has built in Israel, peace would come, not only to Israel but also to the region. But that would mean giving up the Zionist dream of �promised land� and purging it of all its Arab population. What the Zionists are pursuing is not peace and security, but war, more violence and more �ethnic cleansing�. It is Hitler�s thesis of Lebenstraum (living space), in which Jews were the first victims, being brought back by the Zionists.

While the complicity of the US and EU is easy to understand, what explains the Indian government�s stand on Israel? We have already seen the unseemly spectacle of Mossad and the Israeli Army personnel visiting Kashmir. Today, we have a booming arms trade with Israel, which sustains its armaments industry and therefore the Israeli defence forces in its occupation. We are jointly developing drones and other missiles with Israel, which are routinely used in Palestine for targeted assassinations. We are launching satellites for Israel, used in its conflict in Gaza and in spying over Iran.

Merely talking about ceasefire will not do. India must break all ties and scrap its arms deals with Israel. It is only through such actions it can show solidarity with Palestinians. Giving lip service to the Palestinian cause while getting into a strategic alliance with the US and Israel is neither moral nor in India�s national interest.

Millions have already protested over Gaza. We need more such actions to force our governments to act. We need citizens to start an immediate boycott of Israeli companies and goods. We must put pressure on Indian companies that they cease doing business with Israel. Boycott, disinvestment and sanctions are what finally led to the dissolution of South Africa�s apartheid regime. Only such actions will lead to the defeat of the Apartheid regime of Israel.