Israel Blind To Its Own Isolation

I wrote less than two weeks ago that Israel was in an accelerating decline as a result of changed geopolitical realities in the Middle East, most recently and acutely the Arab Spring. That Arab Spring is now in the throes of a 2.0 reawakening and reconstitution of last year's settlements, as events in Egypt in the last two weeks have made clear, not to mention the momentum of Syrian rebels, rioting in Tunisia and renwed protests in Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, etc.

But like a Saudi Emir who can't see the protests outside his window past his line of servants, the Israeli regime appears to have no idea that they are more isolated than ever. Or, perhaps they do, but are unable to change their modus operandi because it is hard-baked into how the state operates, ie. by terror, humiliation and intimidation.

In any case, there's no doubt the world is a changed place when the UK and France call in Israel's ambassador to condemn plans to build 3,000 illegal settler homes as revenge for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas seeking recognition at the UN. And the UK's mooting of the possibility that it will withdraw its own ambassador from Israel - a major diplomatic slap in the face - is a stunning development. You have to know that America's given its approval for this strong response - the UK is, after all, the tail that the American dog wags.

This is not really the result of Israel engaging in illegal or inhumane practices. Israel has been building settlements in the West Bank since it seized control of it, and Gaza, during the 1967 war. This is not a new event. What has changed isn't Israel, it's everything else.

The US and Europe all fear that Israel's uncontrollable brutality is inflaming the region, making it more unstable and more anti-American/anti-European. They are deepening the radicalization. Where once Israel's policy of armed fury towards all comers was useful to keep in line weak and despotic Arab regimes, it is now a hindrance. At a time when Mohammad Morsi, president of Egypt, is facing a revolt for being too much like Mubarak, despised in part for his refusal to confront Israel, Israel's actions could undermine Morsi's credibility further. Or it could force him to hit back at Israel to bolster his domestic position, putting the Camp David Treaty with Israel, which underpins American hegemony, at risk.

Israel really is shooting itself in the foot here. But it's not clear that they have any option. Already almost totally isolated - as the lopsided vote at the UN in support of granting statehood status to Palestine demonstrated - what is Israel to do? If it doesn't respond, coming after its perceived defeat in Gaza, it looks weak - which endangers its role as the American gendarme. And worse, it would look like it accepts the world's verdict that Palestine is a state, which would mean real negotiations towards a viable two-state solution. This it has never and will never accept. Israel has always played the long game, meaning it creates "facts on the ground" over time by stalling on negotiations as it pushes forward on settlement construction and economic strangling of the Palestinians. The end goal was always to gain control of all of Biblical Israel, in part because it provided a strong ideological underpinning justifying the right of European Jews to steal the land of the indigenous population, ie. Palestinians. But also because of the valuable natural resources - in particular water - that exists in the West Bank.

If the rest of the Middle East continues on its journey towards a deepening of democracy, Israel's bullyboy routine will put it increasingly in conflict with the policy of the Americans - and will stand out as anachronistic to the rest of the region. How this will play out in the end is unclear but if Israel closes off definitively the possibility of a two-state solution and the Americans place some distance between themselves (and their barrels of money) and Israel, they could be faced with their own Arab Spring - meaning a civil rights movement of Palestinians and Israeli-Arabs demanding full civil rights and equality.

France and Britain summon Israeli ambassadors - Middle East - Al Jazeera English:

'via Blog this'

"Anti-Semitism" Committee A Rearguard Defence Of Israel's Crimes

It's nothing new really - the right wing, who can barely make their lips form the words "anti-racism", spend boatloads of cash to "take a stand" against anti-Semitism. Except that what they're really defending are the odious actions and policies of the state of Israel. That's exactly what this hokey Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism is all about.

When there was serious, life-threatening anti-Semitism prior to and during the Second World War, with the rise of Jew-hating fascism, did the Canadian Parliament set-up any special committees? No, the Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King pronounced that "none is too many" and turned away desperate Jewish refugees. Back then the Jews weren't of any particular political use to the ruling class in Canada or the US or the UK - or numerous other countries that turned them away. It's still the case that most Jews aren't of any particular political interest to the Canadian political elite. Most Jews don't live in Israel and aren't any more pro Israel than the rest of the population. In fact, this bullshit "coalition" specifically excluded a Jewish organization that didn't have a pro-Israel agenda, Independent Jewish Voices of Canada.

It's also worth noting that Parliament has never set up a committee to combat Islamophobia - even as Muslims suffered job and income losses, suffered harassment and attacks in the streets, campaigns against their places of worship and demonization in the media, not to mention no-fly lists that disproportionately target Muslims, etc. But then Canada's Parliament has facilitated that particular form of discrimination and oppression.

Nor has there been a coalition to combat homophobia, a fact that gay, former MP Mario Silva might want to ponder as he stands shoulder to shoulder with Tory MPs who would happily take away his right to get married, enjoy same sex spousal benefits or any other legal equality that has been fought and won in the last thirty years.

But, besides demonstrating an utterly craven hypocrisy on the question of racism, the existence of this committee also demonstrates something of greater significance - after all, we knew that Parliament was a corrupt dung heap filled with sycophants and toads. Israel and its racist, genocidal policies - it's Apartheid - is suffering the deepest international crisis of legitimacy in its history. The old methods of justifying Israel's uncivilized and inhumane practices by referring to the inhumanity suffered by the Jews during the Holocaust and, more generally, as a result of European anti-Semitism, has faded in potency. After all, why should the Palestinians be punished for crimes committed by Europeans over half a century ago?

Nor is the underlying racist, colonialist justification holding the same weight as it once did. The argument that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is less impressive when not only are their Arab neighbours overthrowing dictatorships in favour of democracy, prominent Israeli officials have more than once expressed their dismay that they are losing "reliable" leaders. The truth is revealed that Israel's existence depends precisely on neighbouring dictatorships to suppress the solidarity felt by the Arab peoples of the region for their Palestinian brothers and sisters. The $2 billion/year that the US spent to prop up Hosni Mubarak actually saved billions more that Israel didn't have to spend on its military in fear of being swamped by the hostile nations around it. Israel could instead focus on their real goal and pleasure - squeezing the Palestinians bit by bit, through illegal settlement expansion, though constant harassment and humiliation, through economic destruction of any indigenous economy, with the goal of driving them out and taking over the whole of "eretz Israel" - from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. This has been the goal from before the founding of Israel and has never been particularly hidden.

And just as Israel's "democratic security" depended upon pliant dictatorships for neighbours, it is dependent upon a pliant dictatorship to rule over the Palestinians. The real outrage over Hamas, and the illegal and ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip is entirely about the fact that the Palestinians - even faced with the full horrors of Israeli Apartheid, refused to submit and voted for a party not sanctioned by their Israeli/American overlords. They are to be punished in perpetuity for voting incorrectly. But as the recent high profile fiascos (and massacres) involving anti-Israel protestors has revealed - whether it is blockading aid boats or shooting unarmed protestors on Israel's border - Israel is just another tinpot dictatorship that allows a small minority within its borders to vote and have full rights.

What Mario Silva - happily voted out in my riding of Davenport - and the goons on Toronto council who tried to deny funding to Pride based upon the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid don't realize is that they are fighting against the wheels of history. And with the revolutions in the Middle East still roiling and reshaping the region (and the world), the wheels of history have just sped up. Their pathetic committee will have no real impact on the inevitable: Israeli Apartheid will be revealed for what it is and defeated.

Anti-Semitism on the rise at Canadian universities, committee says - The Globe and Mail

Gaza: Was There A Winner?

It may seem crass to talk about winning and losing in the face of the Gaza slaughter, as though it were a football game. But there is good reason when one considers that the final tally of a battle or a war shapes key future events, determining the likelihood of future victories or even whether other battles will be entered into by those involved.
And it is not only those directly involved who must be considered, for a victory or defeat by the army of choice will determine future actions. It is a truism about the Middle East, for instance, that Israel's 6-day, smashing victory over three Arab armies in 1967 secured them the sponsorship of the United States, which has sustained their superior position viz. their regional competitors.
Based upon a numbers count it would seem that Israel is the definite winner. There are, after all, something like 1300 dead Palestinians, plus another 5400 wounded, with well over half of the total being accounted for by civilians, even with only women and children being counted as such. This compares to 3 dead Israeli civilians and another 10 dead soldiers, most of them killed by friendly fire, apparently.
But we can't look at the present invasion in terms of crude - and deadly - numbers.
Israel has a massive military superiority over Hamas and its allied militias, like Islamic Jihad, the PFLP and DFLP. They have F-16s, guided bombs and missiles, Merkava tanks, phosphorous shells, unmanned surveillance drones, a navy, all the latest techno gizmos, access to US satellite intelligence - not to mention, apparently, the intelligence support of Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's favourite Palestinian collaborator, and leader of Fatah. All of this ensured that a Hamas military victory over Israel was utterly impossible and Hamas seems to have been smart enough to avoid direct confrontations in the open.
Israeli political leaders had set themselves a series of goals prior to and during the operation. Since Israel initiated the present conflict, planning it far in advance, prior even to the 6 months ceasefire negotiated with Hamas, and set the terms for its victory, it must be measured against those goals. In addition, other, unintended consequences must be looked at.
Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, along with Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, have argued that the primary goal of the Gaza invasion was to stop Hamas lobbing rockets and mortars into southern Israel. If this were really the purpose of the attack, then certainly Israel has failed miserably, as demonstrated by the ceaseless firing of rockets throughout the invasion and even immediately following Israel's unilateral ceasefire. What's more, if the Israeli government wanted to end Gazan rocket fire the answer was very simple - meet the conditions of the original ceasefire negotiated with Hamas and agree to continue it. Hamas had, after all, met its terms - not only discontinuing Hamas' firing of rockets but putting a lid on rocket fire by rival militias such as Fatah and Islamic Jihad. Between June 19, when the ceasefire was agreed and November 4, when Israel launched a military raid, breaking the ceasefire, rocket and mortar fire was effectively nil (see attached pdf, p.6). It was Israel that failed to meet the terms of the ceasefire and which repeatedly provoked Hamas with attacks, arrests and killings.
The second stated goal was to prevent Hamas from re-arming. However, again, actions speak louder than words. If this were Israel's sole goal, they could have negotiated a deal with their pliant Egyptian ally or focused bombing strictly in the border region, where the smuggling tunnels exist. Nonetheless, even the head of Israel's intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, reports that the tunnel network hasn't been destroyed and that it will be up and running again in short order if Egypt doesn't clamp down.
In other words, stopping smuggling was never dependent upon bombing the hell out of Gaza - it couldn't even be effective. What was required was Egyptian cooperation. But Egypt is now less likely, not more, to agree to a politically unpopular clampdown against the Palestinians, after hundreds of thousands demonstrated in solidarity with Gaza and against the Egyptian dictatorship. That was made clear after Israel and the US signed an agreement - without telling the Egyptians - to tackle the tunnels on Egyptian soil. The Egyptian Foreign Minister responded saying that Israel and the US can "do what they wish with regard to the sea or any other country in Africa, but when it comes to Egyptian land, we are not bound by anything except the safety and national security of the Egyptian people and Egypt's ability to protect its borders." President-for-life Mubarak went on television to specifically state that foreign monitors would not be allowed in Egypt. But even if Egypt agrees to more American Army Engineers to help it police the border, or an increase in police numbers IDF officials don't believe that this will stop the smuggling. So, Israel's second policy goal is clearly a failure.
The real key for Israel was the need to restore its deterrent capability" - basically to instill fear in any and all Arabs who might think to challenge the occupation or any other Israeli strategic goals. New York Times billionaire columnist Thomas Friedman supportively referred to this as "educating" Hamas by "inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population." This was, in other words, according to Israeli supporters and critics, a terrorist operation by the state of Israel. As Norman Finklestein pointed out in a recent interview: ""The goal of the operation was to terrorize the civilian population so that Palestinians would be afraid of Israel. This is the dictionary definition of terrorism."
Has Israel restored its deterrent capability, so badly damaged by its failed war in Lebanon in 2006, and its withdrawal under duress from Gaza in 2005 and southern Lebanon in 2000? Certainly every Israeli politician, journalist and military leader is claiming this. However, if the goal was simply to impress upon Hamas that they couldn't defeat Israel militarily, this was already known. Hamas has been trying since at least 2002 to agree a long term truce with Israel, only to face Israeli bombs and targeted assassinations. Certainly by now, any Palestinian knows that it doesn't matter what you do, Israel will try to kill you.

"it is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict: 79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day). In addition, we found that this pattern -- in which Israel is more likely than Palestine to kill first after a conflict pause -- becomes more pronounced for longer conflict pauses. Indeed, of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days."

The irony is that this pattern almost ensures the continuation of violent resistance since even non-violence is met by Israeli attacks. At a certain point, Israel's deterrent capability is undermined by the fact that only utter defeat and an acceptance of genocide would prevent Palestinians from resisting Israel's aggression. Certainly Hamas was suitably unbowed to fire off nearly two dozen rockets after Israel's unilateral ceasefire and to demand a withdrawal within one week or they would restart hostilities. What's more, everyone can see, as they did in Lebanon in 2006, that while Israel could defeat three Arab armies in six days in 1967, after three weeks fighting a starved, blockaded, disarmed population in Gaza, the IDF didn't take more than a corner of Gaza City.
Ultimately, of course, it will be in the coming days that the interpretation of events will unfold, depending upon the actual state of Hamas and other resistance organizations. It is likely that while Arabs throughout the region will of course remember that Israel can, in fact, destroy unarmed populations, that it is possible to resist and survive. What's more, Hamas will likely be strengthened politically, while Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization will be fatally weakened. Israel, the US, EU and their Arab client regimes may try to hold him up but everyone knows that they are now dead as a resistance movement and thus in the eyes of the Palestinian people.
This makes it more likely that Israel will, as a result of this onslaught, be forced to recognize Hamas as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians, as will the international community. The 18 month campaign to destroy the results of the democratic election of Hamas, first by arming Fatah and fomenting a civil war and now with a direct intervention, have utterly failed.
And outside of the Middle East, Israel has managed to discredit itself even further, spurring into being a massive movement in solidarity with the Palestinians and against Israel. They have shattered the myth that Israel is the victim and the Palestinians the aggressors. This movement, the heroic resistance of the Palestinians and the images of Israel's utter brutality, which they were unable to hide, though they barred all journalists from entering Gaza, has pushed even Israel's staunchest allies to criticize them. Turkey, Israel's only Muslim ally, strongly rebuked Israel, demanding their exclusion from the UN until they implemented the Security Council resolution. Egypt, the biggest Arab nation and paid billions by the US to play with Israel, has been made even more unstable by the slaughter, creating concern for the US' major Arab bulwark in the region. Jordan recalled their ambassador in protest. And there is even suggestion in a fascinating article by Justin Raimondo that the US ruling class is growing tired of Israel's mad dog routine, which threatens US hegemony in the region by alienating Arab allies and threatening others with domestic political upheaval because of Israel's penchant for killing Arab civilians.
It's unclear how all this will pan out over the medium term. But it is clear that the Gaza operation, which Israel was forced to end before Obama's inauguration, has not all gone the way Israel hoped. It may not even go the way that Livni and Barak hoped it would in terms of their electoral prospects, with the ultra-war mongers in Likud making most of the gains from the invasion. 

Hamas and the Palestinian people will live to fight another day, with a much larger international movement, one in which the call for boycott and divestment may get a major hearing. And the whole region has been destabilized thanks to Israel's compulsive need to avoid peace at any costs. The blowback is looking to be much worse than what they started out fighting, as they have internationalized the conflict.

"Not A Single Palestinian Has Raised His Voice Against Hamas"

This is a fascinating article in Wednesday's Jerusalem Post about the state of the of the fight against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Essentially, the article argues that Hamas, while under significant pressure from the Israeli onslaught, has yet to buckle and continues to effectively resist.

What is particularly interesting is that one of the key goals of the offensive - to break Palestinians' support for Hamas, has utterly failed.

"Although Hamas has been hit hard, not a single Palestinian in the Gaza Strip has raised his voice against the movement and its leaders. Hopes that the massive IDF operation would encourage Palestinians to revolt against a weakened Hamas have not materialized.
If anything, many Palestinians agree, the Israeli offensive has actually boosted Hamas's popularity and undermined the so-called moderates in the Arab world."

It also admits that the IDF has been about much more than destroying the "infrastructure of terror", which one would assume means military stores, training facilities, bunkers, etc. Rather, they have destroyed "scores of Hamas-linked charities and organizations that were providing the Palestinians with a vast network of social, economic, health and education services."
This is an open admission of what is clearly a war crime.
No wonder the UN - minus the utter scumbags of Canada's Tory government - are accusing Israel of doing just that and calls are growing to take Israel to the International Criminal Court for genocide.

Meanwhile, over in Latin America, both Venezuela and Bolivia have announced that they are cutting ties with Israel over their invasion in Gaza. This is a brilliant response that will hopefully build momentum towards isolating the Israeli regime.

Gaza: Could Israel Lose?

The fifth largest army in the world, equipped with nuclear weapons and the full-backing of the most powerful empire in world history, has just invaded the Gaza Strip. It is fighting against a people in one of the poorest, most densely populated regions on the planet - and they have endured years of a total blockade of all entry points that have all but starved the people and destroyed the economy. 

It seems foregone that Israel will utterly crush Hamas and all Palestinian resistance. That's certainly the attitude of even Fatah, which had previously led the Palestinian national liberation movement. Why else capitulate so thoroughly to Israel's apartheid agenda, other than a belief that nothing else is possible but to lead an eviscerated bantustan?

But will it? Let's consider the possibility that Israel could lose their war against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

OUTGUNNED

Obviously the Palestinians are outgunned. However, so were Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 when Israel was thoroughly humiliated by failing to achieve any of its constantly changing stated objectives. Hezbollah, and the politics of anti-imperialist resistance, received a huge boost as a result of that war, which also undermined regional quisling powers like the Mubarak dictatorship and the craven Hashemite monarchy in Jordan.

And the defeat in Lebanon highlights a key point made by Alexander Cockburn at Counterpunch.org: 

"The last time Israel had an effective military campaign that could be called a victory was 27 years ago, in the 1982 attack on Lebanon. Hamas has been greatly strengthened by the current attack and the status of President Abbas reaffirmed as a spineless collaborator with Israel;Mubarak likewise; Syria and Turkey alienated from Western designs; Hezbollah and Iran vindicated by the world condemnation of Israel’s barbarous conduct."

In fact, as he also argues, "Although ruthless and horrifying Israel’s onslaughts on Gaza are evidently an expression of weakness..."

Israel's leaders are thus striking against Gaza based upon a desperate need to restore Israel's deterrence and prestige, and short-term electoral calculations, rather than any real belief that they can win any lasting victory. After all, this is the third time since Israel's unilateral withdrawal that Gaza has been invaded - each time to no effect. Rather than achieving any of the stated, nebulous, goals (deja vu Lebanon, 2006), the "world isn't just watching the Israeli government commit a crime in Gaza; we are watching it self-harm."

Unless Israel is able to utterly smash Hamas - an unlikely prospect given its wide support and deep roots - all they will achieve within Palestine, besides wide-spread destruction, is more support for the resistance movement. And it may well be the case that Israel is forced to lift the siege of Gaza's economy to achieve an internationally backed ceasefire.

There is good reason to expect that this will be the case and that a further political crisis will follow inside of Israel, given Israel's record in the last three decades.

"The three last major conflicts entered into by Israel — Yom Kippur in 1973, Lebanon 1982 and Lebanon 2006 — have cost the jobs of three defence ministers, curtailed the military careers of commanders and weakened prime ministers.
"So the current Israeli leadership will have to pull off something special to survive the fallout from operation Cast Lead."

In the context where only 19 percent of Israelis supported a ground invasion and where tens of thousands have already demonstrated inside of Israel against this latest adventure, the stakes are high for the present Israeli leadership.

And the sight of the carnage being wrought by Israel is undermining it internationally as masses of people mobilize in Europe and North America - key bastions of support and money for Israel. 

US JEWS: THE LEAST ZIONIST AMERICANS?

The present invasion is likely weakening Israel's support base within the Jewish community for whom the Zionist state claims to speak. Already, there has been a long term decline in Jewish identification with Israel. 

Barely a majority of young Jews in a 2005 survey by the ultra-Zionist Israel Project identified themselves as "strong supporters of Israel" - part of a 20 year decline in support. And the number of Jews who defended Israel regularly was barely a third. 

This reinforces a 2008 survey by the "pro-Israel, pro-peace" J Street, which found only 8 percent of Jews in the US felt that Israel was an important enough issue to decide for whom they would vote. As well, 78 percent supported a two state solution and 76 percent supported negotiating with Hamas. This puts Jews firmly in the mainstream of American opinion on the question. 

In fact, while the Israel Project's survey states that two-thirds of American's believe that Jerusalem should stay entirely under Israel's control and that only 20 percent believe it should be divided, J Street's survey indicates that 44 percent of US Jews accept the idea of Palestinian neighbourhoods in Jerusalem falling under control of a Palestinian state. 

In addition, while 59 percent of Jews support the idea of dismantling most West Bank settlements to achieve a lasting peace, the Israel Project survey of the general US population suggests that 52 percent think Israel shouldn't have to and 70 percent believe Israel should be able to trade other land, rather than move settlers.

Now, the results of both surveys should be taken with a large grain of salt, with poll questions so tilted to the ideological bias of the organizations that commissioned them as to be scientifically laughable. But they do indicate that American Jews are not somehow especially pro-Israel - if anything they are more critical of Israel than the general population in the United States.

American Jews - and this must surely apply to Jews in the UK, Canada and around the world - are just as apt to move into political opposition to Israel as the general population. That means that mass mobilizations that erupt - like the ones involving tens and hundreds of thousands that have already happened - can undermine a key ideological foundation for Israel. This war could put Israel's position as a key military and ideological prop in the war on terror at risk.

This will be especially the case if Hamas, like Hezbollah, fights Israel to a standstill or makes the cost of the war high in terms of Israeli soldiers and the comforts of Israeli citizens and settlers. There should be no illusions that Hamas can "defeat" Israel but they can, as with all asymmetrical warfare, wear down the enemy. 

But even in the unlikely event that Israel is able to achieve a "total victory" there is still the growing danger that the Arab anger this present brutality has unleashed will destroy the American empire's already shaky hegemony in the Middle East. In Egypt there have been demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands, feeding into a pre-existing movement for labour rights and democratic change. In Lebanon Israel's slaughter will strengthen Hezbollah and other resistance organizations. The rule of Jordan's "liberal" monarchy is also being tested as the Saudi regime's regional and domestic leadership is undermined. The Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 is now truly dead - perhaps the last gasp of the two state solution and any claim by Arab leaders to be able to provide a way out of the impasse.

If these regimes begin to collapse - and Egypt's is the one to watch - it will signal the collapse of four decades of work to create a compliant network of pro-American regimes, with Egypt as the jewel in the crown. America's rulers, already frustrated with Israel's failure in Lebanon to weaken Iran, may begin to raise graver doubts about the utility of Israel's Iron Wall strategy.

Israel truly has everything to lose in this battle and very little that it can possibly gain. Fifty years should have made clear that the spirit of the Palestinians cannot be broken. And the time has passed when it would be politically possible for Israel to exterminate or totally cleanse the Palestinian population. The end game may yet be a long way off, but that it approaches shouldn't be doubted.

Israel Wants Only War And Genocide

With the sycophantic aid of the world's media, Israeli political leaders constantly claim that there is nobody to talk to on the Palestinian side. As though the issue were a matter of negotiation - Israel illegally occupies Palestinian land, full stop. Until that ends, Israel is a rogue state, standing outside of international law on this and many other questions.

But even this fails to take note of the fact that the entire Israeli nation resides on land stolen from Palestinian Arabs. This has been sanctified by the UN and the world's major powers for the simple reason that Israel performs the useful function of regional watch dog for the dominant empire of the day - previously the British & French (see the Suez Crisis of 1956), later the Americans.

Nonetheless, the utter deceipt and racism of Israeli state politics deserves to be exposed over and over again, if only for the simple reason that each act of deceipt and violence is forgotten as soon as it is perpetrated and the long-suffering Palestinians who dare to raise their heads and demand, even plead, for justice, are condemned as extremists and liquidated with 1,000 lbs bombs. 

Palestinian leaders like Arafat and Abbas who are only too happy to take Israeli gold in return, are labelled as ineffectual or corrupted when they are unable to pacify Palestinian resistance on behalf of the Israelis and Americans - using American counter-insurgency training and even some American small arms (never enough to turn them on their Israeli masters, of course).
And so here is a small selection of choice quotes to demonstrate that Israeli is a vicious regime, hell-bent on genocide, rather than on negotiating even the most truncated, neutered and poverty-ridden Palestinian state.

Dov Weisglass, Prime Minister Sharon's advisor, on the Gaza withdrawal in 2004: "The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians." And he goes on: "When you freeze [the peace] process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the [Palestinian] refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.
"Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda.
"And all this with authority and permission. All with a [US] presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress."

The very same Weisglass was quoted in relation to the Israeli state's intended response to the democratic election of Hamas in 2006 - an election that the Americans and Israel demanded. Here is how he described their intended response: "It's like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die." 

The Haaretz article notes that this quote emerged from a meeting of a team assembled to respond to the situation: "The team, headed by the prime minister's advisor Dov Weissglas and including the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, the director of the Shin Bet and senior generals and officials, convened for a discussion with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on ways to respond to the Hamas election victory. Everyone agreed on the need to impose an economic siege on the Palestinian Authority..."
Certainly the Israelis aren't the first to use food as a weapon against weaker opponents, in order to crush all possibility of resistance. The Nazis used the same tactic against Jewish ghettos in World War 2. As discussed on a Holocaust eduction website:
"It is one of the cruelest weapons war, because deaths caused by starvation are protracted, involve great suffering and anxiety, and take their toll also in disease long before death, and malnutrition causes vitamin-deficiency diseases and related problems, and later breaks down the immune system. In WWII, the Nazis purposely reduced the amount of food to Jewish Ghettos and Camps leaving even the working residents half-starved... The starvation diet killed many, especially the weak and elderly without lifting a gun, and left the rest of the populace of [Warsaw] and other ghettos too weak to provide much resistance."
This tactic was systematized, like everything the Germans did in relation to the Final Solution, to an industrial precision. Starvation proceeded according to something called "The Caloric Reduction Intake Schedule".
Of course, none of this is accidental or the result of the bad politics of this or that Israeli leader. It has been the strategy of Israel from the beginning to eliminate the Palestinians.

As David Ben-Gurion noted in 1938, ten years before Israel's existence: "Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country."

The means to achieve the goal was also established early on: the locals should be provoked and then crushed when they respond. It is the method of a vise - don't resist and be eliminated in the most brutal manner; resist and be eliminated in the most brutal manner.

As Israeli Commander Moshe Dayan wrote in 1955: “Israel must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no – it must – invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation and revenge…”
And that is exactly what they have done, at every hint of a peace initiative, Israel has gone out of its way to "invent dangers" via the "method of provocation" in order to destroy such initiatives. As Marwan Bishara argued in The Nation of July 5, 2006:
"On July 31, 2001, Israel's assassination of the two leading Hamas militants in Nablus ended a nearly two-month Hamas cease-fire, leading to the terrible August 9 Hamas suicide bombing in a Jerusalem pizzeria. On July 22, 2002, an Israeli air attack on a crowded apartment block in Gaza City killed a senior Hamas leader, Salah Shehada, and fourteen civilians, nine of them children, hours before a widely reported unilateral cease-fire declaration. A suicide bombing followed on August 4. On June 10, 2003, Israel's attempted assassination of the senior Hamas political leader in Gaza, Abdel-Aziz al-Rantisi, which wounded him and killed four Palestinian civilians, led to a bus bombing in Jerusalem on June 11 that killed sixteen Israelis."
He could have added that Hamas offered a ten year truce to Israel at the beginning of 2004. Israel's response was to assassinate Hamas' leader Sheikh Yassin a few months later, followed by his successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, who made the truce offer, a few weeks after that.
For Israel the worst possible scenario is the establishment of a lasting peace. Peace would put an end to the expansion of Israel and expansion is precisely the life-blood of Israel. As former Prime Minister Menachem Begin put it in 1948:

"The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized .... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever."

And as Benyamin Netanyahu, former and probably the next Israeli Prime Minister stated in 1989: "Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."

Thus Israel has broken every peace initiative, every unilateral or bilateral ceasefire between it and the Palestinians - then blamed it on the Palestinians as an excuse for imposing yet further brutality.
The present assault is no different - Hamas agreed a ceasefire earlier this year and stuck to it, while Israel continued the inhuman and illegal blockade and used the distraction of the November 4 US presidential elections to kill several Hamas leaders and break the ceasefire.
What this makes clear is that the Palestinians have no "partner" with whom to make peace. Israel will only make peace with its neighbours and Palestinians will only win civil and democratic rights on their land, when Israel has been utterly defeated. That will require several things. First and foremost, forcing the US government to withdraw support. And that is only possible when it is clear that Israel's extremist policy is a threat to American interests in the Middle East and/or as a result of the pressure of a popular movement in the US.

Arab Anger Gives Hope To Gaza

Stepping outside the borders of Gaza, a sea of anger is visibly rising. It threatens to wash away the detritus of American imperialism in the region; the Arab ruling classes of Egypt, Jordan and beyond.
That the dictatorial governments of Jordan and Egypt are bought and paid for is utterly apparent to all but the North American and European media. They endlessly insist on calling them “moderate Arab regimes”. You’d think this were a compliment if you didn’t know that this is a region where extreme solutions are the only viable ones.
But the New York Times is happy to let the cat out of the bag: being moderate means being pro-American. It doesn’t matter if you cut the heads off of political opponents and prevent women from driving. It doesn’t matter that you slaughter, repress, censor or engage in any number of other repulsive practices: if you will kiss Uncle Sam’s ass, you’re a moderate. Robert Fisk summed it up well :
“As usual, the Arab satraps – largely paid and armed by the West – are silent, preposterously calling for an Arab summit on the crisis which will (if it even takes place), appoint an "action committee" to draw up a report which will never be written. For that is the way with the Arab world and its corrupt rulers.”
Luckily, the idiot kings and dictators of Egypt and Jordan face a growing wrath. Egypt in particular has seen an explosion of militancy in recent years, including a growing confidence to challenge America’s favourite president-for-life, Hosni Mubarak. It was only severe repression earlier this year that prevented a growing labour insurgency from turning into a general strike, rooted in the giant textile mills of Malhalla, Egypt.
That anger still exists and the confidence remains unbroken. The present slaughter in Gaza is creating a special crisis for Egypt because it has locked down its Gaza border, preventing at gunpoint desperate Palestinians trying to escape.
“The largest protests against the Israeli bombardment of Gaza were in Egypt, where 8,000 demonstrated in the southern city of Aysut, 4,000 protested in the capital Cairo and 4,000 in Alexandria. In total, more than 50,000 demonstrated in Egyptian cities on Sunday, led by the Islamist opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, out of which Hamas first emerged.”
Within Iraq anger at the slaughter is acting as a catalyst to unite Sunni, Shia – and even Kurds in the north. Israel is undermining all of America’s good work of divide. The war against Gaza could make life difficult for America in Iraq.
In Jordan, which has long aided Israel, including a massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians during Black September, 1970, protests continued across the country.
In Lebanon, which has also suffered under the blows of Israel’s American-made weapons, and which sent the Israeli’s scurrying back across the border on more than one occasion, there was a mass demonstration of tens of thousands that pledged solidarity with the suffering Palestinians.
And, of course, within Israel/Palestine itself the assault is pushing more Palestinians towards support for Hamas and leading to greater unrest – including riots and protests - in the areas controlled by the corrupt satraps of Abbas’ Palestinian Authority.
It’s this explosion of anger that has pushed the Americans and the so-called Quartet to press Israel to agree a ceasefire. So far Israel has resisted the pressure but if the mobilizations and pressure rises in Egypt or Jordan, watch America move to rein in its high priced watchdog. It can't come a moment too soon.

Media Lies And Palestine

Well, another day another blown up house in Gaza. Just add it to the list. Don’t worry though – it wasn’t the Israelis, it was just a coincidence that one of their F-15s flew overhead right before the explosion, which killed not just a Palestinian militant but his wife and kids, plus another 17 local children. And even if it was the Israelis, well, it’s just a response to Palestinian terror. Right?
The way the media spins it, everything that happens in Palestine/Israel is the result of those unruly Palestinians. They’re just so…so extreme. Can you imagine, firing rockets into Israel?
Of course, the reporting on Israel’s regular bombardments with helicopter gunships, tanks and jet fighters – provided by US taxpayers for America’s most important military base, I mean ally – is either non-existent or makes it seem like poor Israel is besieged by irrational lunatics. So, for instance, a Globe & Mail story that was online Sunday said that Israeli Prime Minister Olmert had given his military a “free hand” after a Palestinian rocket “slammed” into a house in Israel on Saturday.
They don’t mention that the rocket attack was a response to Israeli bombardment that happened on Friday, and which killed 8 people and wounded dozens of others. They also don’t mention that Israel has been bombing and invading Gaza almost every day of the week since Hamas took over, in order to break the Palestinians’ resistance.
Nor is it ever mentioned that the Palestinians have been systematically robbed of their land and dignity within living memory, nor that the Israeli ‘security wall’ is being used to expand Israel’s borders, separate Palestinian towns from their agricultural fields and olive groves (regular bulldozed to expand settlements).
Even now, Gaza is the world’s largest open-air prison with an illegal Israeli lockdown on fuel and medical supplies, even food. As Israeli officials were noting publicly back in 2006:
“Israel's policy was summed up by Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, earlier this year. 'The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,' he said. The hunger pangs are supposed to encourage the Palestinians to force Hamas to change its attitude towards Israel or force Hamas out of government.”
By the way, collective punishment is a war crime and is disturbingly reminiscent of the treatment meted out to Jewish populations in Europe under the Nazis. I remember reading about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and how the Nazis sought to starve the Jews into submission and, ultimately out of existence.
And Israel regularly blows up any infrastructure that would allow the Palestinians to maintain some self-sufficiency, starting with Gaza’s only power plant. But it’s continued since then.

[An Israeli] warplane fired four missiles at a large vegetable storage facility in al-Shaboura refugee camp in Rafah. As a result, the facility was destroyed completely. The owners of the 800-square-meter facility estimated their loss at approximately $700,000 US. Forty workers at this facility, which is owned by Dr. Abdul-Hadi Qishta, lost their jobs.
The strike also targeted another vegetable factory owned by the Shabana Company. The factory's owners estimated their loss at approximately $350,000. The factory employed 80 workers in two shifts. Fourteen houses in the area were damaged partially or severely; one of them was destroyed completely and its owner and his wife received minor injuries. These fourteen homes were inhabited by 106 persons. Ten citizens were injured in this shelling; most of them were children.
Later that night, at approximately 11:55pm, IOF warplanes launched four air strikes at an unfinished training site in the town of Bani Suhaila, east of Khan Younis. The attack caused damage to the building.
A few minutes later, at approximately 12:30am (10 February), IOF warplanes fired a missile at a steel factory in al-Zaitoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, destroying it completely and causing severe damage to a nearby workshop. The factory is owned by Yasin al-Madhoun. The shelling also caused damage to many houses and injury to 13 people from the neighborhood, including four children and six women.

Is it any wonder that the Palestinians celebrated when the border with Egypt came down? It was the worlds largest prison break, no matter how much western and Israeli media tried to spin it as some kind of frivolous shopping spree. It was desperation and resistance. It's clear that Israel will continue to produce the former and that the Palestinians have no choice but to continue the latter. And the media will continue to lie about both.
But let's not kid ourselves, when one side has helicopter gunships, jet fighters, nukes and tank brigades and the other side has to stuff pieces of metal into tennis ball tubes to use them as missiles, there is no symmetry. When one side is the largest recipient of US aid - receiving as much as the entire rest of the US aid budget. When one side can starve, colonize, invade, harass and blow up the other side at will, the actions of those who are being starved, colonized and blown up are acts of resistance. The real terrorists are those who hide behind the 5th most powerful army in the world, supported by the most powerful empire in world history, to kill the indigenous populations of this tragic land.