The Newest Spectator Sport

Sometimes it's tough living in the suburbs, trying to find something to do. Everything's so homogenized and alienating and you can only wander around the shopping malls so many times, right?

When I was a kid my grandparents used to take us to the airport to do some planespotting. I shit you not. We'd sit on the road at the end of the runway and watch planes take-off, taking turns with the binoculars, while they smoked cigarettes. It was a nice way to spend time with my grandparents and the memory has obviously stayed with me - even if it's kind of a weird past-time now when I think about it.

Well, if you're in Israel you don't have to watch anything so boring as some dumb old jumbo jets taking off, flying people to Disney World in Florida. No, you can set up your lawn chair and watch the Israeli Army and Air Force slaughter unarmed Palestinian civilians. "Forget snuff films, honey. We're taking the kids to Gaza to see it live!"

IDF Leaves Wounded Children To Starve

The Israeli Defense Forces likes to big-up its commitment to "purity of arms". Well, allow me to suggest that this is just more of the usual horseshit. As proof for my claim I could point to any of a number of massacres of civilians by the IDF, the bombing of schools, aid convoys, what-have-you.
However, this particularly despicable incident says it all. There is coverage also in The Guardian newspaper in the UK, which adds to previous coverage of the incident, in which Israeli troops ordered up to 100 members of the same family to take shelter in a house in Zeitoun and then repeatedly shelled it killing dozens. But it doesn't end there:

The Red Cross workers found the small children, who were so weak they could not stand, sheltering next to the bodies of their mothers in a house in Zeitoun, southeast of Gaza City. Another man was found alive, but again too weak to stand. At least 12 bodies were lying on mattresses.
In another house nearby they found 15 survivors, several of whom were wounded. There were three more bodies in a third house. On Wednesday, a Palestinian volunteer with the Red Crescent who was in the same convoy described seeing dozens of dead bodies. Among those killed when the houses were shelled on Monday were three small boys, all from the Samouni family.
The Red Cross said Israeli soldiers were posted just 80 metres away and had several positions nearby, including two tanks.
It was a "shocking incident," said Pierre Wettach, head of the Red Cross delegation for Israel and the Palestinian territories. "The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded," he said.

I'm not sure where the purity of arms comes into play, or "fighting terrorist infrastructure". It seems that the Israelis have decided that Palestinian children are part of this infrastructure.

Major Union Leader Renews Israel Boycott Call

Sid Ryan, leader of the Ontario section of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the province's largest union, has renewed calls for a boycott against Israeli academics. He says that those academics who don't denounce Israel's assault on the Islamic University in Gaza ought to be prevented from speaking at Ontario universities.
Already there is the usual, expected hullaballoo from the various Israel-supporting Jewish organizations, including the pathetic old slander that attacking Israel is anti-Semitic. Bernie Farber, head of the CJC, has been throwing this about so long you'd think he'd get tired of it himself by now - but of course, the identification of Jewishness with Israel is a key prop of the Zionist regime.
Sadly, it is one that is supported by the scumbags and fundamentalist nutjobs in the Tory Party who run the Canadian government at the moment. MP Peter Kent, the junior foreign minister in the Conservative government has come out with statements even more crazily pro-Israel than the neo-con crazies who run the outgoing Whitehouse. Not an easy feat as you can imagine.
Kent's response to Israel's bombardment of a UN school, killing 30+ civilians, including children, is simply more of the usual vile anti-Arab racism typical of Israel and its supporters:

“We really don't have complete details yet, other than the fact that we know that Hamas has made a habit of using civilians and civilian infrastructure as shields for their terrorist activities, and that would seem to be the case again today,” he said in an interview.
He added: “In many ways, Hamas behaves as if they are trying to have more of their people killed to make a terrible terrorist point.”

As Robert Fisk points out, this is all of the usual fare for Israel and its pathetic hangers-on:

"I write the following without the slightest doubt: we'll hear all these scandalous fabrications again. We'll have the Hamas-to-blame lie – heaven knows, there is enough to blame them for without adding this crime – and we may well have the bodies-from-the-cemetery lie and we'll almost certainly have the Hamas-was-in-the-UN-school lie and we will very definitely have the anti-Semitism lie. And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn't. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians."

Luckily, the tide is turning against this lot - as masses of people take to the streets internationally, including 10,000 in Toronto last weekend, with another demonstration this Saturday. Even the leader of Britain's third party, the Liberal Democrats, has called for a suspension of arms sales to Israel and has condemned the assault. In Venezuela, good old Chavez has sent the Israeli ambassador packing in protest against the assault on Gaza. And never one to miss an opportunity to have a poke at the imperialists, Chavez offered his opinion of Israel's military: "They are cowards - bombing innocent people. What great soldiers they are, how brave the soldiers of Israel are."
Back here in Canada, the cant of Jewish "leaders" like Mr. Farber is thankfully being undermined by some of the youth of the Jewish community. Over at YayaCanada, there is "An Open Letter From Anti-Zionist Youth in Canada", signed by dozens. It deserves to be promoted widely and reads, in part:

"We are calling for a solidarity that stretches beyond borders and nationalities. Israel's violent actions will only serve to further isolate the state and its citizens from the rest of the world. By calling itself a Jewish state and committing war crimes in the name of Jews everywhere, Israel makes the world even less safe for Jews, leading to an increase in animus towards Jewish people around the world."

Such courage on the part of Ryan, the anti-Zionist youth and even from the leader of Britain's Lib Dems, gives me hope that the tide truly is turning against Israel with this latest round of atrocities. No longer can it expect to get away so easily with murder. With any luck, this latest stupidity will help to drive a stake through the heart of our wretched Conservative government.

DEMONSTRATE IN TORONTO AGAINST THE ISRAELI ASSAULT ON GAZA!

Dundas Square 

(facing Eaton's Centre, Dundas Station)

2pm on Saturday January 3rd, 2009

CONTACT:
Palestine House
info@palestinehouse.com

Demonstration Organized By:
Palestine House
Canadian Arab Federation
Women in Solidarity with Palestine (WSP)
Not In Our Name (NION): Jewish Voices Opposing Zionism
Muslim Association of Hamilton
International Jewish anti-Zionist Network – Toronto
Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid
Students Against Israeli Apartheid
Canadian Druze Society
Canadian Syrian Cultural Club
Al Huda
Islamic Relief
United SteelWorkers
CUPE , Ontario
Educators for Peace and Justice
Toronto Coalition against the War
Muslim Unity
Canadian Shia Muslims Organization ( CASMO)

Please send further organizational endorsements to: info@palestinehouse.com

Gaza Suffers In Vengeance For Lebanon

You could be excused for thinking that Israeli jets are bombing the hell out of Gaza in order to stop the missiles falling on southern Israel. Every mainstream news outlet in the western world has been spouting that line, direct from the propaganda offices in Tel Aviv. Too bad it's a lie.

See, here's the thing. Hamas and Israel had agreed a peace treaty that expired only a few weeks ago. You'd think that the problem was Hamas wouldn't renew it but the truth is that Israel violated it back in November, on the night of the US presidential election when most people were looking the other way. Israeli forces assassinated a number of leading Hamas members. What's more, the Israelis never implemented the terms of the treaty, which included lifting the horrific and illegal siege of Gaza, that has turned it into the world's largest open-air prison.

So, the idea that Israel was interested in peace with Hamas or is motivated by concern for the ineffectual rocket attacks on southern Israel is a non-starter. The present asymmetrical slaughter is motivated by two things:

1) Israel wants to restore its prestige after being humiliated by Hezbollah during its last invasion of Lebanon in 2006. As Mark Heller, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University put it: “There has been a nagging sense of uncertainty in the last couple years of whether anyone is really afraid of Israel anymore.” And, when you're a settler regime which owes its existence to the expulsion and continued exclusion and oppression of the indigenous Arab population - and you're surrounded by tens of millions more Arabs who understand that Israel's role is as America's enforcer - well, you better believe that maintaining fear is important. A bully who doesn't inspire fear isn't much of a bully. And if Israel isn't an effective bully, what use would it be to the United States, which forks over 1/3 of its entire direct foreign aid budget to Israel every year, plus billions more in indirect aid, loan forgiveness or just plain military hardware.

2) The present assault on Gaza has to be understood as part of the long term Israeli zionist project of all out genocide against the Palestinians. There have been detours, temporary pauses and the occasional minor reversal but Israel's leaders have never faltered in the long-term project to "spirit the penniless Arab population" out of greater Israel. This present assault is merely one more stepping stone on the way. 

Will it work? The Palestinians are a proud and tenacious people who have endured generations of Israeli brutality (with the full support of the United States of America, history's most powerful and most vicious empire). The present bloodletting is unlikely to break them now. In fact, if anything, this will probably strengthen the hand of Hamas in the West Bank, now ruled by the quislings of the Palestine Authority under "president" Mahmoud Abbas. There is the danger that the strengthening of Hamas will provide an excuse to extend the horror from Gaza into the West Bank, to drive forward the genocide project.

But Israel is on increasingly thin ice regionally. The Palestinians never stood a chance on their own. They need the power of the Arab masses, particularly those in Egypt. Israel and the United States know this, that's why Egypt's ruling elite gets a fat paycheque from the US government every year - to keep their population down. But the Egyptian workers and peasants are increasingly restive, with strike waves and a burgeoning independent union movement, alongside a growing sense that Mubarak's pathetic dynasty must go. If Israel pushes too far they may topple the only Arab regime that really matters for their survival. Revelations that the Egyptian government may well have aided the Israelis in tricking Hamas into thinking an attack was unlikely will further inflame ordinary Egyptians. Already thousands are protesting around the Arab world. Israel is playing with fire, with its usual arrogance, we can only hope that, like 2006, its fingers get burned.