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Israel’s ‘Fait Accompli’ in Gaza
Eric Margolis
Lew Rockwell.com
Monday, Jan 5, 2008
There are two completely different versions of what is currently happening in Gaza.
In the Israeli and North American press version, Hamas – “Islamic terrorists” backed by Iran – have in an unprovoked attack fired deadly rockets on innocent Israel with the intent of destroying the Jewish state.
North American politicians and the media say Israel “has the right to defend itself.”
True enough. No Israeli government can tolerate rockets hitting its towns, even though the casualty totals have been less than the car crash fatalities registered during a single holiday weekend on Israel’s roads.
The firing of the feeble, homemade al-Qassam rockets by Palestinians is both useless and counterproductive.
It damages their image as an oppressed people and gives right-wing Israeli extremists a perfect reason to launch more attacks on the Arabs and refuse to discuss peace.
Israel’s supporters insist it has the absolute right to drop hundreds of tons of bombs on “Hamas targets” inside the 360 sq km Gaza Strip to “take out the terrorists.”
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
Civilians suffer, says Israel, because the cowardly Hamas hide among them.
Actually, it is more like shooting fish in a barrel.
Omitting facts
As usual, this cartoon-like version of events omits a great deal of nuance and background.
While firing rockets at civilians is a crime so, too, is the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which is an egregious violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions.
According to the UN, most of Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinian refugees subsist near the edge of hunger. Seventy per cent of Palestinian children in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition and psychological trauma.
Medical facilities are critically short of doctors, personnel, equipment, and drugs. Gaza has quite literally become a human garbage dump for all the Arabs that Israel does not want.
Gaza is one of the world’s most-densely populated places, a vast outdoor prison camp filled with desperate people. In the past, they threw stones at their Israeli occupiers; now they launch homemade rockets.
Call it a prison riot, writ large.
Eyeing the elections
When the so-called truce between Tel Aviv and Hamas expired on December 19, Israeli politicians were in the throes of preparing for the February 10 national elections.
Israeli politics are playing a key role in this crisis.
Ehud Barak, the defense minister and leader of the Labour party, and Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and leader of the Kadima party, are trying to prove themselves tougher than Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line Likud party – and one another.
Israel’s elections are only six weeks away, and Likud was leading until the air raids on Gaza began. Kadima and Labour are now up in the polls.
The heavy attacks on Gaza are also designed to intimidate Israel’s Arab neighbors, and make up for Israel’s humiliating 2006 defeat in Lebanon, which still haunts the country’s politicians and generals.
A fait accompli
When the air raids on Gaza began, Barak said: “We have totally changed the rules of the game.”
He was right. By blitzing Hamas-run Gaza, Barak presented the incoming US administration with a fait accompli, and neatly checkmated the newest player in the Middle East Great Game – Barack Obama, the US president-elect – before he could even take a seat at the table.
The Israeli offensive into Gaza now looks likely to short-circuit any plans Obama might have had to press Israel into withdrawing to its pre-1967 borders and sharing Jerusalem.
This has pleased Israel’s supporters in North America who have been cheering the war in Gaza and have been backing away from their earlier tentative support for a land-for-peace deal.
Israel’s successes in having Western media portray the Gaza offensive as an “anti-terrorist operation” will also diminish hopes of peace talks any time soon.
Obama inherits this mess in a few weeks. During the elections, Obama bowed to the Israel lobby, offering a new US carte blanche to Israel and even accepting Israel’s permanent monopoly of all of Jerusalem.
As he concludes forming his cabinet, his Middle East team looks like it may be top-heavy with friends of Israel’s Labour party.
Obama keeps saying he must remain silent on policy issues until George Bush, the outgoing US president, leaves office, but his staff appear happy to avoid having to make statements about Gaza that would antagonize Israel’s American supporters.
Obama will take office facing a Middle East up in arms over Gaza and the entire Muslim world blaming the US for the carnage in Gaza.
Unless he moves swiftly to distance himself from the policies of the Bush administration, he will soon find himself facing the same problems and anger as the Bush White House.
Arab deal killed
Israel’s Gaza offensive is also likely to torpedo the current Saudi-sponsored peace plan, which had been backed by all members of the Arab League.
The plan, now likely defunct, had called for Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders and share Jerusalem in exchange for full recognition and normalized relations with the Muslim world.
Arab governments will now be unable to sell the deal as they face a storm of criticism from their own people over their powerlessness to help the Palestinians of Gaza.
Egypt, in particular, is being widely accused of collaborating with Israel in further sealing off and isolating Gaza. It seems highly unlikely they will be able to advance a peace plan with Israel for now.
This is a bonus for right-wing Israelis, who have always been dead set against any withdrawal and strongly supported the attack on Gaza.
Other Israeli factions who were always lukewarm about the Saudi peace plan are now unlikely to reconsider it.
Israel’s security establishment is committed to preventing the creation of a viable Palestinian state, and refuses to negotiate with Hamas. Unable to kill all of Hamas’ men, Israel is slowly destroying Gaza’s infrastructure around them, as it did to Yasser Arafat’s PLO.
Israel’s hardliners point to Gaza and claim that any Palestinian state on the West Bank would threaten their nation’s security by firing rockets into Israel’s heartland.
Mighty information machine
Israel is confident that its mighty information machine will allow it to weather the storm of worldwide outrage over its Biblical punishment of Gaza. Who remembers Israel’s flattening of parts of the Palestinian city of Jenin, or the US destruction in Falluja, Iraq, or the Sabra and Shatilla massacres in Beirut?
The US media has focused on the rockets being fired on Israel from Gaza.
Though the torment of Gaza is seen across the horrified Muslim world as a modern version of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising by Jews against the Nazis during World War Two, Western governments still appear bent on taking no action.
Though Israel’s use of American weapons against Gaza violates the US Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts, the docile US Congress will remain mute.
Israel’s assault on Gaza was clearly timed for America’s interregnum between administrations and the year-end holidays, a well-used Israeli tactic.
Hamas refuses to recognize Israel as long as Israel refuses to recognize Hamas and the rights of millions of homeless Palestinian refugees.
It calls for a non-religious state to be created in Palestine, meaning an end to Zionism. Ironically, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and late leader of Hamas, had spoken of a compromise with Tel Aviv shortly before he was assassinated by Israel in 2004.
An inherited mess
Israel’s hopes that it can bomb Gazans into rejecting Hamas are as ill-conceived as its failed attempt in 2006 to blast Lebanon into rejecting Hezbollah.
The Fatah regime on the West Bank installed by the US and Israel after Yasser Arafat’s suspicious death will be further discredited, leaving the militants of Hamas as the sole authentic voice of Palestinian nationalism.
Hamas, the militant but still democratically elected government of Gaza, is even less likely to compromise.
The Muslim world is in a rage. But so what? Stalin liked to say “the dogs bark, and the caravan moves on,” and as long as the US gives Israel carte blanche, it can do just about anything it wants.
The tragedy of Palestine will thus continue to poison US relations with the Muslim world.
Those Americans who still do not understand why their nation was attacked on 9/11 need only look to Gaza, for which the US is now being blamed as much as Israel.
Unless Israel can make 5 to 7 million Palestinians disappear, it must find some way to coexist with them. Israeli leaders on the center and right continue to avoid facing this fact.
The brutal collective punishment inflicted on Gaza will likely strengthen Hamas and reverse any hopes of a Middle East peace in the coming years.
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17 Responses to “Israel’s ‘Fait Accompli’ in Gaza”
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January 5th, 2009 at 6:39 am
This can end if Israel does want to live in peace with its apartheid neighbors. They only have to negotiate and open the borders.
But NO! They have to listen to Bush who just wants to profit from selling weapons because he is a merchant of death.
http://prosecutegeorgebush.com/book.htm
January 5th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Americans do not understand why they have been attacked on Sept 11, 2001?????
Of course they do not! They keep believing that WTC fall down because of planes hit it, not the explosives that caused controlled demolition!
Wake up! Learn the basic physics.
Kerosine burns at 281C , steel is melting at 1200C as minimum.
Where the molten steel at ground Zero comes?
January 5th, 2009 at 8:01 am
INFORMATION IS THE BEST WEAPON TO USE AGAINST THESE NEO-SCUM BASTARDS !!
IT’S TIME FOR ALL INFOWARRIORS TO STEP UP, STEP FORWARD, AND POLLUTE THE
WORLD WITH OUR COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 1 LOVE !!!!!!!!!!!
TIME TO GIVE POWER BACK 2 THE PEOPLE, GIVEN BY THE PEOPLE, & GIVEN 4 THE PEOPLE
AND SO BEGINS THE REVOLUTION …………………………………………….
………”RON PAUL”……………………….”ALEX JONES”………………………….”DAVID ICKE”……….
…..FOR PRESIDENT…………….FOR VICE-PRESIDENT………….FOR SECRETARY-OF-STATE……..
January 5th, 2009 at 10:10 am
As usual Margolis gets it half right half wrong.
All of his points about Israel and Gaza that relate to fighting and Israeli elections are correct.
His pure unadulterated BULLSHIT about Obama would be comedy gold, if so many people didn’t believe it.
Obama is 100% owned by the US military industrial complex, and he has no intention of messing up the number one business of our nation, war.
His Hawaii trip, and his bloody vulgar henchman Rahm Emanuel on vacation in South Africa allow them both to avoid SUPPORTING the Gaza attacks, not avoid criticizing them as Margolis suggests.
The naive Obama kool aid drinkers must be allowed to maintain their fantasy world and remain apathetic. They are very good themselves at simply pulling the ostrich move and ignoring reality, but this Israeli bombing campaign pushes them to the limits.
Having Obama voice support for Israeli murder might actually push a few of the Obama worshipers to see reality.
Margolis is part of the machinery that perpetrates the two party myth.
I don’t mind that Alex features him here on PP, but there is no way Margolis should expect a free pass on his ridiculous lies about Obama.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:19 am
I am disappointed in Lew Rockwell’s reference to 9/11 as an Arab attack. He knows better. Our efforts for peace and liberty will be for nought if we continue to kowtow to this lie….talk about fait accompli. Even the FBI admits there is no evidence Osama did 9/11. As long as we give implicit support for the war on terror by promulgating this propaganda, we ain’t got a chance….were just enabling the real terrorists. Speaking of which…..so who did do 9/11? The documentary ‘Fabled Enemies’ gives as good a run down as any….Mossad.
Until we frame the problem properly and truthfully, we have little chance of finding its solution. So get with it Lew…..take a lesson from Chamberlain. Judism is being held captive by the Zionist war machine. We can’t help them with false paradigms.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
dont fool yourself isreal. gaza is an impenetrable fortress. they have walls of arabs with machetes and pitchforks ready to attack. beware. not like shutting off their supply lines does much anyways.
January 5th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I have a hard time understanding how people that claim to follow God’s will, and claim to study the bible, believe they are correct in waging wars and yet will not follow the commandments.
The Jewish faith, the Islamic faith, the Christian faith, in fact all faiths, claim to follow God’s will.
We can see by their examples that those that do not.
Woe unto the people that do not understand the simple commandment..
“Thou shalt NOT KILL!”
Those that cannot follow this simple rule prove that they are liars that only use their own concept of God and their particular spin on religion to control, steal and to murder.
By not following this simple rule they also prove they do NOT believe there is a God, no matter how much their lips may flap.
They prove that they are the Children of the Darkness.
Those of any faith/path, lack there of or athiests, that do stand up against wars, murders, liars, rapists, abusers and thieves, are the true Children of the Light.
By their “fruits”/actions/inactions/results, we shall know them.
Too bad all this energy, money, lives and devotion is not being put towards making this a planet of peace, health, abundance and prosperity for ALL.
January 5th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Thanks for taking away medical school, thanks for brainwashing my parents (your carefully groomed goym cattle propaganda and 9/11 mythos consumers), thanks for the checkpoint-hell apartheid against the strong young men in the airports and at the US border, thanks for sabotaging airplanes and blaming us, thanks for dealing drugs and blaming us, thanks for dominating and subjugating the US with your big, slick prisons and protection rackets. DHS is a protection racket! International air travel is a protection racket! The EU is a protection racket! Everywhere, the Judeo-fascists grab guns, and demand guns only for themselves! What a nightmare, obsessive-compulsive, gun-grabbing, medical-school-blocking assassins who like to cross dress a little! Very sexy men but it’s a big headache for us, all your problems! Judeo-fascist judenrats, you are a scourge! You are a curse! Get out of my country! Your stench is everywhere! Shoving Hillary “The Mockingbird” Clinton in our faces for 16 years wasn’t long enough, eh? Trashy nightmare creature, you funded her against our will. And you laugh about it! Big Jewish joke, all of these broken countries filled with cattle and police, eh? What goes around, comes around, “old friend”, so you keep tabs on that! Shalom to the good ones and bambinos, you don’t be shy, afraid or offended.
January 5th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
New Nazis
January 5th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
God protects the Jewish people even though you try and kill them!
http://www.israelnationalnews......spx/128897
Missile and Mortar Attacks on Israel Pass 10,000 Mark
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
(IsraelNN.com) Gaza terrorists escalated attacks on the western Negev Tuesday, pushing to 10,046 the number of mortar and rocket attacks the past eight years…
One Israeli suffered shock in the latest barrage, which included five Kassam rockets and a mortar shell. One rocket exploded in a soccer field next to the Sapir College, located adjacent to Sderot, and the other rockets landed in open areas outside the city. The IDF identified and hit a Kassam launcher in northern Gaza, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced that he would continue diplomatic non-military retaliation by keeping Gaza crossings closed and preventing trucks from bringing goods into the region…
Media outlets have been emphasizing December 19 as the end of six months since outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to the June 19 ceasefire, although no expiry date was set in the unsigned agreement. Hamas has adopted the date as the end of the pact and has threatened to consider the agreement void even thought it already does not exist in practice…
More than 225 attacks were registered in the past six weeks, and the Sderot Media Center reported that 7,000 mortars and rockets have been fired since Israel executed the “Disengagement” program in the summer of 2005. The government expelled more than 7,000 Jewish residents of Gush Katif and northern Gaza, withdrew all military personnel and surrendered control of the Philadelphi Route, which includes the Rafiah area used to smuggle explosives and weapons into Gaza…
January 6th, 2009 at 4:47 am
FCUK THOSE NEO-SCUM MUTHAFUKAZ, BOY BUSH & O”BAAAA”MA BIN LADEN TOO !!
INFOWARRIORS ? STEP-UP TO THE FRONTLINE, & LET’S COMMENCE OUR INFOWAR !!!
RETURN POWER 2 THE PEOPLE, RETURNED BY THE PEOPLE, AND 4 THE PEOPLE
* RON PAUL….4….PRESIDENT *
* ALEX JONES….4…..VICE-PRESIDENT *
* DAVID ICKE…….4……SECRETARY-OF-STATE *
January 6th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Margolis suffers from NWO tunnel vision. Yes, the NWO is real, but so is Islamic fundamentalism, which Margolis appears to entirely overlook. The problem with the simple-minded idea that Israel can solve this problem by giving land for peace is clear. Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon and then was attacked by Hezbala rocket fire. They unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and they were attacked by Hamas rocket fire. Do we see a pattern here folks? Giving up land only allows the Islamic terrorists to have a more advantageous position from which to attack Israel. If Israel were to give up part of Jerusalem and the West Bank for peace do you really think the Islamic terrorists would just go away? That’s nonsense. They would do as they have done in the past, using their new territory to attack Israel further. The reason they attack Israel is not because they want a state of their own. That is a goal that we in the West imagine as a solution for them, but it is not what they are after at all. They are very forthright in stating what they want. THEY WANT ALL THE LAND and THEY WANT ISRAEL DESTROYED. They consider it a religious duty to kill both Israel and Israelis. Absolutely nothing that Israel can do will ever change that, since it is a core religious ideal. Such religious ideals are not open to negotiation, nor can they be bought at any price. That is why it is not Israel’s reluctance that derails any hope for a workable peace deal. The real culprit is unrelenting Islamic radicalism that simply cannot be satisfied with anything but Israeli blood. When you come up with a real solution to that core issue you may be justified to criticize Israelis for not wanting to give away more land for peace. Till then sane people everywhere will understand from a gut level why Israel doesn’t want to give its radical enemies free reign to attack and kill them. Like you and I, they don’t want to give up whatever measure of safety they already have for a pie-in-the-sky dream that can never bring peace but is sure to bring them only more destruction and death. Israel has only one visible route to survival. They must be stronger than their enemies who seek to destroy them. The minute that’s not true anymore then their enemies will do as they have vowed and “wipe Israel off the map.” You might like that, but don’t expect Israel to let that happen as long as they have the power to prevent it.
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