On Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at 1:03:28 AM UTC-5, Tell it like it is. wrote:
On May 1, 12:43 am, HHW <coaster132...@yahoo.com> wrote:
WORLD
AlterNet / By Noam Chomsky 578 COMMENTS
Noam Chomsky: What the American Media Won't Tell You About Israel
The savage punishment of Gaza traces back to decades ago.
The Israeli air force struck a UN building during the assault on Gaza
in 2008-09.
Photo Credit: ISM Palestine/Wikimedia Commons
December 3, 2012 |
An old man in Gaza held a placard that read: “You take my water, burn
my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison
my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all,
humiliate us all, but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.”
The old man’s message provides the proper context for the latest
episode in the savage punishment of Gaza. The crimes trace back to
1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled from their homes
in terror or were expelled to Gaza by conquering Israeli forces, who continued to truck Palestinians over the border for years after the official cease-fire.
The punishment took new forms when Israel conquered Gaza in 1967. From recent Israeli scholarship (primarily Avi Raz’s “The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the
June 1967 War”), we learn that the government’s goal was to drive the refugees into the Sinai Peninsula – and, if feasible, the rest of the population too.
Expulsions from Gaza were carried out under the direct orders of Gen. Yeshayahu Gavish, commander of the Israel Defense Forces Southern
Command. Expulsions from the West Bank were far more extreme, and
Israel resorted to devious means to prevent the return of those
expelled, in direct violation of U.N. Security Council orders.
The reasons were made clear in internal discussions immediately after
the war. Golda Meir, later prime minister, informed her Labor Party colleagues that Israel should keep the Gaza Strip while “getting rid
of its Arabs.” Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and others agreed.
Prime Minister Levi Eshkol explained that those expelled could not be allowed to return because “we cannot increase the Arab population in Israel” – referring to the newly occupied territories, already considered part of Israel.
In accord with this conception, all of Israel’s maps were changed, expunging the Green Line (the internationally recognized borders) – though publication of the maps was delayed to permit Abba Eban, an
Israeli ambassador to the U.N., to attain what he called a “favorable impasse” at the General Assembly by concealing Israel’s intentions.
The goals of expulsion may remain alive today, and might be a factor
in contributing to Egypt’s reluctance to open the border to free
passage of people and goods barred by the U.S.-backed Israeli siege.
The current upsurge of U.S.-Israeli violence dates to January 2006,
when Palestinians voted “the wrong way” in the first free election in the Arab world.
Israel and the U.S. reacted at once with harsh punishment of the miscreants, and preparation of a military coup to overthrow the
elected government – the routine procedure. The punishment was
radically intensified in 2007, when the coup attempt was beaten back
and the elected Hamas government established full control over Gaza.
Ignoring immediate offers from Hamas for a truce after the 2006
election, Israel launched attacks that killed 660 Palestinians in
2006, most of whom were civilians (a third were minors). According to
U.N. reports, 2,879 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire from
April 2006 through July 2012, along with several dozen Israelis killed
by fire from Gaza.
A short-lived truce in 2008 was honored by Hamas until Israel broke it
in November. Ignoring further truce offers, Israel launched the
murderous Cast Lead operation in December.
So matters have continued, while the U.S. and Israel also continue to reject Hamas calls for a long-term truce and a political settlement
for a two-state solution in accord with the international consensus
that the U.S. has blocked since 1976 when the U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution to this effect, brought by the major Arab states.
This week, Washington devoted every effort to blocking a Palestinian initiative to upgrade its status at the U.N. but failed, in virtual international isolation as usual. The reasons were revealing:
Palestine might approach the International Criminal Court about
Israel’s U.S.-backed crimes.
One element of the unremitting torture of Gaza is Israel’s “buffer zone” within Gaza, from which Palestinians are barred entry to almost half of Gaza’s limited arable land.
From January 2012 to the launching of Israel’s latest killing spree on Nov. 14, Operation Pillar of Defense, one Israeli was killed by fire
from Gaza while 78 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire.
The full story is naturally more complex, and uglier.
The first act of Operation Pillar of Defense was to murder Ahmed
Jabari. Aluf Benn, editor of the newspaper Haaretz, describes him as Israel’s “subcontractor” and “border guard” in Gaza, who enforced
relative quiet there for more than five years.
The pretext for the assassination was that during these five years
Jabari had been creating a Hamas military force, with missiles from
Iran. A more credible reason was provided by Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin, who had been involved in direct negotiations with
Jabari for years, including plans for the eventual release of the
captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Baskin reports that hours before he was assassinated, Jabari “received the draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel, which included mechanisms for maintaining the cease-fire in the case of a flare-up between Israel and the factions in the Gaza Strip.”
A truce was then in place, called by Hamas on Nov. 12. Israel
apparently exploited the truce, Reuters reports, directing attention
to the Syrian border in the hope that Hamas leaders would relax their guard and be easier to assassinate.
Throughout these years, Gaza has been kept on a level of bare
survival, imprisoned by land, sea and air. On the eve of the latest attack, the U.N. reported that 40 percent of essential drugs and more
than half of essential medical items were out of stock.
In November one of the first in a series of hideous photos sent from
Gaza showed a doctor holding the charred corpse of a murdered child.
That one had a personal resonance. The doctor is the director and head
of surgery at Khan Yunis hospital, which I had visited a few weeks earlier.
In writing about the trip I reported his passionate appeal for
desperately needed medicine and surgical equipment. These are among
the crimes of the U.S.-Israeli siege, and of Egyptian complicity.
The casualty rates from the November episode were about average: more
than 160 Palestinian dead, including many children, and six Israelis.
Among the dead were three journalists. The official Israeli
justification was that “The targets are people who have relevance to terror activity.” Reporting the “execution” in The New York Times, the
reporter David Carr observed that “it has come to this: Killing
members of the news media can be justified by a phrase as amorphous as ‘relevance to terror activity.’ ”
The massive destruction was all in Gaza. Israel used advanced U.S. military equipment and relied on U.S. diplomatic support, including
the usual U.S. intervention efforts to block a Security Council call
for a cease-fire.
With each such exploit, Israel’s global image erodes. The photos and videos of terror and devastation, and the character of the conflict,
leave few remaining shreds of credibility to the self-declared “most moral army in the world,” at least among people whose eyes are open.
The pretexts for the assault were also the usual ones. We can put
aside the predictable declarations of the perpetrators in Israel and Washington. But even decent people ask what Israel should do when
attacked by a barrage of missiles. It’s a fair question, and there are straightforward answers.
One response would be to observe international law, which allows the
use of force without Security Council authorization in exactly one
case: in self-defense after informing the Security Council of an armed attack, until the Council acts, in accord with the U.N. Charter,
Article 51.
Israel is well familiar with that Charter provision, which it invoked
at the outbreak of the June 1967 war. But, of course, Israel’s appeal went nowhere when it was quickly ascertained that Israel had launched
the attack. Israel did not follow this course in November, knowing
what would be revealed in a Security Council debate.
Another narrow response would be to agree to a truce, as appeared
quite possible before the operation was launched on Nov. 14.
There are more far-reaching responses. By coincidence, one is
discussed in the current issue of the journal National Interest. Asia scholars Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen describe China’s reaction after rioting in western Xinjiang province, “in which mobs of Uighurs marched around the city beating hapless Han (Chinese) to
death.”
Chinese president Hu Jintao quickly flew to the province to take
charge; senior leaders in the security establishment were fired; and a wide range of development projects were undertaken to address
underlying causes of the unrest.
In Gaza, too, a civilized reaction is possible. The U.S. and Israel
could end the merciless, unremitting assault, open the borders and
provide for reconstruction – and if it were imaginable, reparations
for decades of violence and repression.
The cease-fire agreement stated that the measures to implement the end
of the siege and the targeting of residents in border areas “shall be dealt with after 24 hours from the start of the cease-fire.”
There is no sign of steps in this direction. Nor is there any
indication of a U.S.-Israeli willingness to rescind their separation
of Gaza from the West Bank in violation of the Oslo Accords, to end
the illegal settlement and development programs in the West Bank that
are designed to undermine a political settlement, or in any other way
to abandon the rejectionism of the past decades.
Someday, and it must be soon, the world will respond to the plea
issued by the distinguished Gazan human-rights lawyer Raji Sourani
while the bombs were once again raining down on defenseless civilians
in Gaza: “We demand justice and accountability. We dream of a normal life, in freedom and dignity.”
Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics and philosophy at MIT.
Every Christian American knows what they would
do in Palestine and Israel to bring justice and peace to that region
of the earth. Unfortunately, in a real world what is unfolding in THE
HOLY LAND is plain as the nose on a man's face. Everyone knows what is taking place since 1948 , but it is fascinating to watch the cowardice
and hypocrisy by which actions are defined by people in public office constrained by a hundred Zionist Organizations in the United States.
The fact is Zionism and Communism developed
in the ghettos of Russia. The Zionism for the Middle East and the
Communism for Christian Russia. Chomsky and Dershowitz met each other
in the Commie Camps which they attended during the summer months during their childhood.
Mommie was a Commie courtesy Makow and his website.
In 1913 international bankers notably Paul
Warburg brought the usurious business of banking international style
to America.
No president nor the US Congress tells the FED what to do..
The
frustration in Palestine is so great that they kill themselves:
suicide bombers. The FED is a violation of the US Constitution, it
must end.
one letter in a word as a typo can change the entire meaning of what was written and intended.
There is no way Congress can have a
balanced budget unless they control the money supply. Wall Street is corporate welfare. Our debt is nothing more or less than a wall street bailout. Companies that are insolvent go out of business. Wall street becomes insolvent, and American Taxes are diverted to make them
solvent. I call that corruption.
What crime did Christ commit in 33 A.D.?
The same crime every Christian commits by going to Church on Sunday. http://aipac.org
http://adl.org
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)