Thoughts On the Ongoing Massacres in Gaza - July 2018

Not- so- good afternoon

BOSTON GLOBE July 20. 2018

Just hours after Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned that Israel is gearing up to launch a "large and painful military operation" in Gaza that would rival Operation Protective Edge—a 2014 assault that killed more than 2,000 Palestinians—the Israeli military carried out "wide-scale" airstrikes and deployed tanks against “militant sites across Gaza on Friday following weekly anti-occupation protests along the border fence”.

WHY?

BOSTON GLOBE July 22, 2018

“Even after last week’s cease-fire ended the fiercest exchange of rocket fire and Israeli airstrikes since the 2014 war, incendiary kites and balloons continued to float from Gaza into Israel, setting off damaging fires to farmlands.”

That is what it says. Gazans continued to release incendiary kites and balloons from Gaza into Israel, which were said to have set “off damaging fires to farmlands”.

You heard it right. Israel carried out wide-ranging airstrikes and deployed tanks against (so it is said) “militant sites” because Palestinians, during their ongoing protest against intolerable living conditions had resorted to releasing incendiary kites and balloons.

Let me repeat that. Israel carried out wide-ranging airstrikes and deployed tanks against (so it is said) “militant sites” because Palestinians, during their ongoing protest against intolerable living conditions had resorted to releasing incendiary kites and balloons.

For some, this picture (by Carlin) is worth many articles describing the ongoing massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.

First, Israel converts de facto apartheid into de jure apartheid by enacting the Nation-State law.

Then it continues to massacre, and make life intolerable for, Palestinians in order to effect ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Gaza and in Israel.

Israel’s end-game for decades, its only goal, is, not a just peace or two-states but a West Bank with no Palestinians that can be annexed legally to Israel.  

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres responded to the ongoing massacre of Palestinians by Israel, saying “he was ‘gravely concerned” about the escalation and called on both sides to step back from the prospect of another devastating conflict adding  “Any further escalation will endanger the lives of Palestinians and Israelis alike, deepen the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and undermine current efforts to improve livelihoods.”

Yes. He called on “both sides” to step back.

You can be certain that his “whining” will be totally ineffective in pressuring Israel to end its 40 year brutal oppression.

Then there is the role of the United States in supporting the ongoing decade of massacres in Gaza.

The airstrikes began to slam Gaza just hours after Israeli soldiers gunned down at least three Palestinians during anti-occupation demonstrations. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says one of its soldiers was killed by retaliatory gunfire from the Palestinians. "Palestinian defense forces fired back at Israeli snipers who have been murdering Palestinian men, women, and children for weeks," noted journalist Ali Abunimah. Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, added: "Israeli snipers shoot and kill scores of unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, including kids, then calls it self-defense. When a Palestinian sniper fires at one Israeli soldier, Israel bombs Gaza with F-16s and preps for all out war." "Israel has been planning another war on Gaza for some time. They recently conducted exercises, declared Friday as an ultimatum day, and the Americans to wrote a WaPo oped to open the Israeli propaganda campaign," Munayyer noted, referring to an opinion piece co-authored by White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, which blames Hamas for Israel's brutal decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory. "Seems Israel is hell bent on war, again," Munayyer added.  Israel’s bombardment of Gaza comes just days after Israel further intensified its collective punishment of the Palestinian people by imposing "genocidal" trade restrictions on the occupied territory. As Common Dreams reported, Israel's legislature also approved a bill this week that enshrines "apartheid into law" and makes the 1.8 million Arabs living in Israel second-class citizens. COMMON DREAMS July 20, 2018

Kushner’s op-ed, the kind of truly fake news the MSM spews in the United States, is another example of the Israel propaganda campaign exposed in Occupation of the American Mind.

Israel’s brutal oppression began when …… 1948?, 1967?

And in 1987 when Israel brutally repressed a Palestinian attempt to opposed the occupation and the settlements, one consequence was the founding of Hamas in 1987

Here are excerpts from Wikipedia on Hamas and the First Intifada.

Hamas was founded in 1987,^[17][18] soon after the First Intifada broke out. The First Intifada or First Palestinian Intifada was a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.^[6] The uprising lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference in 1991, though some date its conclusion to 1993, with the signing of the Oslo Accords.^[7] The uprising began on 9 December,^[8] in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) truck collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinians.^[9][10][11] In the wake of the incident, a protest movement arose, involving a two-fold strategy of resistance and civil disobedience,^[12] consisting of general strikes, boycotts of Israeli Civil Administration institutions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, an economic boycott consisting of refusal to work in Israeli settlements on Israeli products, refusal to pay taxes, refusal to drive Palestinian cars with Israeli licenses, graffiti, barricading,^[13][14] and widespread throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails at the IDF and its infrastructure within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel, deploying some 80,000 soldiers and initially firing live rounds, killed a large number of Palestinians. In the first 13 months, 332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed.^[15] Given the high proportion of children, youths and civilians killed, it then adopted a policy of 'might, power, and beatings,' namely "breaking Palestinians' bones".^[15][16] The global diffusion of images of soldiers beating adolescents with clubs then led to the adoption of firing semi-lethal plastic bullets.^[15] In the intifada's first year, Israeli security forces killed 311 Palestinians, of which 53 were under the age of 17.^[15] Over the first two years, according to Save the Children, an estimated 7% of all Palestinians under 18 years of age suffered injuries from shootings, beatings, or tear gas.^[16] Over six years the IDF killed an estimated 1,162–1,204^[17] Palestinians. Between 23,600–29,900 Palestinian children required medical treatment from IDF beatings in the first 2 years.^[18]

So, Israel was, in a way, the founder of Hamas.

And a few years earlier, Israel similarly founded Hezbollah, a consequence of Israel’s invasion of, and massacres in, Lebanon.

With all that in mind, it is inconceivable to me that anyone concerned with peace and justice would oppose the non-violent BDS movement.

Strong global action is required and needed to end Israel’s massacres, to end its occupations, to close its settlements and to establish one democratic state with equal rights for all.