Damian Lataan
Telling the History of the Twenty-First Century as it Really Is
It’s been a year since Hamas asserted its rightful role as the democratically elected government in the Gaza Strip after corrupt Fatah forces there had unsuccessfully tried to usurp Hamas’s governance of the Palestinian enclave. Hamas’s victory in the January 2006 elections was not recognized by Israel or the US, the two nations on our planet that scream loudest about the necessity of democracy in the region. Instead, they ensured that the corrupt Fatah organization under Abbas took control of Palestinian affairs, a move that, while successful in the West Bank, was unsuccessful in the Gaza.
Ever since Hamas took control of the Gaza, the Israelis have hounded the Gazan Palestinians, in many cases, literally to death through bombing and denial of basic health access. Hundreds of men, women and children have died through indiscriminate IDF helicopter gunship and strike fighter aircraft attacks on the densely populated Gaza Strip. Tens of thousands more are suffering through the lack fuel and other supplies. Scores have died through not being allowed to leave the Gaza for proper medical treatment. Homes have been demolished and much of what little productive land remains that is able to provide food has been bulldozed bare by the Israelis. All this has been in an effort to dislodge Hamas from their position of governance. In short, the Gazan people are being collectively punished for having had the temerity to exercise their democratic rights voting in a government that the Israel and the US do not accept.
In an effort to stem and deter the Israeli attacks on the Gazan people and their government, Palestinian fighters have launched crude and largely ineffective rockets against Israel, acts that Israel simply uses as an excuse for even more attacks against the Gazan people.
During the past year the Israelis have threatened to launch a full-on invasion of the Gaza to oust Hamas from power using Hamas’s futile rocket attacks against Israel as the casus belli for such an invasion. Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister has on countless occasions threatened such action but, as yet, has not carried it out despite Hamas and other Palestinian fighters continuing to launch their rockets against Israel.
Israel has always sought to justify anything they do militarily by telling the world that they are merely acting in response to acts committed against them by their Arab enemies. They rarely strike openly without trying to find some excuse to justify their crimes, even if it is one that they have had to invent for the purpose.
As the USS Liberty Affair and the Lavon Affair has demonstrated in the past, the Israelis are not above committing crimes themselves and then deflecting blame for those crimes onto others in order to get other nations to help their fight wars with them or, better still, for them. Nor are the Israelis above getting non-Israeli Diaspora Jews that support the Zionist dream to work toward those ends. Jewish-American neoconservatives whose loyalties to Israel are stronger than their loyalties to the US together with their non-Jewish supporters have orchestrated and manipulated US governmental affairs over the last eight years in such a way as to benefit Israel. As a direct result of the 9/11, a crime that is now increasingly being questioned with regard to who the true perpetrators were, has resulted in the US launching an all out propaganda war against Islam. It also provided the casus belli for an attack against the peoples of Afghanistan where Israel says its enemies hide, and it also provided the casus belli for the invasion and destruction of Iraq, a country led by Saddam Hussein who financially supported the Palestinian cause but had nothing to do with 9/11.
Iran is now the only nation left that is powerful enough to stand in the way of the Zionist’s dream of a Greater Israel that includes the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the Shebaa Farms and south Lebanon up to the Litani River. Without Iran to supply and support Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas the Israeli Zionists believe that their dream of a Greater Israel can be realised.
All they need is an excuse, a casus belli, to attack Iran but it is something that they cannot do alone; they need the US to do it for them. Hamas in the Gaza may just be the fuse they need to ignite their final confrontation against Iran. By attacking Hamas, Israel knows that Hezbollah will likely come to their aid by launching rockets against northern Israel. This, as in the last war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, will be the excuse the Israelis need to launch an all-out attack against and an invasion of Lebanon. The first sign of any Iranian weapons being used by Hezbollah against the Israelis will be all that is needed to launch a deadly aerial bombardment campaign against Iran designed to force capitulation and regime change.
The on-again-off-again threatened attack against Hamas in the Gaza that could well spark the final confrontation between Israel and Iran and drawing in the US is being threatened again.
The world should make no mistake about what is happening. Hamas and their hold on the Gaza are being used by the Israelis to provide the launch pad for their final confrontation with Iran. As the window of opportunity closes as Bush’s presidency comes to an end, the threat of such a confrontation has become more urgent.
It’s just a matter of timing now – and time is running out.
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