These misconceptions are spread by the American media.
1.
Israeli hawks represent themselves as engaged in a ‘peace process’ with
the Palestinians in which Hamas refuses to join. In fact, Israel has
refused to cease colonizing and stealing Palestinian land long enough to
engage in fruitful negotiations with them. Tel Aviv routinely announces new, unilateral house-building on the Palestinian West Bank .
There is no peace process. It is an Israeli and American sham. Talking
about a peace process is giving cover to Israeli nationalists who are
determined to grab everything the Palestinians have and reduce them to
penniless refugees (again).
2. Actions such as the assault on Gaza can achieve no genuine
long-term strategic purpose. They are being launched to ensure that
Jewish-Israelis are the first to exploit key resources. Rattling sabers
at the Palestinians creates a pretext for further land-grabs and
colonies on Palestinian land. That is, the military action against the
people of Gaza is a diversion tactic; the real goal is Greater Israel, an assertion of Israeli sovereignty over all the territory once held by the British Mandate of Palestine.
3. Israeli hawks represent their war of aggression as in ‘self-defense.’ But the UK Israeli chief rabbi admitted on camera that that the Gaza attack actually ‘had something to do with Iran.’
4. Israeli hawks demonize the Palestinians of Gaza as “bad neighbors”
who don’t accept Israel. But 40% of the people in Gaza are refugees,
mostly living in refugee camps, from families in pre-1948 Palestine that
had lived there for millennia.
They were expelled from what is now Israel in the 1948 Zionist ethnic cleansing campaign .
Israelis are now living in their homes and farming their land, and they
were never paid any reparations for the crimes done to them. [pdf] “Israel’s failure to provide reparations to Palestinian refugees over the past six decades is in blatant violation of
international law.” Israel does not accept Palestine’s right to exist,
even though it is constantly demanding that everyone, including the
displaced and occupied Palestinians, recognize Israel’s right to exist.
5. Israeli hawks and their American clones depict Gaza as a foreign, hostile state with which Israel is at war. In fact, the Gaza strip is a small territory of 1.7 million people militarily occupied by Israel (something
in which the UN and other international bodies concur). Israelis do not
allow it to have a port or airport, nor to export most of what it
produces. Palestinians cannot work about a third of its land, which is
reserved by Israel as a security buffer. As an occupied territory, it is
covered by the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva
Convention of 1949 on the treatment of occupied populations by their
military occupier. Indiscriminate bombing of occupied territories by the
occupier is clearly illegal in international law.
6. Israeli hawks see themselves as innocent victims of bewildering
Palestinian rage from Gaza. But Israel not only has kept Palestinians of
Gaza in the world’s largest outdoor penitentiary, they have them under
an illegal blockade that for some years aimed at limiting their nutrition without altogether starving them to death. I wrote earlier:
“The food blockade had real effects. About ten percent of Palestinian children in Gaza under 5 have had their growth stunted by malnutrition. A recent report [pdf] by Save the Children and Medical Aid for Palestinians found that ,
in addition, anemia is widespread, affecting over two-thirds of
infants, 58.6 percent of schoolchildren, and over a third of pregnant
mothers. “
If any foreign power surrounded Israel, destroyed Haifa port and Tel
Aviv airport, and prevented Israeli exports from being exported, what do
you think Israelis would do? Oh, that’s right, it is rude to see both
Palestinians and Israelis as equal human beings.
7.
Israeli hawks demonize the Palestinian residents of Gaza as followers
of Hamas, a party-militia of the Muslim religious right. But half of
Palestinians in Gaza are minors, who never voted for Hamas and cannot be
held collectively responsible for that party.
8. Israeli hawks justify their aggression on the Palestinians on
grounds of self-defense. But Israel is a country of 7.5 million people
with tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, helicopter gunships and F-16s
and F-18s, plus 400 nuclear warheads. Gaza is a small occupied territory
of 1.7 million which has no heavy weaponry, just some old guns and some
largely ineffectual rockets. (Israelis cite hundreds of rockets fired
into Israel from Gaza in 2012; but until Israel’s recent attack they had
killed not a single Israeli, though they did wound a few last March
when fighting between Palestinians and Israelis escalated.) Gaza is a
threat to Israel the way the Transkei Bantustan was a threat to
Apartheid South Africa. As for genuine asymmetrical threats from Gaza to
Israel, they could be dealt with by giving the Palestinians a state and
ceasing the blockade imposed on them, or in the worst case scenario
counter-terrorism targeted at terrorists rather than indiscriminate
bombing campaigns.
9. Israeli hawks maintain that they were provoked into the attack. But
actually Ahmad Jabari, the Hamas leader the Israelis assassinated
earlier this week, had been engaged in talks with the Israelis about a
truce . Assassinations achieved by the ruse of openness to peace talks are guarantees of no further peace talks.
10. Although most American media is a cheering section for the Likud Party, in fact the world is increasingly done out with Israel’s aggressiveness . Boycotts and sanctions will likely grow over time, leaving Israeli hawks with a deficit…
Juan Cole the writer of the above posting is a professor of history at the University of Michigan and maintains the blog Informed Comment.
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