On Jan 12, 12:44*pm, David Nebenzahl wrote:
After reading the stuff posted here about the war in Gaza, with the
near-unanimous opinion that the Palestinians are getting what they
deserve, I've got to say something to counteract this entirely *wrong* view.

I'll refrain from calling those who post these opinions names. They can
be forgiven because they are--we all are--victims of propaganda, of
Israeli propaganda which is, for the most part, not challenged by our
(writing from the U.S. here) miserable excuse for a "free press".
(Things are a little different in, say, the UK: read the Guardian or the
Telegraph for a much more diverse spectrum of views on this situation.)

The fact is that in this situation, as in so many others, the Israelis
are behaving somewhat like Nazis. I hasten to add that, as a Jew, I do
not in any way equate the Israelis with those aforementioned vermin. But
the parallels in their behavior are disturbing.

What's being left out of any discussion of this situation is the extent
of the oppression of the entire Palestinian population that is the
driving force behind all of their violent actions (suicide bombings,
rocket launchings). Even before this latest invasion, Gaza has been a
gigantic prison for more than a million people. The Israelis, so far
from having left the place as is widely stated, control every aspect of
life in this miserable place. Nothing gets in or out without their
approval. If you want to go out to visit someone, to buy something, for
whatever reason, you have to negotiate an Israeli checkpoint. Which
means you may or may not get in or out, and if you do, you may have to
wait hours. Or days.

I'll get to those Hamas rockets in a second. But to understand what's
happening there, put yourself in that situation. Imagine you live here,
let's say somewhere in Texas, and that your area is under occupation,
let's say by Unitarians. (Your population is predominantly Christian.)
Your region is surrounded on 3 sides by a fortress wall with guarded
checkpoints; the 4th side is the sea. If you want to get in or out, you
have to wait at a checkpoint where a Unitarian guard may or may not let
you through; they will shower you with abuse, though, steal stuff from
you, maybe even shoot you. You wouldn't get through even if your child
was in critical need of medical attention which they could only get on
the other side; sometimes they would die there.

Unitarians will periodically demolish homes (occupied or vacant) in your
territory (and this is during the time of a cease-fire). They'll uproot
your olive orchards, kill your livestock. Every day you'll see them
traveling on Unitarian-only roads, past their settlements which are
watered with *your* water, living a life of relative affluence against
your grinding poverty.

I could go on, but you should get the picture. Don't take my word for
it: here's a letter I got, written by a 26-year-old Israeli soldier,
about his experiences in the Occupied Territories:

* *On some days, of course, we enforced a full "closure", meaning that
* *no Palestinians could pass at all. It didn't matter if you were a
* *teacher or a student trying to get to the school right on the other
* *side of the checkpoint. Nobody got through.

* *Every day at lunch, we closed the checkpoint down until we were done.
* *Queues would form, but we would pay them no mind. If a Palestinian
* *got impatient and started approaching, we knew what to do: One of us
* *would get up and point a rifle at him. He would quickly turn back.
* *If not, we would make sure that he spent many good hours waiting at
* *the checkpoint.

* *Of course, if a settler came by the checkpoint--during lunch or at
* *any other time--he'd just smile at us, wave hello, and walk by.

* *These were the day-in, day-out realities of my time in the IDF. And
* *there were, of course, examples of more extreme behavior. Like the day
* *my unit set up a surprise checkpoint at the outskirts of a Palestinian
* *village. A local farmer trying to pass through the area had raised a bit
* *of a fuss. He wanted to transport some chickens, but a soldier refused
* *him. Our commander decided to show the Palestinian who was boss. He
* *lifted his rifle, aimed, and shot one of the chickens. End of argument.

Sure, a dead chicken might seem like small potatoes, but multiply that
small humiliation by a thousand and you begin to see how nobody--no
human being--who lives under such conditions *constantly* would put up
with it for long.

So what about those Hamas rockets?

It's true that Hamas has launched, and continues to launch, rockets into
Israel. But to listen to the U.S. media, you would think that this is
simply being done because they're evil, with no provocation. I refer you
to the above for why they're doing it.

This is not to say that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself: it
does. But this situation is so disproportionate that it staggers the
mind. Take those Palestinian rockets: how many have they killed? Turns
out that over the last 8 years, about 20 Israelis have been killed by
them. 20. How many has Israel killed in this latest carnage? The toll
stands at about 900 today; almost a third of them (275) children.

And those rockets? Anyone know how pathetically, almost comically
inaccurate and crude those Qassam rockets are? They're homemade, for
chrissakes. No accuracy at all. More likely to land in an empty field
than anywhere else. While some of the rockets are better ones smuggled
in from outside, the majority are these grenades-in-tin-cans.

Sorry, Israel is the aggressor here, the one with the upper hand
militarily. (Even so, it's likely they'll lose this war, just as they
lost the 2006 Lebanon war, although not until much death and destruction.)

So where will Obama come down on this? My guess is that he'll simply
continue the decades-old policy of nearly unconditional support for
Israel, no matter what.

Let me close with a caustic look at this situation from an Israeli peace
activist, Uri Avnery (http://counterpunch.org/avnery01122009.htmlfor
full article):

* *Nearly seventy ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime
* *was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand
* *days, a gang of extremists called “the Red Army” held the millions of
* *the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the
* *German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had
* *no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a
* *total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.

* *Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The
* *Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions
* *of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their
* *Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the
* *Blitz.

* *This is the description that would now appear in the history books –
* *if the Germans had won the war.

* *Absurd? No more than the daily descriptions in our media, which are
* *being repeated ad nauseam: the Hamas terrorists use the inhabitants of
* *Gaza as “hostages” and exploit the women and children as “human
* *shields”, they leave us no alternative but to carry out massive
* *bombardments, in which, to our deep sorrow, thousands of women, children
* *and unarmed men are killed and injured.

--
In order to embark on a new course, the only one that will
solve the problem: negotiations and peace with the Palestinians,
the Lebanese, the Syrians. And: with Hamas and Hizbullah.

Because it's only with enemies that one makes peace.

- Uri Avnery, Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.
(http://counterpunch.org/avnery08032006.html)

Whats really happening in Gaza?

Self defense.