Well, I’d been expecting to see it right along – the 1.000-word diatribe from Chuck Krauthammer in support of Israel’s rampage in Gaza. And it did not disappoint… it contains all of the elements that make Krauthammer’s screeds extra special: the hollow moralism, the chilling portraits of Palestinian depravity, the meticulous attention to select details coupled with a total neglect of even recent (i.e. the past year’s) history. One brief example – he cited 6,464 rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza on southern Israel over the past three years. Since we’re counting, I wonder if anyone has bothered to calculate the number of munitions expended by Israel on that sorry strip of land over the same period? No, I thought not. Never once does Krauthammer so much as suggest that Israel bears even minimal responsibility for the massive death and destruction now taking place in Gaza. Quite the contrary, it is Hamas that “is committed to causing the most civilian pain and suffering” while Israel is “committed to saving as many lives as possible.” That fiendish Hamas – using those peace-loving Israeli tanks and warplanes as instruments of terror. Will they stop at nothing?

How, you may ask, does Israel demonstrate their commitment to protecting the innocent? Well, Krauthammer reminds us that they phone warnings to people prior to air strikes. It’s like a wake-up call, except that the voice on the phone tells you your home and everything you value will be incinerated very soon – have a nice day! Of course, the notion that the Israeli government is somehow obsessed with the well-being of the people they bomb would almost be laughable were it not for the landscape of terror it is attempting to conceal – one noxious product of the decades-old policy of dispossession that Israel has pursued relentlessly and Krauthammer (along with most articulate opinion) chooses to ignore. He speaks of Israel as a charitable, enlightened, even somewhat over-indulgent neighbor that graciously allowed the man-beasts living in Gaza the opportunity for self-determination in 2005 when, after 40 years of brutal occupation, they pulled out – an opportunity they squandered, according to Krauthammer. He apparently feels as though Palestinians in Gaza should be grateful for Israel’s largess, even as it kills them by the hundred.

The facts disagree. Israel still controls Gaza – any child can work that out. They control exit and entry on all sides. They control the sea and the air. They have veto power (regularly exercised) over electricity and water supplies, to say nothing of food and medicine. They have been applying that power with great effect over the past two years, since Hamas won legislative elections in 2006, then anticipated the coup Israel and the U.S. worked to foment through compliant elements in Fatah (i.e. Abbas and friends) and drove the Palestinian Authority from the strip. And yet Israel’s apologists, from their ambassador to the U.S., to Krauthammer and his fellow pundits, to the Israel Project’s Meagan Buren, talk as though a.) Israel is bending over backwards to give Gazans what they need, and b.) Gaza is an entity separate unto itself, totally divorced from the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Israel is perpetrating collective punishment on nearly 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, but also on the balance of Palestinian society elsewhere in the territories. While its apologists speak of “peace”, they provide cover for the encroachment of settlements that has taken place consistently over the past 40 years.

Israel – fully supported by the Bush administration – wants to knock Hamas out, not because of scattered rocket attacks on southern Israel, but because they will insist on real concessions from Israel. Krauthammer’s job is obscuring that fact. Would that he were the only one on that beat.

luv u,

jp

Is this the spring of 2002, summer of 2006, or winter of 2009? I’ve lost track. The Israelis are again engaged in using their enormous (largely U.S. supplied) military might to crush a virtually defenseless people they are compelled by international statute to protect, dropping so-called precision weapons on one of the most densely populated parcels of land on earth and blaming the predictable resulting civilian deaths on those they target. Soon their tanks will roll into the open air prison that is Gaza on yet another mad, premeditated mission of murder and rampage, punishing 1.5 million Palestinians for voting the wrong way two years ago and, more fundamentally, for refusing to disappear as a people. Israel’s leaders, once more bloodying the ground for the next election, are intoning the rhetoric of the injured party, the enlightened state that has already endured too much, been too lenient, too forgiving, etc., as they pursue a strategy long in the making to decapitate Hamas while scoring substantial injury on all Palestinians. Their government officials and spokespersons, their surrogates in the American press, and their apologists in our own government repeat the mantra of self defense, likening lowly Hamas to the legions of Hitler (per Netanyahu) when comparisons even to Hizbullah are ludicrously overblown.

Like their depraved campaign in the West Bank in 2002 and the murderous war on Lebanon in 2006, this is the kind of assault that should be taken up by the U.N. Security Council and, ultimately, the Hague. I’m not holding my breath. From around the world, the response has ranged from equivocation to full-throated support for Olmert and Barak’s war. As Ali Abunimah said recently on Democracy Now!, Israel is waging war against a captive population, bombing mosques, hospitals, universities, and refugee camps. It is the most wanton attack against Palestinians in decades, and they are following through on it behind a protective shroud of silence. Israeli policymakers are confident that the United States government will be behind them no matter what they do, and that spineless leaders from Britain to Bahrain will refrain from raising their voices, or merely imply some kind of moral equivalency between the attackers and the victims. When Russia took action against Georgia, the outrage was deafening. Yet Israel bombs the most miserable place on earth, and you can hear crickets.

Let us not forget the genesis of this particular outrage. Hamas won the parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories in 2006. Israel and the U.S. found this unacceptable and immediately began undermining the results of that election, applying pressure on Abu Mazen, their hand-picked Palestinian representative, to move against Hamas. They supplied Fatah with arms and were in the process of stoking a coup in Gaza when Hamas anticipated their move and drove Fatah from the strip in 2007. Since then, the Israelis and the United States have held the Gaza strip under siege, starving its populace, denying basic medical supplies, and generally engaging in collective punishment against the population in hopes that they would turn against Hamas. The vaunted cease-fire has never been observed by Israel, which has run bombing raids on Gaza through the duration. They picked this opportune moment to complete the job Abu Mazen was unable to finish for them more than a year ago.

In 2002, Arafat was the “terrorist” and the obstruction to peace. Now it’s Hamas, precisely because they earned the support of a majority of Palestinians. Hamas is willing to negotiate on equal terms with Israel – that makes them unacceptable. Israel wants a negotiating partner they can roll over and dictate terms to. What we’re seeing is their attempt to ensure that advantage will continue, through air raids that recall Guernica and god knows what else.

Make your voice heard. This killing will stop only if we abandon our silence.

luv u,

jp