Did you know that not every Israeli is a Zionist? Also, did you know
that not every Palestinian, including those struggling to survive on the
Gaza strip, supports Hamas? What follows is opinion, with a whole load
of facts thrown in.
You know how in Hollywood, certain film
stars end up being typecast, because they play a villain so well, and
find they cannot get any other part unless it is a villainous one. Well
it seems people in the normal world get typecast too. However, quite
literally, not all Palestinians follow Hamas’ ideals, and not all Jews
are Zionists.
But, while Israelis
sit in their armchairs,
beer in hand, at the Gaza border, cheering as families and babies are
slaughtered, we really need to start putting things in perspective and
seeing life as it actually is. This action, incidentally, was even
caught on an interview with
CNN reporter, Diana Magnay – as she explained the current situation in the region, the cheering could be heard going on in the background.
Magnay even got into trouble for a tweet she sent from the scene. She
immediately deleted it, just before they relocated her away from the
Gaza situation all the way to Moscow. Basically this is what it said:
“Diana Magnay - @dimagnayCNN
Israelis on hill above Sderot cheer as bombs land on #gaza; threaten to ‘destroy our car if I say a word wrong’. Scum.”
Why, we ask, throwing our hands in the air, are innocent people with no
connection to Hamas, including hundreds of women and children, and even
in one case 20 members of the very same family, being bombed and
slaughtered?
It started when three teenagers were murdered
In a seriously tragic incident, three young Israelis were kidnapped and
murdered. With no evidence given, Israel placed the blame for this
awful slaughter firmly on Hamas. Shortly after this, a 14 year old
Palestinian boy from a town near Jerusalem was captured, beaten,
tortured and burned alive, in some kind of tit-for-tat response.
These incidents
were allegedly the start of the current and ongoing offensive by Israel
against Gaza. However, it has since come to light that the perpetrators
of the killing of those Israeli teenagers, while identified as veteran
members of Hamas’ military wing, were actually a rogue element that
likely acted without the knowledge and against the wishes of Hamas
leadership.
Apparently some sources believe that the Netanyahu
government knew about this all along and just wanted to use the
situation to whip up the frenzy among the Israeli public that would then
allow them to attack Gaza and continue to work towards their actual
aims.
“It’s all about self-defense”
While Israel insists that “Operation Protective Edge” is all about
self-defense, and that, “Hamas started the whole thing in the first
place,” we need to look a little deeper into the whole story before
deciding who should take blame, and who is possibly innocent.
While it is true that a country has the right to self-defense, are we
not seeing something far beyond the defense of self here? Let’s not
compare the numbers of the dead on each side, as the balance is so
completely off, it is positively terrifying. Let’s just point out that
now at least 1,000 Palestinians are dead from the current “operation,”
the majority of which are innocents, and the number of course includes
hundreds of children and babies. How can a child or a baby possibly be
considered a threat to the mighty nation of Israel, you ask? Good
question.
While the
UN Charter
does reserve the right of force for its Security Council members, and
individual countries can act in self-defense when threatened, the
response should be proportionate to the threat that country is facing
and it should be short-term, until such time as UN agents can intervene
in the situation.
Looking at Israel’s “defensive response” in
the current situation, we can see that it is grossly disproportionate to
the threat faced, literally by proportions of hundreds to one. When
Israel seeks “self-defense,” it is never short-term and often goes on
for weeks of constant and never-ending bombardment, while their famous
“Iron Dome” intercepts most rockets coming their way from Hamas.
When talks of a ceasefire arise, Israel never really gives this any
serious attention. For instance, in recent days, just 20 minutes before
the beginning of a 12 hour ceasefire, Israel carried out a massive
bombardment of Gaza's Shijaiyah neighborhood, leveling a building
complex, which can be seen on
YouTube here.
Obviously the scales are balanced mostly in Israel’s favor for so many
reasons. They have a sophisticated modern military. They own
helicopters, fighter jets, tanks, and have their anti-rocket defense
system, while Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza have Stone Age
weapons by comparison, often using “home-made” rockets.
And
there is always the big story. Why does a country, acting in pure
self-defense, need to blockade and militarily occupy territories
belonging to other people for literally decades, if this is in
self-defense?
A series of maps showing how little is actually left for the Palestinians
“Peace-loving nation”
According to Israel, they are a peace-loving nation, but what have they
done so far to enable that peace? Without even touching on the
Palestinian issue, in the country’s
brief history
they have repeatedly invaded their neighbors, including Egypt in 1956,
Syria, Jordan and Egypt (again) in 1967. They invaded Lebanon three
times, in 1978, 1982 and 2006. Over the years they have launched
airstrikes against Iraq and Syria with no real come-back on them. Does
that sound like a peace-loving nation to you?
Again, according
to Israel, they do everything they possibly can to avoid civilian
deaths. For instance they say they warn people to leave the area before
they bomb the living hell out of it.
A regular practice of the
IDF is to drop a “small” bomb on a house, to warn family members to
leave their home before they drop a much larger version and raze the
building to the ground. Watch this
YouTube video
for an example of this practice – if it goes a bit too slow for you,
fast forward to 1.20 to see the house completely demolished. How is that
about fighting any kind of enemy? It makes you think this is more about
demolishing a city, step by step.
Apparently even this
so-called “roof-knocking” does not always save people, as on July 17,
three young children were killed while playing on the roof of their home
in the Sabra neighborhood by just such a “warning.”
They hand
out leaflets or use the media to warn people to flee or evacuate before
they attack. Flee or evacuate to where exactly? The Gaza Strip is a
relatively small place. Where are the residents supposed to go when
these attacks happen? They are walled in, enclosed in the equivalent of a
fish bowl and when Israel attacks, is it not so much like “shooting
fish in a barrel” than anything else?
Even kids playing football on a beach are slaughtered, what does this have to do with self-defense?
Besides the fact that their tactics in most cases do not save civilian
lives, the approaches they use are also not acceptable under
international law. Said law prohibits a military attack if there is a
high risk of civilian casualties and obviously if you are bombing a
densely populated city, with thousands of people trapped in a small
area, there is an extremely high risk.
Also under international
law, it is stated that the warring parties involved must allow civilians
to flee the area for safety. Yet, in Gaza, which has severe limits on
all civilian access in and out of the territory, there is no way for
these innocents to flee.
As for the current conflict, it should
be noted that most civilian casualties have happened in places that
should never have been targets in the first place, including cafés,
hospitals, a home for the disabled, people’s houses and apartment
buildings, and so on. None of these structures should ever have been a
target, under international law.
So we must ask ourselves in all honesty, why is all this happening.
Gaza is sitting on a treasure-trove
In recent weeks, the media has brought to our attention a literal
treasure-trove of natural gas reserves located just off the coast of
Gaza.
On one hand, back in 2000, British Gas (BG) apparently
discovered what was claimed to be $4 billion worth of natural gas
reserves, with the Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF) and BG, both
investing in the project, and with BG holding 60 percent of the rights
to said gas. On the other hand, in the last couple of years, Israel has
apparently been suffering an energy crisis, which gets worse by the day,
as per this
letter written by two Israeli scientists.
An excerpt from the letter reads, “We believe Israel should increase
its [domestic] use of natural gas by 2020 and should not export gas,”
with another part reading, “The Natural Gas Authority’s estimates are
lacking. There’s a gap of 100 to 150 billion cubic meters between the
demand projections that were presented to the committee and the most
recent projections. The gas reserves are likely to last even less than
40 years!”
So now Israel desperately needs energy and we look to who holds exactly what they need.
Shortly after
the 2006 election of Hamas, Israel started negotiations with BG, with
Israel insisting that they want the gas, but on the other hand, no part
of the revenue from this gas should get into the hands of Hamas. Ergo,
what Israel needs to do is get rid of Hamas. Problem solved, loads of
natural gas on hand. This may sound a little simplistic, but is it
really?
It is interesting to note that Israel’s negotiations
with BG actually happened at the exact time that another awful slaughter
known as “Operation Cast Lead” began in June 2008. While the
negotiations were going on, Israel killed 1,417 Palestinians, displaced
over 50,000 Gazans and destroyed over 4,000 homes with their air
strikes, followed by a deadly ground invasion, just like we are seeing
right now in the current operation. Israel says that these invasions are
to secure areas where rockets are fired within the Gaza strip, but it
seems nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact it seems
far more likely these ongoing and brutal operations are merely a means
towards the eventual goal of Israel’s appropriation of Palestinian
natural gas, which has nothing to do with self-defense, and everything
to do with self-interest.
Sources on Palestinian natural gas:
Other related news reported by Anne Sewell:
