Choosing Atrocity: Israel, America and the Strangling of Gaza

Choosing Atrocity: Israel, America and the Strangling of Gaza

Chris Floyd
Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel
Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:00 UTC

Although Professor Juan Cole is lamentably jejune in his abiding trust in Barack Obama's good intentions in Iraq, he has been doing yeoman service in covering the ongoing atrocity in Gaza. The inhuman conditions in the world's largest open-air concentration camp have slipped almost entirely from notice in the Western press.

At most one sees a few comforting headlines or crawl-lines about "pledges of aid" from the world community for poor Gaza, which seems to have suffered some sort of unavoidable natural disaster, like a flood or earthquake. Forgotten is the fact that Gaza was ravaged in a relentless, murderous military assault that deliberately targeted heavily populated areas and numbered hundreds of children among its many innocent victims. Forgotten is that the attack. fueled with American money and American weapons, was a clear act of "collective punishment," one of the most heinous of the war crimes perpetrated by the Nazis against Jews and non-Jews alike. Indeed, the Israeli government was quite candid that the attack was designed as a collective punishment; they were admirably honest about adopting this policy of the Nazis as their own.

After many days of horror, many children and other non-combatants slaughtered, the attack finally came to an end -- apparently as a gesture toward Barack Obama, to spare him the embarrassment of finally having to comment on the massacre being committed by a staunch U.S. ally: something he had adroitly avoided throughout his president-electship, preferring instead to hide behind the specious nostrum of "one president at a time in foreign policy" -- a "principle" which, oddly enough, did not prevent him from commenting at length on any number of other foreign policy issues. But the end of military operations was by no means the end of the collective punishment atrocity -- which, indeed, began before the attack itself, with the barbaric, Warsaw Ghetto-like blockade of essential goods and services imposed by Israel on its captives in Gaza.

Not only did these sanctions leave ordinary Gazans even more stricken and weakened -- and vulnerable -- than usual, it also prevented civilians from fleeing the carnage. With the American-backed dictatorship in Egypt giving its silent collusion, the borders of the Gaza cauldron were completely sealed. There was literally nowhere for civilians to go in the midst of the invasion; they could not even flee to a desperate, hellish exile in a foreign land, as more than two million Iraqis did to escape the similar American invasion of their country. This enclosure in Gaza was also a deliberate strategy, designed to heighten the terror against civilians and "break" the Palestinians psychologically.

Now, as Cole -- nearly alone among commentators with a mainstream audience -- has frequently noted, the Israelis are continuing their economic stranglehold on Gaza, refusing to let in some of the most basic materials needed to rebuild the shattered region and sustain even the barest modicum of a decent human life for the captives there. While Saudi Arabia -- yet another savagely repressive dictatorship supported by American guns and money -- joins the United States and other countries in making a great show of pledging billions in aid to Gaza, the Israeli government -- soon to be in even more virulently right-wing hands -- throws up roadblocks to staunch the flow.

But of course, it is not just Israel who is holding up the distribution of aid. It is also one of the great showy donors themselves: the United Progressive Liberal Humane States of America. As Cole notes:

[Hillary] Clinton arrives in Israel from a donors conference in Cairo that raised $5 bn. Unfortunately, Israel won't let most of it in, since it is trying to half-starve the Palestinians into submission. And the only realistic conduit for that amount of money is the Palestinian Authority bureaucracy in Gaza, which was taken over by Hamas when it won the January, 2006 elections. But the US and Israel refuse to deal with Hamas and won't let the money go through bureaucracies it controls (all the relevant ones). Washington and Tel Aviv will probably try to use the money to bolster Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction within the Palestinian Authority. What they can't understand is that Palestinians have excellent BS meters, and don't support people they view as corrupt collaborators. The frantic search for the 'good Palestinian' only creates unpopular failures over time.

Cole also points to a revealing article by Helena Cobban. Although he provides a useful link, the piece is worth quoting more fully. In her piece, Cobban talks to Professor Efraim Inbar, a key adviser of incoming Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and learns that the post-attack strangling of Gaza is indeed a deliberate act of collective punishment. Cobban writes:

In a telling op-ed published in The Jerusalem Post in early February, Prof. Efraim Inbar, an adviser to Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, argued that, "The developing international campaign to reconstruct Gaza is strategic folly. It is also unlikely to be effective. And, under current circumstances, it is also immoral."

The article strongly supported a policy of punishing all the people of Gaza for the actions of Hamas.

I interviewed Inbar here in Jerusalem yesterday. Referring to his article and to today's donors' conference, he admitted that the international community might (misguidedly) insist on rebuilding Gaza-- "but we can always slow the process down."

Indeed until now Israel, which is the "occupying power" in the Gaza Strip, has complete control over the passage of all freight into or out of the Strip. Since the Gaza war it has used that power to prevent the entry of just about all the basic materials required for physical rebuilding: cement, rebar, glass, piping, etc. So it seems that the outgoing Olmert government has already been working hard to prevent or slow down the rebuilding of Gaza.

The Independent, in another piece linked by Cole, details some of the sand that Israel is pouring into the gears of the aid machine:

The total number of products blacklisted by Israel remains a mystery for UN officials and the relief agencies which face long delays in bringing in supplies. For security reasons such items as cement and steel rods are banned as they could be used by Hamas to build bunkers or the rockets used to target Israeli civilians. Hearing aids have been banned in case the mercury in their batteries could be used to produce chemical weapons.

Yet since the end of the war in January, according to non-government organizations, five truckloads of school notebooks were turned back at the crossing at Kerem Shalom where goods are subject to a $1,000 (#700) per truck "handling fee".

Paper to print new textbooks for Palestinian schools was stopped, as were freezer appliances, generators and water pumps, cooking gas and chickpeas. And the French government was incensed when an entire water purification system was denied entry. Christopher Gunness, the spokesman for the UN agency UNRWA responsible for Palestinian refugees, said: "One of the big problems is that the 'banned list' is a moving target so we discover things are banned on a 'case by case', 'day by day' basis."

Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said: "Israel's blockade policy can be summed up in one word and it is punishment, not security."

Again, the Israelis are not being coy about their intentions. They are seeking, says Inbar, not only to punish the Palestinians but also to "train" them -- to break them to the yoke, like oxen or mules, in other words. As Cobban reports:

Inbar is the Director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. In another part of yesterday's interview he talked about the need to maintain the extensive series of roadblocks and other movement-control mechanisms deep inside the West Bank with which Israel controls its 2.3 million Palestinians. Those roadblocks currently number more than 600, and have completely paralyzed the ability of West Bankers to build anything like a functioning economy.

Inbar described the West Bank roadblocks as another part of the effort to punish, or "train", the Palestinians. The US and other governments have urged Israel to reduce their number. But Inbar told me, "The Americans may push us on this, and we may remove one or two roadblocks. We'll just play with the Americans!"

They will "play with the Americans" indeed. And the Americans are happy to be played with. It's all a game for the elites in both countries, as they serve each other's mutual interests for their agendas of domination. As Cobban notes:

In some cases, like that of the US, this intention of giving reconstruction aid now seems bizarre and hypocritical, given that Washington could have stopped Israel's assault on Gaza in its very first hours, and thereby prevented just about all of the horrendous damage Gazans have suffered....

Yes. The attack certainly could have been stopped -- before it started, or at any time thereafter -- with a word from the Bush Administration. Even a critical word from the incoming president, riding a wave of worldwide popularity -- and making clear that there would be serious consequences when he took office if the atrocity did not halt immediately -- would probably have been equally effective. But of course the Bush Administration did not want the attack to stop; and neither did the president-to-be.

Here again, I will pay Barack Obama much more respect than many of his followers do. I don't believe that he looked at the attack on Gaza, felt to his very soul that it was an horrific atrocity, but then refused to denounce it out of some sort of cynical political calculation. (Which is the usual explanation offered by his acolytes when he does something unseemly.) I believe that, like most good, decent, honorable, upright, serious members of the American Empire's power elite, he did not think the attack on Gaza was an atrocity at all. It was simply a grim necessity, the kind of thing that essentially good and altruistic nations like the United States and Israel have to do sometimes, even if, unfortunately, it does produce some "collateral damage" here and there. But just like the last great Democratic secretary of state said about the 500,000 children killed by America's Gaza-like blockade of Iraq for years on end, these grimly necessary unfortunate actions are "worth it."

Just as Bush could have ended the attack with a word, so too could Obama end the deliberate degradation and destruction of the Palestinians in Gaza. He could force the Israelis to lift the blockade tomorrow -- today -- this very hour -- simply by threatening to cut off the massive flow of American aid that Israel is dependent on. The fact that he will not do that -- or anything like that -- is, like the Israeli infliction of Nazi-like collective punishment on Gaza, a very deliberate choice.

Chris Floyd has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years, working in the United States, Great Britain and Russia for various newspapers, magazines, the U.S. government and Oxford University. Floyd co-founded the blog Empire Burlesque, and is also chief editor of Atlantic Free Press.

Moving Beyond Political Activism: Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

A month later, and tragically, even more true. So much for "good will to ALL men"

Blue Ibis

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Moving Beyond Political Activism: Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

Information Clearing House
Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:42 UTC

Joe Mowrey

As conditions in the Gaza strip approach a catastrophic level of deprivation, the world media, and in particular the U.S. media, remain largely silent. The United Nations, whose truckloads of food and medical supplies continue to be denied entry into Gaza by Israel, appears to be one of the few international voices of dissent concerning the collective punishment of 1.5 million human beings. This, despite the fact that more than 50% of the population in Gaza is comprised of children under the age of 15.

Israel claims to be defending itself against the crude, often homemade rockets which militant factions in Gaza fire randomly into southern Israel. Though it may be considered politically incorrect, this writer refuses to precede his remarks with the requisite, "It's wrong for militant Palestinians to be firing rockets into Israel." The ethics of Palestinian resistance to the Zionist colonization of Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinian people is a subject for another article. The issue at hand is one of collective punishment. Regardless of the actions of certain factions in Gaza, the fact remains that Israel (with the approval of the U.S.and the world community) is depriving an entire civilian population of food, medicine and clean drinking water in response to the violent actions of a few among that population.

Comment: And there's the twist, the lie that we are repeatedly told, in blatant disregard for the facts, in the hope that we will swallow it and turn away. The collective punishment of terror that is waged upon the entire Palestinian population is not 'in response to the violent actions'. Rather, those 'violent actions' are a combination of the desperate last attempts at survival in response to the Israeli reign of terror and genocide, and also a continuing manufactured Israeli manouevre, to justify their ongoing bloodthirsty rampage - as has been demonstrated many times, false flag operations are a standard Israel procedure which they use to further their agenda.

By any civilized standard this behavior is wrong and should be condemned vociferously. To paraphrase the words of an alien from another planet in a not-so-great Hollywood movie of some years ago, every sentient being knows the difference between right and wrong.

Comment: By any human standard this behaviour is wrong. Perhaps the perpetrators are not quite human?

Apparently not. Israel's Foreign Minister and likely future Prime Minister, Tzipi Livni, recently dismissed the notion that Israel's actions in Gaza amount to collective punishment and claimed those actions were a justifiable response to the rocket attacks on Israel. She stated, "The international community must be more decisive in making itself heard and in using its influence in the face of these attacks."

To suggest that the international community should condemn "these attacks" by militant Palestinian factions, yet ignore the humanitarian disaster being imposed on Gaza by the government of Israel demonstrates a nearly incomprehensible level of hypocrisy. But more importantly, the fact that Jews are the ones perpetrating these unconscionable actions in Gaza is a tragedy of historic proportions. The Geneva Conventions, particularly those articles addressing the collective punishment of civilian populations, were largely crafted in response to the treatment of Jews by the Nazis during World War II. Has the sense of exclusivity and entitlement created by the Zionist experiment in Israel become so great that people there no longer see themselves in the mirror of their own history? The irony of Jews, among the most egregiously persecuted and maligned people in history, denying food to hundreds of thousands of children in order, allegedly, to insure their own security, is breathtaking. Who could ever have imagined such a thing?

As people of Gaza suffer, here in the U.S., the vast majority of so-called progressives continue to revel in the recent election of the first Black man to the Presidency. While Obama has garnered a great deal of political and financial support by pledging his unconditional support for the Zionist regime in Israel, he remains completely silent on the plight of the children of Gaza. Our first Black President not only refuses to speak out against the collective punishment of an oppressed people, he actively supports and encourages the regime responsible for this behavior. This too is a tragedy of historic proportions. Have we come this far in the struggle against racism in our country only to see Barack Obama put a minority face on U.S. support for violations of international law and essential human dignity by Israel? Again, one has to say, who could ever have imagined such a thing?

Each morning I peruse the alternative media online and hope to see at least some minor degree of outrage at the situation in Gaza. A small but courageous handful of progressive web sites dare to criticize Israel and speak out against the abuse of the Palestinian people. But for the most part, the glorious and powerful "NetRoots" movement is too busy congratulating itself on the so-called victory it has achieved in the recent elections, too busy celebrating the illusion of change which Barack Obama represents, to admit the absence of any indication of substantive change in U.S. foreign policy in Palestine or the Middle East under his coming administration.

Does it ever occur to those who so blindly and passionately rallied 'round their candidate for the Presidency that they might now use their voices to encourage him to oppose the human rights abuses being orchestrated in Gaza? The sad reality is, not even a chorus of such voices is likely to alter the course Obama appears to have taken. He has surrounded himself with a familiar cast of armchair militarists, corporatists and hard core pro-Zionist zealots who will continue to give their unconditional support to Israel regardless of what barbaric tactics the government there uses to advance the colonization of Palestine. He is choosing to turn his back on the men, women and children in Gaza and the West Bank who suffer chronic malnutrition, desperate poverty, dispossession and daily humiliation at the hands of the Israeli military.

We should stand up in opposition to instances of human rights abuses whenever and wherever they occur. The situation in Gaza is only one on an unfortunately long list, locally, nationally and internationally. And U.S. government (that means you and me) support for and complicity in many such instances is no secret. If each of us were to do just one thing per week to address these issues, the result might surprise us all. Take a minute out from the long and endless chatter of day to day living and speak to a friend about the idea of social equality. Write one letter to the editor of your local paper in support of human rights. Spend just one percent of your online hours learning the truth about our complicity as U.S. citizens in the exploitation and degradation of other people and their cultures. Turn off your television. Go stand on a corner with a sign to protest war. Wear a button promoting peace and justice. One small thing at a time.

To those who became politically active, possibly for the first time, and expended their valuable enthusiasm and energy in order to see Barack Obama elected: thank you for being a part of history. Now why not try on the mantel of social activism? Write our President-elect a letter and suggest that he at least acknowledge the suffering of the people in Gaza. It is doubtful it will change him or his policies, but it may change you. And that truly is "change we can believe in."

Every sentient being knows the difference between right and wrong. The question is, why do so few of us act on that knowledge?

Israel Comes Clean on Gaza Policies

Economic Warfare in Gaza

Yossi Wolfson
Challenge Magazine
Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:41 EST

©Wissam Nassar

Gaza City, January 8, 2008. From a demonstration against the Bush visit: empty coffins symbolize 62 patients who have died since June because Israel denied them access to medical treatment outside Gaza.

No more lies or twisted tongues. Israel is saying at last what, in the past, it always refused to acknowledge: its war is against the Palestinian population.

Until now, in discussions about the separation wall, closures, blockades, house demolition, and other sorts of collective punishment, the State Attorney's Office lacked the gumption to admit in court that the aim of such measures is to harm civilians. It always came up with convoluted security claims in order to present some vital military necessity for the sake of the War against Terror. Harm to the population was described as a regrettable side effect.

But now a Rubicon has been crossed. This happened after ten human-rights organizations petitioned the High Court on October 28, 2007 against cuts in the supply of electricity and gasoline to Gaza. The petitioners claimed that the cuts amount to collective punishment, which is forbidden under international law. The State might have answered that the cuts are a necessary military measure aimed at stopping the production of Qassam rockets. Or it might have tried some other tongue twister. But no. In their response to the petition, Dana Briskman and Gilad Shirman from the State Attorney's Office announced openly, without blinking an eye, that the cuts' main purpose is to exert pressure on the economy as a way of influencing Hamas.

Thus the State clamps the arteries of life for 1.5 million Gazans and describes its action as an economic war. Here it infringes a basic principle of the international laws concerning warfare, which distinguish between the civilian population and the armed forces. One main purpose of these laws is to shield civilians from the battlefield and mitigate the effects war can have on them. The lawyers for the State Attorney do not dispute this principle. Rather they would limit it to strictly military operations. Cutting the supply of electricity or gasoline is not a strictly military operation. In an economic war, they hold, the principle does not apply. Following this logic to its absurd conclusion, we find that it is forbidden to blow up a civilian installation, but it is permissible to disable it by cutting off raw materials. It is forbidden to blow up a power plant, but it's OK to turn off the electricity.

This is not to imply that Israel abides by the law in its strictly military decisions. In summer of 2006, for example, it did blow up the Palestinian power plant in Gaza, raising the Strip's dependence on itself for electricity - the same electricity that it today proposes to cut.

The state turns international law on its head. Various provisions regulate civilian supplies in wartime, with the aim of keeping the situation from reaching the threshold of a humanitarian crisis. Israel cites these provisions but interprets them as allowing it to harm civilians as long as it stops short of that threshold, defined by it.

What is the humanitarian threshold in Israel's view? The blockade of Gaza has been going on at various levels for years. Since Hamas ousted Fatah there in the summer of 2007, the shipment of goods to the Strip has been restricted almost totally to basic foods, medicines, medical equipment, cooking gas, gasoline and electricity. Karni, the main checkpoint for transfer of goods, earlier functioned in a spotty manner, but today it is completely shut. The code for importing goods to Gaza has been deleted from the computers of Israel's Customs Authority, which (according to the Paris Protocol) is supposed to collect the tariffs. The supply of fuel (except cooking gas) has been cut (without court interference). The electricity cut has not yet been implemented, but the shortage is already severe. Electricity and water are available only intermittently. Most of the industrial plants are closed for lack of raw materials and replacement parts. Hospitals, water and sewage services have been operating for the last year and a half (since Israel blew up the power plant) by means of emergency generators. Because replacement parts are lacking, the infrastructures are running down, and there is increasing danger of disaster. A harbinger was the bursting of the cesspool wall in Um al-Nassar last year, where five people drowned in a river of sewage.

According to statistics from the summer of 2007 (See the Gisha web site: "New Report: Commercial Closure"), before Israel hardened its measures, 87% of Gazans lived beneath the poverty line, which was reckoned at $2.40 per day. Already then there were perceived shortages in basic products, and food prices rose by tens of percentage points. According to figures of the World Food Program, 85% of Gazans depend on aid to purchase food.

In the view of Israel, however, the existing supply of goods is above what the law obligates it to allow, and the supplies of electricity and gasoline are even twice the minimum required. Below the humanitarian threshold as defined by it, Israel includes little more than hospitals run by generators, ambulances, supply trucks, and minimal public transport. On November 1, it repeated its assurances to the Court that its measures are carefully weighed and considered. It promised to watch the situation closely to prevent a humanitarian crisis. Yet the government had no up-to-date figures on the likely effects of an electricity cut. The Court asked for data, but the State did not provide them. Instead, it became clear that even the partial statistics cited earlier were misleading (See the Gisha web site: "Court criticizes State Attorneys...").

Israel claims in court that it has the right to choose the countries it trades with, as if Gaza were just one independent state among the many. It views a cut in electricity to Gaza as not essentially different from, say, a cut in the sale of diamonds to Spain. This claim conceals the self-righteous notion that Israel, having disengaged, is no longer responsible for the Strip. But who presides over Gaza's borders? Who rules its air space? Whose jets and attack helicopters are those up there? Who controls Gaza's sea, preventing the erection of an independent harbor?

Gaza's economic dependence on Israel is the fruit of a deliberate policy that has been in effect for decades. Here as well as in the West Bank, Israel stymied any fledgling industry that might compete with it. It developed Gaza's dependence on it for electricity and gas. It turned the Gazans into a cheap labor force to serve Israeli industry - at first by having them commute into Israel and later by developing an industrial area at Checkpoint Erez. Israel also benefited from Gazan dependence on its products. When Karni was closed, among the loudest protestors were Israeli farmers. According to reports from the summer of 2007, about a fourth of the fruit grown in Israel was marketed in the Occupied Territories. The cut in gasoline shipments also made a dent in the income of Dor-Alon, the Israeli energy company supplying Gaza.

Yet Israel's conceptual change about Gaza is not consistent. Disengaged or not, it can't resist the temptation to exploit the Strip's resources. Parallel to the discussion on cutting energy supplies, there is another petition before the High Court that also concerns energy - but here the supply would go from Gaza to Israel. In this petition, two corporate groups are battling for an Israeli license to pump natural gas from the reservoir off Gaza's coast, a reservoir that - if Gaza belonged to a Palestinian state - would be in its territorial waters. The pumped gas is slated to become a major energy source in Israel's economy. Did the Justices happen to recall another case they are hearing, in which the State says it no longer occupies Gaza? If so, they haven't indicated this. Needless to say, no Justice cried in astonishment, "By what right do you intend to exploit the gas reserves of the Gaza Strip? This is against the provisions of international law, which forbid an occupying power from exploiting the natural resources of an occupied territory for its own use!"

Finally, we cannot ignore the similarities between Israel's policies in Gaza and in Lebanon. In southern Lebanon too (if to a lesser degree), Israel for years used the population as a cheap commuting workforce and as consumers of its products, all in the framework of the so-called "Good Fence" policy. This ended, as in Gaza, in a unilateral withdrawal (May 2000). Israel's interest in controlling the water that flows its way from southern Lebanon brings to mind its interest in Gaza's gas reserves. Its attack on Lebanon in 2006 also has its Gazan parallels. In both places Israel learned that it has no military answer to the threat of rockets in the hands of militias. With Hezbollah as with Hamas, Israel refused to negotiate. In Lebanon too, it hesitated to open a broad ground war, and rightly so. It learned that it cannot rule a hostile area in the face of attrition from guerrillas. When it undertook military action in Lebanon, the weakness of its own armed forces became apparent. This weakness derives from the moral corruption of the military and political leadership. The war revealed an impossible combination: on the one hand, the leadership's overall contempt for human life, and, on the other, Israeli society's unwillingness to accept battle casualties.

In both cases, Gaza and Lebanon, Israel has made indiscriminate war from the air on civilians while hesitating to commit ground forces. In both it has sought to destroy the economic infrastructure and reduce the civilian population to primitive conditions. By harming them, it was thought, you could get them to pressure their leaders and thus make political gains. This notion proved false in Lebanon, as in Gaza. The Israeli attacks amount to an expression of weakness, but the price will not be paid by those who launch them, rather by civilians on both sides.