Israel’s baseless hatred unleashed on Gaza – again
JVL Introduction
We’ve been here before.
Gaza has been effectively sealed off from the outside world since 2007.
Since then we have seen major conflicts especially in 2008-9, 2012, 2014 and 2018 – cynical exercises in what the Israeli military call ‘mowing the lawn’, designed to weaken (but not destroy) Hamas.
We’re just seeing another one and can’t yet predict its outcome. But like Rabbi Brant Rosen, we will be mourning the losses of yet another merciless war waged by Israel against the Palestinian people.
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A little background
As Mouin Rabbani explained when looking at the 2014 war on Gaza, “in 2004, a year before Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, Dov Weissglass, éminence grise to Ariel Sharon, explained the initiative’s purpose to an interviewer from Haaretz:
The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process … And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda”
In 2006 Weissglass was just as frank about Israel’s policy towards Gaza’s 1.8 million inhabitants: ‘The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.’
And, expounding the Israeli mindset, David M. Weinberg of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security wrote for the Jerusalem Post in April 2021 when Gaza was also under attack.
“Just like mowing your front lawn, this is constant, hard work. If you fail to do so, weeds grow wild and snakes begin to slither around in the brush.”
This article was originally published by Shalom Rav on Sat 6 Aug 2022. Read the original here.
On Tisha B’Av 2022, Israel’s Baseless Hatred Unleashed on Gaza
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Of course for the Zionists, murdering Palestinians is a way of turning a day of mourning into a day of joy. Not that Judaism, other than the Zionist perversion of it, has anything with what Israel does.
However this should fortify us in our determination to eradicate the only apartheid state in the world. Naturally the Biden Administration poses the issue in different terms – the right of Israel to defend itself. Which is no different from calling Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 an act of self-defence, which is what they did claim at the time.
It should however be clear, even in the eyes of the most obtuse, that there is no reformist solution to the Zionist state other than its abolition. By definition a settler colonial state cannot be reformed or persuaded to change its ways.
Those who continue to posit the idea of the two state solution, at a time when Israel has made it clear it has no interest in such a solution, are doing the work of the Zionists. They are creating a smokescreen which obscures the real problem viz. that Israel is incapable of any existence that does not involve war against its own people and the Arab peoples.
It is also necessary to avoid any attempt to impute that what Israel does has anything to do with its ‘Jewishness’. Israel is, as Akiva Orr said, The UnJewish State. I was involved in a spat with 2 antisemites who are on the margins on the solidarity movement today, Greta Berlin and Michael Rabb. Ilan Pappe’s retort to them is worth quoting:
‘Indeed Tony, adding the adjective Jewish undermines the cause of the liberation of Palestine! Only Zionists and anti-Semites regard Israeli actions as Jewish actions. It is a pity Palestine has such fellow travelers, well intentioned or sinister does not matter, who play into the hands of the Zionist propaganda in Britain. We now need more than ever before to do all we can to stop the incremental genocide of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by pointing clearly to the criminals behind this policy in an accurate way so as to be effective in our solidarity with the liberation movement.
It is thankful to see concerned Israelies unite with Palestinians in criticism of and opposition to the totalitarian and inhuman actions and intentions of the Israel government and state.
I wonder what percentage of the Israeli population get a REAL thrill when Gaza is bombed and Palestinians are killed.
And I don’t think it’s hatred of the Palestinians at work in the Israeli establishment that instigates these attacks, and they are done to create and ‘replenish’ hatred in the Palestinians in fact.
Bullies get high on bullying, and mega bullies get mega high. *And* ESPECIALLY bullying people who are as good as defenceless.