Arriving again at the cycle of vengeance
JVL Introduction
In a bitter-sweet opinion piece in Haaretz Amira Hass says ‘We told you so’ but with no sense of triumph as she chronicles the inevitable: “Ongoing oppression and injustice explode at unexpected times and places. Bloodshed knows no borders.”
She points to “The automatic Israeli conclusion, as on previous occasions when its normalcy was shattered a bit: … that if death and destruction haven’t achieved their goal until now, more aerial killings of Palestinians and more destruction and vengeance are the answer.”
And to the fact that Western governments seem happy to go along with this conclusion, “ignoring Israel’s structural violence and cruelty, and the context of the Palestinian people’s ongoing dispossession from their land.”
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Tue 10 Oct 2023. Read the original here.
Arriving again at the cycle of vengeance
In a few days Israelis went through what Palestinians have experienced as a matter of routine for decades, and are still experiencing – military incursions, death, cruelty, slain children, bodies piled up in the road, siege, fear, anxiety over loved ones, captivity, being targets of vengeance, indiscriminate lethal fire at both those involved in the fighting (soldiers) and the uninvolved (civilians), a position of inferiority, destruction of buildings, ruined holidays or celebrations, weakness and helplessness in the face of all-powerful armed men, and searing humiliation.
Therefore, this must be said once again – we told you so. Ongoing oppression and injustice explode at unexpected times and places. Bloodshed knows no borders.
The world has suddenly turned upside down, and the Palestinians’ daily nightmare has shattered the façade of normalcy that has characterized Israeli life for decades. Hamas crushed it by means of the surprise operation it launched, which demonstrated its military ingenuity and its ability to make plans, keep them secret and employ diversionary tactics.
Its operatives displayed creativity by using a variety of methods to break through the walls of the world’s largest prison, into which Israel has crammed two million human beings. Its armed men embarked on this campaign with a willingness to sacrifice their lives, knowing full well that they had a good chance of being killed. Some of them murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians in what seemed like orgies of vengeance, which their commanders weren’t wise or didn’t deem it important to prevent, if only for tactical reasons.
Three days later, the enormity of those mass acts of Palestinian rage is still unfolding, while Israel’s intensive aerial onslaught on Gaza has already resulted in the deaths of over 560 people, most of them civilians, over 120,000 displaced and thousands wounded.
As in every Israeli war against the Gaza Strip that Hamas had an interest in, especially given the murder of civilians, one should ask: Does this organization have a realistic plan of action and a realistic political goal, or did it mainly want to rehabilitate its own position in the eyes of Gaza residents? Was its military operation accompanied this time by a logistical plan to assist and rescue Gazan civilians under attack? Or will this once again fall on international aid agencies?
The gleeful Palestinian reactions to Hamas’ current achievement shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, the all-powerful enemy has been revealed in all its nakedness – an unprepared army that is busy protecting settlers praying in the West Bank town of Hawara and Jews who take over Palestinian springs. Confused soldiers and police officers who have gotten used to thinking that combat means rousing children from their sleep with drawn bayonets, or invading a refugee camp in an armored jeep. Inventors of spyware and collaborator-running Shin Bet agents who were so content about their achievements that they neglected the human factor – that is, the yearning for freedom shared by every human being.
“Half of Sderot’s residents are in Gaza, and half of Gaza’s residents are in Sderot,” Gazans joked over Shabbat after the number of Israelis taken captive became clear. These are the jokes of detainees sentenced to life, people acquainted only through the stories told by their refugee grandparents with the landscapes of Jiyya, Burayr, Hamama, Najd, Dimra, Simsim and other destroyed villages around today’s Gaza Strip, where the attacked kibbutzim and Israeli towns are now located. But what comes after that joy and that feeling of achievement?
The automatic Israeli conclusion, as on previous occasions when its normalcy was shattered a bit, is that if death and destruction haven’t achieved their goal until now, more aerial killings of Palestinians and more destruction and vengeance are the answer. That’s the conclusion of both the government and the army, but also of many Israelis. And it’s also apparently the conclusion reached by Western governments, which raced to voice support for Israel while ignoring Israel’s structural violence and cruelty, and the context of the Palestinian people’s ongoing dispossession from their land.
Congratulations to Haaretz for publishing this and other critical pieces. UK and Western media ought to wake up.
Brilliant piece by Amira Hass. And she asks a crucial question about Hamas – Does this organization have a realistic plan of action?
I am guessing not. They didn’t send an organised troop of well trained paramilitaries into southern Israel but a rag tag and bobtail bunch of heavily armed young men, many on ancient bicycles, who probably expected to meet resistance soon after they arrived in Israel and were prepared to die. So to keep going, they had pumped themselves up with a mix of adrenaline and fear.
When resistance found they almost none, this adrenaline had to go somewhere, and it turned into a massive orgy of blood-shedding. No excuse. Horrific. But evidence that Hamas had no vision whatsoever for turning this into a means for holding Israel to account. So now we have a huge tragedy – for the ordinary people in what I understand to be rare leftist kibbutzim along the Gaza border, for the mostly Mizrahi Jews in Israel’s southern border towns, and for two million Palestinians, at least half of them children.
The murder of Israelis is Hamas fault – and also that of a vicious right-wing government that left its own citizens defenceless, so it could look after (not control, but look after) its rampaging settlers. And also that of every government that cosied up to Israel, gave it special treatment, and has ignored the Palestinians’ misery for 75 years.
Always difficult, and even risky, to make comments into a terrible situation like this. As a Christian Socialist I have deep respect for Judaism from which Christian roots emerged, but I am appalled at the way the Israeli state has treated the Palestinian people over many decades. The targeting of civilians, whatever their religion or race, is always unacceptable, but anger at persecution and disrespect will always spill over into violence if the root cause is not focused upon and dealt with. The Israelis hold the political key here. The Palestinian people must be treated with respect and their voices heard. A common thread for both Christianity and Judaism is the so-called ‘golden rule’ i.e. “ treat others as you would wish to be treated “.
What has not helped is the sadly predictable instant response by the political leaders in the UK, USA, and EU which effectively provides the Israeli government with a free hand to respond however they wish. What was sensibly needed was a nuanced response which, yes, condemned the terrible violence perpetrated on Israeli civilians , but took the opportunity to emphasise that the time has truly come for the Israel leaders to recognise that they cannot continue with the illegal and immoral path they tread in respect to the Palestinian people. I do wonder about the ability and integrity of our political leaders these days. It is a terrible indictment on us all that the western world allows this situation to continue.
Good to see that they are critical voices within Israel that want peace with the Palestinians.
I hope that at the next General Election Israelies vote for Political Parties willing to engage in a just peace with the Palestinians. Ready to abandon the illegal settlements in the West Bank and to live in peace with their neighbours.
If Israel fails to achive peace, if instead insist in building more illegal settlements in the West Bank, the only solution would be to dismantle the State of Israel.
In the here and now Hamas would most probably be defeated by Israel. However, in the here and now too, many Israelis with double nationalities will leave not willing to sacrifice their children’s lives. While other jewish families thinking of moving to Israel and raise their children there, will think twice.
Just came across the following Vox Political article:
‘Israeli army can’t confirm that Hamas beheaded babies. IT DIDN’T HAPPEN’
After all the hysteria about Hamas “beheading babies” in the Israeli Kfar Aza kibbutz – including a wave of front-page news stories in UK newspapers [and around the world no doubt], it seems only one news organisation has actually sought corroboration of the claim – and found that it cannot be proved.
That organisation was Turkish news agency Anadolu……
A report on the news agency’s website states:
The Israeli army has no information confirming allegations that “Hamas beheaded babies,” Israeli army spokesperson unit told Anadolu on Tuesday.
It was alleged that Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, “beheaded many Israeli babies” on the Israeli side during the early Saturday morning attack launched from Gaza.
When Anadolu contacted the Israeli army spokesperson unit over the phone and asked about the allegations, she said “We have seen the news, but we do not have any details or confirmation about that.”
https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2023/10/11/israeli-army-cant-confirm-that-hamas-beheaded-babies-it-didnt-happen/
Do you believe the Hamas fighters cut the throats of babies?
It’s possible of course, human beings are capable of that sort of thing. Nazi soldiers would swing children by the legs and dash their heads against the wall. They threw children from buildings. It’s documented. But the first casualty of war is the truth.
No bones about it, Hamas is guilty of a horrific deplorable act of cruelty by this invasion; meanwhile this horror is throwing British politics into sharp relief. Kier Starmer, supposedly a human rights lawyer, has declared on radio that the Israelis have the right to starve Gazans of water, electricity and food. But Gutierez UN general secretary has pointed out that collective punishment is a war crime! Are we are about to elect this kneejerk politician? He’s supposed to think constructively with calm measure, to offer a balanced response, but he’s just being swept along with the hysteria. We now have the Israeli government under Netanyahu, already bristling with hatred towards Palestinians, completely unrestrained by anybody, with the Palestinians in Gaza totally at their mercy. What is going to happen next ? This is how genocides come about.
The tragedy of Israel Palestine cries out to be ended once and for all by a leader or leaders of the western nations – it’s a problem created by British colonialists after all. Biden, Starmer, Netanyahu, are not it.
If Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn had become leaders of the English-speaking world in 2016 and 2017, the one leading the US, Israel’s ultimate backer, and being Jewish anyway, and the other having the moral compunction and the will to solve it- this present war might not have happened.
But the establishment refused to allow it– not the Conservative establishment mind you, but the supposedly liberal centrists in the..
[cut to our limit of 300 words – admin]
Grayzone article posted yesterday (some clips):
‘Source of dubious ‘beheaded babies’ claim is Israeli settler leader who incited riots to ‘wipe out’ Palestinian village’
After an Israeli reserve soldier named David Ben Zion told a reporter Palestinian militants “cut [off] heads of babies,” Biden, Netanyahu, and the international media amplified the dubious claim.
The Grayzone has identified Ben Zion as a fanatical settler leader who incited riots by demanding a Palestinian town be “wiped out.”
According to CNN correspondent Nic Robertson, apparently citing Israeli military sources, Palestinian militants carried out, “ISIS-style executions,” in which they were “cutting the heads off of people,” including babies and pets [not just babies, but pets as well??!].
The Grayzone has now identified a key source of the claim that Palestinian militants beheaded Israeli babies. He is David Ben Zion, a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army who also happens to be an extremist settler leader who incited violent riots against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank earlier this year.
Hours after his interview with i24, still in the village of Kfar Aza, a uniformed Ben Zion could be seen repeatedly grinning ear-to-ear in a video posted to his Facebook – an odd disposition for a supposed witness to the methodical butchering of babies.
Ben David appears to have been at the forefront of settler extremism for years. He was photographed in 2015 (below) holding a microphone for the fanatical settler ideologue Noam Livnat, a self-described “radical right-wing messianist.”
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/11/beheaded-israeli-babies-settler-wipe-out-palestinian/
NB Does Hamas have any history of rape and mutilation and cutting off heads? Not heard of such myself.