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
In August 2014, the Jewish festival of Tisha B’Av arrived as Israel was waging a military onslaught on Gaza that would eventually kill 2,251 Palestinians, 1,462 of whom were civilians, including over 500 children. Tisha B’Av is traditionally observed a day of mourning over the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and by extension, the tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people throughout its history. To mark the occasion of the festival in 2014, I wrote a new version of the first chapter of Lamentations (the Biblical book traditionally chanted on Tisha B’Av). At the time, I suggested this new version be added to the ceremony to acknowledge the massive tragedy the state of Israel was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza in the name of the Jewish people.
Now eight years later, the eve of Tisha B’Av 2022 arrives this evening amidst yet another grievous military assault on Gaza. As of this writing, 24 people have been killed and over 120 more have been wounded. The Israeli military reports it is preparing for a week long operation “that could take longer, if needed.” It is not currently engaging in any ceasefire negotiations.
As in 2014, Israel, its supporters and the mainstream media at large are selling this latest military onslaught by claiming “Israel has a right to defend itself” from Gazan rocket fire. But as I wrote about Israel’s actions in 2014, this is a cynical and empty posture. As was the case eight years ago, this new war on Gaza was openly and unabashedly provoked by Israel. The timeline leading up to this latest assault is a matter of public record that is available to anyone interested in reading past Israel’s hollow propaganda:
• This past May, it was reported that the Israeli military was expanding what it described as a “bank of targets” in the Gaza Strip it had identified since its most recent military offensive in 2021.
• On Monday, August 1, the Israeli military arrested Bassam al-Saadi, a senior member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp. The PIJ issued threats in response but took no action.
• Concerned that the PIJ would attack in retaliation, the Israeli military directed authorities to close roads near the Gaza border.
• Yesterday, claiming that it was responding to an “imminent threat,” Israel unleashed a wave of airstrikes in Gaza, killing PIJ military commander Tayseer Jabari along with seven other people, including a 5 year old girl, Alaa Abdullah-Riyad Qaddoum.
• The PIJ retaliated by sending more than 100 missiles into Israel. The Israeli military reported that it had intercepted about 95 percent of the rockets. There were no reports of significant property damage.
• The US Ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, stated that “the United States firmly believes that Israel has a right to protect itself.”
This is, in short, purposeful wanton aggression. That it is repeatedly committed against a blockaded, besieged population of 2,000,000 who literally have nowhere to run raises it to the level of atrocity. It is no less abominable to rationalize it away by with the bromide that “Israel has the right to defend itself” or to blame Palestinians themselves for their own destruction by invoking the allegation of “human shields” – a false claim that has been repeatedly disproved by human rights observers.
These rationalizations are particularly profane in the way they rob Palestinians of their basic humanity. I remember thinking of precisely this on Tisha B’Av 2014 – and how incongruous it felt to engage in a ceremony of grief over Jewish loss while a nation state purporting to act in the name of the Jewish people inflicted such unspeakable losses on another people.
According to Jewish tradition, the fall of the Temple was caused by internal sinat chinam – baseless hatred – that wracked the disempowered, besieged Jewish community of ancient Jerusalem. In the age of Zionism, it seems to me, we must be ready to acknowledge a different kind of sinat chinam – one that is wielded by a Jewish state power against a people it continues to disempower and besiege.
As in 2014, I will not be mourning the destruction of the Temple this Tisha B’Av. I will be mourning the losses of yet another merciless war waged by Israel against the Palestinian people. And as in 2014, this will be my lament:
For these things I weep:
for the toxic fear we have unleashed
from the dark place of our hearts
for the endless grief
we are inflicting
on the people of Gaza.
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.