7 - 2014 - Antiwar.com Blog

Israel’s Bombardment of Gaza: What Is Different This Time?

This originally appeared on Truth-Out.

The current Israeli onslaught on Gaza which so far resulted in 120 dead and counting, as Israel is attempting to a final blow to Hamas after many failed attempts, appears to have been planned in advance, regardless of developments on the ground. Following the abduction of three Israeli youth and their subsequent murder several weeks ago, Israel laid the blame on Hamas although the latter denied responsibility and said it wants calm with Israel. It then went on to conduct a major crackdown on the movement in the West Bank and arrested over 500 people. Israel is now launching a massive aerial bombing campaign on Gaza, claiming its goal is to eradicate Hamas. Hamas was a convenient target for the Israeli government that has been fretting over the fact that it joined a unity government with the PLO, which received international recognition. By framing Hamas as the culprit initially, Israel probably sought to disrupt the government and chose an escalation at a time when it was faced by increased international criticism as peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas collapsed.

In a way, the current Israeli onslaught on Gaza is not much different than the earlier aerial bombing campaigns that took place in 2009 and in 2012. Then, as now, the Israeli government claimed it was doing so to protect its civilians from rocket fire while failing to acknowledge the fact that the illegal blockade of Gaza, in which 1.8 million people are confined to a tiny strip and in which anyone who approaches a buffer zone next to the border is automatically shot, will mean that Palestinian will attempt to practice resistance with by available means. While Israel systematically attempts to gain international solidarity by asking the world what would they do if they were attacked by rockets, it does not ask the question of what would one do if confined to a blockaded area from which there is no escape and without a functioning alarm system. (Similarly, while Egypt has also closed its border with Gaza, Israel remains the occupying power in strip due to siege it imposes. It was also Israel, and not Egypt, that occupied the area in 1967). Then, as now, Israel claimed it was not targeting civilians intentionally although it was doing just that. Then, as now, the international community turned a blind eye to what a former Israeli pilot described as war-crimes, until the number of the dead became ‘unbearably’ high beyond what the international community can accept. Then, as now, Israel continuously violated the ceasefire it had with Hamas and at the same time ignored its own violations. Then, as now, Israel refused to negotiate directly with Hamas, although a rabbi of a West Bank settlement who has done so managed to achieve an agreeable cease-fire.

What is different, however, this time, is that even some in the US mainstream media that traditionally tends to unquestionably adopt Israel’s narrative, began to depict life in Gaza. The Washington Post, for example, posted a video of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip from the ground level, a perspective not often seen on the American press and issued a list of children killed. What is also different, this time, is that Israeli politicians have openly declared the entire Palestinian people to be the enemy, and radical right wing Israelis have staged demonstrations calling for "death to the Arabs". Indeed, the brutal burning to death of a Palestinian child, carried out by Israeli radicals, has indicated the degree to which the anti-Arab incitement has been that severe that the Israeli government may be losing control of the situation. Additionally, this time, unlike in earlier events, Hamas leader Khaled Masha’al issued a statement directly to Israelis arguing they should blame Netanyahu for their current predicament. This time too, unlike in previous attempts, an Israeli ground invasion in Gaza, and even a recapturing of the entire strip, is a realistic possibility. While it is hard to say whether Israel has escalated the situation because of its desire to get rid of Hamas or due to its interest in gas reserves found near the Gaza coast, Israeli citizens, who are rightfully fearful due to the constant rocket attacks, are for the most part still united behind the Israeli government’s "Protective Edge" operation, just as they support "Pillar of Cloud" and "Cast Lead" although none of the previous operations has provided them with security or a lasting peace. To what degree the international community will continue to support Israel’s actions in Gaza remains to be seen.

Joshua Tartakovsky is an Israeli-American independent journalist and a graduate of Brown University and LSE.

Exchange of Projectiles?

Numerous headlines in mainstream American coverage of Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip feature language about Israelis and Palestinians “exchanging rocket fire,” which conveys to the American public the sense that it is a matter of a “battle” between two neighboring “powers,” instead of the bombardment of an occupied territory; as if there was any kind of equivalence between the 400 tons of explosives that have rained down from Israeli jet planes, and the primitive, unguided rockets being lobbed from Gaza. The former has, in just a few days already killed over 100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and including at least 13 children. The latter has resulted in zero Israeli deaths, and only 7 injuries.

It’s rather like a scrum of cops assaulting a prostrate man with batons and tasers, and the media calling that a “fight” instead of a beating, because the man, as he flailed about under the blows raining down on him, kicked the leg one of the cops.

The Palestinians aren’t allowed to leave; the Gaza Strip is a giant open-air prison camp. They have no air raid shelters or sirens. They are like fish in a barrel, being blasted by a shotgun from above. It’s like some of the fish in the barrel pathetically spitting water at the gunman, and calling that a “shooting battle.” Indeed one has to wonder, if the economic blockade and the destruction wrought upon the Palestinians were to reduce them to such penury that they no longer had enough materials for rockets, and were reduced to only throwing rocks while continuing to have 1-ton smart-bombs dropped on their houses, would the American mainstream media call the affair an “exchange of projectiles”?

Ellsberg Billboards Urge Whistleblowing in DC: ‘Tell the Truth with Documents’

From the Institute for Public Accuracy:

In an unprecedented push for whistleblowing in the nation’s capital, the new organization ExposeFacts announced today that 13 billboards have gone up near Capitol Hill, the Justice Department, the White House, the Government Accountability Office, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, a popular bookstore at Dupont Circle and other prominent locations.

The six-foot billboards display a message from Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg: “Don’t do what I did. Don’t wait until a new war has started, don’t wait until thousands more have died, before you tell the truth with documents that reveal lies or crimes or internal projections of costs and dangers. You might save a war’s worth of lives.”

Ellsberg is a member of the advisory board of ExposeFacts, which is encouraging whistleblowers to “disclose information that citizens need to make truly informed decisions in a democracy.” He joined with NSA, State Department, EPA and Justice Department whistleblowers to help launch the new organization, which is part of the nonprofit Institute for Public Accuracy.

ExposeFacts “aims to shed light on concealed activities that are relevant to human rights, corporate malfeasance, the environment, civil liberties and war,” the group says. The ExposeFacts.org site features the whistleblower submission system known as “SecureDrop,” provided by the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

To see the billboard, click here.
For details on locations of the billboard, click here.

Playing With Fire, Both Israel and Ukraine Say, “No Truce for You”

The empire is in a particularly testy and truculent mood. Two of its appendages have, virtually simultaneously, eschewed ceasefires in their respective campaigns of aggression. Both have bombarded civilian centers with airstrikes, and Ukraine has been rolling in armored vehicles, while Israel is preparing to do the same. As Jason Ditz reports:

Israeli Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich today ruled out any ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, as the Israeli military continues to escalate airstrikes against the tiny Gaza Strip, and is building up for a ground invasion.

and

Having taken Slovyansk earlier this week, Ukrainian officials are increasingly bellicose about their ongoing civil war, demand unconditional, unilateral disarmament by the rebels before any future discussions. “There will be no more unilateral ceasefires” by Ukrainian troops, announced Defense Minister Valeriy Heletey, while other officials promised a “nasty surprise” for any of the eastern rebels that continue to resist their takeover. (…) “…the Ukrainian military is increasingly using not only airstrikes, but armored vehicles in its offensives.”

With Ukraine, as it always does with Israel, the U.S. government, which funds and arms both, defends its actions as “defending itself.” Propping up such merciless savagery is unbelievably reckless on the part of U.S. policymakers. It is precisely this kind of mass brutalization of Arabs that has resulted in incidents of blowback like 9/11. And now, even as the empire doubles down on this treatment of Arabs, it is so suicidally stupid as to actually extend it to Russian-speaking people, right on the border of nuclear Russia.

Demonize Putin all you want, but never forget that control over Russia’s mountain of H-bombs is, in the final analysis, in the hands of the Russian people. And it is far from impossible that the “blowback” rage and hatred to come from grinding Russian-speakers under the imperial boot will not be dissimilar from the blowback of doing the same to Arabs; only this time with potentially thermonuclear consequences. How, after all, do you think it makes Russians feel to see pictures like this, which is from a Ukrainian airstrike on Russian-speakers in early June?

And no, you hubris-addled neocons, not even regime-change against Putin would solve the problem. If anything his popularity is putting a lid on the outrage, because the Russians trust him to stand up for them, and therefore give him leeway for compromise.

Stop the madness now.

Bowe Bergdahl and the Voice of War

During my recent visit to Gangjeong, on Jeju Island, South Korea, where a protest community has struggled for years to block construction of a U.S. military base, conversations over delicious meals in the community kitchen were a delightful daily event. At lunchtime on my first day there I met Emily and Dongwon, a young and recently married couple, both protesters, who had met each other in Gangjeong. Emily recalled that when her parents finally traveled from Taiwan to meet her partner, they had to visit him in prison.

Dongwon, who is from a rural area of South Korea, had visited Gangjeong and gotten to know the small protest community living on the Gureombi Rock. Drawn by their tenacity and commitment, he had decided to join them. When a barge crane was dredging the sea in front of Gureombi Rock, Dongwon had climbed up to its tip and declined to come down. On February 18, 2013, a judge had sentenced him to one year in prison for the nonviolent action.

Emily laughs happily as she recalls how muscular she became while she was learning to become a sailor. She had wanted to be able to transport herself and others to and around the islands that in this region tend disproportionately to be affected by militarization, such as Taiwan, Okinawa, and Jeju Island. Boats have factored significantly into civil disobedience against the construction of Jeju’s naval base. Emily had recently returned from an international meeting with Okinawan islanders. Participants were eager to develop flotilla actions, defending peace in Asian seas, where the US military, as part of its "Asia Pivot," plans to create a ring of militarized islands in order to contain (even at the cost of provoking) emerging superpower rival China and other nations of concern.

Meanwhile, Dongwon was arranging a conference at Jeju University to explore conscientious objection to war. He and his friend Mark do not want to be conscripted into military service, but failure to comply with the Republic of Korea’s mandatory service could result in extremely severe punishments. Worldwide fully 90 per cent of those presently incarcerated for conscientious objection to military service are to be found in South Korean prisons.

Continue reading “Bowe Bergdahl and the Voice of War”

Killing in Lieu of Surveilling

Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles deserves another Pulitzer Prize for this superb cartoon. Some people are singing hallelujahs over the Supreme Court’s recent decision that police cannot automatically search people’s cell phones. However, the Supreme Court has done nothing to negate the government’s prerogative to kill people based on secret memos, secret evidence, and utter bunk.

I started ragging on the U.S. government’s assassination policy long ago when Obama was a presidential candidate who pledged to obey the Constitution. A 2011 story I wrote for the Christian Science Monitor (“Assassination nation: Are there any limits on President Obama’s license to kill?”) evoked a torrent of testy online comments:

* “Hopefully there will soon be enough to add James Bovard to the [targeted killing] list.”

* “We need to send Bovard and the ACLU to Iran. You shoot traders and the ACLU are a bunch of traders.”

* “Now if we can only convince [Obama] to use this [assassination] authority on the media, who have done more harm than any single terror target could ever dream of…”

* “James bovard… We would all be better off if bigots like you stopped writing crap.”

* “You guys who are against killing these guys are going to be the death of all of us.”

As the Counterpunch piece noted – “Unfortunately, the primary difference between some assassination advocates and Washington apologists for targeted killing is that the latter use spellcheckers. For both groups, ‘due process’ is an anachronism – if not a terrorist ploy. And for both groups, boundless groveling to the Commander-in-Chief is the new trademark of a good American. Anything less is national suicide.”

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