The Third Intifada… Is it time to fight back with stones?

Dima Hamdam.

On the first Friday of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, I was watching rushes coming in from Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, waiting for something to happen…

Hamas had called for a “day of anger” to protest Israel’s atrocities, and we were expecting clashes to break out between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers after Friday prayers.

Sure enough, there were clashes, and demonstrators have taken to the streets in several Palestinian cities, as well as Arab cities in the 1948-occupied territories. I thought it would gradually culminate into a mass-uprising… the third Intifada… but so far, it hasn’t.

Watching footage of young Palestinians covering their faces with Kuffiyah’s and hurling stones at the soldiers reminded me of 1987. Back then, I was a teenager living in Kuwait, and I was shocked to see Palestinian kids, younger than me, as they took to the streets, not afraid of massive Israeli tanks or soldiers carrying machine guns. This was a popular reaction to 20-years of Israeli occupation, but one incident is still widely believed to have been the “last straw” that led to the mass eruption; the killing of four Palestinian civilians by an Israeli jeep at a checkpoint in the Gaza Strip. (http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9155.shtml)

“Four deaths! Well the death toll in Operation Cast Lead today stands at 800 and the meter’s still rolling,” I said to a friend over the telephone today. “… where is the Third Intifada?”

He said it was probably up to Khaled Meshaal to make a phone call “when the time is right” and mobilise people. But since when did the Palestinians wait for “orders” to start an uprising? They didn’t wait for it in 1987, and in fact they took all the politicians, the PLO and all the factions, by surprise. Even in the Second Intifada, the initial revolt was a mass decision, not a response to orders from Arafat or anyone. Some might want to debate the legacy of the Second Intifada, but we cannot deny that the uprising of 1987 wasn’t just a message to the occupation, but to the already-fragmented leadership that the people were united, regardless of their
political affiliations.

No doubt the situation now is very different. Palestinians in the West Bank now have to deal with both the occupation and the Palestinian National Authority. There is also a greater risk that warring factions would want to make political gains out of popular actions. Ordinary civilians might be reluctant to march or chant under political banners. Palestinian cities are now cut off from each other which probably makes it difficult to organise a mass movement. But is silence really an affordable option now?

One might ask what gains can be made from another Intifada. Will it ultimately liberate Palestine? Well maybe not, but how is it acceptable that only one party, Hamas, is doing all the fighting, and only in the Gaza Strip? What’s going on in the West Bank? More land confiscation, more settlements, and a slow and “quiet” ethnic-cleansing process is going on in East Jerusalem while the world is looking away.

I do not know when the situation will be “ripe” for a third Intifada, and whether it is still is a viable option to begin with. I must admit: I’m a Diaspora Palestinian who’s never experienced the humiliation and oppression of the occupation. No one in my immediate family is at risk. Only Palestinians living in the occupied territories could say whether there should be a Third Intifada, but I think this is an urgent question that we must discuss, and I would love to hear from people within the West Bank… let’s debate this.

I look back at pictures of youth hurling stones in the 1980s, surely some of them are now married with children, would they send their children out now? Then I look back at what Palestinians have had to endure since 1987 and I realise the price they had to pay for their resistance; young boys who’ve limbs were broken by soldiers, fighters and civilians killed in Jenin in 2002, the horrors of Operation Defensive Shield, and of course the carnage taking place in Gaza. If I was a mother living in the West Bank would I send my children out to throw stones at soldiers, knowing that I could end up a bereaved mother like hundreds of others in Gaza?…

I’ll probably never know the answer to that. However, as the carnage continues in the Gaza Strip I cannot help but look at the West bank with extreme worry… if a Third Intifada isn’t an option, are there any alternatives?

But this much I know; everything Israel has done on the ground – the isolation of Gaza, cutting off the territories, playing up the Palestinian parties against each other – ultimately aims to destroy the cohesion of Palestinian society to an extent where it no longer speaks with one voice, and is no longer a viable nation that can create its own state. Our politicians have fallen into the trap, but we, as a people, must not.

Dima Hamdan is a London-based journalist and filmmaker.

The Children

Jack Hirschman.

This tremendous curse against the murderers of Gaza was written by New York born poet Jack Hirschman, who has spent a life on the barricades against the establishment, and whose work is a unique blend of Marxism and Jewish mysticism.

Jack Hirschman is the best known alternative poet of the United States. Unlike his beat generation colleagues and friends - for example Allen Ginsberg - he chose political revolution over the pre-hippy lifestyle.

Hirschman's poetry is much more than an outburst of righteous indignation.

It is an original blend between blue collar blue collar American speech, violent, yet thirsting for justice, and a reflection on the Qabbalah, which in its turn draws its inspiration on a merge between the Jewish and the Neoplatonic tradition. Comment by Miguel Martinez.

THE CHILDREN

all over will remember
their legs their arms,
the amputated spaces
will be Nothing [1] branded
into their little souls,
never to forget, Israel
you shattered their vessels [2]
with your gunfire, shit on
the word, said fuck you
to the fetus in the womb.

You - not they - pissed on
your own wholly unholy
tetragramaton, its letters
a fraud and a fake.
I wish I could feed you
hand grenades in your mug,
I want to stuff dead children
into your eyes, lovers of learning lies.

May selah [3] be broken
in your mouth, may amen
never find chapter and verse,
may your food turn into
the gangrenous limbs of the
children you've felled,

those little trees of sparks.[4]
You've killed David over
and over, you star of death.

[1] The ayin of the Qabbalah.

[2] A reference to the klipot or "husks" of the Qabbalah.

[3] A reference to a Jewish prayer, as is amen here

[4] The "sparks" of the Qabbalah.

Source, Miguel Martinez's blog Kelebek http://kelebek.splinder.com/post/19555677/Maledetti+gli+assassini+di+Gaz

Jack Hirschman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Hirschman

Cartoon.

We Support the Resistance in Gaza

The recent massacres in Gaza demonstrate the zionists' capacity for violence. They also reveal their fear and weakness in the face of Palestinian armed resistance. Still humiliated by their defeat by Hizballah in Lebanon in 2006, they have chosen to inflict massive casualties on easy targets. The deliberate bombing of schools stands out among the atrocities, which now include the bombing of mosques, hospitals, ambulances, universities and all other forms of civilian infrastructure.

Because the assault comes after a regime of mass starvation–with people forced to eat animal feed in the months before the military attack–we can predict that the secondary casualties from lack of food, clean water and medicine will dwarf even the staggering numbers from the attack itself.
The current attack can only be seen as the culmination of a deliberate plan to starve and kill the people of Gaza. The portrayal of zionist actions in corporate media as "retaliatory" and Palestinian resistance as "provocation" falsifies the nature and history of the zionist state.

“Israel” is a colonial settler state founded on the racist ideology of zionism. It has followed the expansionist and genocidal logic of white supremacist, settler-colonialism for over 60 years: its aim is to completely eradicate the indigenous population — either by “transfer” or by total annihilation.

Historically, the only force that has stood between the zionists and the completion of this goal has been the armed resistance. It was the armed resistance of Palestinians in the 1930s that first forced the British to reconsider their goal of establishing a zionist state in Palestine. Armed resistance forced Ariel Sharon to scrap his plan in 2000 of bringing a million new settlers into the West Bank. Armed resistance drove Israel out of South Lebanon, and forced 5,000 settlers out of Gaza.

In the absence of armed resistance, zionist expansion has continued unhindered and without international attention–as in the case of the Naqab, where Bedouins have been driven from their traditional lands. As the collaborationist Palestinian Authority increasingly tightens its repression against resistance forces in the West Bank, settler atrocities against Palestinians —aimed at driving them from their land— now escalate unchecked.

Rockets fired from Gaza on settlements in ‘48 occupied Palestine (e.g. Sderot, Ashkelon) are not mere acts of symbolism: they have defeated the capacity of the zionist state to offer settlers "security." Since "security" is now the main promise which the state holds out to its settler population, this defeat is quite significant. It has prevented the zionists from achieving their “demographic” goals: deluging Palestine with fresh new waves of colonial invaders.

We recognize that Palestinian resistance follows in the tradition of many other indigenous peoples who have had to survive and defend themselves against colonialism. First Nations peoples in the Americas, enslaved Africans in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Latin and South America, the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Herero in Namibia, the Mau Mau in Kenya, Aborigines in Australia, Arabs in Iraq, and the Macheteros in Puerto Rico have all had to, and continue to, defend themselves against white supremacist violence and land theft.

All in the international community who support the Palestinian people in their fight against zionist oppression must also support their struggle against the colonization of their land. This means supporting not just the right to resist, but the resistance itself— recognizing both its legitimacy and its viability.

The resistance has issued statements asking all supporters worldwide to state their support for the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance and recognize it as the sole alternative for Palestinian liberation. This was their only request.

We, the undersigned, answer this call:

1. We reject zionism as a white supremacist colonial ideology.
2. We recognize the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance as an expression of the will of the Palestinian people. This includes the right to decolonize all of historic Palestine by any means necessary.
3. We support the Palestinian resistance and acknowledge that it is the sole legitimate alternative in the fight for Palestinian liberation.
Long live the Palestinian Resistance!

Qawem Coalition
We are encouraging organizations to sign this statement by sending an e-mail to qawem@riseup.net . Names will be posted to the statement on our website: http://qawemcoalition.org

Pro-Resistance Coalition in Support of Palestine

People of good-will have been horrified by the most recent genocidal zionist assault on Gaza. Many have felt powerless to have any significant impact on it, but have still used the means at their disposal to express their outrage. Since neither the anti-war movement nor the Palestine solidarity movement have developed more serious forms of organized, oppositional power, these expressions of grief and anger have followed a well-worn pattern:

- Emergency demonstrations in front of the “Israeli” consulate

- Candle-light vigils for the people of Gaza

- Marches and rallies

With hundreds murdered within the first days of the bombing, and almost a thousand massacred by the third week, the sheer magnitude of atrocities committed by the zionist military in Palestine has brought groups together around the narrow call for an “end to the massacre in Gaza.”

Given the power that is currently organized in the US on the side of maintaining the zionist project, it is understandable that people who are earnestly searching for some way to intervene strategically on the Palestinian side would want to see the broadest possible coalition of forces around key goals. Regardless of political differences, and however conflicting the long-term goals of these forces may be, the crisis is felt to call for the broadest possible immediate action to stop an unfolding act of mass-murder.

As the zionists outdo themselves in the brutality of their military actions, this crisis-driven unity rears its head every few years. One thinks most immediately of the mass mobilizations that took place in 2002 after the bombing of Jenin and 2006 during the sustained air-assault on Lebanon.

But this unity not only fails to lead to more serious sustained action, it presents fundamental obstacles to the struggle for Palestinian liberation. These obstacles include:

1)A failure to denounce and reject zionism

2)A narrow reliance on marches, rallies, vigils and protests that have no impact

3)A co-opted and dangerous call for ‘unity’ between colonizing zionists and colonized Palestinians

4)A diffusion of resistance by channeling opposition into forms of protest that do not threaten the status-quo of occupation and war.

1. Failing to Denounce Zionism

By ignoring the implicit white-supremacist foundations of zionism, people are able to protest massacres while silently accepting the larger pattern of colonization. The message at the root of these actions seems to be one that denounces how Israel oppresses Palestinians (with ‘disproportionate’ violence) while silently accepting the racism, colonialism and violence implicit in “Israel’s” very existence.

As the violence of “massacres” becomes the exclusive object of protest, the violence of colonial settlement can be portrayed as “peace.” This also serves as one more weapon in the zionist propaganda arsenal: Palestinian resistance against the ordinary, daily violence of colonial oppression can be presented as “provocation,” and zionist violence as “retaliation.”

The failure to denounce zionism itself also means that zionists who object only to the most extreme policies of aggression are tolerated within a movement that should be guided exclusively by those who are fighting zionist oppression.

2. Rallies, Marches, Protests

Protests, marches, and rallies can be effective when they are part of a larger strategy of building and exerting power. This can take place when movements have a strong base and clearly articulated visions. If a union is considering a strike to enforce its demands, a mass demonstration of unity by workers is a direct threat to management. A million people mobilizing on the streets of Lebanon to demonstrate their opposition to foreign intervention aimed at disarming Hizballah was enough to scuttle a number of NATO plans. In both of these cases, the tactical meaning of demonstrations is an implicit threat: there is a next step after demonstrations, a threat that the powerful cannot ignore.

In both the anti-war and in the Palestine solidarity movements, there is no next step after marches and rallies, except more marches and rallies. Usually these marches and rallies will get big, then will taper off into smaller marches and rallies, and then will get big again in the face of the next crisis.

The marches and rallies alone fail to:

1) send a clear message in support of the Palestinian struggle for liberation through active resistance
2) have an immediate tactical impact on the machinery of genocide and war here where we live
3) become the launching point for more serious, sustained initiatives.

This is at least partly a consequence of the political forces involved in the current broad coalitions.

3. Unity between whom?

“Unity” in this case is not just the unity of more and less radical forces or of different social forces with limited shared goals. Because unity is formed around the call to “end the massacre,” it tends to include organized groups whose fundamental interest is in maintaining the state of “Israel”. They tend to be groups who think that massacres are a bad idea tactically (a real PR nightmare). For these groups, it is important to maintain support for “Israel” while at the same time objecting to the “cycle of violence” and calling for more “dialogue.”

In our current situation, these groups include people here who are tied to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority exists to administer the occupation and is now preparing to reap the benefits of the recent assault on Gaza. They are complicit in this US backed, zionist attempt to destroy the resistance. They have imprisoned and tortured members of the resistance. They have received guns and training from the “US” while promising not to use them against zionist invaders­that is to say, exclusively against Palestinians. Abbas has prepared an emergency cabinet to take control of Gaza when the zionist assault is over. While those tied to the Palestinian Authority need some kind of a stage from which to publicly proclaim their opposition to the attack, their condemnation of ‘Israeli’ attacks in Gaza keep them legitimate, but do not make them implicitly pro-resistance or pro-Palestinian liberation.

It has become clear that “unity” in this context includes forces who are against the resistance in Gaza and who oppose any real liberation for Palestinians. In any given coalition, these groups are more likely to have resources and sustained organizational infrastructures that put them in a much better position to project the message of collective action.

The main focus of political activity has been symbolic demonstrations that send a political message. That message fails to articulate unambiguous support for the Palestinian resistance, in this case military resistance in Gaza. These dangerous omissions negate the significance that such action might have. This is a crucial failure: political support for the legitimacy of the resistance is the single most important request that the Gaza resistance has asked of the broader international community.

4. Impact: Diffusing Resistance

Mass mobilizations in the streets carry with them the potential to disrupt the machinery of war and business.

One could better sympathize with limited calls for protest aimed at maximizing numbers if those numbers were being mobilized to do something to impede the infrastructure of mass murder. In six years of organizing against the war in Iraq, this goal has not crystallized. Any attempts at disruption of the imperialist war in Iraq have been limited to smaller groups in a few locations.

Here, once again, it is possible to see how the organizations involved in broad coalition work have functioned to keep anti-war actions on terrain that is safe and unthreatening to the war. These include groups who have functioned as appendages of the Democratic party who have used demonstrations as another stage for electioneering and self-promotion. At the root of their protests is not support for the Arab resistance and struggle for freedom, but alternately, progression of their own political and economic fortunes. Included in the types of coalitions who participate in co-opting sustainable, effective activism are left-wing party organizations that have used demonstrations primarily as a means of recruitment.

These types of coalitions diffuse resistance by providing avenues through which people can protest massacres while ensuring that these protests do not disrupt wars. These coalitions and their demonstrations allow people who feel ‘uncomfortable’ with massacres the ability to express this discomfort. Not organizing or supporting resistance beyond that, centralizes these demos within the consciousness of the demonstrating protestors. It becomes more about protestors’ feelings and anxieties than it does about stopping violent institutions and the states that perpetrate the bloodshed being protested.

Marches and rallies, if they did nothing else, could potentially be a way of getting new people involved in a movement with strategic goals. This is something different from mere recruitment to existing organizations and parties: it requires the building of credible initiatives by groups and individuals with shared goals that would allow us to exert power.

What We Can Do

Such strategic initiatives will not arise from coalition work with any of the forces already mentioned above. Zionists have a long history of involving themselves in “pro-Palestine” work in order to prevent Palestine solidarity from having any real consequences. Liberal democrats have worked hard to ensure that the anti-war movement does not organize demonstrations that might potentially harm the interests of Democratic Party war-mongers (Kerry in 2004; Obama in 2008).

Despite these ideological and structural obstacles, we need to build coalitions. In those coalitions, we need to hold serious strategy discussions, and from those strategy discussions, to build initiatives with both short-term and long-term goals. These initiatives cannot be the initiatives of any one group, but must be owned by a larger movement.

1) We need a coalition that is both anti-zionist and pro-resistance. Whatever immediate strategic action or initiative we may form, it must be guided by those who share the consensus that Palestinians have a right to reclaim all of their historic land by any means necessary.

2) We need a coalition that supports not only radical principles but radical actions. Such a coalition must be willing to look for ways to intervene tactically and to move beyond the script of rallies and demonstrations.

3) Out of that coalition, we need to set both short and long term goals and build movement infrastructure for achieving them.

The Qawem Coalition has come together to advance these goals:

- Supporting the resistance in its struggle to liberate all of historic Palestine
- Providing aid to Palestine that is not tied to political parties and organizations whose primary goal is to undercut support for the resistance
- Ending all “US” aid to “Israel”: military, economic and political
- Fighting colonialism and “US” imperialism here where we live If you are interested in joining the Qawem coalition (qawemcoalition.org), please write us at qawem@riseup.net. FREE PALESTINE!!!

How beautiful it is to kill, how just to die

WRITTEN BY: Santiago ALBA RICO
Translated by Christine Lewis Carroll

“and thereupon the Lord rained down brimstone and fire out of heaven, the Lord’s dwelling place, and overthrew these cities, with all the plain about them, and all those who dwelt there, and all that grew from their soil. And Lot’s wife, because she looked behind her as she went, was turned into a pillar of salt.”
Genesis 19, 23-26



The wrath of God is not only just but also beautiful, and its very beauty reveals and proclaims God’s superior justice. How can one not give in to this extraordinary picture of El Bosco painted by the Israeli aviation? Are not the bodies and homes below demolished precisely because of the beauty of this divine flash, of this dazzling fountain of light? Those who do not die, those who resist, those who curse amongst the ruins, are they not guilty for this reason, demanding with their very survival a new ejaculation of brimstone and fire?

The oldest religious atavisms are supported by the most modern means of destruction. Manipulation and lies apart, we bow fascinated by the Israeli brutality because it is brutal and comes from the sky; we admire their force and not their cause, and it is exactly the indisputable verticality of this force what confers it with a legitimacy unattainable to reason: it is all in one time and cast aesthetic and theological. At one time one could only destroy a city by being God; now the Israelis can do it as well. Only miraculous blessings and deserved punishment fall from heaven. The technological superiority of the Zionists – their superior contempt of human life activates this theological legitimation that their rulers consciously exploit, to the point that it is the biblical technotheology of the air raids, now the only source of legitimacy, what obliges them to repeat the raids on a bigger scale every time. It is so nice, so pleasant, so easy, so fair to reduce a city to rubble and so difficult, so ugly, so morally degrading to try to rationally defend Zionism…The God of the Bible who destroys from above is more just and beautiful the greater his destructive power. His victims adorn His power, justify His existence, pay tribute to His mercy; the greater the number of dead, more guilty are the corpses and more sublime the aggressor; the more children, women and old people that perish under this marvellous light, more marvellous is the light and more deserving the punishment. Only Yahweh is “disproportionate” – out of all proportion – and this is what the mass media and governments mean when they describe – respectfully and with admiration – the use of force by Israel: they mean it is “divine”, supernatural, superhuman, they mean it is justified, that we cannot judge it and even less condemn it without committing sacrilege. The means (of destruction) justify all the objectives. The technological “disproportion” declares its right regardless of human laws and requires very little propaganda to impose its authority: it is sufficient to be able to imitate God and “overthrew these cities, with all the plain about them, and all those who dwelt there” amidst a torrent of light. Even the most hardened atheists amongst us must ignore the dead as long as there are many, and cluster bombs and white phosphorous are used; as long as the murderer is almighty and its power religious and supernatural. Israel is a theocratic state, because of the way people live and kill there. The rest of the world admires Israel because of this. And when we look back on the spectacle, like Lot’s wife, we are converted into dumb pillars of salt.

The air is pure; the sky is not imputable. The Israeli pilot of the F16 does not even get his hair ruffled; elegant, sophisticated, punctilious in accomplishing his mission, disinfected from all the lowest instincts which could blur his vision, brilliant, ironic, serious, just, he imitates God and El Bosco and returns in time to Tel Aviv to try the food from a new Indonesian restaurant and discuss with his girlfriend the details of the new furniture bought in Ikea.

And down below? What happens meanwhile down below? What are the people below like?



Here we see them. They are part of the land, primitive, emotional, loud, threatening, obscure, clinging, superstitious, gregarious, ragged, ugly, pedestrian, horizontal, vulnerable, expendable: human. The article in El Mundo which illustrated this photograph added that they were also “exhibitionists”: contrary to us, the lords of the sky who prefer to bury our dead in private, the Palestinians of Gaza enjoy displaying the corpses of their children and proclaiming obscenely their grief. The shrewd anthropologist of the Spanish newspaper forgot to quote other differences just as eloquent: whilst as lords of the sky we like dying of old age in a hospital or in the privacy of our own homes, the Palestinians of Gaza like dying in the street, in public, blown up with no decency by a biblical bomb sent from the sky; whilst as lords of the sky we like killing without ruffling our hair or getting excited – to return in time for supper to Tel Aviv without visiting the hairdresser first – the Gaza Palestinians like killing and killing each other – because the rage and the hate would not let them do it any other way. If the Israeli “disproportion” justifies itself, the human proportions of the Palestinians are also eliminated. The photograph of the Israeli bombing is enough to convince us of the Zionist justice; the photograph of the Palestinian funeral is enough to convince us of the Palestinian guilt.

The difference between Israelis and Palestinians is summarised in these two images, in this contrast which the mass media, deliberately or not, feed without respite: the aesthetic and theological superiority on one part, based exclusively on their deadly weapons, and the “natural” inferiority of the others, reduced beforehand and from time immemorial to pure tinder for Yahweh’s fire, to mere fuel for the Divine Light. No reasoning, no request can thwart this difference; not even a Qassam rocket. There are only two ways to correct this contrast fixed in our retina and synthesised tamely in the way we look: or we arm the Palestinians with missiles, cluster bombs and white phosphorous or we disarm the Israelis and dissolve the State of Israel. Not until either of these two alternatives occurs, will it be of any use that human justice is on the side of the Palestinians in a world that dribbles fascinated – the USA, the European Union, the Arab governments, the UN, the mass media – in the presence of pictures of El Bosco painted by the Israeli aviation and the biblical just beauty. As long as human justice does not seem more just and beautiful to us than an Israeli bombing, the Palestinians – whatever they do – will only manage to enlarge the difference and give excuses to Yahweh for killing them from its remote, imperturbable elegance. Please do not give them excuses – do not launch rockets, do not fire arms, do not unsheathe knives, do not defend your homes, do not protect your children, do not shout, do not cry, do not eat, do not breathe. But if there is no human justice and the Palestinians are guilty before God of breathing (all the more so if they bleed!), if whatever they do, they have been condemned for eternity, it would be shameful to condemn them also – whatever they do – from the comfort of our moral airplanes. There are occasions when it is more immoral to moralise than murder.

But now the difference has been reduced a little. Under cover of the F16 in my warm home, shuddering and ashamed, I feel satisfied that the Israelis have given up their divine impunity and have also entered Gaza by land. They are still vastly superior, but they move at ground level so they become more Palestinian, a little more human and vulnerable; perhaps it would even be justifiable to kill them. Perhaps some may even die. I wish that instead of fear or admiration, some might even inspire us pity.

God is “disproportionate”; human justice is “proportionate”. Beauty is “divinely proportionate”; compassion is “humanly disproportionate”. Perhaps in the next few days we will see at last the image of an Israeli tank being destroyed by the heroic defenders of Gaza and then, after the joy, we would get taken away by the disproportion of the compassion - unexpected, incomprehensible, irrational – in the presence of an Israeli soldier taken prisoner or dead. In the absence of proportion, in the absence of justice, maybe the murderers now exposed to the weak, ugly and courageous defensive fire, the Zionists, dead, taken prisoner or wounded, painfully lying on the ground, would seem human to us for the first time.

In the Name of the Palestinians

"...We know this much : the Palestinians may bend, but they will not break. We must continue to defend their legitimate rights on the ground. Around the world, we must support their resistance in a determined, peaceful way. Israel, for all its awesome firepower, has not won the conflict ; Israeli society faces deepening crises. It is a matter of utmost urgency that the State and the people of Israel realize that, for them, there can be no secure future, and ultimately, no survival, without recognition of the legitimate rights and the dignity of the Palestinians. The strategy of playing for time, of willful blindness, of “shock and awe”, of bloodshed and massacre offers no assurance of victory. On the contrary, it is a formula for defeat..."



Startling—and stomach turning : where Palestinians are involved, memory and sense of proportion fail us. The Jewish conscience, justifiably, has long called upon the world’s powers and upon their citizens to remain vigilant, never to forget -in the name of “the duty of memory”- the atrocities, massacres and genocides of the past. But where the State of Israel is involved, we are expected to set all sense of proportion aside, to leap to conclusions. Suddenly, it would be assumed that these are two equally powerful belligerents. After a six-month ceasefire, one of the two parties to the conflict (the Palestinians) is said to have broken the truce by unleashing its rockets. The victim of aggression (Israel) is acting solely in self-defense—if we are to believe the version sold to the world by Israel, and relayed by complacent and complicit Western media with the full support of the Bush administration and of many European governments. The bravest among them can barely bring themselves to point out Israel’s “disproportionate” reaction. What courage !

And, most of all, what lies ! For decades—long before Hamas came to power—the Palestinians have seen their dignity trodden underfoot, their legitimate rights denied. From the Oslo “peace” accords to a succession of negotiations (more frequently compromises), from the repeated broken promises to media circus withdrawal schemes, the Palestinian representatives have achieved nothing for their people. Israeli governments, whether of the Left or the Right, stall for time, resort to lies, summarily execute their adversaries, and dismiss Palestinian civilian deaths as collateral in the name of Israel’s security while continuing to expand illegal settlements and pursue a policy of “facts on the ground.” Many experts, including Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur for Human Rights in Occupied Palestine, have confirmed that Israeli policy fails to respect the Geneva Convention ; that it has, by default, made the two-state solution almost impossible.

The Israeli government has fenced in the population of the West Bank (in complete disregard for United Nations General Assembly resolutions and the International Court) ; it has subjected the population of Gaza to a siege coupled with a blockade that has brought hunger, a shortage of medical supplies and care, and mass unemployment ; it has created a state of despair. International humanitarian relief organizations are sharply restricted in their activities ; badly needed food supplies are not getting through. The June 19 - December 19 truce was conditional on an end the siege and the blockade of Gaza, and partial opening the Egyptian border crossing. Neither Israel (nor Egypt) has respected these conditions ; the Palestinian population has been the victim of inhuman treatment, for weeks, months and years now. Are we to ignore these realities in order to justify the massacres now unfolding before our eyes ? Are the Palestinians responsible for their own misfortune because rockets were launched from Gaza ? The failure of memory is compounded by a loss of all sense of proportion : the number of Israeli victims is now multiplied by a factor of one hundred, two hundred, three hundred Palestinian civilians murdered by Israeli government fiat.

Israel flaunts its contempt for the self-styled “international community”, secure in unilateral support of the United States and the silence—in silent complicity—of European governments. An efficient communication strategy and a complacent media establishment (accompanied with the usual dose of predictable disinformation) allows the Israeli government to play for time, to inflict upon a population of one and one-half million human beings an inhuman siege, and now, a full-scale massacre. We have been reduced to spectators and our “neutrality” should have to protect us from our guilty conscience. Cynicism is at its paroxysm when we understand that the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians depend upon the political calculations of Israel’s leaders, eager to demonstrate their strength and determination with a view to the upcoming elections. The Lebanese disarray during summer 2006 should be rectified. Mission accomplished : 80% of Israelis support the murderous operations in Gaza ! Frightening !

Can we expect anything better from the “international community” of governments and states as we observe their reactions, both East and West ? Theirs is the guilty silence of the accomplice ; the hypocrisy ; the waiting game ; contempt for Palestinian lives—for whom the ideal solution would be Jordan, Lebanon, or some “permanently temporary” refugee camps. The time has come to create an international, global non-violent resistance movement against the violent, extremist policies of the State of Israel. We must mobilize world opinion by keeping the Palestinian issue in the public eye through ongoing, scrupulously accurate information ; by writing articles, organizing conferences and demonstrations in support of the Palestinians, and by improving synergy between the efforts and activities of existing organizations. We know this much : the Palestinians may bend, but they will not break. We must continue to defend their legitimate rights on the ground. Around the world, we must support their resistance in a determined, peaceful way. Israel, for all its awesome firepower, has not won the conflict ; Israeli society faces deepening crises. It is a matter of utmost urgency that the State and the people of Israel realize that, for them, there can be no secure future, and ultimately, no survival, without recognition of the legitimate rights and the dignity of the Palestinians. The strategy of playing for time, of willful blindness, of “shock and awe”, of bloodshed and massacre offers no assurance of victory. On the contrary, it is a formula for defeat.

The Old Testament and the Genocide in Gaza

"You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.”
Leviticus, Chapter 26, verses 7-9

"When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations…then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.”Deuteronomy 7:1-2,

"...do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them…as the Lord your God has commanded you...”Deuteronomy 20:16

There is not much doubt amongst Biblical scholars that the Hebrew Bible contains some highly charged non-ethical suggestions, some of which are no less than a call for a genocide. Biblical scholar Raymund Schwager has found in the Old Testament 600 passages of explicit violence, 1000 descriptive verses of God's own violent actions of punishment, 100 passages where God expressly commands others to kill people. Apparently, violence is the most often mentioned activity in the Hebrew Bible.

As devastating as it may be, the Hebrew Bible saturation with violence and extermination of others may throw some light over the horrifying genocide conducted momentarily in Gaza by the Jewish state. In broad daylight, the IDF is using the most lethal methods against civilians as if their main objective is to ‘destroy’ the Gazans while showing ‘no mercy’ whatsoever.

Interestingly enough, Israel regards itself as a secular state. Ehud Barak is not exactly a qualified Rabbi and Tzipi Livni is not a Rabbi’s wife. Accordingly, we are entitled to assume that it isn’t actually Judaism per se that directly transforms Israeli politicians and military leaders into war criminals. Moreover, early Zionists believed that within a national home Jews would become 'people like all other people', i.e., civilised and ethical. In that very respect, Israeli reality is pretty peculiar. The Hebraic secular Jews may have managed to drop their God, most of them do not follow Judaic law, they are largely secular, and yet they collectively interpret their Jewish identity as a genocidal mission. They have successfully managed to transform the Bible from being a spiritual text into a bloodsoaked land registry. They are there, in Zion i.e., Palestine, to invade the land and to lock up, starve and destroy its indigenous habitants. Accordingly, it seems as if the artillery commanders and IAF pilots that erased northern Gaza two nights ago were following Deuteronomy 20:16 they indeed did ".. not leave alive anything that breathes.” And yet, one question is left open. Why should a secular commander follow Deuteronomy verses or any other Biblical text?

Some very few sporadic Jewish voices within the left are insisting upon telling us that Jewishness is not necessarily inherently murderous. I tend to believe them that they themselves consider their words as genuine and truthful. But then one may wonder, what is it that makes the Jewish state brutal with no comparison? The truth of the matter is actually pretty sad. As far as we can see, Zionism is the only secular ideological and political Jewish collective around and as it happens, it has proved once again this week that it is genocidal to the bone.

As far as genocide is concerned the difference between Judaism and Zionism can be illustrated as follows: while the Judaic Biblical context is soaked with genocidal references, usually in the name of God, within the Zionist context, Jews are killing Palestinians in the name of themselves i.e., the ‘Jewish people’. This is indeed the ultimate success of the Zionist revolution. It taught the Jews to believe in themselves. To believe in the Jewish state. ‘The Israeli’ is Israel’s God. Accordingly, the Israeli kills in the name of ‘his or her security’, in the name of ‘his or her democracy’. The Israelis destroy in the name of ‘their war against terror’ and in the name the ‘their America’. Seemingly, in the Jewish state, the Hebraic subject reverts to mass killing as soon as he finds a ‘name’ to associate with.

This doesn’t really leave us too much room for speculation. The Jewish state is the ultimate threat to humanity and our notion of humanism. Christianity, Islam and humanism came along with an attempt to amend Jewish tribal fundamentalism and to replace it with universal ethics. Enlightenment, liberalism and emancipation allowed Jews to redeem themselves from their ancient tribal supremacist traits. Since the mid 19th century, many Jews had been breaking out of their cultural and tribal chain. Tragically enough, Zionism managed to pull many Jews back in. Currently, Israel and Zionism are the only collective voice available for Jews.

The last twelve days of merciless offensive against the Palestinian civilian population does not leave any room for doubt. Israel is the gravest danger to world peace. Clearly the nations made a tragic mistake in 1947 giving a volatile racially orientated identity an opportunity to set itself into a national state. However, the nations’ duty now is to peacefully dismantle that state before it is too late. We must do it before the Jewish state and its forceful lobbies around the world manage to pull us all into a global war in the ‘name’ of one banal populist ideology or another (democracy, war against terror, cultural clash and so on). We have to wake up now before our one and only planet is transformed into a bursting boil of hatred.