Nearly six months have passed since the Israeli Army ceased pounding the tiny stretch of land known as the Gaza Strip. Since then, Gaza continues to appear in the news sporadically as a subject of recurring human misery.
The tireless efforts of British MP George Galloway and the courageous endeavors of the Free Gaza Movement have managed to push Gaza back into the spotlight even if only for a moment and with a political context which is lacking at best.
Aside from that, the three-week Israeli onslaught on Gaza last year and the catastrophic conditions endured there have served the purpose of a footnote in many news reports. The event is generally cited: “Israel moved against Hamas in Gaza to quell the firing of militants’ rockets, resulting in the death of such and such a number.” Hamas, according to conventional media wisdom is the “group that ousted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ forces in a bloody coup in mid-2007.”
Sadly, one’s worse fears have been realized; the post-Gaza massacre world and the one, which existed before are exactly the same. Israel is trying to prove that political and military might overpower all human rights reports combined, and that public opinion — which turned against Israel as it wantonly killed and wounded thousands — will eventually swing back to its favor. One does not need to be an expert in the art of propaganda to predict the public relations model that allows Israel to deceive millions into believing that the belligerent state is in fact a victim of Arab hostility. Thus, it was hardly a deviation from the script when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a very shrewd term to describe his governments’ refusal to respect international law regarding the dismantling of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. All the settlements, by the way, are considered illegal under international law — specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention. Netanyahu said during his recent trip to Germany that the West Bank would never be “Judenrein,” a Nazi term meaning “cleansed of Jews.”
And once again, Israel is resorting to its traditional propaganda — such as equating Palestinians with Nazis — drawing on people’s historical sympathies, their guilt and inability to recognize false analogies.
More, Israel’s National Security Adviser Uzi Arad is in fact reviving the discredited Israeli rhetoric that Israel has no partner in peace. In Haaretz on July 10, he questioned whether there is in fact a Palestinian leadership that is capable of delivering peace with Israel. If such a Palestinian state existed, say in 2015, according to Arad, it would be a “fragile structure, a house of cards.” But he chose to leave unsaid that Israel purposely besieged and weakened the democratically elected Palestinian leadership in Gaza, while painstakingly propping up and legitimizing Abbas, using with astounding mastery the carrot and stick metaphor.
Only Israel can cleverly spawn a dependent, weak leadership, and accuse the Palestinians of not being a worthy peace partner; only Israel can murder thousands of Palestinians and demand security from its very victims; only Israel can speak of a Nazi past, yet cage Palestinians in concentration camps and punish them for foolishly being born into the wrong race.
It has been six months since the unprecedented and savage war against Palestinians in Gaza, and here we are making the same argument, referencing the same deceit and quoting the same outrageous claims. During those same months, unsubstantiated Israeli accounts have been countered with carefully composed reports by highly regarded organizations, such as the Red Cross, among others. Bombarded Gaza neighborhoods “look like the epicenter of a massive earthquake,” said a recent Red Cross report, entitled: “Gaza: 1.5 million trapped in despair.”
UN human rights envoy, Richard Falk summed up Israeli behavior in more direct terms on July 9. “There will be no peace between these two peoples, until Israel shows respect for Palestinian rights under international law,” professor Falk said.
Israeli leaders, however, pay no heed to international law. In fact there is little evidence that Israel’s history was shaped, in any respect, by international standards, neither those pertaining to war nor to peace. Israel only understands the language of politics and power. It is a state that has been constructed and sustained according to Machiavellian wisdom. Adviser Arad is perhaps the most visible manifestation of the logic that propels the Israeli state. In his recent interview, he stated that once a state deal is reached with the Palestinians, Israel should be granted NATO membership as a “quid pro quo.” To counter nuclear threats by others, he said Israel must have “tremendously powerful weapons.”
Considering that Israel already has nuclear arms, one must wonder what other “tremendously powerful weapons” Arad is referring to. Arad must have been encouraged by US Vice President Joe Biden who said in a recent interview with ABC’s “This Week” that “If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different from the one being pursued now (by the US and its allies), that is their sovereign right to do.”
Once again, it is the brute logic that “might makes right” pursued by those with the bigger guns, that continues to menace the Middle East, with Gaza being the most devastating example.
One must remember that Israel never heeds statements and is hardly moved by reports and random condemnations. Only pressure, constant and focused, will grab the attention of Israeli policymakers. Only the language of an international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions will be a legible political language for Tel Aviv. As for Gaza, civil society must not wait for President Barack Obama or any other to save the slowly starving population, but must take every possible and urgent effort to help an oppressed yet proud community obtain its basic rights and freedom.
— Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com.
