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How Israel’s Propaganda Machine Works

January 12, 2009
James Zogby

James Zogby

Founder and president of the Arab American Institute

The Huffington Post

Posted January 9, 2009

As in past Mideast conflicts, both the media story line and political commentary here in the U.S. has closely followed Israel’s talking points on the war. This has been an essential component in Israel’s early success and in its ability to prolong fighting without U.S. pushback. Because it recognizes the importance of the propaganda war, Israel fights on this front as vigorously and disproportionately as it engages on the battlefield.

Here’s how they have done it:

1) Define the terms of debate, and you win the debate. Early on, the Israelis work to define the context, the starting point, and the story line that will shape understanding of the war. In this instance, for example, they succeeded by constant repetition, in establishing the notion that the starting point of the conflict was December 19th, the end of the six-month ceasefire (which Israel described as “unilaterally ended by Hamas”). In doing so, they ignored, of course, their own early November violations, and their failure to honor their commitment in the ceasefire to open Gaza’s borders. They also ignored their having reduced Gaza into a dependency, a process which began long before and continued after their withdrawal in 2005. Because they know that most Americans do not closely follow the conflict and are inclined to believe, as the line goes, “what they hear over and over again,” this tactic of preemptive definition and repetition succeeds.

2) Recognize that stereotypes work. Because, for generations, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been defined with positive cultural images of Israel and negative stereotypes of Palestinians, Israel’s propagandists have an advantage here that is easy to exploit. Because the story has long been seen as “Israeli humanity confronting the Palestinian problem,” media coverage of any conflict begins with how “the problem” is affecting the Israeli people. As Golda Meir once put it, “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but we can never forgive them for making us kill their children.” And so, it was not surprising that, despite the disproportionate suffering of the Palestinians, media coverage attempted to “balance” the story, giving an extensive treatment, with photos, of anguished and fearful Israelis and the impact the war was having on them. Early on, when media treatment mattered most, Palestinians were reduced, as always, to mere numbers or objectified as “collateral damage.”

3) Anticipate and count on your opponent’s blunders. Hamas’ stupidity played into Israel’s strategy. From the outset, Israel could count on the fact that Hamas would launch rockets and issue the kind of threats that Israel could then parley into sympathy in the West. Knowing that these would most certainly come, and could be exploited, was an advantage in their propaganda war.

4) Be everywhere, and say the same thing — and make sure your opponents remain as invisible as possible. Israel begins each war with a host of English-speaking spokespersons (many born in the West) available at any time for every media outlet (it’s no accident, for example, that Israel has an “Arab” Consul General in Atlanta – that’s where CNN is). The work of their propaganda operation, which spreads multiple spokespersons in venues across the United States with consistent talking points, guarantees success. At the same time, they are able to deny media access to Gaza, only allowing the Western reporters to operate near the war zone under IDF supervision, guaranteeing Israel the opportunity to shape every aspect of the story while removing the possibility of independent verification of the horror unfolding in Gaza.

5) Give no ground. Since half of the story will be determined by what political leaders say and do, the political apparatus in Washington is also pressed into service, ensuring that White House and Congressional leadership will “toe the line.” Statements issued by Congress, therefore, reflect the talking points and, together, the Israeli spokespersons, the political commentators, and the Congressional statements serve as echoes of one another.

6) Deny, deny, deny. When events and reality break through, contradicting the Israeli-established narrative, creating stories that run counter to the imposed story line, the propaganda machine works overtime to deny, deny, deny (saying quite boldly, “Who do you believe, me or your lying eyes?”), and/or concoct a counter-narrative that shifts the blame (“We didn’t do it, they made us”). In this instance, that means asserting that the death of Palestinian civilians is always the fault of someone else, or that reporters or their opponents are staging the photos of grief (as if to say, “Arabs don’t really grieve like we do”).

7) The last refuge…. When all else fails, point to a few examples of outrageous anti-Semitism, generalize them, suggesting that that is what motivates critics. It stings, and may be over-used, but it can silence or put critics on the defensive.

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A socialist answer to the Gaza crisis

January 11, 2009
WSWS, 10 January 2009

The following statement [PDF] is being distributed at international demonstrations being held this weekend against the Israeli war in Gaza.

The criminal character of the Israeli blitzkrieg against Gaza is becoming clearer day by day. According to the United Nations, nearly 800 men, women and children have been killed so far by the Israeli military and over 3,200 people have been wounded. Universities, schools, houses, bridges and drainage systems have been destroyed by huge 500-pound bombs. The extent of the humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip defies description.

Israel is continuing to intensify the war. On Thursday, the United Nations stopped vital supplies of food for the population of Gaza after its workers were deliberately targeted by the Israeli army.

All over the world people are reacting with a sense of shock and anger to the slaughter of the defenseless Palestinian population by the modern Israeli military machine. International protests are increasing, as are the numbers of people taking part. Numerous demonstrations are planned for today with rallies and protests taking place in the US as well as numerous European cities, including Paris, London and Berlin.

How can the Israeli terror be halted? How can the future of the long-suffering Palestinian people be assured?

The organizers of today’s demonstrations have no answer to offer. Their main response is to appeal to Western governments and the United Nations to intervene and exert pressure on Israel. This invariably leads to a dead end. In reality, only a socialist offensive on the part of the international working class can bring peace to the Middle East and secure a viable future for its people—Palestinian, Israeli and Arab.

The genocidal offensive launched by the Israeli government is inseparably connected to the crisis of the capitalist world economy. After decades of unrestrained enrichment, the ruling classes all over the world have nothing to offer the working masses except poverty, unemployment, exploitation, repression and war.

Israel demonstrates this development in microcosm. Israeli society is wrought by profound social divisions. Its government is thoroughly embroiled in corruption. One of the aims of the onslaught on the Gaza Strip is, in the middle of an election campaign, to divert attention from the seething social tensions inside Israel itself.

Zionism has proved to be a trap for the Jewish people. Socialists have always warned that the Jewish question cannot be solved by setting up a capitalist national state on a religious basis. The overcoming of anti-Semitism and the persecution of Jews is inseparably bound up with the abolition of capitalist class society and the fate of the international working class. The Holocaust was made possible only by the prior destruction of the German workers’ movement by the Nazis.

With its terrorizing of the Palestinians, the Israeli state has lost any moral legitimacy. This is reflected inside Israel itself, where political life is increasingly dominated by religious zealots and right-wing fanatics who intimidate the Israeli population. It is a tragic irony that the closest parallel to the Israeli onslaught on the encircled population of Gaza is the murderous clearing of the Warsaw Ghetto by the Nazis.

Israel can conduct its war only because it has the unconditional support of the US and the complicity of the European and Arab bourgeoisies.

The US pumps $3 billion annually into the Israeli military, supplying it with the most modern weaponry. Not only President Bush and the Republicans, but the Democrats in the Senate as well have unequivocally backed Israel. Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, has remained silent—which amounts to tacit agreement.

The European ruling elites are playing a more disguised but equally perfidious role. Not one of them has condemned the Israeli aggression. Instead, they have justified the Israeli aggression as a legitimate act of self-defense and declared Hamas to be responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians. According to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, responsibility lies “clearly and exclusively” with Hamas.

The Europeans, however, are concerned about the possible consequences of the reckless actions of Israel and the US. They are therefore demanding a cease-fire. They fear the war will destabilize the Arab bourgeois regimes and undermine their own influence in the region. They also fear an increase in tensions within their own countries, which, especially in the case of France, are home to millions of immigrants from North Africa and Arab countries.

While Israel continues to intensify its terror against the Palestinians, Europe, led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, is pushing for a cease-fire on terms acceptable to Israel and the US.

Gaza is to be transformed from a prison into a high-security ghetto. The small strip of borderland between Gaza and Egypt—the only one not controlled by Israel—is to be hermetically sealed and supervised by an international security force. The authoritarian Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak and the US-sponsored Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas will be given the task of policing Gaza. Israel will thereby be freed of any responsibility for feeding Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants, and Mubarak will take over as the prison warden.

Mubarak is as yet hesitating, afraid of the domestic repercussions of such a step. But if the bribe is high enough, he will agree. His government is largely dependent on international financial assistance.

Mubarak played an important role in the preparation of the war. He shares the Israeli goal of destroying Hamas, which he fears because of its links to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Two days before Israel launched the war, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni paid a visit to Cairo to inform Mubarak of Israel’s plans. When the war started, Egypt made sure its border with Gaza remained closed, thereby blocking the only possible escape route for the encircled Palestinians.

While it is necessary to defend Hamas against the assassination of its leaders and the vilification of its supporters as “terrorists” by those inflicting state terror against a civilian population, this movement has no perspective for confronting and defeating the conspiracy between the US, Israel and the Arab bourgeois regimes. As an Islamic organization, it rejects the class struggle. Rather than turn to the Arab, Israeli and international working class for support, it is attempting to strike a deal with the Arab regimes and the imperialist powers. This is of a piece with its perspective of increasing pressure on Israel by firing rockets at Israeli villages.

Hamas is heavily reliant on Syria, which will have no problem dropping its support for Hamas if Israel pays the appropriate price. It is to this end that Sarkozy and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan (a former Islamist) are intervening. They both maintain close contacts with Israel and Syria, and are pressuring Syria either to force Hamas to end its resistance, or to abandon the organization altogether.

The fate of the population of Gaza is inseparably bound up with the international working class. The Palestinian people cannot expect any support from the United Nations, Arab regimes or European governments, which have betrayed them time and time again and share responsibility for their plight.

The international economic crisis will inevitably provoke explosive class struggles—in the Middle East, Europe and the US. These will provide the basis for a combined offensive by the international working class. The precondition for such a struggle is a break with all those parties and organizations that subordinate the working class to the national interests of the bourgeoisie. An independent socialist perspective is required.

That is not the orientation that dominates today’s demonstrations. Instead, many organizations that call themselves “left” or even “anti-capitalist” are trying to divert the protests behind their respective governments.

In Germany, the position taken by the Left Party is no different from that of the Merkel government. Leaders of the Left Party such as Gregor Gysi hold Hamas responsible for the outbreak of the war. Another Left Party leader, Norman Paech, demands the sending of UN troops to block the supply of weapons to Gaza. Others, like Wolfgang Gehrcke, hail the initiatives of French President Sarkozy. Monika Knoche calls upon the German government to support “the initiative of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.”

In France, the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) appeals to the “International Community,” i.e., the imperialist governments organized in the United Nations. On its web site, the “New Anti-Capitalist Party” being formed by the LCR prominently published an appeal by the Israeli peace activist Michel Warschawski, who demanded “an international intervention now” and called for “pressure to be exerted on Western governments” to send international troops.

At a time when growing numbers of workers and youth are coming into conflict with their own governments and the capitalist system, such organizations are seeking to divert the opposition to imperialism into support for the respective bourgeois regimes and their policies.

In the US, the organizers of the demonstrations subordinate them to the Democratic Party. They address appeals to the incoming president, Barack Obama, who has long since made clear that he will continue in all essentials the foreign policy of George W. Bush.

The World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International call upon all participants in the demonstrations to reject this orientation. The events in Gaza urgently raise the necessity of uniting the Jewish and Arab working class in the struggle for a Socialist Federation of the Middle East. This perspective is inseparably bound up with the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism all over the world.

The World Socialist Web Site editorial board

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Few Speak Out for Palestinians in US Congress

January 11, 2009

Published on Saturday, January 10, 2009 by Rueters

by Susan Cornwall

WASHINGTON – Many voices around the world speak up for the Palestinians, but few in the U.S. Congress.

Lawmakers in Washington routinely pass nonbinding resolutions supporting Israel during Middle East crises. The Senate on Thursday backed Israel’s battle against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip and the House of Representatives followed on Friday.

Even U.S. lawmakers who express sympathy for the Palestinians hesitate to call themselves pro-Palestinian and they voice strong support for the security of Israel as well, hewing to decades of close U.S.-Israeli ties.

“When these events occur, there’s almost a knee-jerk reaction of Congress that endorses 1,000 percent what Israel is doing,” said Nick Rahall, a West Virginia Democrat and Lebanese-American who has voted against some of the measures and did so again on Friday.

“Israel is our ally. … It always has been, with which I perfectly agree. But I don’t believe in allowing that to blind us to what is in our best interests, or giving knee-jerk approval to anything Israel does. We don’t do that with any other ally,” he told Reuters.

Washington has been Israel’s closest ally since 1948, when President Harry Truman made the United States the first country to recognize the new Jewish state.

Harry Reid, who leads the Democratic majority in the Senate, gave voice to the depth of the relationship when he said on Thursday, “Our resolution reflects the will of the State of Israel and the will of the American people.”

The Senate measure offered “unwavering commitment” to Israel. It recognized “its right to act in self-defense to protect its citizens against acts of terrorism” and urged a ceasefire that would keep Hamas from firing rockets at Israel.

That closely tracked Republican President George W. Bush’s comments on the crisis, said Ric Stoll, professor of political science at Rice University, who questioned whether it helped U.S. diplomats trying to broker a ceasefire.

LANDSLIDE VOTES

“You don’t have to say Hamas are nice folks,” Stoll said. “(But) how do you convince supporters of the Palestinians to pressure Hamas to go for a ceasefire, if your statements look like you are tilting heavily towards Israel?”

The House on Friday passed a resolution “recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza” by 390-5. The measure noted that the humanitarian situation in Gaza “is becoming more acute” but did not rebuke Israel.

The House has passed similar measures in recent years by landslides.

In 2006, the House voted 410-8 to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah for “unprovoked and reprehensible armed attacks against Israel” and supported Israel’s incursion into Lebanon.

In 2004, the vote was 407-9 to support a statement by Bush that it was “unrealistic” to expect Israel to return completely to pre-1967 borders. In 2003, it was 399-5 to support Israel’s forceful response to Palestinian attacks as justified.

The few opponents of the measures often include lawmakers of Arab-American descent or from Arab-American communities, and mavericks such as Democrat Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Republican Ron Paul of Texas.

Kucinich, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination last year, charged that the United States was ignoring the current humanitarian crisis in Gaza while facilitating Israel’s actions with arms deals worth billions.

Washington “sniffs at the slaughter of innocents in Gaza,” he said. “U.S. tax dollars, U.S. jets and U.S. helicopters provided to Israel are enabling the slaughter in Gaza.”

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said the Israeli lobby is often seen as the force behind pro-Israel votes, but he thinks it is not that simple.

Some Americans “don’t have a clue” about the Palestinians’ history, he said.

Lawmakers also take foreign policy cues from the president, Zogby said, so some change could lie ahead with President-elect Barack Obama, who has said little about the crisis so far.

Editing by Eric Walsh

© 2009 Reuters

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Rights Groups Condemn U.S. Role in Gaza Conflict

January 11, 2009

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (OneWorld.net) – Decrying U.S. “complicity” in what they say amounts to Israeli violations of international law, human rights groups are calling on the U.S. government to demand an immediate cessation of indiscriminate violence against civilians and increased humanitarian aid to Gaza inhabitants.

A woman and child sit next to a bag of Mercy Corps food aid in Gaza, 2006. The flow of humanitarian assistance, including food aid, into Gaza has been severely limited by the Israeli attack. © Mercy Corps

A woman and child sit next to a bag of Mercy Corps food aid in Gaza, 2006. The flow of humanitarian assistance, including food aid, into Gaza has been severely limited by the Israeli attack. © Mercy Corps“The Israeli airstrikes represent serious violations of international law — including the Geneva Conventions and a range of international humanitarian law — and the U.S. is complicit in all of it,” wrote Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies as the Israeli attacks on Gaza began in late December.

Specifically, “Israel’s lethal attack today [Dec. 28] on the Gaza Strip could not have happened without the active military support of the United States,” charged Bennis, detailing the types of weapons — such as F-16 fighter planes and Apache attack helicopters — and the amount of military aid — $3 billion a year — Israel receives from Washington.

“The use and threat of use of the U.S. veto in the [United Nations] Security Council and the reliance on raw power to pressure diplomats and governments to soften their criticism of Israel all serve to protect Israel and keep it from being held accountable by the international community,” added Bennis.

The advocacy group U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is among those that agree that Israel’s assault on Gaza “would not be possible” without U.S. support in the form of military assistance and diplomatic backing at the United Nations.

Similarly, human rights monitor Amnesty International has voiced serious concern about “attacks directed at or resulting in harm to unarmed civilians,” the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, and the significant role the U.S. alliance with Israel plays in the conflict.

“Without diminishing the responsibility of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups for indiscriminate and deliberate attacks on Israeli civilians, the U.S. government must not ignore Israel’s disproportionate response and the longstanding policies which have brought the Gaza Strip to the brink of humanitarian disaster,” wrote Amnesty International Senior Deputy Executive Director Curt Goering in an open letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week.

Highlighting the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza and noting the disproportionate impact violence has on women and children, the women-for-peace group CODEPINK is encouraging concerned U.S. citizens to take action.

In a letter to supporters today, the group decried yesterday’s Senate resolution — passed by unanimous voice vote — “recognizing the right of Israel to defend itself against attacks from Gaza and reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel in its battle with Hamas, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”

“There was nothing in this one-sided legislation…that will help the 1.5 million Gazans who are currently under siege,” the group charged, adding: “There is nothing in this bill that will do anything to support ‘the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.'”

With a similar vote expected in the House of Representatives soon, CODEPINK is rallying its supporters to urge their members of Congress to oppose any legislation that doesn’t call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire as well as unimpeded access for humanitarian aid into Gaza and a lifting of Israel’s blockade of vital household goods like cooking oil and baking flour.

OneWorld.net: Latest from Groups Inside Gaza — What’s Happening & How You Can Help

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Welcome to Hell: Gaza’s unending misery

January 11, 2009

A family of nine is among the latest Palestinian civilian casualties as the fighting continues. Ibrahim Barzak, Kim Sengupta, Geoffrey Lean and David Randall report

The Independent, UK, Sunday, 11 January 2009

A wounded Palestinian boy waits for treatment at Shifa hospital in Gaza City yesterday

AP

A wounded Palestinian boy waits for treatment at Shifa hospital in Gaza City yesterday

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Israeli forces yesterday pounded dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip and dropped leaflets warning of an escalation in attacks, as southern Israel came under renewed Palestinian rocket fire. Last night, as flames and smoke rose over Gaza City, speculation grew that Israel was about to launch the so-called third stage of its offensive: the forcible entry into Gaza City by thousands of troops.

In response, Hamas said that the Gaza offensive had “killed the last chance for settlement and negotiation with Israel”. Earlier yesterday, Israeli aircraft attacked more than 40 targets throughout Gaza, striking 10 rocket-launching sites, weapons-storage facilities, smuggling tunnels, an anti-aircraft missile launcher and gunmen. And civilians. In the day’s bloodiest incident, an Israeli tank shell landed outside a home in the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, killing nine people as they sat in their garden. They were all from the same clan, and, said health administrator Adham Hakim, their bodies were so mangled they were brought to hospital in the boot of a civilian car. Two were women and two were children.

This wretched pair will be added to the nearly 300 Gaza children who have been killed by Israeli fire. In the perversely disproportionate mathematics of this conflict, 13 Israelis have been killed – four of them by militant rockets. According to the Hamas-run Palestinian health ministry, the overall death toll now exceeds 800, more than a third of them children. The United Nations corroborates this, a report two days ago from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs putting the number of children killed at 265. The Israelis respond that Hamas often uses schools and homes, and therefore are the ones bringing down fire on Gaza’s children. Last week, an Israeli attack outside a UN school killed nearly 40 people. Israel and Palestinian witnesses said militants carried out an attack from the area moments earlier. But it is Israeli fire, Israeli weapons and Israeli military that do the aiming – and Palestinian women and children being killed at a rate that is sickening world opinion, if not yet world leaders.

And behind the statistics, the pictures of broken bodies wrapped in winding sheets are the stories of real people. People such as Olvera Al-Jarou and her tiny son Yusuf. Mrs Al-Jarou, 36, originally from Ukraine and married to a Palestinian doctor, became the first foreigner to lose her life in Gaza. Her one-year-old son Yusuf, clinging to her in fright during a bombardment, also died when an Israeli shell hit their home. A daughter, Yasmine, was severely injured and is now in intensive care; another son, Abdulrahman, was also wounded but is expected to make a full recovery.

Mrs Al-Jarou could have left with about 300 other foreign nationals allowed to leave Gaza by the Israelis last week. But other family members were denied the same escape and she decided she could not abandon her husband and children, as well as the community that has become her home. “My wife said to me that her place was with us, here, in Gaza. She could never just leave us. So she stayed, and she died,” said Dr Awny Al-Jarou, who received cuts to his head. “She died. My beautiful son died as well. My wife was cut in half and my son was in pieces. My heart is breaking but I have two other children and I now have to make sure that they live and grow up. I try not to think about my wife and son.”

Death from the skies is not the only threat facing Gaza’s children. Medical facilities are stretched almost to breaking point, and no one can vouch for this better than Dr Al-Jarou. He is at the Shifa, Gaza’s biggest hospital, where about 70 patients are in intensive care, among them his daughter Yasmine. They cling to life through four generators working round the clock at a hospital which has been without power for the past seven days because Gaza’s sole power plant has stopped working due to lack of fuel. “How terrible it would be,” Dr Hassan Khalaf, the hospital’s director, said, “if our patients survive attacks – and then die because of a lack of electricity.”

And the threats to Gaza’s families, these “collateral” inhabitants waiting to be damaged, now include, according to the World Bank, being drowned by sewage as the Israeli offensive threatens to cause the collapse of a giant lagoon of human waste. The bank says the earthen walls of the 75-acre lagoon – which contains 450 million gallons of sewage – are being weakened by the bombardment and the build-up of water pressure because pumps have run out of fuel. If they were to burst they could bring about a death toll far greater than that of the military action so far.

The bank said: “Pumps transferring sewage from the lake to infiltration basins, critical to the relief of pressure on structure, are not in operation due to lack of electricity and fuel. Failure would put about 10,000 residents of the surrounding area in danger of drowning, and spark a wider environmental and public health disaster.” It called on Israel to provide fuel for the pumps, let staff and spare parts through to the lagoon, and secure “a wide no-fire zone” around it.

There was no hope of that yesterday. Saturday’s fighting raged after both Israel and Hamas ignored a UN resolution calling for an immediate and durable ceasefire that would lead to the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. Israel has dismissed the Security Council resolution passed on Thursday as impractical, while Hamas, whose government in Gaza is not recognised internationally, is angry it was not consulted about the diplomatic efforts. Yesterday, Syria-based Palestinian militant groups including Hamas rejected the deployment of international observers or troops in Gaza. They also rejected any security arrangement that “infringes on the right of resistance against Israeli occupation”. The statement came after the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, called on Hamas, which controls Gaza, to reach an agreement to end the fighting. Mr Abbas, in Cairo for talks on a truce to end the fighting in Gaza, said the Egyptian proposal, put forward earlier this week by President Hosni Mubarak at a news conference with France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, is the only way forward.

Meanwhile, on the ground, some of the heaviest fighting occurred on the strategic coastal road north of Gaza City, Palestinian security officials said. Israeli forces moved to within about a mile of the city before pulling back slightly. While Israel has largely taken control of the road, militants continue to operate from hidden positions in the area. The road is often used to fire rockets into Israel or attack Israeli naval boats off the Mediterranean coast. By Saturday morning, 10 rockets had landed in Israel, the army said. One rocket scored a direct hit on an apartment building in the southern city of Ashkelon, lightly wounding two people and causing extensive damage to the structure.

The offensive has caused extensive damage throughout Gaza, fuelling fears of a humanitarian crisis. The United Nations estimates two-thirds of Gaza’s 1.4 million people are without electricity, and half don’t have running water. There was a lull for three hours on Saturday to allow the territory’s besieged residents to stock up on supplies, for medics to rescue casualties, and for aid groups to rush through food distribution. But agencies say three hours isn’t enough time to do their work. Salam Kanaan of Save the Children said that, in previous lulls, the agency distributed food to 9,500 people – far short of the 150,000 people it serves. UN official Adnan Abu Hasna said the Palestinian refugee agency would distribute aid to 40,000 people, half of them holed up in UN schools transformed into shelters.

Israel says any ceasefire must include assurances that Hamas will halt attacks and end the smuggling of weapons into Gaza through the porous Egyptian border. Hamas has said it won’t accept any ceasefire deal that does not include the full opening of Gaza’s border crossings. The UN resolution emphasised the need to open all crossings, which Israel and Egypt have kept sealed since Hamas militants seized control of the territory 18 months ago. Israeli leaders oppose that step because it would allow Hamas to strengthen its hold on Gaza.

The rising civilian death toll has drawn heavy criticism of Israel from international aid groups and triggered anger throughout the Islamic world and elsewhere. There have been daily protests in the Middle East and in Europe, where there also has been a rise in anti-Semitic attacks. The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said it is difficult to protect civilians in a place as densely populated as Gaza. “It’s also an area in which Hamas participates in activities like human shields and using buildings that are not designated as military buildings to hide their fighters,” she told reporters.

Rules of engagement: Is Israel in breach of the laws of war?

Critics of the Israeli invasion of Gaza say that the military response has been disproportionate and in breach of international rules of war. According to international agreements based on principles dating back to St Thomas Aquinas and enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, Israel should adhere to rules on:

Proportionality No more force should be used than is necessary, and casualties should be kept to a minimum. The response should be in proportion to the level of the threat.

Civilians Should not become victims of the war and have the right to be protected and their safety ensured.

Children Are not to be treated as combatants; medicines, food and clothing should be allowed through.

Targets Only military targets should be attacked and indiscriminate bombing is forbidden.

Weapons White phosphorus should not be used as a weapon of war in civilian areas, but Israel has argued that there is nothing to stop it being used as a smokescreen.

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Leading British Jews call on Israel to halt ‘horror’ of Gaza

January 11, 2009

A group of Britain’s most prominent Jews has called on Israel to cease its military operations in Gaza immediately, warning that its actions, far from improving the country’s security, will “strengthen extremism, destabilise the region, and exacerbate tensions inside Israel”.

Describing themselves, as “profound and passionate supporters” of Israel – and supporting its right to defend itself against the “war crime” of Hamas rocket attacks – they added that the current tactics threatened to undermine international support for Israel.

The intervention, in a letter published in today’s Observer, came as fears grew that Israel was to launch a “new phase” of its military offensive inside the Gaza strip. Yesterday warplanes dropped leaflets warning Gazans “not to be close to terrorists, weapons warehouses and the places where the terrorists operate”. The two-week-old campaign has already killed more than 800 Palestinians, while 13 Israelis have died, three of them civilians killed by Hamas rockets.

Although individual Jewish writers and religious figures have expressed their opposition to the conduct of Operation Cast Lead, the letter represents the most significant break with Israel’s tactics from a group of UK Jews.

Prominent rabbis, academics and political figures are among the signatories, including Rabbi Dr Tony Bayfield, head of the Movement for Reform Judaism; Sir Jeremy Beecham, former chair of the Labour party; Professor Shalom Lappin of the University of London; Baroness Julia Neuberger; Rabbi Danny Rich, chief executive of Liberal Judaism; Rabbi Professor Marc Saperstein, principal of Leo Baeck rabbinical training college; and lawyer Michael Mitzman, who set up Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for the Home Office.

Their demand comes amid increasing pressure on Israel from the diplomatic community to halt its operations, and rising criticism of the humanitarian impact on Palestinian civilians, including allegations of potentially serious breaches of international humanitarian law. Demonstrations around the world yesterday called for a ceasefire.

“We look upon the increasing loss of life on both sides of the Gaza conflict with horror,” reads the letter. “We have no doubt that rocket attacks into southern Israel, by Hamas and other militant Palestinian groups, are war crimes against Israel. No sovereign state should, or would, tolerate continued attacks and the deliberate targeting of civilians. Israel had a right to respond and we support the Israeli government’s decision to make stopping the rocket attacks an urgent priority.

“However, we believe that now only negotiations can secure long-term security for Israel and the region.”

The letter was written before the escalation of ground fighting in Gaza City itself signalled by Israel yesterday.

“There can be no alternative to a negotiated solution,” said Beecham. “Israel should be demonstrating, along with the Palestinian Authority, that there are economic and political benefits to be gained from peaceful engagement rather than violent confrontation.”

His sentiments were echoed by Lappin: “Relying on overwhelming military force to respond to terrorist provocations invariably imposes horrendous suffering on innocent Palestinian civilians while entrenching the agents of terror in their midst. We have no alternative but to pursue rational, long term political options that promote moderation and marginalise extremists.”

In London violent clashes broke out near the Israeli embassy as tens of thousands marched in protest. Helmeted riot police with batons and shields charged a group of demonstrators who hurled sticks, shoes and traffic cones back at them while chanting “Free Palestine!”

Protesters tried to force entry to the north gate of Kensington Palace Gardens and six climbed an adjoining wall, setting fire to an American flag. The windows of a Starbucks opposite the embassy were smashed.

The police charges created waves of panic. Protester Ahmed Mohammad, 23, claimed he saw women and children get hurt: “It was a peaceful protest until the riot police came. I’ve seen a mother and little girl pushed to the ground.”

Some protesters attempted to throw barriers and other missiles at police.

The Stop the War Coalition, which organised the event, claimed that “at least” 100,000 people had made it “the biggest demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinian people in the history of this country”. The Metropolitan Police estimated the total at 12,000.

Earlier, Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park was turned into a sea of Palestinian flags and banners condemning Israel. Speakers included human rights advocate Bianca Jagger, singer Annie Lennox and the Rev Garth Hewitt, canon at St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem.

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Israel, Hamas reject Security Council resolution

January 10, 2009

PA sees missed opportunity
uruknet.info,

Jan 9, 2009

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Both Israel and Hamas rejected on Friday a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate halt to hostilities in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri argued that the resolution is biased toward Israel and against the Palestinians, and is intended to exact a political price from Hamas.

He said the resolution does not fulfill Hamas’ conditions, which are “to end the Israeli aggression immediately, lift the blockade and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.”

The Hamas-run de facto government in Gaza has no voice at the United Nations. The Palestinian Authority mission to the UN represents the rival Fatah-led government in the West Bank.

In rejecting the resolution, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, “The State of Israel has never agreed that any outside body would determine its right to defend the security of its citizens.”

He also called the document “not practical,” blaming Palestinian organizations for continuing to fire projectiles and rockets into Israel. He said the Israeli military “will continue operations.”

The resolution “stresses the urgency of and calls for an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.” It also called for an end to the smuggling routes from Egypt into Gaza, the reopening of Gaza’s borders, and “unimpeded provision” of humanitarian aid.

Fourteen of 15 member states voted for the resolution, which was submitted by the UK. The United States abstained.

PA: “Best we could get”

An aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Nimir Hammad said that the PA and Arab states had made a massive effort to pass the ceasefire resolution. Abbas travelled to New York to press the Security Council for a ceasefire.

Hammad said the text of the resolution was the best the Palestinian diplomats could get. “I think that it is not the right time for any side or party to reject to the resolution if the objective is to stop the bloodshed in Gaza.”

“We want to stop the Israeli attacks. There is an Egyptian –French initiaive included in [the resolution] and a speedy mechanism to implement it,” he added.

He also accused Israeli politicians of waging war for electoral gains: “It is well known that the aim of the Israeli attacks is for election gains, they count the bodies for the number of seats in the Knesset.”

Hamad concluded by affirming that “We are ready for a Palestinian-Palestinian dialogue. We hope that after the end of the attacks on Gaza we will start the dialogue based on the Egyptian invitation and proposal.”

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Israel rejects UN cease-fire, continues Gaza assault

January 10, 2009
By Tom Eley | World Socialist Web Site,  10 January 2009

On Friday, Israel continued its bombardment of the densely populated Gaza strip, rejecting a UN Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire. Israeli leaders hinted that they were preparing the “third phase” of the blitz, which would entail an invasion of the inner city of Gaza, home to 410,000 people.

The criminal character of Israel’s war is reflected in its death toll. The number of Palestinians killed is rapidly mounting. Nearly 800 have died, and thousands more have been maimed. It is now believed that about half of those killed in Gaza have been civilians.

Meanwhile, 13 Israelis have died, with only three of these civilians. The ratio of Palestinian civilians to Israelis killed is over 100 to 1.

Between Thursday night and Friday afternoon, at least 22 more Palestinians were killed. Israel bombed at least 30 targets in Gaza during the night. Among the buildings destroyed was a five-story structure in northern Gaza, where seven members of a family, including one infant, perished.

Aid workers report that the situation in Gaza is increasingly desperate. Unless food and water deliveries are allowed, many of the area’s population of 1.5 million people face starvation.

The UN Security Council resolution called for an immediate end to the hostilities. The US—which normally vetoes UN resolutions related to the Palestinians that do not completely correspond to Israel’s interests—abstained from the vote, thus allowing the measure to pass without opposition.

The resolution was crafted as a face-saving measure for Israel. In effect it was an ultimatum issued to the Palestinian population, predicating any cease-fire on the ending of all resistance to Israel. Only after Palestinians lay down their primitive rifles and rockets would the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) be required to rein in its military. The resolution also called for a “durable cease-fire,” a US-Israeli euphemism for the cessation of all resistance on the part of the Palestinians, now and in the future, against Israel’s blockade, which even before the IDF’s December 27 attack had reduced over half of Gaza’s population to malnourishment.

The UN resolution envisaged a tightening of the noose around Gaza, including language demanding the prevention of the shipment of arms to Gaza from Egypt. One of Gaza’s few means of acquiring food and medicine is a series of tunnels under its southern border with Egypt. Israel has targeted the border area with a massive bombing campaign in a bid to destroy the tunnels.

Nonetheless, Israel rejected the UN motion out-of-hand. The Israeli cabinet met immediately, and, in language reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s defiance of the UN’s forerunner, the League of Nations, issued a statement rejecting the notion that the UN has any right to intervene in the Israeli offensive.

“Israel has never agreed that any outside body would determine its right to defend the security of its citizens,” said the office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

For its part, a Hamas representative in Lebanon said the group “is not interested” in the UN cease-fire because it does not meet the organization’s minimum demands. Another Hamas spokesperson said that the UN has not counted Hamas as a legitimate party to truce negotiations. Ayman Taha, a Hamas delegate in Egypt for informal negotiations, told Al-Jazeera television that Israel must stop its attacks and withdraw from Gaza. “We are not asking the impossible,” he said. “This is our right to ask for it, and to protect our people and their blood.”

Protests, large and small, against Israel’s attack on Gaza have continued throughout the world.

Thousands gathered at demonstrations in the West Bank, Alexandria in Egypt, Amman in Jordan, and in Kuwait and Baghdad. It is reported that protests in Egypt have been growing in size and intensity, and are spreading across the country. The protest in Alexandria attracted more than 50,000.

In Kenya, a protest of about 5,000 was prevented by police from advancing toward the Israeli embassy. Five thousand also protested in Malaysia. A protest of 1,000 in Oslo, Norway, was broken up by police after altercations erupted with a pro-Israeli counterdemonstration.

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Jimmy Carter: An Unnecessary War

January 10, 2009

I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided.

After visiting Sderot last April and seeing the serious psychological damage caused by the rockets that had fallen in that area, my wife, Rosalynn, and I declared their launching from Gaza to be inexcusable and an act of terrorism. Although casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years), the town was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions. About 3,000 residents had moved to other communities, and the streets, playgrounds and shopping centers were almost empty. Mayor Eli Moyal assembled a group of citizens in his office to meet us and complained that the government of Israel was not stopping the rockets, either through diplomacy or military action.

Knowing that we would soon be seeing Hamas leaders from Gaza and also in Damascus, we promised to assess prospects for a cease-fire. From Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who was negotiating between the Israelis and Hamas, we learned that there was a fundamental difference between the two sides. Hamas wanted a comprehensive cease-fire in both the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israelis refused to discuss anything other than Gaza.

We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.

Palestinian leaders from Gaza were noncommittal on all issues, claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight. The top Hamas leaders in Damascus, however, agreed to consider a cease-fire in Gaza only, provided Israel would not attack Gaza and would permit normal humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Palestinian citizens.

After extended discussions with those from Gaza, these Hamas leaders also agreed to accept any peace agreement that might be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO, provided it was approved by a majority vote of Palestinians in a referendum or by an elected unity government.

Since we were only observers, and not negotiators, we relayed this information to the Egyptians, and they pursued the cease-fire proposal. After about a month, the Egyptians and Hamas informed us that all military action by both sides and all rocket firing would stop on June 19, for a period of six months, and that humanitarian supplies would be restored to the normal level that had existed before Israel’s withdrawal in 2005 (about 700 trucks daily).

We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israel’s unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.

On another visit to Syria in mid-December, I made an effort for the impending six-month deadline to be extended. It was clear that the preeminent issue was opening the crossings into Gaza. Representatives from the Carter Center visited Jerusalem, met with Israeli officials and asked if this was possible in exchange for a cessation of rocket fire. The Israeli government informally proposed that 15 percent of normal supplies might be possible if Hamas first stopped all rocket fire for 48 hours. This was unacceptable to Hamas, and hostilities erupted.

After 12 days of “combat,” the Israeli Defense Forces reported that more than 1,000 targets were shelled or bombed. During that time, Israel rejected international efforts to obtain a cease-fire, with full support from Washington. Seventeen mosques, the American International School, many private homes and much of the basic infrastructure of the small but heavily populated area have been destroyed. This includes the systems that provide water, electricity and sanitation. Heavy civilian casualties are being reported by courageous medical volunteers from many nations, as the fortunate ones operate on the wounded by light from diesel-powered generators.

The hope is that when further hostilities are no longer productive, Israel, Hamas and the United States will accept another cease-fire, at which time the rockets will again stop and an adequate level of humanitarian supplies will be permitted to the surviving Palestinians, with the publicized agreement monitored by the international community. The next possible step: a permanent and comprehensive peace.

© 2009 The Washington Post
The writer was president from 1977 to 1981. He founded the Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization advancing peace and health worldwide, in 1982.

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How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

January 9, 2009

Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state’s legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions

A wounded Palestinian policeman gestures

A wounded Palestinian policeman gestures while lying on the ground outside Hamas police headquarters following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

The only way to make sense of Israel’s senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel’s vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration’s complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza’s prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion’s share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.

Israel’s settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel’s propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel’s terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel’s cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted – a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, “crying and shooting”.

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak – terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel’s entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel’s soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel’s objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel’s forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel’s spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel’s actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel’s objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel’s insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel’s concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel’s record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism – the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

• Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in War and Peace.

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