Western Media/governments complicit in Zionist brutality

 

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired *

One of the most frustrating things in periods of relative calm in the struggle, or more accurately, when the working class is not united and moving forward, is that one can feel so helpless, so unable to influence events.  One thing I miss about work and my union activity on the job was the constant struggle day in day out between workers in the form of our union and the bosses. The battle at the point of production, where the “Rubber meets the road” never stops. It wasn’t always easy but I always felt that I was participating in the making of history as opposed to simply being a victim of it.

When it comes to wider battles the situation can get a bit demoralizing. At times there seems little we can do about the super exploitation of our brothers and sisters in factories of Bangladesh or in the urban ghettos and rural poverty in our own country. The sex trade and child trafficking is an epidemic, not to mention environmental destruction, the lack of any significant national movement and absence of a leadership with any hint of a class struggle approach, it seems overwhelming at times.

I was talking to a woman the other day who had just returned from Israel. I didn’t know her at all and she was friendly enough so I asked her if she went to Gaza. She wasn’t real familiar with the name and it became pretty obvious why when she mentioned that she had gone with a group from her church.  The Christian Zionists wouldn’t be concerned with what’s happening in Gaza as they believe, like the Jews do, that god gave the Jews this land. The present conflict is a predecessor to Jesus coming back here.  How can the plight of Palestinians command attention in that scenario? The Jews, unlike Christians, are not moved by the Christian position that they will all burn in hell if they don’t convert when Jesus gets here.

You can’t hate an individual for their ignorance. I gave her a brief history of the situation and what Gaza was but, hey, I can’t compete with god. I had to just walk away from that one. The leaders of the organized labor are also guilty for their shameful silence and inactivity as this Apartheid state continues its war against Palestinians. Their silence contributes to the ignorance people have around this issue and other matters that affect all working people.

That a religious person would ignore what is happening in that part of the world, a horrific and violent climate, a racist settler state, financed and armed by the US taxpayer, disgusts and angers me.  You can’t accuse Germans or Poles of turning a blind eye to the horrors of Auschwitz or Bergen Belsen and not condemn Christian pilgrims, Jews  (or anyone else) that travel to Israel and ignore the horrific brutality that Palestinians face at the hands of Jewish extremism (Zionism).

I got madder this morning when I saw the front page of the wall Street Journal.  There’s a picture of Israeli’s by a line of cars taking cover “As sirens sound in Tel Aviv”. The picture to the right is a map of the area showing how far rockets from Gaza can reach in to Israel now, as far as 47 miles. And this journal of the US capitalist class, the same thugs that are destroying our standard of living at home, warns that in this “confrontation between Israel and Hamas”-------- carefully chosen words as opposed to a war on Palestinian civilians because the US considers Hamas, the democratically elected government of the concentration camp we know as Gaza, a terrorist group---------, will likely escalate as Hamas has acquired new rockets from Syria that can travel 93 miles.   One of the reasons the homemade rockets fired from Gaza often miss their targets is they are aimed not guided. Hamas  doesn’t have the Pentagon on their side.

Israel, one of the most technologically advanced and powerful militaries in the world has responded firing missiles in to the heavily populated Gaza.  There are no pictures in the WSJ of the damage inflicted in Gaza but the paper does report that the mighty Gazan military machine with its homemade rockets and all has resulted in “No (Israeli) casualties or major damage…”  Meanwhile, the Zionists high-powered and US provided war machine has killed “61 people in Gaza since Monday” the Journal reports. This is the collective punishment the Zionists are so fond of.

The western press is complicit in the humanitarian disaster that is Gaza and the condition of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.  Gaza is a horrific scene as the Zionist regime controls food, water and power in the camp. The entire article in the Wall Street Journal is nothing but a propaganda piece reminiscent of the Nazi propaganda of the past.

Norman Finkelstein talked of the last invasion of Gaza pointing out, as one commentator said, that the planes bombing this highly populated civilian area, “…operate in an environment free of air defense, enjoying complete aerial superiority”  “It took as much courage….”  Finkelstein argues, “….to fly planes over Gaza as it does to shoot fish in a barrel.”

We don’t need to be military statisticians or experts on warfare to draw the conclusion that the “both sides should show restraint” nonsense we hear from Western media is nothing but the parroting of state department releases.  The body count alone speaks volumes.  In the last invasion of Gaza at least 1,166 Palestinians were killed and the Israeli’s lost 13. And Benyamin Netenyahu, the Israeli prime minister says of the Palestinians, “There is a vast moral divide between us and our enemies, they sanctify death and we sanctify life.”

Netenyahu’s words above are meant for Hamas, the democratically elected government in Gaza. Former US president Jimmy Carter was one of the monitors of the election that put Hamas in the driver’s seat and claimed they were fair and free elections. "If you sponsor an election or promote democracy and freedom around the world, then when people make their own decision about their leaders, I think that all the governments should recognize that administration and let them form their government," Carter said at the time.

But the Palestinians in Gaza didn’t elect the government the US or Israel wanted so the present stature of “terrorist” group with regards to Hamas still stands; for the name “terrorist” group to not apply to various organizations throughout the world, they have to be terrorists that serve the interests of Washington and US capitalism.   There are occasions of course when these allies fall afoul of their masters, begin to function a little too independently which brings the category “terrorist” back in to play. Northern Irish Catholics were always subject to the "terrorist" label by British capitalism when it was convenient to do so.

Most of the hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers that have come from other countries and stolen land belonging to Palestinians are right wing religious fanatics, the Jewish equivalent of the Islamist fanatics waging war in Iraq at the moment. They claim ownership of that land not by deed but by god’s will and backed up by mortal "boots on the ground."  Imagine Native Americans demanding that all immigrants in the US, whether here through capture or indentured servitude, leave this land. Imagine having them drive us from our homes and then demolishing them.  Imagine them taking our farms, our homes, killing or imprisoning our children. After all, they have the right; their god gave this land to them. This is the basis for the Zionist argument and the Apartheid state they rule.

The Gentile US bourgeois has no love for Jews.  The creation of a Jewish state in Palestine was a political issue. Early leaders of the Zionist movement were labeled “terrorists” by the British.  But World War 1 changed things. The first British governor of Jerusalem referred to the formation of a Jewish state after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire as “Our loyal little ulster in the Middle East”. The defeat of the Turks left a huge vacuum in the area that British imperialism could not fill and oil had been discovered there by that time.  The Arabian peninsular had become more than just a stopping off point for British imperialism en route to its Indian and Asian possessions.  The Arab masses were not reliable, too populous and filled with revolutionary potential.

The view was that a Jewish settler state would, like Ireland’s six northern counties (Ulster), be surrounded by Muslims.  Like the Protestants in Northern Ireland, a siege mentality would be a good thing in the new Israel, a reliable and secure ally, a secure foothold in an oil rich region.  The Nazi regime and the slaughter of million of Jews offered another opportunity for western imperialism to strengthen its foothold in the Middle East, a refuge for Jewish survivors of Nazi terror. The Palestinians had nothing to do with the Nazi’s attempt to annihilate the Jews; they must get sick of hearing about it. Had the world’s ruling powers put Israel in Bavaria there would have been some turmoil indeed.

There is no way out of this quagmire on the basis of capitalism. The break up of Iraq which was evident from the beginning of US capitalism’s failed and brutal occupation, appears to be more likely than ever, either way, there is no answer to that crisis on the basis of capitalism either.

US friendship with Israel is between the folks at the top and that is waning. Martin Indyk, the US’s special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian talks, recently resigned, stating at a gathering in Colorado last week, “There’s a deep loathing of each leader that has built up over the years”, referring to Netenyahu and the head of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas.  We know it is more than that, but at some point as the US capitalist class continues to attack living standards at home, and US workers are forced to fight back, pressure to abandon the Zionists and cut the money flow will likely increase, especially as US reliance on foreign oil declines.  It is not ruled out that the flames of anti-Semitism could be reignited by the US bourgeois as part of a generalized strategy to undermine a united working class offensive against austerity. The Jewish population in the US is very small, about 1.7% of the population according to the CIA World Factbook.  Billions of US taxpayer dollars are spent supporting Israel and during economic crisis and rising opposition to austerity, scapegoats will be found.

For a useful account of the rise of Zionism and the birth of Israel including Zionism’s cooperation with right wing anti-Semitic forces read: The New Apartheid at: http://oaklandsocialist.com/2013/12/24/the-new-apartheid-the-rise-of-zionism-and-the-founding-of-the-israeli-state/

For an interesting article about the events leading up to the present Gaza offensive, the lies and distortions surrounding the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli youth and revenge killing of a Palestinian youth, check out How Politics and Lies Triggered an Unintended War in Gaza

* Watch Full Tears of Gaza (Gazas tårer) Documentary here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n9CJP...