Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, Retired
The image above, is from a report in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. It is in an article Titled, Gaza Militants, Israel Escalate Attacks.
The title uses the term Militants as a way of denying any credibility to the Palestinians, no matter which group of them it might be. It is to deny that they might have a legitimate reason to be firing rockets at the Israeli's that live outside Gaza's borders. These Israelis are from many countries, South Africa, Russia, the US especially. Many of them justify their colonial project and the ethnic cleansing of the native population on the grounds that god gave them this land. Not bad for a group of people who are more often than not atheist, certainly secular.
Gaza is that small sliver of land, basically an outdoor prison camp, that contains some three million or more Palestinian Arabs. The Zionist regime controls what goes in and out of this area. Gaza has no army, no ships, no air force, no state.
The picture is telling. The First picture is the larger image and shows Israeli Jews "taking cover" from a rocket attack fired from Gaza, allegedly by the Islamic group Islamic Jihad. The Zionist regime had previously assassinated a prominent leader of the group, Baha Abu Al Ata. The Zionist regime, that has been shooting unarmed protesters for some months now, claims that 360 rockets have been fired from the Gaza strip in the two days since the assassination.
While firing rockets in to Israel is not a strategy that I would support or one that will work in a positive way for the Palestinians cause. The reader must not be too awed by the term rockets remembering that Gaza has no defense forces at all basically. One only need go do a body count for each time the Israelis have invaded or attacked Gaza. The Israeli death toll from these rockets stands at zero so far. There is one young 8 year old girl in critical condition after she, "....lost consciousness while fleeing from a rocket on Tuesday..." the Wall Street Journal reports. The rockets injured "three" people according to the report and Israeli "medical authorities......treated 63 people...." including the above mentioned girl. With a few exceptions, I do not wish death on other human beings, especially children. But we cannot be neutral in cases like these.
The picture below the main one shows a house completely destroyed by an Israeli attack. In two days as of yesterday, 73 Palestinians have been injured and 24 killed. As you can see, there appears to be a bit of a difference between the effectiveness of Palestinian weapons, home made rockets, and the Israeli military that receives billions of dollars form the US taxpayer as well as the most up to date weaponry and technological equipment. Israel has an Iron Dome Defense System supplied by the US that has a rocket interception rate of 90% according to Israel's military.
The situation in Gaza is critical. The Zionists have a siege in place and controls all aspects of life and have also destroyed much of the important structures like hospitals.
Israel is a European colonial settler state. The first British governor of Jerusalem called the creation of a Jewish state in the region "Our loyal little Ulster in the Middle East" referring to Northern Ireland created in the partition of Ireland in 1921 by British capitalism. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, British and American imperialism saw the need of a reliable foothold and ally in the region. The Arab regimes were not reliable and the potential revolutionary power of the Arab masses too great. With the betrayal of the European Jewish population by Stalinism and their near annihilation in the Nazi death camps, the creation of a Jewish state in the Middle East would become an important asset. It was not for any love of Jews that British capitalism supported the idea.
The Zionist regime is thoroughly rotten. The occupation since 1967 and the building of settlements is considered illegal by the vast majority of the world's nations. The Zionist regime is a criminal racist regime. I read that Noam Chomsky recently said it was incorrect to describe Israel as an Apartheid regime like South Africa as the white South African ruling class needed the black population to do all the work; it didn't want to annihilate them. This is not the case in Israel. The Zionist goal is to eliminate the Palestinians as a people, expel them, rid the area of their language, the religion, their culture. The Zionist policy with the backing of the United States and other western governments is to wipe the Palestinians off the map.
This does not mean Jews don't have a right to live in the area. It is the traditional home of the Jewish people, Semites like their Arab kin. My Yemeni friend calls them "our cousins". When I was much younger in the early 1960's I remember the term Arab Jews. There were Arab Jews, Arab Christians, Arab Muslims and so on. With the creation of the state of Israel that changed. The Jews, whose contribution to western and world culture is phenomenal, now have a nation, a ruling class, and the opportunity to become the oppressor.
I emphatically believe in Israel's right to exist. It has existed some 70 years as a modern nation state. It has expanded as well through the theft and possession of Palestinian land, farms and homes. But it cannot exist as it has been for decades. I do not think the issue, like many geo-politcal problems we have today, can be resolved within the framework of capitalism, any more than the unification of Ireland, or Kashmir can. These issues will only be resolved through the intervention of a global, united working class movement and the building of a world federation of democratic socialist states.
I would urge the reader to watch this presentation from Gideon Levy. It is sad in some ways in that he appears to have lost faith that there is any solution including the two state solution he had hoped might come about. He is not a socialist but he is courageous person and a genuine human being I reckon. It's a powerful statement indeed.
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