[A-List] Ralph Nader: State Terrorism Against Gaza

[Leighm]

January 20, 2009
Punishing the Palestinians
State Terrorism Against Gaza

By RALPH NADER

In the long sixty-year tortured history of the Palestinian expulsion 
from their lands, Congress has maintained that it is always the 
Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority, and now Hamas who are to blame 
for all hostilities and their consequences with the Israeli government.

The latest illustration of this Washington puppet show, backed by the 
most modern weapons and billions of taxpayer dollars annually sent to 
Israel, was the grotesquely one-sided Resolutions whisked through the 
Senate and the House of Representatives.

While a massive bombing and invasion of Gaza was underway, the 
resolution blaming Hamas for all the civilian casualties and 
devastation—99% of it inflicted on Palestinians—zoomed through the 
Senate by voice vote and through the House by a vote of 390 to 5 with 22 
legislators voting present.

There is more dissent against this destruction of Gaza among the Israeli 
people, the Knesset, the Israeli media, and Jewish-Americans than among 
the dittoheads on Capitol Hill.

The reasons for such near-unanimous support for Israeli actions—no 
matter how often they are condemned by peace advocates such as Bishop 
Desmond Tutu, United Nations resolutions, the World Court and leading 
human rights groups inside and outside of Israel, are numerous. The 
pro-Israeli government lobby, and the right-wing Christian evangelicals, 
lubricated by campaign money of many Political Action Committees (PACs) 
certainly are key.

There is also more than a little bigotry in Congress against Arabs and 
Muslims, reinforced by the mass media yahoos who set new records for 
biased reporting each time this conflict erupts.

The bias is clear. It is always the Palestinians’ fault. Right-wingers 
who would never view the U.S. government as perfect see the Israeli 
government as never doing anything wrong. Liberals who do not hesitate 
to criticize the U.S. military view all Israeli military attacks, 
invasions and civilian devastation as heroic manifestations of Israeli 
defense.

The inversion of history and the scope of amnesia know no limits. What 
about the fact that the Israeli government drove Palestinians from their 
lands in 1947-48 with tens of thousands pushed into the Gaza strip. No 
problem to Congress.

Then the fact that the Israeli government cruelly occupied, in violation 
of UN resolutions, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 and only removed its 
soldiers and colonists from Gaza (1.5 million people in a tiny area 
twice the size of the District of Columbia) in 2005. To Congress, the 
Palestinians deserved it.

Then when Hamas was freely elected to run Gaza, the Israeli authorities 
cut off the tax revenues on imports that belonged to the Gaza 
government. This threw the Gazans into a fiscal crisis—they were unable 
to pay their civil servants and police.

In 2006, the Israelis added to their unrelieved control of air, water 
and land around the open-air prison by establishing a blockade. The 
natives became restless. Under international law, a blockade is an act 
of war. Primitive rockets, called by reporters “wildly inaccurate” were 
fired into Israel. During this same period, Israeli soldiers and 
artillery and missiles would go into Gaza at will and take far more 
lives and cause far more injuries than those incurred by those rockets.

Civilians—especially children, the infirm and elderly—died or suffered 
week after week for lack of medicines, medical equipment, food, 
electricity, fuel and water which were embargoed by the Israelis.

Then the Israeli bombing followed by the invasion during the past three 
weeks with what prominent Israeli writer Gideon Levy called “a brutal 
and violent operation…far beyond what was needed for protecting the 
people in its south.” Mr. Levy observed what the president of the United 
Nations General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann called a war against 
“a helpless and defenseless imprisoned population.”


The horror of being trapped from fleeing the torrent of the most modern 
weapons of war from the land, air and seas is reflected in this passage 
from Amira Hass, writing in the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

“The earth shaking under your feet, clouds of choking smoke, explosions 
like a fireworks display, bombs bursting into all-consuming flames that 
cannot be extinguished with water, mushroom clouds of pinkish-red smoke, 
suffocating gas, harsh burns on the skin, extraordinary maimed live and 
dead bodies.”

Ms. Hass is pointing to the use of new anti-civilian weapons used on the 
Gazan people. So far there have been over 1100 fatalities, many 
thousands of injuries and the destruction of homes, schools, mosques, 
hospitals, pharmacies, granaries, farmer’s fields and many critical 
public facilities. The clearly marked UN headquarters and UN school were 
smashed, along with stored medicines and food supplies.

Why? The Congressional response: “Hamas terrorists” everywhere. Sure, 
defending their Palestinian families is called terrorism. The truth is 
there is no Hamas army, airforce and navy up against the fourth most 
powerful military in the world. As one Israeli gunner on an armored 
personnel carrier frankly said to The New York Times: “They are 
villagers with guns. They don’t even aim when they shoot.”

Injured Gazans are dying in damaged hospital corridors, bleeding to 
death because rescuers are not permitted to reach them or are endangered 
themselves. Thousands of units of blood donated by Jordanians are 
stopped by the Israeli blockade. Israel has kept the international press 
out of the Gazan killing fields.

What is going on in Gaza is what Bill Moyers called it earlier this 
month – “state terrorism.” Already about 400 children are known to have 
died. More will be added who are under the rubble.

Since 2002, more than 50 Arab and Muslim nations have had a standing 
offer, repeated often, that if Israel obeys several UN resolutions and 
withdraws to the 1967 borders leaving 22 percent of the original 
Palestine for an independent Palestinian state, they will open full 
diplomatic relations and there will be peace. Israel has declined to 
accept this offer.

None of these and many other aspects of this conflict matter to the 
Congress. Its members do not want to hear even from the Israeli peace 
movement, composed of retired generals, security chiefs, mayors, former 
government ministers, and members of the Knesset. In 60 years these 
savvy peace advocates have not been able to give one hour of testimony 
before a Congressional Committee.

Maybe members of Congress may wish to weigh the words of the founder of 
Israel, David Ben-Gurion, years ago when he said:

“There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis Hitler Auschwitz but was that 
their [the Palestinian’s] fault? They only see one thing: We have come 
here and stolen their country.”

Doesn’t that observation invite some compassion for the Palestinian 
people and their right to be free of Israeli occupation, land and water 
grabs and blockades in the 22 percent left of Palestine?

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and three-time presidential candidate.

http://counterpunch.org/nader01202009.html