[R-G] Destroying Gaza, Delaying Palestine

[Anthony Fenton]

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 174 ... January 4, 2009
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Destroying Gaza, Delaying Palestine

Bashir Abu-Manneh

We watch in horror as Israel unleashes yet another war on the  
dispossessed and weak. Hundreds are killed (mostly police and  
civilians, not trained militants), thousands are injured, and a  
million and a half are terrorized, punished for defying the will of  
their besiegers and refusing to submit. Again the media colludes and  
sells a barbaric aggression on a basically defenseless and deprived  
population as a war between two sides, mystifying fundamental  
inequalities of power through words like "disproportionate response"  
and "ceasefire." Again "shock and awe" is bandied about as military  
currency, as if it worked the first time round in Iraq, or the second  
in Lebanon 2006. Again we hear a cocksure military commander say that  
the targeted area will be sent back decades in time, as if Israel has  
complete control over historical temporality: "In attacking Hamas'  
regime in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces will try to 'send  
Gaza decades into the past' in terms of weapon capabilities while  
achieving 'the maximum number of enemy casualties and keeping Israel  
Defense Forces casualties at a minimum,' GOC Southern Command Yoav  
Galant said."

Israel has tried to habituate the world that killing Arabs is normal,  
an unexceptional daily event in the time of "the war on terror," and  
that there is always a justifiable reason to do so. Why? Because Arabs  
always seem to lack something: goodwill toward their oppressors,  
peaceful intentions, or, simply, reasonableness, moderation, and  
humanity. The American elite is certainly convinced of that. Witness  
their behavior in Iraq, or even Afghanistan and Somalia: a bipartisan  
consensus that long-term direct or proxy American involvement (read  
imperialism) is not in question. National sovereignty and self- 
determination are only for the West. The Israeli elite makes its  
living off such racist assumptions: the Palestinians thus need to be  
taught yet another lesson by their colonial masters. As Tom Segev has  
put it:

"Israel is striking at the Palestinians to 'teach them a lesson.' That  
is a basic assumption that has accompanied the Zionist enterprise  
since its inception: We are the representatives of progress and  
enlightenment, sophisticated rationality and morality, while the Arabs  
are a primitive, violent rabble, ignorant children who must be  
educated and taught wisdom – via, of course, the carrot-and-stick  
method, just as the drover does with his donkey."


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