War on Gaza - Operation Pillar of Defense

“The Israelis launched their attack shortly after the US elections and shortly before the US was about to swear in a president at the inauguration in January and just before Israeli elections were scheduled as well. So there is no question that it has everything to do with Israeli politics.” /Phyllis Bennis, director of the Institute for Policy Studies

If you just look at the casualties’ figures of that horrific three weeks of the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2008 – there were more than 1,400 Palestinians killed, the majority of them civilians. And there were 13 Israelis, of whom seven were civilians and five of them were killed in friendly fire. So the disparity of casualties, and we’re seeing it again now is enormous.

It’s going to result first of all in enormous human cost to the people of Gaza, who since 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead have been able to rebuild very, very little of what was destroyed in that operation, in those three weeks of assaults. Gazans still don’t have electricity 24 hours a day. It’s still on only for a few hours. If bombing this time goes at the electrical generators again, as it did four years ago, it will be another period of years before that could be rebuild. So there is a devastating human impact. The purpose behind this is clear: as Interior Minister Eli Yishai said, “The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages."

Hypocrisy of slaughter

Israel’s assault on Gaza raises doubts that it has any interest in finding the lasting peace settlement it proclaims to want. Does the campaign have an alternative objective as part of a strategy to engineer a strike on Iran? It’s probably the world’s most tragic never-ending story. For almost 65 years now, Israel has been bombing, maiming and humiliating the Palestinians, bulldozing their homes and placing Gaza in lock-down mode turning it into the world’s largest concentration camp. On Wednesday 14th, an Israeli helicopter attack killed Hamas military wing leader Ahmed Jabari, triggering a violent reaction from Hamas which rained little rockets over southern Israeli towns, which in turn brought in more Israeli air attacks killing 19, injuring 100 and leaving six children dead.

Dejá-vù: it’s January 2009’s “Operation Cast Lead” revisited; this time they’re dubbing it “Operation Pillar of Defense.”

(In response to a sharp increase in the number and frequency of rocket attacks into Israel prior to and following the expiration of Hamas' agreed period of "calm" on December 19, 2008, the Israeli Air Force launched Operation Cast Lead, consisting initially of airstrikes on December 27 against Hamas security installations, personnel, and other facilities in the Gaza Strip, followed on January 3 by ground operations. Hostilities between Israeli forces and Hamas fighters continued through January 18, and the Israeli withdrawal of troops was completed on 21 January 2009.)

Clearly, Israel’s right-wing leaders do not want a peaceful agreement with the Palestinians.That’s why they’ve systematically sabotaged all possibility of reaching a two-state solution. The last honest Israeli who tried to bring peace was Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, until he was gunned down in the streets of Tel-Aviv in November 1995; not by an Islamic fanatic, not by some mad Neo-Nazi, but by one Ygal Amir: an ultra-right-wing Zionist fanatic linked to both the fundamentalist Settlers’ Movement and Israel’s security agency Shin-Beth.

Bodies for Ballots
by Yousef Munayyer, an Executive Director of The Jerusalem Fund and its educational program, The Palestine Center.

Israeli forces have launched dozens of airstrikes on Gaza City, targeting governmental and civilian facilities and other objects mostly located in densely-populated areas. The targets have included the building of the Council of Ministers in the west of the City, which was completely destroyed and a number of nearby houses damaged; the building of the police command in the center of the City, which was completely destroyed and a number of nearby houses damaged; the building of the Civil Department of the Ministry of Interior in the south of the City, which was attacked for the second time, causing damage to al-Quds Hospital and a number of public and UNRWA school; and Palestine Stadium in al-Remal neighborhood in the center of the City, which was extensively damaged...

They say when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But when you are a politician and all you have is a hammer, you must convince voters every problem looks like a nail. This is the only thinking that can explain Israel’s behavior in escalating bombardment of Gaza. The Israeli spin machines are out in full force in the hopes of convincing Israelis and the rest of the world that the attacks on Gaza are in self-defense. But anyone following the situation closely and over time will tell you that cannot be the case. For context, consider this: more Palestinians were killed in Gaza yesterday than Israelis have been killed by projectile fire from Gaza in the past three years. The problem Gaza presents for Israel is that it won’t go away—though Israel would love it if it would. It is a constant reminder of the depopulation of Palestine in 1948, the folly of the 1967 occupation, and the many massacres which have happened since then. With Israeli elections around the corner, the right-wing Israeli government chose the counter-productive path of escalation even though civilians would pay the price and their domestic opposition rallied behind them.

Trading bodies for ballots is an equation Israeli leaders are happy to be engaged in, especially since all the ballots are Israeli and the bodies are almost always Palestinian.

‘Don’t worry about America…’

Former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon is infamously quoted as yelling to his colleagues during a heated debate in Israel’s Knesset in October 2001, that they need not worry about American reaction to Israel’s Palestine-bashing because “we the Jewish people control America!"

Watching how US politicians file through powerful Pro-Israel lobbies, think tanks and organizations like AIPAC – American Israeli Public Affairs Committee -, the ADL and others, competing to give their most impassioned and dramatic pro-Israel speeches, one is tempted to believe Mr. Sharon’s candid words.

During the recent US presidential campaign both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each tried to give their most convincing Joe Biden-like “I-am-a-Zionist” speeches, to win over not just the Jewish vote and money in America, but also the Zionist vote which is represented by many non-Jewish born-again Christians.

So, when earlier this week US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice openly supported Israel and condemned Hamas’ retaliatory attacks describing them as “violence that Hamas and other terrorist organizations are employing against the people of Israel", one can hardly be surprised.

It doesn’t really matter who sits in the Oval office; whether Democrat or Republican, the US will always unthinkingly and unreservedly support Israel every time it decides to play a new round of Palestine-bashing. (read more)

Gaza Blockade

"The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger," Dov Weisglass said in 2006.

The Israeli military meticulously and callously calculated the number of calories Gaza residents would need to consume in order not to starve, and used those calculations to inform how to impose a harsh economic blockade on the Palestinians, according to newly released documents. The overwhelming blockade Israel imposed on Gaza, tightening restrictions on the movement of people and goods, was supposedly punishment for having Hamas in power. “The official goal of the policy was to wage ‘economic warfare’ which would paralyze Gaza’s economy and, according to the Defense Ministry, create pressure on the Hamas government,” the Israeli human rights group Gisha, which fought the legal battle that led to the document’s release, said in a statement. Israel’s general policy towards Gazans was summed up by Dov Weisglass, an adviser to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, years before the document was written. 

Israel imposed a naval blockade on Gaza in 2009, saying it was needed to prevent the smuggling of arms to the Islamic militant group Hamas, which governs the Palestinian enclave, and to jihadist groups operating there. More than a dozen ships had tried to break the blockade since 2010, when Israeli commandos killed nine pro-Palestinian activists after encountering resistance during a raid on a six-ship flotilla led by the Turkish vessel the Mavi Marmara. The episode led some of the restrictions on imports to Gaza to be relaxed, but also caused a deep rift in relations between Israel and Turkey, which has indicted four Israelis for their roles.

Land blockade: The Israel and Egypt–Gaza Strip barrier, built by Israel between 1994 and 2005 when it had full control of the Gaza Strip, separates the Gaza Strip from both Egypt and Israel; the Israeli Defense Forces maintain a presence at all border crossings and regularly patrol along the fence. All humanitarian aid bound for Gaza via Israel is transferred through four border crossings: The Kerem Shalom, Karni, Erez, and Sufa crossings. All aid first undergoes security inspection before being transferred by truck into Gaza. Additionally, the Egypt-Gaza barrier was built underground by Egypt starting in 2009. The stated aim was to block smuggling tunnels. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs at various times, Israel has blocked goods including wheelchairs, dry food items, and crayons, Stationery, soccer balls, and musical instruments. International aid group Mercy Corps said it was blocked from sending 90 tons of macaroni and other foodstuffs. Israel was also reported to have prevented aid groups from sending in other items, such as paper, crayons, tomato paste and lentils. Because of an Israeli ban on the importation of construction materials (such as cement and steel) for fear of Hamas using them to build bunkers and fortified positions from which to shell villages in Israel, the UN Relief and Works Agency built at least one mud brick home, and planned to build up to 120. Food waits on trucks and in warehouses, and many basic items are rejected by Israel as "luxuries" or are turned down for unexplained reasons. Tin cans are banned because "the tin might be melted down and used to build weaponry or structures by Hamas", making it hard for Gazan farmers to preserve their vegetables. Cement, glass, steel, bitumen, wood, paint, doors, plastic pipes, metal pipes, metal reinforcement rods, aggregate, generators, high voltage cables and wooden telegraph poles are "high priority reconstruction materials currently with no or highly limited entry into Gaza through official crossings.