Fw: EdgeLeft: After the Truce in Gaza (from David McReynolds)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: David McReynolds 
To: [email protected] 
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2012 7:53 PM
Subject: Re: EdgeLeft: After the Truce in Gaza





:

  EdgeLeft: After the Truce in Gaza, by David McReynolds

  (EdgeLeft is an occasional commentary, and can be used, reproduced, without
  further permission)

  Let me start this commentary with a note about an Israeli film which has
  opened in NYC - The Gatekeepers. This features six retired heads of
  Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency. These men can hardly be considered
  voices from the Israeli left - but they are unanimous in their sense that 
  the political scene in Israel is not good, and getting worse. I hope the
  film finds a wide audience.

  We should be reminded, in looking at anything involving Netanyahu, that
  we are not dealing with an "ordinary" head of state, but with a man of the
  far right. His late father was an open racist whose comments about the
  Palestinians are fully the equal of the Nazi views of the Jews, and was a
  follower of the Jabotinsky movement - the extreme right of the Zionist
  movement (Jabotinsky worked with Mussolini before WW II). The Israeli
  Prime Minister is truly his father's son. 

  It is ironic that the recent violence in Gaza comes just after the U.S. election,
  in which Netanyahu all but openly enlisted as a supporter of Romney, 
  so that Obama owes the Israeli Prime Minister no favors. (To rebut
  the charge that Jewish money buys American elections, Sheldon Adelson,
  the Las Vegas billionaire - with an estimated fortune of over 20 billion 
  dollars - gave at least 30 million dollars to the Republican Party in an
  effort to defeat Obama!).

  From the Israeli point of view, the Israeli air strikes on Gaza, which not
  only resulted in a number of civilian deaths, but also involved a deliberate
  Israeli attack on a clearly marked media car (see "Using War As Cover to
  Target Journalists", NY Times, November 26) which killed Palestinian
  reporters, was no more than a response to "terrorist" attacks by Hamas in
  Gaza. In fact, this was a military exchange which suited both Hamas and
  Israel. There was no special occasion for the Israeli air strikes except to 
  provoke Hamas into sending vast numbers of rockets into Israel. Thus 
  Israel was able to test its new "Iron Dome" defense against rockets - something
  that will come in handy in the event of war with Iran or a conflict with 
  Hezbollah in Lebanon. A kind of test run, at little cost to Israel.

  And Hamas scored a clear win by its risky gamble. In a situation where the
  Palestinians are divided between Prime Minister Abbas in the West Bank,
  the man who is nominally  head of the Palestinian Authority, and the
  more militant Hamas, which had won elections in Gaza, it was Abbas who
  was sidelined, while Hamas won its gamble by forcing the Egyptians to
  deal with Hamas directly.

  As others have observed, this was not only a victory for Hamas, but also
  for Israel, which achieved at one stroke a deep division between the two
  sides of the Palestinians. Abbas, who had accepted the right of Israel to
  exist, who had curbed any attacks on Israel from the West Bank, who had
  shown his willingness to pursue a peaceful path to a two state solution, is
  suddenly marginalized, and Israel can point to Hamas in Gaza as proof
  that there is no one with whom Israel can make peace.

  The U.S., having ignored the Palestinian issue for the last four years, came
  to the negotiations with Hamas, via Egypt. (And in the process strengthened
  the hand of Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader of Egypt, who, as this is
  written, is trying to establish himself as a man with unlimited powers in
  Egypt - we will have to wait to see how that plays out).

  Israel has no interest whatever in a peaceful settlement. By provoking the 
  attacks from Gaza, it is able once more to claim that Israeli civilians are
  threatened by the terrorism of the Palestinians. A word on "terrorism", 
  which Israel and her American defenders use so lightly. If the Palestinians
  who fire rockets are terrorists, then so are the pilots of the Israeli jets
  which carry out targeted assassinations of Palestinian leaders. One cannot
  justify the violence of one side while terming the violence of those who
  resist as being "terrorism". On both moral and pragmatic grounds I believe
  the best hope for the Palestinians lies in the nonviolent movements that
  have emerged in the West Bank (and to which the American media have
  paid almost no attention). But the Israeli actions are so cynical, and so
  illegal under international law, that violent resistance is justified and Netanyahu
  can expect no sympathy from those of us outside of Israel.

  If this recent bloody exchange, in which both Israel and Hamas were willing
  to lose some innocent civilians in order to score political points, proves anything
  it is that Americans need to focus attention on the only thing which might
  move Israel to negotiate, and that is to cut off all economic and military aid
  to Israel.

  Those who ask me why I focus on Israel more than on, for example, China
  over the issue of Tibet, or Russia or the issue of Chechnya,, it is because the
  US is not sending military and economic aid to China or Russia. It is because
  our tax money buys the military hardware for Israel, and because our 
  political leadership, in fear of AIPAC, will not speak out for justice for the
  Palestinians. We must speak out for the Palestinians, and we can do so knowing 
  that American Jews no longer see Israel in the same way it was seen ten 
  and twenty years ago.

  The issue of the Palestinian people can no longer be left to the Israelis
  and the Palestinians, nor can we assume that non-Jews have no moral obligation
  to speak out. All Americans share in the responsibility for the criminal actions
  of the State of Israel. The hope of Israel will not come from those who
  support it, but from those who demand that Israel be held to the standards
  of international law.


  (EdgeLeft is written by David McReynolds, who was for nearly forty years a member of the staff
  of the War Resisters League, and was twice the Socialist Party's candidate for President. He and the
  late Barbara Deming are the subjects of a dual biography, A Saving Remnant, by Martin Duberman,
  published by the New Press, and available in paperback. David retired in 1999, and lives on the
  Lower East Side of Manhattan with his two cats. He can be reached at: [email protected].
  His website is: EdgeLeft.org).