22 March 2008

WHAT WENT DOWN

On 27 February, the Israeli Defense Forces once again invaded the Gaza Strip in what they once again said was an attempt to stop militants from firing their home-made, short-distance, and highly inaccurate rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel. In the first 2 days of fighting, 17 Palestinians, including a 6-month-old baby, were killed. Saturday 2 March was the heaviest day of fighting in quite some time. I went to sleep in Fresno late Friday night after reading that 23 Palestinians had been killed in the last 12 hours. When I awoke six hours later, the death toll stood at 54 Palestinians. By Monday, according to most news reports, around 140 Palestinians had been killed, more than 70 on Saturday alone.

Apparently, throughout all of this, around 50 Palestinian rockets per day were landing in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, and some were even hitting Ashkelon, further north. So, the utterly unsurprising fact is that this fresh Israeli invasion of Gaza resulting in the deaths of 140 did nothing to stop the rocket fire…once again. All that it really accomplished was a whole lot of death and destruction. The IDF seems to enjoy beating the dead horse that is Gaza.

Cruelly, two medical facilities in Gaza were also destroyed by IDF airstrikes, while the border crossing with Israel remained shut even to those in need of serious medical attention unavailable in Gaza.

After the fighting, B’Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) was able to verify that 106 Palestinians had been killed between Wednesday 27 February and Monday 3 March. Of those, 54 were bystanders uninvolved in the fighting. Even more horrifying, 25 of the dead—that’s nearly one-fourth—were children.

In response, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas suspended talks with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, talks which had been set up as part of peace negotiations coming out of last November’s peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland. “In light of the Israeli aggression, such talks have no meaning,” said his spokesman. (Quick editorial aside: Wow. Who could have possibly foreseen that this big trumped-up peace conference hosted by USA would fail to actually create peace? I mean, the conference was held at a nice venue. All the important people were there. The food, I hear, was delicious. How can people still be fighting?)

All in all, three Israelis were killed, two IDF soldiers in Gaza and one civilian (a university student in Sderot) killed by a rocket.

Meanwhile, Palestinians carried out anti-Israeli protests throughout the West Bank, decrying the deplorable aggression being rained down on their sisters and brothers in Gaza. One young protester in Ramallah was shot dead by a Jewish settler.

REACTIONS

About halfway through Israel’s invasion, a US State Department spokesman said, “We’re encouraging Israel to exercise caution to avoid the loss of innocent life,” but made no mention at all of how in the world the IDF is supposed to cautiously blanket an entire region with missiles and mortars.

I take particular offense to the use of the word encouraging here. The statement amounts to something like, Hey Israel, if it’s not too much trouble, try not to kill too many innocent Arabs. It’s just a suggestion, though. If you can’t, whatever.

The first public statement of disapproval (and mild disapproval, at that) made by a US official regarding the loss of innocent life in Gaza was made only after the death of the student in Sderot. And the comment, from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, was three-pronged. First, the Palestinian rocket attacks “need to stop.” Second, “We are all sorry about the death of the Israeli university student.” And third, “I am concerned about the humanitarian conditions there and innocent people in Gaza who are being hurt.”

So, the rocket attacks, which killed one Israeli, need to stop. But the full-scale IDF assault on Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of at least 54 Palestinian civilians and 25 Palestinian children, is merely a source of concern. Notice also her use of pronouns. The sorrow at the death of an Israeli is attributed to the royal we—she’s speaking for all of us, for the whole global community—while the concern for the civilians of Gaza is hers and hers alone: “I am concerned,” she says. Also, notice that she expresses sorrow at the Israeli death, but refers (without sorrow, with mere concern) to innocent Gazans being hurt. Granted, I’m sure many of their deaths did indeed hurt, but it seems underhanded and dismissive to refer to a massacre resulting in over 100 deaths as nothing more than people being hurt, as if the IDF merely pinched them or slapped them or called them mean names.

WHAT WENT DOWN

In Jerusalem, on Thursday, 6 March, 25-year-old Ala Hashem Abu Dhaim (an Arab Israeli working as a driver) walked into the library at Mercaz Harav seminary, where around 80 students were studying, and opened fire with an AK-47 rifle. He killed eight students before he was shot dead by an Israeli security officer. Of the eight killed, one was 26 years old, while the rest were between 15 and 19. It was a sick and tragic crime.

An aspect of the story that failed to receive much big media coverage, though, is that the particular religious school at which the shooting took place is the ideological center of the right-wing ultra-Zionist settler movement in the West Bank. The school runs a cooperative program with the IDF, in which students couple their religious studies with IDF combat service in Gaza and the West Bank. Leaders of the school were opposed to the Israeli withdrawal of troops and settlers from Gaza two years ago and are vocal and powerful opponents of any Israeli negotiations with Palestinian leaders, including the presently suspended talks between Olmert and Abbas. This attack will certainly strengthen their political will to stop any lasting peace agreement.

REACTIONS

George W. Bush commented, “I condemn in the strongest possible terms the terrorist attack in Jerusalem that targeted innocent students at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva. This barbaric and vicious attack on innocent civilians deserves the condemnation of every nation. I have just spoken with Prime Minister Olmert to extend my deepest condolences to the victims, their families, and to the people of Israel. I told him the United States stands firmly with Israel in the face of this terrible attack.” Rice said, “This barbarous act has no place among civilized people and shocks the conscience of all peace-loving nations. There is no cause that could ever justify this action.”

Though I agree, both Bush’s and Rice’s failures to make statements of even mild condemnation about the IDF’s murderous rampage through the Gaza Strip that occurred just days before this attack and that resulted in about 20 times more deaths than in this attack carries a lot of implications. The IDF’s systematic and sustained attacks on the civilians of Gaza, we must presume, are undeserving of the condemnation of every nation and should not shock the conscience of peace-loving nations.

I’ve long argued that this kind of lopsided expression of public condemnation, which is reflected in lopsided mainstream media coverage, plainly betrays an undeniably racist undertone to the world’s viewing of this whole issue. The death of even a single Israeli consistently sparks outrage and condemnation from just about every Western nation, while the deaths of tens or hundreds of Palestinians inevitably garner muted responses that are generally watered-down expressions of mere concern or worry. Why is it that an Israeli death should so stoke our outrage while 20 or 30 or 150 Palestinian deaths ought not? The only logical way to make sense of this is to conclude that an Israeli life is somehow worth more than a Palestinian life. And that, dear readers, is some racist bullshit.

The narrow and ultimately racist bent of the dominant perspective on all of this is perfectly captured by a statement made by Dani Speigel, a classmate of the victims, after the shooting. He said, “Well, it's very hard here in the yeshiva. We're having a very hard time. What people do not understand is that kids, 14 years old, 15 years old, 16 years old, high school kids, died here yesterday.”

Now, what’s so priceless about Speigel’s statement is its naivete. To be sure, he’s right. It is deeply tragic that kids were killed, but what’s so clearly missing from his statement is even the slightest awareness that his country’s army just killed a bunch of Palestinian kids a few days prior to this tragedy, or that he and his classmates are all being trained to become part of that army.

One wonders if Speigel thinks that the Gazans who survived the IDF onslaught are also having a very hard time, given that more than 25 Palestinian children perished by Israel’s hand.

Yes, it’s tragic when Israelis die at the hands of Palestinian attackers, but it’s equally tragic, to my mind, when Palestinians are killed by the IDF. This condemnation of the yeshiva attack expressed by Bush and Rice and even Speigel is based on disgust at the senseless murder of innocents—and innocent children, at that—but where was this disgust at the murdering of children when Israel was the aggressor, and to a much greater extent, just a few days prior?

It’s this tone, this utter dismissing of the Palestinian plight, that sickens so many of us.