(19 May 2007)

Same old shit in the Gaza Strip

It occurs to me, as I sit down to write the latest Report, that news from Palestine is, in the long run, so frustratingly cyclical, so repetitive, that a commentator like myself could probably get away with reprinting previous articles, changing a few dates and numbers, and no one would be the wiser.

Once again, tempers have flared and trigger fingers have gotten itchy in Gaza. Superbly playing out the script to a play that Western governments have directed in venues all over the third world, poverty-stricken and hopeless Palestinians have, once again, turned their guns away from their common enemy and aimed them, instead, at one another. Because I’m sick of it, here’s the news: Lots of innocent folks died. Lots of men with guns died. Mothers cried. Proud fathers held it in, then wept into their cupped hands late at night while their wives consoled them. Neither Hamas not Fatah gained a thing, politically or otherwise. Nothing was achieved. No progress was made.

The sequence of events is as follows. First, Israeli airstrikes killed nine Palestinians in Gaza. Then, on 24 April, Hamas officially ended its five-month truce with Israel and marked the occasion with the launching of a barrage of over a hundred rockets and mortars into Israel, which killed no one, and hurt not a fly. The next day, Israeli PM Ehud Olmert ordered the army to begin operations in Gaza, “to prevent other attacks against Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip.” (This makes perfect sense to me, since sending a bunch of troops into Gaza has always proven so successful in stopping attacks. Or, wait, no, no, I’m confused. It’s the other way around. The IDF’s presence in Gaza has always, every single time, generated further counterattacks, and I’m sick of hearing Israeli PMs say that, by attacking, they’re attempting to stop attacks. It’s like touching a hot stove and expecting it to be cool to the touch. How can official Israeli policy be so monstrously stupid? Or, more precisely and truthfully, how can we be so stupid as to keep swallowing such bald-faced lies, such weak official justifications for the committing of genocide?) Then, as Israeli operations carried on intermittently, Palestinians began fighting each other on 11 May, displaying stupidity almost as great as the cruelty displayed by the IDF. For about a week, gangs of idiots roamed the streets killing their brothers. Ceasefires were declared each day and broken immediately. Many died. Scores more were injured.

At this point, the IDF took advantage of the fact that Palestinian militants were too busy fighting each other and decided to hit Gaza with airstrikes. That ought to calm things down, they must have figured. Six Palestinians were killed in four air raids on 17 May. Amazingly, this didn’t phase the Palestinians hell-bent on slaughtering one another, and they continued to do so, without pause. The next day, the IDF launched airstrikes again, killing another five. And the next day, and the day after that, the IDF launched airstrikes on Gaza. All the while, Palestinian militants continued to launch Qassam rockets across the border into Israel on a daily basis. In total, over the last week alone, five Hamas-Fatah truces have been made and promptly broken, 50-odd Palestinians have been killed by Palestinians, 20-odd Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes, and zero Israelis have been killed or hurt by the launching of Qassam rockets.

It’s utter madness in Gaza, and Europe and USA and the various puppet sellout Arab heads of state are essentially sitting around twiddling their thumbs as they watch this little imperialist experiment of theirs go very, very awry.

Does the Israeli populace think for itself?

On 30 April, the Winograd Commission (established by the Israeli government to examine the handling of last summer’s “war” with Hezbollah) released its findings, which heavily criticized Israeli PM Ehud Olmert for his hasty leadership during the war and blamed him of exhibiting “a severe failure in judgment, responsibility, and caution.” Wow; it took a government commission nearly a year to come to this utterly obvious conclusion. Olmert was greeted the next day by a chorus of calls for his resignation from among members of the government. Then, on 3 May, in a weird event, nearly 100,000 Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv, filling Rabin Square and calling for Olmert’s resignation. It seems the obvious conclusion had evaded even ordinary Israelis, who, en masse, cheered and called for blood over the summer as their prime minister ordered the brutal destruction of Lebanon that resulted in the deaths of over 1,000 Lebanese, as well as that of a significant number of Israeli civilians and soldiers, and who then waited for nearly a year, suspending their judgment, until this government commission concluded that their leadership had failed them, at which point they suddenly and angrily poured into the streets of Tel Aviv to protest the very thing that they had applauded last summer. Where were their protestations when they could have mattered, when they could have saved lives? And, furthermore, why are they looking to a government commission for information about how to feel about a “war” that that very government waged and mucked up? And why do they trust it at all?

Young Israeli street thespian jailed for having a conscience and sticking to it

Toward the end of September of last year, a small protest put on by three 18-year-old would-be IDF recruits sparked significant controversy. Outside of an IDF enlistment center, as draftees lined up and filed in to enlist for their mandatory service, the three youths (who signed papers affirming their refusal to serve in the IDF on moral grounds) performed a mock beating, in which two “Palestinians” were being threatened and beaten by an “IDF soldier.” The boys also gave each of the IDF recruits a gift, a pair of handcuffs adorned with the following message: Dear recruit, you were chosen to serve in the State of Israel’s army. To mark your entry into the ‘most moral army in the world’ we are presenting you with these handcuffs. Through emergency orders in place in Israel, you have the authority to detain people without a trial. Please use this gift and humiliate anyone who dares resist the Israeli occupation.
What’s really interesting about the story, though, are the reactions they got for this plainly honest bit of street theater. Apparently, IDF recruits and other passersby attempted to assault the boys several times. One yelled, “Soldiers die because of you, you are shaming the country.” Another: “That’s disgusting. Remove them from here. They want the Arabs to be here instead of us. They are ruining my drafting ceremony. If the police were not here, I would have hit them.”

One of the boys, Uri Natan (who got a lot of press last year for chaining himself to the gates of a school where an IDF official was to be lecturing), explained his decision to refuse: “I am against armies and wars and I don’t believe it is possible to hold these convictions and serve the army. As an Israeli youth I felt [sic] that I am missing nothing by refusing to serve. On the contrary, my refusal empowers me as I feel I am opposed to a powerful institution.” He is now in prison for refusing to serve.

His mother had this to say: “I respect his decision.”