[Reader-list] Fwd: Israeli Barbarism In Gaza By Avshalom In Israel

[Pawan Durani]

I was wondering how much Hamas is resposnsible for instigating this.




On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 12:55 PM, indersalim <indersalim at gmail.com> wrote:

> Israeli barbarism in Gaza
> By Dekel Avshalom in Israel
> Tuesday, 06 January 2009
>
> In a surprise attack last week, Israel's air force infiltrated the
> Gaza Strip and started blasting away. On Saturday, the air force was
> accompanied by blasting from the navy and infiltration of tanks and
> foot soldiers into the Strip causing death and destruction in
> horrifying dimensions. Up to this time, the death toll for
> Palestinians stands at 526 people, with 2500 injured. Israeli
> officials, in particular Defense Minister Ehud Barak, keep reminding
> us that "this is just the beginning". Israeli media is overjoyed in
> stressing the claim that the "majority" of the victims are Hamas
> soldiers. We do not exactly know how they define a "Hamas soldier",
> but the fact that 107 of the murdered victims were children, makes it
> very hard for us to believe such claims. This attack is overwhelming
> in nature. It has been reported that since the 1967 war Israel had
> never used such a massive air attack.
>
> After an Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip
>
> This attack was preceded by a series of deceptive manoeuvres on the
> part of Israel in order to keep Hamas off guard. Israel kept up the
> pretence of negotiations on the ceasefire and even allowed goods to
> enter the Strip. This deception should not come as a surprise to
> anyone who knows Ehud Barak's tactical mind. Just a short while ago,
> Barak used the same deceptive tactics in order to lull some entrenched
> Rightist Jewish settlers in Hebron before evacuating them by force.
>
> A statesman in such a high position does not normally use such tactics
> unless he is desperate. And Barak's desperation is what lies behind
> such an unprecedented attack. Barak apparently saved the attack for a
> special moment in which he could improve his position in the polls for
> the upcoming national elections. These polls consistently show that
> the party under his leadership will receive its lowest number of votes
> to date.
>
> For a long time Barak postponed the attack so it would not seem that
> he was working under the pressure of his opponents. He wanted the
> credit all for himself. Now, the Israeli masses, worked up by the
> media, got what the media told them they wanted: revenge. Barak plans
> to surf on a wave of Palestinian blood into a position of larger
> number of seats in parliament.
>
> In many ways, this attack has similarities with the Lebanese fiasco in
> 2006. It also is a staggering failure for Israel from the very moment
> it was concocted in the twisted minds of Barak and the army generals.
> Just as in Lebanon, also here the army has failed to stop the rocket
> launching into Israel. Hamas launched hundreds of them
> uninterruptedly, killing 3 Israelis in one day and wounding several
> others. It would also not be surprising if it comes out that the army
> wanted this result in order to incite Israelis against the
> Palestinians and to maintain support for the current operation. Just
> as in Lebanon, also here the operation has no concrete purpose. It is
> obvious that it cannot destroy Hamas, which will surely rearm itself
> within a few months of the operation ending. So it all seems just like
> an unleashing of random violence by the army for no obvious reason
> other than crude revenge. The difference between the current operation
> and the Lebanese one is that now the media is full of praises for the
> Defense Minister and the army on the exact level of performance that
> was shown in Lebanon.
>
> Collaborating democracy with imperialism
>
> How do we explain a situation where the Israeli masses have been
> whipped up into such a state of mind of a vengeful and shortsighted
> focus of their political worldview on "getting back" at the
> Palestinians? What should not be underestimated here is the
> psychological warfare the Israeli ruling elite has been waging against
> the Israeli masses. The media, the military and the politicians have
> been collaborating to create the impression that the rocket launching
> from the Gaza Strip has made the surrounding Israeli settlements look
> like a war zone. In actual fact, since 2004 to just before the recent
> operation began, the number of Israelis killed by such rockets is less
> than 15. To put things in perspective, the number of Israeli workers
> that died because of accidents in their workplaces during this period,
> was over 10 times that number. This number also resembles the number
> of Israelis that die in traffic accidents in less than two weeks. So
> if Barak is really so eager to protect Israeli lives through military
> means, he should be mobilising the air force against the Israeli
> bourgeoisie and the state bureaucrats responsible for transport safety
> rather than against the Palestinian masses!
>
> The military is making the lives of the Israelis in the settlements
> around Gaza as fearful as it can be. It is inducing a feeling of panic
> among the public using every means including loud sirens, arbitrary
> "defence" measures such as ducking and hiding, and forcing people into
> bomb shelters, all in response to rockets that pose a minimal security
> threat. All this horror show is designed with one aim in mind: to make
> ordinary Israelis support the continuity of Israel's control over
> Gaza, and thus to pressure or to help democratically elected
> politicians to fall in line with imperialist interests.
>
> In the current economic crisis, control over Gaza is crucial to
> Israeli imperialism more than ever since the first Palestinian
> uprising in 1987. First of all, it satisfies the military's hunger for
> state spending on arms. The military, and the politicians under its
> influence, have proven themselves eager to do battle in any period in
> which their fiscal prerogatives are at jeopardy.
>
> The most crucial thing for Israeli imperialism, however, is to
> maintain stability for the "moderate" PLO in the West Bank which
> provide Israel with numerous resources in terms of one of the cheapest
> workforces in the world, a captive market that is dependent on
> absorbing Israel's surpluses, and land and water resources that Israel
> desperately needs. It requires the "pacifying" of Gaza in order to
> make sure that the terrorism it hosts will not slide over into the
> West Bank and undermine the PLO regime.
>
> This is not to say that Gaza is meaningless to Israel in its own
> right. Despite its massive levels of poverty, the fact that the Gaza
> masses depend on goods coming through Israel gives the Israeli
> capitalists an advantage in terms of a captive market as well, that
> is, as a long-term perspective. This may also explain why the Israeli
> army has made much more of an effort to destroy the tunnels that
> smuggle goods from Egypt than it has to destroy the rocket launchers
> which were the formal reason for the operation in the first place!
>
> What does Hamas want?
>
> Unlike common-sense economic reductionism held by many on the Left,
> terrorist groups don't simply grow out of poverty. Just as the PLO,
> Hamas emerged from within the Palestinian petty bourgeoisie. They use
> the masses and their plight mostly as a tool to achieve their class
> interests which in this context usually include more lucrative jobs
> and positions. After Israel co-opted the PLO into collaboration with
> it in exchange for jobs created especially for the PLO members (the
> jobs created under the cloak of the "Palestinian Authority"), Hamas
> wanted its peace of the pie as well.
>
> Palestinians of the West Bank demonstrate their solidarity with the
> people in Gaza
>
> It started to gather support from many frustrated Palestinians in the
> face of the PLO's betrayal using, among other things, vengeful acts of
> terrorism against Israelis. In parallel, it used similar tactics of
> terrorism in order to lure Israel into negotiating with it, carrying
> the risk of Israel's military, rather than diplomatic, retaliation.
>
> Just like Israel's ruling class, Hamas also benefits from the
> occupation. It uses it in order to gather support by the same populist
> means of violent rhetoric and actions used by the Israeli politicians.
> It also enjoys political and economic benefits via its control over
> smuggling commodities into the Strip: just like Israel, it to can
> benefit from the captive market in Gaza.
>
> In such a situation it is puzzling why, some among the international
> Left are tempted to take a supportive stance towards Hamas. They
> usually state that despite Hamas' reactionary ideology, it should be
> supported because of its "progressive fight against Israeli
> imperialism". The folly of such an idea becomes obvious if we look at
> Hamas from materialistic lines and ask ourselves what would happen if
> Hamas were to win this conflict? Will it weaken Israeli imperialism as
> the idealistic Leftists assume? A victory for Hamas could only mean
> that Israel would be forced to negotiate with it and give it similar
> political concessions as it gave to the PLO. The imperial relation of
> Israel towards the Palestinians may take a different form, but it will
> remain intact. Because under capitalism Palestine cannot be completely
> cut off from Israel, and will always be dependent on it, a national
> liberation movement that limits itself to struggling within the
> confines of capitalism cannot go in any other direction.
>
> Furthermore, bourgeois or petit bourgeois national liberation leaders
> have usually tended to push the proletariat in the oppressed nation
> into accepting their leadership because they became aware of the
> potential power of the workers. Such was the alliance between the
> South African workers and the ANC leaders who brought down the
> apartheid regime. But Here, Hamas has made very little effort to
> create an alliance with the Palestinian workers. Until now it has
> mostly just harassed their trade unions. Hamas thus have only the
> power of terrorism and collisions with the Israeli army to get
> concessions from Israel. Relying on this broken reed, its
> "anti-imperialist" credentials appear as somewhat exaggerated.
>
> Is there a way out?
>
> We are entering yet another cycle of violence between Israel's ruling
> class and Hamas. Such cycles began with Israel's opening up to the PLO
> in 1994. Each cycle brings Israel to a more violent response. However,
> the army has no intention of remaining entangled in the Strip for too
> long. This operation may last a bit longer and be much more violent
> than its predecessors because Barak's election campaign has to be
> taken into consideration. Although it is also true that once it ends,
> the operation always leaves behind the preconditions for the next
> operation.
>
> Demonstration against the war in Amman (Jordan)
>
> The Zionist chauvinism that characterized the first days of the
> operation is gradually being replaced by fear of yet another debacle
> such as in Lebanon. Journalists are constantly asking political and
> military leaders for the actual goals which this operation intends to
> achieve. The answers are always vague and illusive, such as "to
> radically change the array of deterrence". In that background, the
> announcement of Barak on Saturday was especially alarming. He said
> that the operation would take a long time and would have numerous
> victims. With no one knowing what this operation is for, this holds a
> puzzling future for the stability of the political system in Israel:
> after the chauvinism fades away, the death toll will keep increasing
> and many questions will be raised by the masses.
>
> To the dismay of the Israeli ruling class, thousands of Jews and
> Palestinians came this Saturday to Tel Aviv for a mass demonstration
> against the war (see video below). This is unprecedented. In the
> Lebanese war it took two months of bloody entanglement for so many
> protestors to show up. The protestors were constantly harassed by
> Zionist counter-protests which show just how frightened they are of
> the emerging protest movement in Israel. Small as it is now, the
> Zionists are instinctively aware of the fact that it holds the only
> real key to their downfall.
>
> As this website has repeated many times over, there cannot be a
> solution within the confines of bourgeois politics to this or any
> other major political conflict in the world. However, for the moment
> Israel and Palestine are deprived of any other form of politics. As
> long as this situation persists, these cycles of violence will
> continue. We can be sure, though, that from the impossibility of a
> solution to the situation under capitalism, new political forces are
> bound to emerge on both sides. The nature of these new forces is
> impossible to predict at this stage. But if they do not base
> themselves on the revolutionary collaboration of Israeli and
> Palestinian workers and poor against their mutual oppressors, no
> progressive change can be forthcoming from within the
> Israeli-Palestinian borders.
>
> Anti war demonstration in Tel Aviv
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> See also:
>
> Stop Israel's massacre in Gaza! by Walter Leon (December 30, 2008)
> Israel: Tel Aviv municipal elections - a Pyrrhic victory for the Right
> by Dekel Avshalom (November 17, 2008)
> Three years after Israel's disengagement from Gaza: critical
> reassessment by Dekel Avshalom (August 28, 2008)
> Hamas and Israel agree on ceasefire by Dekel Avshalom (June 19, 2008)
> Much ado about nothing: the Israeli "peace" talks with Syria by Dekel
> Avshalom (May 28, 2008)
> Israel turns 60 – where next for the Jewish and Palestinian peoples?
> by Luke Wilson (May 16, 2008)
> Israel storms Gaza: once again "peace" talks prepare war by Francesco
> Merli (March 5, 2008)
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