[Peace-discuss] Ali Abunimah on the Blitzkrieg

[C. G. Estabrook]

	We have no words left
	Palestinians are at a loss to describe this latest catastrophe.
  	International civil society must act now
	Ali Abunimah
	The Guardian, Monday 29 December 2008

"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing." Those 
chilling words were spoken on al-Jazeera on Saturday by Ofer Shmerling, an 
Israeli civil defence official in the Sderot area adjacent to the Gaza Strip. 
For days Israeli planes have bombed Gaza. Almost 300 Palestinians have been 
killed and a thousand injured, the majority civilians, including women and 
children. Israel claims most of the dead were Hamas "terrorists". In fact, the 
targets were police stations in dense residential areas, and the dead included 
many police officers and other civilians. Under international law, police 
officers are civilians, and targeting them is no less a war crime than aiming at 
other civilians.

Palestinians are at a loss to describe this new catastrophe. Is it our 9/11, or 
is it a taste of the "bigger shoah" Matan Vilnai, the deputy defence minister, 
threatened in February, after the last round of mass killings?

Israel says it is acting in "retaliation" for rockets fired with increasing 
intensity ever since a six-month truce expired on 19 December. But the bombs 
dropped on Gaza are only a variation in Israel's method of killing Palestinians. 
In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick 
especially, deprived of food, cancer treatments and other medicines by an 
Israeli blockade that targeted 1.5 million people - mostly refugees and children 
- caged into the Gaza Strip. The orders of Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence 
minister, to hold back medicine were just as lethal and illegal as those to send 
in the warplanes.

Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, pleaded that Israel wanted "quiet" - a 
continuation of the truce - while Hamas chose "terror", forcing him to act. But 
what is Israel's idea of a truce? It is very simple: Palestinians have the right 
to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to 
violently colonise their land.

As John Ging, the head of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works 
Agency for Palestine Refugees, said in November: "The people of Gaza did not 
benefit; they did not have any restoration of a dignified existence ... at the 
UN, our supplies were also restricted during the period of the ceasefire, to the 
point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position and with a 
few days of closure we ran out of food."

That is an Israeli truce. Any act of resistance including the peaceful protests 
against the apartheid wall in the West Bank is always met by Israeli bullets and 
bombs. There are no rockets launched at Israel from the West Bank, and yet 
Israel's extrajudicial killings, land theft, settler pogroms and kidnappings 
never stopped for a day during the truce. The western-backed Palestinian 
Authority of Mahmoud Abbas has acceded to all Israel's demands. Under the proud 
eye of United States military advisors, Abbas has assembled "security forces" to 
fight the resistance on Israel's behalf. None of that has spared a single 
Palestinian in the West Bank from Israel's relentless colonisation.

The Israeli media report that the attack on Gaza was long planned. If so, the 
timing in the final days of the Bush administration may indicate an Israeli 
effort to take advantage of a moment when there might be even less criticism 
than usual.

Israel is no doubt emboldened by the complicity of the European Union, which 
this month voted again to upgrade its ties with Israel despite condemnation from 
its own officials and those of the UN for the "collective punishment" being 
visited on Gaza. Tacit Arab regime support, and the fact that predicted 
uprisings in the Arab street never materialised, were also factors.

But there is a qualitative shift with the latest horror: as much as Arab anger 
has been directed at Israel, it has also focused intensely on Arab regimes - 
especially Egypt's - seen as colluding with the Israeli attack. Contempt for 
these regimes and their leaders is being expressed more openly than ever. Yet 
these are the illegitimate regimes western politicians continue to insist are 
their "moderate" allies.

Diplomatic fronts, such as the US-dominated Quartet, continue to treat occupier 
and occupied, coloniser and colonised, first-world high-tech army and 
near-starving refugee population, as if they are on the same footing. Hope is 
fading that the incoming administration of Barack Obama is going to make any 
fundamental change to US policies that are hopelessly biased towards Israel.

In Europe and the Middle East, the gap between leaders and led could not be 
greater when it comes to Israel. Official complicity and support for Israel 
contrast with popular outrage at war crimes carried out against occupied people 
and refugees with impunity.

With governments and international institutions failing to do their jobs, the 
Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee - representing 
hundreds of organisations - has renewed its call on international civil society 
to intensify its support for the sanctions campaign modelled on the successful 
anti-apartheid movement.

Now is the time to channel our raw emotions into a long-term effort to make sure 
we do not wake up to "another Gaza" ever again.

• Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One 
Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse

electronicintifada.net
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/israel-gaza-attack-palestinian-reaction