It’s All Hamas’ Fault, Right Israel? by Gideon Levy Jul. 31, 2014
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.608118#!
Why did Gazans elect Hamas, instead of a moderate leadership? Because the moderates have been trying for years to achieve something, anything, and all they have received is humiliation and Israeli rejectionism. Has Israel given the Palestinians a reason to choose the Palestine Liberation Organization’s route of diplomacy over Hamas’ violent resistance? Has the PLO brought them an inch closer to statehood or freedom?
Hamas at least won the release of 1,000 prisoners and also preserved a measure of self-respect, even at the terrible price that the desperate Gazans are now willing to pay. What has Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas brought his people? Nothing. A photo op with Barack Obama.
I’m no fan of Hamas, quite the contrary. But Israel’s attempt to put all the blame on Hamas is outrageous. The international community will soon judge this war’s atrocities. Hamas may be reprimanded, deservedly, but Israel will be condemned and ostracized far more. And then Israelis will say, ‘It’s Hamas’ fault. And the world will laugh.
Why Hamas Won Gaza - Bill Clinton
http://www.kpfk.org/index.php/programs/51-michael-slate/8263-tmss-140718
Michael Slate: You’ve talked about this situation today being an incremental genocide, and it seems to me you’re saying there’s been a qualitative leap in what’s going on, and I want to talk with you about that; because it’s also related to what we’re talking about in relation to Gaza and what they’re doing in this sense too, that the particularities of the Gaza Strip make it clear that any collective punitive action—I think this is something you’ve said—like what’s going on now, could only be an operation of massive killing and destruction, a continued genocide. So is this a leap in the situation as you see it?
Ilan Pappé: Always with this case, with Israeli policy, it’s a small leap in terms of numbers of troops used, numbers of people targeted, numbers of people killed. But it’s a bit worse than the previous one, and you can imagine that the next one will be even worse. But I think it began in 2006. We have to remember how it also began even in the short term, let alone a more general historical context. It began when, in 2006, encouraged by the American discourse and propaganda about democracy, Palestinians went to the polling station, in January 2006, and thought that they were really spearheading democracy in the Middle East, and they chose a government. And the reaction of Israel, with the help of the United States, was to ghetto-ize them, without any way of getting in or getting out, and slowly cutting their rations of food and strangulating them.
It was very clear that even if you don’t bomb Gaza every two years from the air, the sea and the land, you are creating a situation in terms of human conditions that in the long run by itself can turn into a genocide. Let alone that in four waves since 2006, you use Merkava tanks, which are the most ferocious tanks in the world: F-16s, Apache helicopters, naval gunships and phosphorus bombs—by the way, all of them made in the United States, I should say to your listeners. All these horrible lethal weapons have been used four times on top of the strangulation, the starvation since 2006 as a punishment for exercising democracy. It’s unbelievable if you think about it.
The naked truth about Palestine is infuriating, the way it is being reported elsewhere. I think this is why I call it incremental genocide, because you can see this combination of the military on the one hand, and that narrative that somehow legitimizes in the West this ghetto-ization of almost two million people. How else can it end, if not with a massive destruction of the Gaza Strip?
Free Palestine!
Let Gaza Live!
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions
Free Palestine!
= new reply since forum marked as read
Has no bearing on today's atrocity...
Umm....
