Israel, the world’s No1 terrorist organisation

For 3 days running now, Israel has carried out an unrelenting terrorist campaign against the citizens of Gaza. The current toll is 345 dead and 1,500 injured. Israel boasts that it has done enough damage to Palestinian infrastructure to set the country back 20 years. Of course this just sets up conditions for another generation of Palestinians to see armed struggle as the only solution. Time for another intifada?

Officially, it originally claimed to be targetting only tunnels that were supposedly being used to transport weapons into Gaza. There are a number of problems with this stance. Firstly, the tunnels are necessary precisely because Israel has carried out a massive blockade of Gaza. This blockade has starved Gaza of essential items such as food, medical equipment, fuel ( and therefore electricity ) and tax revenue, basically since Palestinians voted Hamas into power. If the tunnels are also being used to transport weapons, this should come as no surprise to anyone. The key point in the issue is that Palestinians, and particularly those in Gaza, have no alternative but to fight on. The ‘peace process’ which has been discussed for decades and passed from US president to US president like some war baton offers no hope of peace or even relief from the ongoing blockade. Eyewitness reports from Gaza ( an example being shown on Australian Channel 7’s Sunrise program ) reject Israel’s claim that only tunnels are being targetted. They instead report that Israel is targetting infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, shopping centres, and also residential areas and mosques. This sounds more like the Israel we came to know in the recent short-lived war with Lebanon. Here are some Israeli children signing bombs destined for Lebanon:

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What’s almost as tragic as the terror campaign itself is the response from the international community. Our own Prime Ministrer, Captain Rudd, refused to condemn Israel, only being able to bring himself to call for an ‘end to hostilities’ ( or words to such effect ). The US, unsurprisingly, have reiterated their ’strong support’ for Israel in its ‘time of need’. Of course the millions of dollars in military aid that the US provides to Israel makes their position clearer than any half-wit president could ever hope to. However if there were any doubt remaining, Bush’s war-monger-adviser-extrordinairre Condoleezza Rice has held Hamas responsible for the attack, ignoring Israel’s continued blockaide, cross-border raids, assassinations, and general policy of genicide. By the way, Rice has recently been in the Middle East, supposedely talking up peace. Other world ‘leaders’ have been equally as cowardly and/or callous, prompting senior Israeli diplomats to claim that Israel is feeling no international pressure to end their campaign.

In response to this international indifference, Israel has now rejected its original claim that it’s just targetting some tunnels. Now it admits that this is all-out war, ‘to the bitter end’. It’s still a little confused about who the war is with; it says it’s at war with Hamas, but of course Hamas are the democratically elected leaders of Palestine … something which Israel refuses to recognise ( while still claiming to be a bastion of peace and democracy in the Middle East ). Targetting residential areas and infrastructure is hardly just a war with Hamas. It is of course the latest battle in Israel’s ongoing war with the Palestinian people.

So what of the Condi Rice’s stance that Palestinians brought this on themselves by allowing Hamas to fire rockets into Israel? This line of thinking seems to suggest that the problem originated with Hamas’ rocket fire. But Hamas is a movement that rose in response to decades of brutal military occupation on the part of Israel and the US. It emerged as a rejection of the failed peace process, that ongoing promise of peace which has always been accompanied with ongoing occupation … in fact increased occupation as more illegal settlements arise and are surrounded by an Apartheid Wall. Hamas is a diverse, loosely-knit organisation, with varied interests and methods. There is of course the military wing, which has arisen by pure necessity. There is also the political wing. Then there are individual activists and workers who offer their services in healthcare, education, and reconstruction. This last activity is of course never-ending, as Israel continually targets infrastructure. Israel’s policy of collective punishment is strictly illegal under international law. Of course I’m not suggesting that Israel or the US is at all concerned with breaking international law, but at any rate, it is instructive to consider what the rest of the world has encoded into law, despite their ongoing decades of silence when it applies to Israel. Probably more heartening is a recent EU survey indicating that Israel is considered the biggest threat to world peace. As usual, there is a large gap between what ordinary people think, and what their so-called leaders are willing to admit.

Apart from the obvious David-and-Galioth difference between Palestine and Israel, there is also the fact that the rocket fire the Israelis are crying over is coming from small groups of militants, and not the Palestinian state itself. Israel, on the other hand, has always practiced state terrorism, and quite inconspicuously so. The David-and-Galioth metaphor also applies to the casualties caused; militants’ rocket fire has killed 4 people in the past couple of months, whereas Israel has killed 350 ( so far in 3 days ).

Why is Israel allowed to occupy Palestine and kill as many Palestinians as it wants in the name of protecting itself, whereas Palestinians are to be denounced for their attempts at resistance? As George Galloway said in an interview with Sky News at the time of the Israel-Lebanon war, the mainstream media would have us believe that the problem started when they say so, and by who they say so, and that the blood of an Israeli is worth more than the blood of a Palestinian, Lebanese, or in fact anyone else on Earth. This racism is required by Western powers to justify their imperial projects in the Middle East, and Israel is at the heart of these projects, being the US’s guard-dog. This is proved undeniably by the absolutely uncritical western support for Israel in the face of such crimes against humanity as Israel practices daily, as well as the colossal level of military aid that pours in from the US, without which Israel would crumble in weeks, if not days.

Here at home in Australia, it’s high time Captain Rudd made good on his word to break somewhat the legacy of the Howard years, including the ‘me-too’ foreign policy of monkeying the US, and demand an end to the brutal occupation of Palestine, and a single-state solution, with equal rights for all citizens, the right of return for all Palestinian refugees, and compensation for land stolen for those Palestinians who can’t return to their homes or their ancenstors’ homes.

No justice, no peace.