Israel Needs Moral Compass - And This Is a Tough Sell?

First post in what seems like a century. Have changed my priorities and am blogging less, if at all. But some important things still keep popping up. Like Israel's inhumanity. And look at where U.K. weapons go:

UK weapons are still being used against civilian populations.

Ministers confirmed to the MPs that British-built components were almost certainly used as part of Israeli weapons systems against the Palestinians in Gaza.

What about U.S. weapons? Goes without saying. And what is Israel defending? Children, perhaps? Read this post:

Former Israeli military commander Efran Efrati recently testified to the BBC that Palestinian children are ‘routinely ill-treated’ by Israeli soldiers:

“You take the kid, you blindfold him, you handcuff him, he’s really shaking… Sometimes you cuff his legs too. Sometimes it cuts off the circulation.

“He doesn’t understand a word of what’s going on around him. He doesn’t know what you’re going to do with him. He just knows we are soldiers with guns. That we kill people. Maybe they think we’re going to kill him.

“A lot of the time they’re peeing their pants, just sit there peeing their pants, crying. But usually they’re very quiet…

“When the kid is sitting there in the base, I didn’t do it, but nobody is thinking of him as a kid, you know – if there is someone blindfolded and handcuffed, he’s probably done something really bad. It’s OK to slap him, it’s OK to spit on him, it’s OK to kick him sometimes. It doesn’t really matter.”

When will the lessons of the Holocaust ever be learned? When will people ever learn anything? I guess power is a very addictive drug, and it kills the conscience.

Am I Not Human? Gazans ask Israel

After the invasion of Gaza, this question again points to Israel. If Gazans are human, why do you starve them to death? Why attack the nearly defenseless?
Here is a poem relevant to that.

Gaza

Their faces rise only after slaughter
as your gaunt faces rose accusingly
in the windows of German officers
still-drunk with power, their wives
haunted by the skins of the departed
who shall never depart.

Their faces haunt behind your curtains
drawn inside, further, further,
and you call them terrorists
but what terrifies are not the rockets,
but the same gaunt faces,
that incessant mirror-image insanely
proclaiming they are human,
Human, they are you.

by
Omyma C. Hu

Israel Wipes Gaza Villages Off the Map

Jonathan Miller's report exposes the massacre:



This is unconscionable. It is horrific. It is a war crime. It is beyond words. And it is sponsored by U.S. weapons, and a long-standing policy of treating Israel like the spoiled, beloved child who can do no wrong. Congratulations! You're the proud sponsor of mass murder in the time-worn tradition of Security Trumps Compassion.

Israel traded its conscience for its view of security - apartheid, a protected Elite within a fortress, against the world. That's not a vision of the future. That's a vision of atrocities followed by doom. Good luck with that screwed world view.

Do Something to End the Occupation of Palestine by Israel

If you are sick of the slaughter in Gaza, and want to take action, this is your link.

Palestinians Eat Grass in Gaza: For Israel, the Ultimate Holocaust Denial

This incredible blog post is all the more powerful for the comments. Meanwhile, the Times reported that:

AS a convoy of blue-and-white United Nations trucks loaded with food waited last night for Israeli permission to enter Gaza, Jindiya Abu Amra and her 12-year-old daughter went scrounging for the wild grass their family now lives on.

“We had one meal today - khobbeizeh,” said Abu Amra, 43, showing the leaves of a plant that grows along the streets of Gaza. “Every day, I wake up and start looking for wood and plastic to burn for fuel and I beg. When I find nothing, we eat this grass.”

Abu Amra and her unemployed husband have seven daughters and a son. Their tiny breeze-block house has had no furniture since they burnt the last cupboard for heat.

“I can’t remember seeing a fruit,” said Rabab, 12, who goes with her mother most mornings to scavenge. She is dressed in a tracksuit top and holed jeans, and her feet are bare.

Israel forgot their own experience from the Holocaust, as described by commenter Sonja:

“I used to get …very hungry,” Blum said. “And then something came to me. I said, ‘The cows eat grass to live. How come I can’t do that?’ So I started hunting for grass. But you couldn’t find grass too many places. You find the roots. I used to clean the grass off the roots and chew on the roots, too. But then I discovered an area behind the kitchen. It was a restricted area. Nobody was allowed to go in, and the grass was growing nice. And I used to smuggle myself inside somehow… I ran in, took a handful [of grass] and ran out.”
By Rosa Blum, holocaust survivor, Romania

Holocaust in Romania, by Matatias Carp (6. Life and Death in Transnistria)
June 10, 1942
The buildings on the right housed deportees who had managed to save some
of their money, or because of their good connections were able to receive
aid in Moghilev. On the left side, however, hunger reigned. A number of
those interned had no choice but to eat grass from the meadows and leaves
from trees.

Yom HaShoah: The Train to Belzac
By Eva Galler (holocaust survivor)
It was cold. In one corner there was a little iron stove but no fuel. We were not given enough to eat. The children looked through the garbage for food. There was not enough water to drink. There was one well in the backyard, but it would not produce enough water for everybody. To be sure to get water you had to get up in the middle of the night. Once I had a little water to wash myself, and my sister later washed herself in the same water.
Some people started to eat grass. They would swell up and die. Because of the unsanitary conditions people got lice and typhus. My brother Pinchas got night blindness from lack of vitamins. Every day a lot of people died.

Holocaust survivors remember Lodz ghetto
Reuters - August 29, 2004
LODZ, Poland - Sam Weinreich remembers the last time he came to Radegast train station in Poland’s second-largest city - the day in 1944 he was forced into a cattle car and sent to Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz death camp.
“They promised us bread, so we came here … when you’re hungry, you’ll eat grass. People in the ghetto became like animals,” said Weinreich, one of some 400 survivors who on Sunday commemorated the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto 60 years ago.

Story of Survival - Holocaust experience remembered
by Johnell Lytle-Davis
“Why do they hate us?” Meisel said she asked her mother. “Because we are Jews,” her mother replied. “At least we are alive.”
Meisel revealed that she survived on about 300 calories in a day. “I would eat grass I was so hungry,” she said.

Thank you, Sonja, for this incredible collection of relevant stories.

It seems Israel has no intention of respecting or remembering, let alone learning from, the Holocaust.

Instead, they are trying to create, on perhaps a smaller scale - but in terms of human tragedy, is the death of children ever small for the conscience? - their own little Holocaust, inflicted on someone else.

And the reason is always the same. Security. For the Fatherland.

Palestinian Dr's Daughters Killed While Interviewed on Israeli TV

There seems to be no limits to the Israeli government's love of atrocity. I haven't been able to keep up with it all. The atrocity that is Israel's invasion of Gaza is beyond description, beyond words. It is totally unconscionable.

Just one case in point: frequently interviewed on Israeli TV, Dr. Ezz-El-Din Abu El-Eish, a Palestinian and resident of Gaza who works at works at Israel’s largest hospital, Tel Hashomer near Tel Aviv, was interviewed by cell phone while his daughters were killed by Israelis as described in this heartwrenching report:

This impressive and peaceful man has been stranded at home during the war. Israel’s Channel 10 TV has regularly interviewed him by phone about the situation. On one occasion, a tank gun aimed at his home - and Israeli media intervention saved him…

What we see in the clip [above] is Israeli anchor Shlomi Eldar holding a cellphone with Dr. Abu El-Eish on the other side, howling with misery. A tank shell has just hit his home and immediately killed three of his children (apparently they cut off the first seconds when the shell actually hit).”

And here's a part of the transcript:

“Eldar: …we have on the line Dr. Abu El-Eish, we have been talking with him over the past period… he [his home] was just shelled, his family is wounded, maybe I can replay…

Dr. Abu El-Eish: No one can get to us… (unclear)… Ya Rabi, Ya Rabi (my god).. [he continues to cry throughout while Eldar talks to the audience]

Eldar: They killed his family, over the past few days we have been… I think I’m a bit overwhelmed too because,… (tearing up) Dr. Abu El-Eish is a Tel Hashomer physician, [to the doctor] Abu El-Eish we are now in the studio, [back to the audience] and he kept fearing his family would get hurt, once this week he went on air to Gabi Gazit [another anchor], because this was the only way [apparently referring to the previous near-miss incident]…. In short, he was now hit, who was hurt Abu El-Eish?

Dr. Abu El-Eish: My girls, Ya Allah, Ya Allah

[around 1:00 into clip]

Eldar: He has eight children whom he has protected throughout the war, at his home in Beit Lahiya, maybe the only thing we can do is to ask someone who can, maybe in the IDF, Abu El-Eish can you tell me where your house is, maybe they will enable ambulances to get there

Dr. Abu El-Eish: (unclear) …to save them, to save them, but they are dead already they were hit in the head, it was in their heads [died] on the spot, on the spot, Shlomi, Ya Allah, … what have we done, what have we done [repeatedly]… they killed the family… [more screams in the background]“

It's an atrocity. The entire invasion of Gaza is a horrific slaughter and a tragedy. And to think this is being done to get votes from Israelis? Do they want the world to think the Israeli public is bloodthirsty, or what? If not, what the hell happened to their brains?

Apparently, their brains went the way of their hearts.

Naomi Klein: Want Mideast Peace? Boycott Israel

This heartening post by the ever-honest, ever-justice-loving Naomi Klein entitled "Want to End the Violence in Gaza? Boycott Israel" outlines the only path to Mideast Peace. Israel has never faced, and plans that it never will face, any consequences of a serious nature to its actions. It bombed Lebanon's airport to near-extinction, destroyed much of the country's infrastructure, and killed many children, women, and oh, don't forget, men - most of whom had nothing to do with the border skirmish in which two Israeli military men were kidnapped. Kidnap two soldiers of ours? We'll put you back to the stone age.

But Gaza was already hitting the stone age with a blockade that targeted mainly women, children, the sick and elderly. It has nothing to do with war. Israel's actions in the mideast are unconscionable. And then.... they invade. Invade a basically defenseless civilian population. Don't tell me this garbage about Hamas. Hamas was a legitimately elected government, supervised by Jimmy Carter. The U.S. in its infinite contortions of injustice metes out "justice" by labelling various groups of choice "terrorist", a title that means "fair game for invasion, attack, torture, whatever you can come up with."

It's been Bush's policy to say to Israel, "Sic 'em!" and then lean back and watch the sick show of slaughter, in Lebanon in '06 and now in Gaza. Always there's a "good reason": it's because of Hamas. They're terrorists! But Israel? They're defending themselves. Against homemade rockets. With cluster bombs, bombs of other descriptions dropped from supersonic jet fighters. It's a little "unbalanced"? But not terror?

From Naomi Klein:

It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.

In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions -- BDS for short -- was born.

Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.… This international backing must stop."

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.

1. Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis. The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement." It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures -- quite the opposite. The weapons and $3 billion in annual aid that the US sends to Israel is only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first non–Latin American country to sign a free-trade deal with Mercosur. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45 percent. A new trade deal with the European Union is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And on December 8, European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.

It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7 percent. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.

2. Israel is not South Africa. Of course it isn't. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves that BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, back-room lobbying) have failed. And there are indeed deeply distressing echoes of South African apartheid in the occupied territories: the color-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said that the architecture of segregation that he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was "infinitely worse than apartheid." That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.

3. Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan? Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.

4. Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less. This one I'll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus's work, and none to me. In other words, I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.

Coming up with our modest publishing plan required dozens of phone calls, e-mails and instant messages, stretching from Tel Aviv to Ramallah to Paris to Toronto to Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start implementing a boycott strategy, dialogue increases dramatically. And why wouldn't it? Building a movement requires endless communicating, as many in the antiapartheid struggle well recall. The argument that supporting boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at one another across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.

Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don't I know that many of those very high-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel's Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, the managing director of a British telecom specializing in voice-over-internet services, sent an email to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax. "As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company."

Ramsey says that his decision wasn't political; he just didn't want to lose customers. "We can't afford to lose any of our clients," he explains, "so it was purely commercially defensive."

It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it's precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.

Thank you, Naomi. Finally, someone speaks out. Let's hope others will hear your voice.

Israel Uses Unconventional Weapons Against Gazans

OUTRAGE! As if it's not enough to massacre hundreds of civilians in a show of overwhelming force by Goliath Israel against the prepped-by-starvation population of Gaza, now we learn from Mads Gilbert, a brave Norwegian doctor working in Gaza, that Israel is using unconventional weapons in their war on Palestine aka "War On Hamas". According to Dr. Gilbert:

"The Israelis are using a new type of very high explosive weapons which are called Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) and are made out of a tungsten alloy. These weapons have an enormous power to explode."

"All that is happening in Gaza here now is against international law, it is against humanity."

"Almost all of the patients we have received have these severe amputations. They seem to have been affected by this kind of weapon. Of course, we have many fragment injuries and burns but those who have got their limbs cut off, constitutes quite a large proportion.

You know we have a lot to do. Palestinian doctors, nurses and paramedics do an incredibly heroic job to save their people. Doctor Eric and I are just a small drip in the ocean, but we learn from them."

IN an interview, Dr. Gilbert addresses allegations that Israel is using depleted Uranium and is deliberately targeting civilians.

Doctor Mads Gilbert is a member of a Norwegian triage medical team present in the besieged Gaza Strip. The team has exposed that Israel has used depleted uranium weapons in its war on the impoverished territory which is home to 1.5 million Palestinians. He described the conditions inside Gaza in an exclusive Press TV interview.

Press TV: What can you tell about the uranium findings?

Dr. Mads Gilbert:The findings about the uranium I cannot tell you much about, but I can tell you that we have clear evidence that the Israelis are using a new type of very high explosive weapons which are called Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) and are made out of a tungsten alloy.
These weapons have an enormous power to explode.

The power of the explosion dissipates very quickly and the strength does not travel long, maybe 10 meters, but those humans who are hit by this explosion, this pressure wave are cut in pieces.

This was first used in Lebanon in 2006, it was used here in Gaza in 2006 and the injuries that we see in Shifa [Hospital] now, many many of them I suspect and we all suspect are the effect of DIME weapons used by the Israelis.

On the long term, these weapons will have a cancer effect on those who survive. They will develop cancer we suspect. There has been very little research on this but some research has been among other places in the United States, which show that these weapons have a high tendency to develop cancer. So they kill and those who survive risk having cancer.

If true, it appears to be a mass campaign of terror aimed and demoralizing the Palestinian people into capitulating into accepting a gulag archipelago as a so-called "homeland", which will be overseen and administrated by their captors, the Israelis, and in which their actual autonomy will be severely limited by the double-whammy of checkpoints and physical isolation and separation of these prison-islands from one another. Of course, rejection of the right of return means that it will not be a Palestinian "homeland" in the sense that Israel is a Jewish "homeland", but will be more of a pre-fabricated, US-Israeli-dictated residential living zone where basic human needs will be more likely to be allowed than they are in the current situation. Of course, neither the U.S. nor Israel considers "basic human needs" to include freedom of movement, or the ability of people expelled from their homes to return to their families and relatives.

And I have an appeal to the Israeli doctors and nurses. They are my colleagues. We belong to the same international community, the medical community. I wish that the good doctors and nurses in Israel tell their government to stop these atrocities. We cannot continue with this. We may differ in opinions, but you cannot treat the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza in this way.

And who are the majority of the victims? Terrorists?

Half of the population in Palestine are below 15 years and 80 percent of the people in Gaza live below the level of poverty defined by the UN. Now they don't have food, they don't have electricity. It's cold they don't have warmth and in addition to that, they are killed.

And so how many people have been affected by these unconventional weapons?

Dr. Mads Gilbert: Almost all of the patients we have received have these sever amputations. They seem to have been affected by this kind of weapon. Of course, we have many fragment injuries and burns but those who have got their limbs cut off, constitutes quite a large proportion.

It would seem that Israel is indeed using unconventional weapons. But since when did Israel care about conventions of war? Pre-emptive attacks, pre-emptive assassinations, collective punishment against civilians, and the imprisonment of an entire civilian population within its secure walls and guarded fences, the deprivation of liberty and the means of living, all these are against international law. And Israel joins with Dick Cheney, when faced with the condemnation of those who are brave and outrageously daring enough to give a damn about the people of Palestine:

"SO?"

How long will these outrageous acts continue? As long as the world looks on like a giant piece of inert protoplasm. Israel's banking on it.

Israel's "Up Yours" to Arabs Goes Down Wrong-Way Street

This calls for a toast. Israel, in a celebratory send-off to Favorite Neocon Dick "Mr. Torture" Cheney, is slaughtering "terrorists" (Israeli-speak for Palestinians) en masse in that super-powerful Security Threat, Gaza.

Gaza, where the civilian population has been under an indefinite siege, deprived by Israel of food, medicine, water, gas, and other staples as "collective punishment" for being ... for being ... in Gaza, and somewhat "self-governed" by Hamas. What crime could be worse than "self-government"? Gaza, where unemployment is the highest in the world at 49%. Gaza, where

Half the city's residents receive water only once a week for a few hours.

Gaza, which most of the world recognizes as a "humanitarian disaster." Gaza, where the average income was estimated in better times, last summer, to be about $2/ a day. And that's for those who can find income. Gaza, which has been reduced to living on the dole:

more than one million Palestinians in Gaza live on the modest assistance provided by the UNRWA and FAO in addition to other Arab and Islamic charitable organizations.

Gaza, where no one goes in or out without first passing through a surly Israeli guard at a checkpoint:

The population of Gaza is subject to Israeli closures and checkpoints, which often make it impossible to travel to or work in Israel and the West Bank, and Hamas' leadership are at constant risk of being killed by Israeli security forces.

Gaza also lives under a tight blockade, which often makes it impossible for food, water, medical supplies and other essentials to reach the population.

Gaza, governed as much as that is possible by Hamas, called a "terrorist organization" but which is also a political party and provider of public services in a population which has none of the above - and with less corruption that Yasser Arafat's old party. Gaza, from whose soil Hamas soldiers fired rockets into Israel in protest of Israel's provocative killing of 5 Hamas soldiers. Israel, of course, is always in the process of killing anyone associated with Hamas, having been given that neocon green light for assassination by Bush/Cheney, the darlings of the right-wing in power these days in Israel.

Rockets? Oh, yes, those rockets. Disturbing Israeli civilians. The answer? Death to thy neighbor. And all thy neighbor's wives, children, parents, grandparents, relatives, friends, and anyone and anything that is thy neighbor's. Of course, Gazans are not "neighbors" to Israelis. They are "terrorists". Every man, woman and child.

Oh, yes, Israel must attack Gaza, of all places. After the people have been starved nearly, but not quite, to death. Gaza, a prison masquerading as a "territory" masquerading as a "homeland" masquerading as a "dream". Well, not exactly a prison. Unlike a prison, people can procreate. Unlike a prison, they get no food or water to feed their children. Unlike a prison, they are told to fend for themselves, while being prevented from being able to do just that. Unlike a prison, they are not convicted of any crime, except being Palestinian, which is not a crime, and of defending themselves or fighting for their human rights, which is called "terrorism", which is a neocon crime.

But like am unjust prison, Gaza's only hope of human dignity is for its people to riot. And like a prison, all the power is in the hands of their jailers, guards, and executioners.

But...if all the power is in the hands of their jailers, the Israelis...who are nuclear armed...have supersonic jets...advanced weaponry...a well-trained standing military machine...

WHY THE HELL ARE THEY THREATENED BY A RAG-TAG, STARVING, IMPRISONED POPULATION WITH NO ARMY AND ONLY HOMEMADE OR STON-AGE PRIMITIVE WEAPONS??????

Because Gazans have lots of one things Israelis have less of: powerful motivation. You se, unlike the Israelis, Gazans are fighting to SURVIVE. And everybody knows, ain't no motive like that survival motive. It shoots adrenalin into the brain. It makes guys blow themselves up just to spite their tormentors. It takes people to their extremes, in endurance, in passion, in uniting for a cause. And Israel'[s attacks are increasing that motive, exponentially!

Israelis, on the other hand, have a more amorphous, philosophical motive: The Dream. The Dream of a Homeland for the Jews, especially after the Holocaust. Never mind that to achieve the Dream one must displace millions of inhabitants from that land. Compassion, comesmash'em! It's all about the Dream. It's like, more ideological. We're number one, and you're number nothing!

But what really is problematic here is that the Israelis are also amorphously-guided, by a cloud, as it were. A pillar of fire from the bombing of innocents by night, and a pillar of smoke from their ashes and the ashes of homes, hospitals, schools are more destroyed by day. They have no clear plan, except to react to every little perceived "provocation" like a high-strung cliffhanger on steroids. All they have to go on is a Dream and a Prayer.

The Dream: God told us to take this land OR ELSE.
The Prayer: Please take all those nasty Palestinians offa my land NOW.

The Tactic: Nuke 'em! Screw 'em! Bulldoze 'em! They're not even human! They're terrorists! They hate us! They're out to kill and destroy us! THEY ARE GOING TO DESTROY OUR DREAM!

The Strategy: Kill the Palestinians' motive to survive, their will to live, their human dignity, their pride, their children, whatever they hold dear, to totally annihilate their humanity, so they will agree to be placed in a Gulag Archipelago under Israeli supervision where they can be brutalized and never raise their voices, hands, heads, or hearts in any meaningful way.

Sounds a lot like Cheney's "robust interrogation".

Problem is, it doesn't work. You can't kill the human soul. Correction: when you try to kill the human soul, the only thing you succeed in killing is your own conscience. And with it, your own soul.

Ooops! That means, the Israelis are messing with their own conscience! Their own collective souls! And then...we all know God doesn't "choose" people without a conscience. And...wasn't that the Dream? The Motive? The Biblically sanctioned Holy Land of Israel? Wasn't it supposed to be...divinely ordained? But if God doesn't choose people with dead souls and dead consciences, then he... will choose someone else. A different people... a people who do not idolize the ideals of Dick Cheney and the neocons. A people who don't slaughter to impress their own constituency, as if the Israeli people vote based on bloodlust - whoever slaughters the most Palestinian children gets voted into office. Please tell me it ain't true! It sure as hell looks and sounds like it. But I don't want to believe...

Is THAT what Israel is all about? Is THAT what Israel represents? Power at all costs? Comfort for a few privileged - "comfort" meaning "lack of rocket volleys that shake us up" - at the cost of starvation of millions? Or the direct, deliberate, intentional murder, genocide of hundreds???? Is that the Dream? What the hell kind of a Dream is that, Israel????

This genocide will not go down easy.

Remember when "tough guys" didn't gun down women and children because it was beneath them? When it was too "low" for them to kill those who were weaker than them? How do you talk to Israelis who forgot that murder has consequences? Is it not "murder" when you're in power and using a military "machine" to do the killing? So it has no consequences? So Israel is blame-free? Why do they always attack those weaker than them, at their weakest point? Why don't they ever show that higher ground of "tough guys" in Westerns, of days gone by? Why don't they give a damn about families?

The world may croak like a freshly-slaughtered capon. The Arabs may make Very Strong Statements, signifying nothing. The U.S. may IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, ask ("pretty please") Israel (the beautiful, cruel, temptress girlfriend) to "try" not to kill "too many" civilians. Israel may answer "OK, we'll try, but...we'll won't promise, and we're not gonna stop bombing, invading, etc..."...

Yes, the whole world may join with Cheney in a rousing chorus of "So?"

But you can't eradicate the soul and heart of a nation in order to find the soul and heart of your own nation. It doesn't work that way.

Face it, Israel. Or better yet, say goodbye to right-wing Zionism like we're saying goodbye to Dick Cheney and the discredited neocons. For Israel to survive, it's got to have a goal that INCLUDES the existence of REAL, LIVE, NON-TERRORIST, NON-KOWTOWING, UPPITY, PROUD, HONEST, HUMAN......PALESTINIANS. With dignity. On both sides, not just your side of the border.

And while you're at it, watch your morals when you claim divine rights. Or the disaster you are toasting:
"Up Yours!"
may be your own.

"Am I Not Human?" Blog Campaign: Gaza & The Palestinians

Electronic Village has initiated a blogging campaign for human rights, touching such crucial issues as the genocide in Darfur, held on the 27th of each month. Thinkbridge blog is proud to participate in this campaign, featuring today the human rights debacle that is Gaza in the Palestinian Territories.

Israel's continuing policy of collective punishment is in effect destroying Palestinian families' health and welfare, preventing them from making a living or even living. It is like living in a prison without being fed, clothed, medically attended to and denied access to all of the above. It is like slavery to a master who does not even acknowledge one's usefulness as, say, a worker. It is to be a community of pariahs, hated and condemned simply for being Palestinians, the original inhabitants of the lands including Israel. It is an occupation that grows like a cancer in the form of settlements, homes built for richer and more powerful Israelis who simply decide to bulldoze a couple, or a dozen, of the 4th-class "sub-human" Palestinian ancestral homes, in order to make way for what for all practical appearances looks like the Master Race, or at least the first-class citizens.

Of course, this kind of discussion is absolutely forbidden. From some of the history, many fear they could be targeted by a hit squad just for stating that this policy is racist, cruel, inhuman, oppressive, immoral, unfair, unjust, and despicable. It defies belief that the very people, the Jews, who suffered the most horrendous mass murder and torture and humiliation that anyone could have imagined under the Nazi regime in Germany, could now treat an entire people as sub-human, denying them basic human rights for medical care, trade, food, water, and fuel - all under the guise of "anti-terrorism". The Nazis, too, considered the Jews a "threat" to the German nation. They were a "security threat" in a way hauntingly parallel to the way Palestinian Arabs are seen as a "security threat" to the state of Israel.

Except the Jews were not the original inhabitants of Germany and were not displaced by German immigrants. This point is lost on most people, though.

In fact, the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians is in itself a type of Holocaust denial. What possible lessons could one gain from the Holocaust, if not the moral depravity of racism and of singling out one ethnic community for slaughter, torture, and denial of the right to basic human rights? Of course, Israel is not slaughtering or torturing Palestinians on the same scale the Nazis did to the Jewish people. But it is nonetheless absolutely denying Palestinians' human rights. And this, in fact, creates more enemies, hence a far greater security risk. Aside from the humanitarian issue. Are not Palestinians, too, human after all?

It seems the United States does not truly consider Palestinians human in the sense that Israeli Jews are human, except in carefully worded rhetoric. Whenever a single Jew is threatened or injured, the U.S. government is quick to condemn the "terrorists". Whenever a group of Palestinians are killed, even if they are children or minors, they are always depicted as "terrorists" or "militants" or, at best, "suspects". The word "terrorist" is the newest racist tool to deny a community its humanity. If they are "terrorists" or even "terrorist suspects", they are immediately and completely denied any right to be considered human.

Aside from that, the rest are, at best, "collateral damage". So the inhabitants of Gaza are "collateral damage", forgotten at the moment, their lives, sorrows and troubles are not our business, not of our interest. They have nothing to offer us, the idea goes. They are "terrorists", they are "Islamic militants" - another new term to deny humanness in others - and any attempt to defend themselves or their dignity is considered a "threat" which must be "subdued", usually by guns or air strikes. It is the very threat to their peace and the denial of their right to make a living or trade or even seek medical help that kills hope, the hope of being thought of as human.

While the Presidential candidates hold the world riveted until election day, places like the Gaza strip are very much forgotten and very much in the same progressively worse misery they were when some attention reached them. Thankfully, human rights groups inside Israel, and in other parts of the world are trying to do something.

A group of international experts Sunday blasted Israeli authorities for denying their entry into the Gaza Strip for a mental health conference, urging the international community to end Israel's actual occupation.

"We strongly protest the decision by the Israeli authorities to deny entry permits to 120 international academics and concerned professionals" who had been invited to attend the "Siege and Mental Health, Walls vs. Bridges" conference originally scheduled in Gaza City, said Professor Alice Rothschild from U.S. Harvard University at a press conference.

The Oct. 27-28 conference, sponsored by the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP) in cooperation with the Gaza office of World Health Organization (WHO), is aimed to examine the impact of the conflict in the Palestinian enclave on local children, families, and communities and to support the development of appropriate mental health and psycho-social services, said GCMHP in a statement.

The group said the WHO office handed over its request for entry permits for 80 experts and health professionals, mostly from Europe and North America, in late September, and 40 others submitted their applications via other channels.

In mid-October, the Israeli military authorities informed the WHO office that all requests were turned down, without giving any reason, according to the conference organizers.

Israel holds a knife at Palestine's throat, and anyone who wants to get in has to pass by that knife. Very few ever get past.

Miri Weingarten, a spokeswoman of the Physicians For Human Rights-Israel organization, said that her group contacted the relevant authorities and found that the denial was a political rather than security decision.
Meanwhile, the press conference also said that 16 doctors from Britain who planned to enter the poverty-stricken strip in November to treat local patients have also run into a closed door.

Note that many Jews are furious at this policy. It is not, certainly, a Jewish policy, but rather a right-wing Israeli policy. Note that the right-wing Israelis are aligned with the neocons in the Republican party in the U.S. It's time that these two right-wing movements stop being the Party of the Mean-Spirited and Cruel and face up to the fact that these policies are totally counterproductive.

And the cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians has not improved the conditions of Palestinians in Gaza from a humanitarian standpoint. The only beneficiary of this cease-fire has been Israel.

“If anything, existing evidence discloses a harsher regime of confinement and siege imposed on the Gazan population,” Richard Falk, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, told the General Assembly’s third committee (social, humanitarian and cultural) yesterday.

He said Palestinians continue to face difficulties in obtaining exit permits to receive specialised medical treatment in Israel or elsewhere that is not available in Gaza.

“Such delays and denial of permission has resulted in a growing number of tragic deaths, severe mental and physical suffering, and constitutes a violation of the duty of the occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention to take all reasonable steps to protect the health and well-being of the population under occupation, with exceptions only to the extent absolutely necessary for upholding security.

“These restrictions appear unrelated to credible security claims, and hence a punitive form of collective punishment, which is consistent with the overall maintenance of the siege that has been applied to Gaza since July 2007.”

Israel's claim of "security threats" seems excessive in this case, and the tragedy that is Gaza is unconscionable. Meanwhile, some Israeli settlers continue their violence even against Israeli authority when it curtails their extremist behavior. Just yesterday, October 26,

Israel's outgoing prime minister on Sunday called for a crackdown on extremist Jewish settlers who attacked and threatened Israeli troops and vandalized Palestinian property.

The settler rampage on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Hebron came after Israeli forces demolished an illegal settlement outpost that had been set up by a well-known ultranationalist extremist, Noam Federman.

But it's not an isolated incident - it's a movement.

Settlers also vandalized a nearby Muslim cemetery and slashed the tires of two dozen Arab-owned cars, the Israeli military said.

Israeli human rights groups and senior military officials have expressed concern about growing violence by the most militant among the about 300,000 West Bank settlers in recent months.

The Israeli army commander in the West Bank, Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni, warned in a newspaper interview earlier this month that the number of settlers engaged in violence has ``grown into the hundreds.''

Critics have long complained that settler vigilantes are allowed to act with impunity and that the security forces often look the other way, particularly when it comes to settler violence against Palestinians.

And it is this very movement that the less-extreme in Israel have to make concessions to, or at least think so. And act on that thought.
And so, when it comes to Gaza, things like education are almost an impossible dream:

The right to education is a fundamental human right - one not often honoured in the occupied Palestinian Territories, where thousands of students are blockaded by the Israeli authorities who refuse them the right to freedom of movement.

Rami Abdu, who last month succeeded in crossing the Rafah border to take up his PhD in finance at Manchester Metropolitan University, is one such victim. “I got a full scholarship to Manchester one and a half years ago. I tried to cross the border four times and I sent messages to human rights groups, but like many students I was unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, death is all too often the result of denied human rights. More than education or trade, the very right to live is being denied to an entire people.

At least 255 Palestinians, including approximately 100 children, died in Gaza awaiting Israeli-issued permits to leave for outside treatment. Medical facilities in the Strip are subpar with a lack of supplies, medicines and working equipment. Without imports repairs cannot be made and simple treatments are difficult to administer.

In Gaza, 81% of residents are living below the poverty line. And as for justice, picking up Palestinians or attacking their families and then arresting them is commonplace. After arrest?

According to B’Tselem some 85% of Palestinian detainees have been tortured during interrogation.

And in one year alone, 68 Gazan children were killed as a result of collective punishment by the Israeli government.

Since the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have killed more than 860 children in the OPT, the majority of them in the Gaza Strip.

In response to these IOF killings of children, and IOF consistent use of excessive lethal force against Palestinian children, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights is launching "Blood on Their Hands" -- a major investigative report on child killings perpetrated by the IOF in the Gaza Strip.

"Blood on Their Hands" examines IOF killings of children in the Gaza Strip from June 2007 through June 2008. During this period, IOF killed 68 children in the Gaza Strip. (For the purpose of this reports, PCHR defines a child as a boy or girl younger than the age of 18 who is not taking part in hostilities.) The report provides data, analysis and testimonies on the killings of these children, including detailed testimonies from eye-witnesses and bereaved families, which highlight the horrific nature of these IOF child killings. The report also examines the psychological impact of child deaths on other children in the Gaza Strip, especially those children who have witnessed IOF killings.

Is this the way the "Sole Democracy in the Middle East" is shining a "light" to the supposedly "dark" neighbors??? Is this America's best friend? Or is Israel the tin man, in desperate need of getting back his heart?

Lawrence of Cyberia: Why Don't Zionists Adopt Gandhi's Methods?

Just discovered this post which makes this astute point:

It takes a special kind of nerve to embark upon a project - Zionism - that can be fulfilled only through the violent destruction of another people, and then criticize the people you are destroying for their failure to adopt non-violence.

Which is followed by this quote from Gandhi, showing his distaste for Zionism:

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. …Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred.

… I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.

-- The Jews In Palestine, by Mahatma Gandhi; The Harijan, 26 Nov 1938

According to Gandhi, it was the Zionists, not the Palestinians, who invented terrorism.

Truce Between Hamas & Israel: Reprieve or Improvement?

From the Guardian:

On Thursday at 6 am, following a furious final burst of activity from Qassam rocket teams against the residents of the towns of the Western Negev, and by Israel's air force against the Qassam rocket teams, silence descended on Gaza and its environs. The six-month "tahdiya" (period of calm) declared between the Hamas rulers of Gaza and Israel is the latest move in a long and exhausting war currently under way in the Middle East. This war pits a coalition of rejectionist (mainly Islamist) forces centered on Iran against pro-western elements in the region. A central goal of the pro-Iranian alliance is the destruction of Israel. Hamas is the main representative of this alliance in Gaza and the West Bank. The "tahdiya" represents a significant achievement for Hamas, and therefore for this camp.
The "tahdiya" is the fruit of the campaign of attacks launched by Hamas against the communities of the western Negev. This campaign began in the days following Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in the summer of 2005. Since that time, of course, Hamas has won PA elections, and destroyed its Fatah opponents in Gaza. The Egyptian-brokered period of calm is a de facto recognition by the government of Israel of the Hamas regime in the Strip.
Hamas gave some ground in the indirect negotiations in the period leading up to the ceasefire. Most significantly, the movement had originally wanted the ceasefire to extend to the West Bank. Israel, fearing the possibility of a creeping Hamas takeover of this area, refused. But this caveat notwithstanding, the tahdiya will allow Hamas a breathing space in which it will consolidate its rule and build up its forces.
According to the ceasefire, Israel will begin to ease its blockade of Gaza if the quiet holds for three days. A week later, again dependent on the maintenance of quiet, Israel will then further ease restrictions on cargo crossings. Talks will then begin over the re-opening of the Rafah Crossing between Egypt and Gaza, and for the release of kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. (The causal relation between these two final aspects is not clear, and it will be interesting to observe whether the Egyptian decision to re-open Rafah will indeed be conditioned on progress regarding Shalit, or whether the one will be quietly de-coupled from the other in the weeks to come.)

Israel's Breach of Conscience Breeds More Terrorism Than Peace

Even when a new "shaky" ceasefire is in place, it helps to consider the plight of Gaza again.
When this came out last May 30

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has denounced the international community for its "silence and complicity" on what he called Israel's "abominable" 11-month blockade of Gaza.

and

The Archbishop, mainly here on a UN mission to investigate what he called the Beit Hanoun massacre of 21 civilians by Israeli tank shelling 18 months ago, said: "All we had heard about conditions in Gaza – deprivation, a sense of despair, the lack of economic activity – had not prepared us for the stark reality which we saw."

Of course, this gets little response, thanks to "fear of AIPAC." But AIPAC may ultimately be working against Israel's long-term interests, and so are others who support the blockade, which has radicalized more moderates and villainized Israel to more people than any "Islamist" propaganda ever could.

Nobody in their right mind expects the candidates to stand in sympathy with Gaza or the Palestinians. Candidates have to be all things to all people, and even more particularly, all things to all power-brokers. So to whom do we turn to stand up to the almighty power of AIPAC about which is said:

Former president Bill Clinton defined it as "stunningly effective". Former speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich called it "the most effective general-interest group across the entire planet". The New York Times as "the most important organization affecting America's relationship with Israel".

and

AIPAC maintains a virtual stranglehold over the US Congress. Critics of the Israel lobby other than Walt and Mearsheimer also contend that AIPAC essentially prevents any possibility of open debate on US policy towards Israel.

Or towards Palestinians. Or towards ... Iraq?

It has become relatively fashionable for some members of the Israeli lobby to deny any involvement in the build-up towards the war on Iraq. But few remember what AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr told the New York Sun in January 2003: "Quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq was one of AIPAC's successes over the past year."

And in a New Yorker profile of Steven Rosen, AIPAC's policy director during the run-up to the war on Iraqi, it was stated that "AIPAC lobbied Congress in favor of the Iraqi war".

Compare it with a 2007 Gallup study based on 13 different polls, according to which 77% of American Jews were opposed to the Iraq war, compared to 52% of Americans.

Walt and Mearsheimer contend

"the war was due in large part to the lobby's influence, and especially its neo-con wing. The lobby is not always representative of the larger community for which it often claims to speak."

Does this mean AIPAC is overextending itself and in fact, doing the Jews - or actual human beings who identify themselves as Jews - and even Israel in a more long-term sense - more harm than good??

Does that apply also to the Palestinian issue? Of course it does! Look at Amy Goodman, who frequently hosts Palestinian-sympathizing guests and expresses strong opposition to the hawkish Security First line.

Nothing ever gets solved without the willingness to actually discuss and communicate as human beings. Once both sides become Untouchable Aliens, there is no solution but war, violence and suffering. And this doesn't occur in a vaccuum.
The problem also lies in what has been defined as "nationalism" vs. "patriotism".

George Orwell wrote that nationalism was one of the worst enemies of peace. He defined nationalism as the feeling that your way of life, country, or ethnic group were superior to others. These types of feelings lead a group to attempt to impose their morality on any given situation. When those standards were not met, more often then not, war would result.

In contrast he stated that patriotism was the feeling of admiration for a way of life etc. and the willingness to defend it against attack. The obvious difference between the two is that while patriotism is a passive attitude, nationalism is aggressive by nature.

Israel's Security First right wing enforces strong nationalism. Nationalism that displays in US foreign policy that blares to the world "Israel Right or Wrong". It's presented as a patriotic thing, but in practice, with the pre-emptive attack policy, it cannot be described as merely "defense".

On the other hand, Israel has failed to recognize that it actually has neighbors to whom it must prove itself as a good neighbor so as to get off US life-support, finally graduate from Protected Fetus status, and become a viable nation in every sense of the word. In other words, Israel will remain in vitro, a sort of implant in the Middle East, as long as it keeps this "I am God, You are Dirt" attitude. The blockade of Gaza signs, seals and delivers that impression on all those neighbors. Those nasty little vermin anti-semitic terrorists/ tyrants.

Can't you even pretend they're human? Turn on the electricity or open some freaking road so the dying can get treatment in the hospitals? Can't you see how tyrannical, nasty, mean, racist, and downright immoral this looks? The taste of genocide is in the air... where's those talented PR guys??? A token loaf of bread, some baby formula, something...

Israel cannot maintain its current position forever, much to some Israeli right-wingers' disbelief. The US empire is crumbling in the wake of the disastrous so-called "War on Terror" which has proved to be more of an apocalyptic-styled war on any non-totalitarian Muslim society that claims to have an "Islamic" government.

The US and Israel, by their policies, are feeding the fire, creating more terror, more enemies, more worldwide resentment. They are becoming, in the eyes of the rest of the world, pariahs. Their policies are intransigent, highly aggressive, featuring torture and "pre-emptive strikes". What was once the sole domain of Israel and done with some trepidation is now US foreign policy and done without a single pang of conscience.

What is conscience? An inconvenience? A nagging UN-leftwing-bleedingheart-vegan-weenie-antisemitic rant? Or is it that very thing that forces humankind to do what they hate most - consideration for others? It is that painful, dreaded submission of pride to some alien group again.

Conscience is replaced by rhetoric. Discourse is replaced by rant.

On the one hand, we hear citations of numerous threats by Hamas or Hamas sympathizers that they will somehow return Palestine to its original, Jew-free state. Just as Palestinians see Israel's insistence that recognition include the phrase "Jewish Homeland" which they take to mean recognition of the right of Israel to expel all non-Jews from Israel, to create an Arab-free state. But everyone knows reality is never dictated by threats, dreams, commands, or dictates issuing from leaders or governments.

Even Hamas leader Misha'al stated (quoted here)

We have the Palestinian Conciliation Document of 2006, in which all the organizations agreed clearly to a state based on the borders of 1967 including Jerusalem, the right of return and full sovereignty.

At some point, Israel will have to listen to its own people and take them into consideration, not for their fears but for their hopes and aspirations - but realistically. That means facing the ugly consequences of what the Israeli government is doing now so aggregiously, so aggressively, so cold-heartedly. So devoid of conscience. As Desmond Tutu said:

"The entire situation is abominable. I believe the ordinary Israeli citizens would not support this blockade if they knew what it really meant to ordinary people like themselves... My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity, especially on the situation in Gaza, shames us all. It is almost like the behaviour of the military junta in Burma."

And here's the crux of the matter:

... he said that events in both South Africa and Northern Ireland had shown that peace would come through negotiations "not with your friends. Peace can only come when enemies sit down and talk".

Of course, fat chance of that from nationalist Israel:

... less than 24 hours after the Archbishop's visit to Beit Hanoun, 60 Palestinians were arrested during a pre-dawn raid by the Israeli military on the northern Gaza town. Palestinian witnesses said that residents had been summoned to a local square before dozens were taken away for questioning, and that armed military bulldozers had destroyed some farmland in the area.

Some think they can obliterate a population and then, as if committing the perfect crime, simply deny they ever existed, thus exonerating their deed. Others prefer using semantics, calling Palestinians "terrorists" and "antisemites" (implying "racist") while Jews are "God's chosen people" and part of Biblical destiny and "holocaust victims" - meaning not simply victims of the Holocaust, but people who, having collectively undergone such a horrible disaster, now are justified in doing anything whatsoever to maintain their security. It's a feeling, but Israel needs more self-confidence, less defensiveness. Hey, they're nuclear armed in a sea of Arab military nothingness!

Finally, the net result of Israel's blockade of Gaza may be to create more extremism and terrorism in the region, since all Palestinians and Arabs can see of Israel is cruelty and oppression and a callous disregard for their humanity. They don't see that Hamas is also culpable in this, that they may be "abusing" their population in some ways.

Palestinian children in Hamas-controlled Gaza are being taught to take an active role in terrorist operations against Israel and are thus placed in mortal danger by those who should be responsible for their safety and well-being. The children, too young to fully understand even the meaning of death, are taught to aspire to "martyrdom" in children's television shows produced by the Hamas.

The blockade is NOT having the desired effect of limiting Hamas' power, but rather increasing their hold on people who see Hamas, like them, as being victimized. It gives Hamas the role of "voice of the people", a role I believe Israel, in its most nationalistic right-wing dream, would prefer it not to have.

Conscience has its perks. People recognize good works and human consideration for others. They really do. And ultimately, what could hurt Israel in the region is disregard for Palestinians and the human wasteland they've made of Gaza. You can blame Hamas. You can call them terrorists. But what the people feel is that Israel wants to destroy them, not Hamas. And only Israel can have a change of conscience. The US will do nothing with theirs, as long as Bushco and AIPAC remain in their positions of unmitigated power.

Israel Uses Gunfire Against Gaza Protesters

Talk about Israel's "democratic ideals" and "peaceful neighborliness" - those quotes are presumed, not real - and here you've got it! Or check this NYT article.

Israeli troops used gunfire and teargas on Friday to keep more than 3,000 Hamas
supporters from approaching one of the Gaza Strip's main border crossings with
Israel, wounding at least six Palestinians,
witnesses said.
At least two of the wounded were in a critical condition,
Palestinian medical workers said.

Freedom of speech under the gun. I guess the right to protest, to express oneself, to speak one's mind, is VERBOTEN under an OCCUPATION. Wonder why they "resort" to violence? Since when did peaceful means work with Israel???? WHen????

Remember this in Iraq. Israel, the occupier, uses guns because in their minds, Palestinians are not people, they're terrorists! Nothing like a label to destroy human relations. Nothing like guns to destroy peace. It's all about "preemptive strikes", that right-wing catchall for paranoid nationalism. Gee, did anybody ever hear that Nazi Germany was into the same thing? Maybe you should mend some fences with the extreme right, Israel. You have so much in common.

Separately, Palestinian medical workers said a 65-year-old woman died on
Friday from wounds suffered a day earlier.
The Palestinians said the woman was hit during an Israeli army raid near her home in the southern Gaza Strip.

Ahhh, another day, another raid, another dead body, another reason to keep killing each other.

And America is doing the same in Iraq, only more heavy-handedly, unbeknownst to the press. Notwithstanding the dancing GI's with Iraqis celebrating their battle victory over an al-Qaeda "cell". Lots of people in Iraq say they are much worse off now, and democracy is far more difficult to achieve. When will the Republicans ever learn freedom is not by force?

Probably when the Israelis learn civility and peace is not by force, either. You don't get good neighbors by starving their children and bulldozing their homes. Duhhhhh....

Revenge Against Children for Parents' "Crime": Being Arab

Israelis are very defensive. No argument on that point. So they must hate "Save the Children" when that organization described the situation in Gaza as a "man-made, completely avoidable" "humanitarian implosion", laying the blame for the suffering of Gaza's children, who make up almost half of the population, on Israel's morally abhorrent policy of communal punishment on Gazans.

The number of people living in absolute poverty in Gaza has increased
sharply. Today, 80% of families in Gaza currently rely on humanitarian aid
compared to 63% in 2006. This decline exposes unprecedented levels of poverty
and the inability of a large majority of the population to afford basic
food. ...
In June 2005, there were 3,900 factories in Gaza employing 35,000 people. One and a half years later, in December 2007, there were just 195 left employing
only 1,700. The construction industry is paralysed with tens of thousands of labourers out of work. The agriculture sector has also been badly hit and
nearly 40,000 workers who depend on cash crops now have no income....
In September 2007, an UNRWA survey in the Gaza Strip revealed that there was a nearly 80% failure rate in schools grades four to nine, with up to 90% failure rates in Mathematics. In January 2008, UNICEF reported that schools in Gaza had been cancelling classes that were high on energy consumption, such as IT, science labs and extra curricular activities.

This is not the result of some unforeseen tragedy. This is deliberate, calculated "punishment" against children first - for they suffer the most - because of rockets launched by Hamas militants. Did this policy succeed to stop the rockets? No. Did it bring the region closer to peace? Quite the opposite. Did it succeed to kill and sicken innocent children, bringing them to the brink of starvation in front of their desperate, heartbroken, trapped and walled-in parents? Yes!

As the head of UNRWA has pointed out, ‘Hungry, unhealthy, angry communities do not make good partners for peace.’

Someone - wonder who? - said "You shall know them by their fruits." Here are the fruits of the Israeli occupation: Suffering and pain, near-starvation, deprivation of freedom - against children first! They are the most vulnerable, and the ones who bear the brunt of Israel's retribution and thirst for revenge. Is that the nation who celebrates their 60th anniversary? Do I hear a party?
Partying at the expense of whom? Do they feel no shame, dancing on the graves and pain of innocent children? What just God could possibly sympathize with them?

Marketing Ethnic Cleansing: Israel Parties Like It's 1948 on its 60th Birthday

This article is too good to be true - alternet sees through the smoke and mirrors. The title here is your link to one great article on the con job that is Israel, American-style - sans Palestine. The latter is effectively hidden behind a wall of silence, written in the word "terrorism" - a term originally invented by Israelis to obfuscate the issues of Palestinian nationality and counter with a term that criminalizes any resistance to the occupation.

Imagine, this 60th Anniversary "Celebration", on the twin anniversary of the Nakba, the expelling of thousands of Palestinians from their homes to make room for the Zionist dream, and the beginning of a war without end, that has destabilized the middle east and the Muslim world for generations. About the Jews having the right to a homeland after the horrors of the Holocaust, there's a powerful public sentiment in their behalf. About taking that homeland by force from people living already on the land in question - well, not so easy to accept. About what to do now.... requires mind, discipline, and a sense of fairness. Who has that?

Meanwhile,In economic terms, you could say that Israel Independence Day has
"market dominance." When most people think of Israel Independence Day -if they
contemplate it at all- they think of it in terms of Israel's national narrative.
But in spite of all the festivities, Israel Independence Day may
be losing some of its market share. Unable to market the brand to at least two
demographics (Muslim and Arab Americans) and losing market share to a generation transformed by a deeper understanding of military occupation (whether in
Palestine, Iraq or Tibet), a quality of desperation seems to underlie the latest
efforts to sell the holiday.
While advocates of Israel Independence Day still market the holiday to the country as a whole, they're increasingly turning to niche markets like health & wellness and adventure travel to achieve their main objective: market saturation.
But is it working?
...
But the edifice of legend is cracking. M.J. Rosenberg, director of the
Israel Policy Forum, recently wrote about the reluctance of young Jewish
Americans to embrace the Israel of lore, saying in a newsletter that "The
Internet generation is not into tired organizational talking points which mix
facts and myths in equal measure." Rosenberg argues that, "you can't defend the
occupation and sell Israel at the same time."
For those trying to sell Israel
to the public, opinion polls show that, while Americans tend to sympathize more
with Israelis, most people believe that Israelis and Palestinians share the
blame for their conflict -along with the United States. A BBC World Service Poll
released in early April describes the American public as "nearly evenly divided"
in their opinions on Israel. This doesn't jibe with a narrative that casts
Israelis as innocent transplants who got stuck in a bad neighborhood, but are
thriving just the same.
...
There is a new ethos now: If you feel for one side, you should feel for the
other. Those who subscribe to this view condemn all violence. They put the needs
of the people, Israelis and Palestinians, before everything else. You could call
them the People-First Movement.
The advocates of this movement, many of whom are American Jews and Israelis, believe that the official Israeli story has to be outsold by a new narrative. This means, first, acknowledging all that happened in 1948, including al nakba: the organized killings of Palestinians, the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages, and the expulsion of over seven hundred thousand Palestinians from their land. And it means looking at the US-backed occupation, and the fact that all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank live under the reach of Israeli military power.
The most striking thing about this movement is how grassroots it is.
...
In the IPF newsletter cited earlier, Rosenberg describes this trend within
the Jewish community: "They are losing the campus battle big time....I'm talking
about young opinion leaders who are turned off by the occupation and identify
Israel with settlers there and neoconservatives like Feith, Perle, and
Krauthammer here. They hate the paranoid style in which all dissent from the
status quo is deemed anti-Israel or anti-Semitic and, generally, have no use for
the mindless emotionalism and ethnic sentimentality that characterize so much of
the organized pro-Israel community. As third or fourth generation Americans,
they cannot be won over with scare tactics about the Holocaust or Ahmedinejad."
...
Omar Baddar, who works with the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation,
explains that "Activism had died down in the 1990s due to the misconception that
the 'peace process' was working and could achieve something. Once that fell
through, and it became obvious that Israel was choosing illegal territorial
expansion over peace with the Palestinians, people felt the need to get active
on the issue again." Baddar believes the movement is growing because it engages
supporters "democratically and on many different levels." The anniversary of Al
Nakba on May 15 provides a focal point.
...
On April 24, The Washington Post reported on the Bush Administration's
"secret" agreement with Israel to support settlement expansion in the West Bank.
But it's no secret that, even since the Annapolis talks in November, the Israeli
government has authorized a surge of settlement construction in the West Bank
and East Jerusalem. And it's no secret that the US backs virtually all of
Israel's policies: its settlements and separation wall, its occupation and
siege; policies that have strangled the Palestinian people and resulted in many
lost lives on both sides.
...
But the peace movement is growing, and it's drawing support from people
across the country who think that two safe and viable nations will best serve
the Israeli and Palestinian people. Now that would truly be something to
celebrate.

How likely is this to succeed? It depends on the courage of the grassroots. What'll you have - war with fake peace, or real peace with less hype? The choice is yours.

What's It All About, Israel?

Here's why Palestinians, in part represented by Hamas, have trepidations about recognizing Israel as Israel wants to be recognized - defined as "a Jewish state":

A recent poll found that 76 percent of Jewish Israelis support “transferring” the Palestinian citizens of Israel – more than 1.4 million people – out of the country.

It's the fear of that very expulsion - expulsion of all non-Jews - that would be the final crushing blow to Palestinians. And hey - "expulsion of all non-Jews" - doesn't that sound somehow ... racist?

Nakba Denial Is As Much a Crime as Holocaust Denial

Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany, and many other countries. The logic is that such a great humanitarian disaster should be remembered, and in remembering never repeated. Yet another humanitarian disaster, different, but certainly involving the population of an entire nation, still hanging over them with the spectre of obliteration from the face of the earth, in the name of race. And this disaster was caused by the very people who collectively were victims of the Holocaust. So certainly it is of great significance, something to be remembered, something to make them strive to avoid victimizing others as they were victimized. Yet almost the opposite has occurred. And so Israel denies the Palestinian Nakba ... but brave and powerful voices are speaking the unspeakable, telling the whole painful truth. And what peace or freedom can there be without truth?

In seeking understanding between Palestinians and Israelis, there are some Israelis, like Norma Musih, featured in this article, and Eitan Bronstein, founder of Zochrot ("remembering" in Hebrew), who have made it their mission to present the often-lost/denied part of Israel's formation, in particular "the expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948", known as the Nakba, also described here:

In 1948 more than 60 percent of the total Palestinian population was expelled.
More than 530 Palestinian villages were depopulated and completely destroyed. To date, Israel has prevented the return of approximately six million Palestinian refugees, who have either been expelled or displaced. Approximately 250,000 internally displaced Palestinian second-class citizens of Israel are prevented from returning to their homes and villages.

Norma Musih, a young teacher from Jaffa and Assistant Director and one of the founders of Zochrot, helped New Yorkers commemorate "Nakba Day" last May 15, 2007, during which she opened a dialogue about the meaning of the Nakba, reconciliation, justice, and the work of Zochrot.

In spite of death threats and other attacks and resistence, she and other members of the group are devoted to "commemorating, understanding and teaching about a subject that in Israel is plainly subversive: the Palestinian Nakba."

“At first, the Nakba was something I couldn’t understand,” Musih said. “But I felt there was something there I must face. I had to explore what that was. Now I see that the Nakba belongs to us as well as to the Palestinians. It is part of our healing process.”
In one of her exercises with children, she hands each child a card on which are the names of Palestinian villages that were destroyed, or from which Arabs were driven out. The children are to put their cards in their proper places on the map.
“One Israeli girl put back on the map the village her father had destroyed,” Musih recalled.

Here one can read about Eitan Bronstein, an Argentinian-born Israeli educator and activist, who, as Director of Zokhrot, says,

"When it comes to the Nakba and what was there before Israel was created, it's a big hole, a black hole and people don't know how to deal with it," he said. "It's perhaps the most important period of our life in this region and it's not really known."

As stated on their website:

"The Zionist collective memory exists in both our cultural and physical landscape, yet the heavy price paid by the Palestinians -- in lives, in the destruction of hundreds of villages, and in the continuing plight of the Palestinian refugees -- receives little public recognition. Zochrot works to make the history of the Nakba accessible to the Israeli public so as to engage Jews and Palestinians in an open recounting of our painful common history.

"We hope that by bringing the Nakba into Hebrew, the language spoken by the Jewish majority in Israel, we can make a qualitative change in the political discourse of this region. Acknowledging the past is the first step in taking responsibility for its consequences. This must include equal rights for all the peoples of this land, including the right of Palestinians to return to their homes."

The group's compassionate and honest willingness to view the situation from the Palestinian side is crucial to achieving a lasting peace, realistically.

For Bronstein it is critical for Israelis to understand and acknowledge what happened to the Palestinians in 1948.

"1948 was the year that constructed relations between Jews and Arabs, that made it okay for Israelis to shoot Arabs in 2000," he said referring to the 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel who were shot and killed by Israeli police during a protest against Israeli practices in the Occupied Territories. "You can't understand what happened in 2000 without understanding the Nakba. Anyone who understands what happened in 1948 cannot continue to be blind."

The keyword is reconciliation, far preferable to war, even though more difficult to get people to do, especially in light of such painful historical events as Plan Dalet, the strategy Israel acted upon in which Palestinians were forcibly removed and sometimes massacred in order to form Israel as a Jewish homeland. Two-thirds of Palestinians became refugees, numbering about 700,000 or more, and "more than 100 civilians (were) killed in the village of Deir Yassin on April 9 and 200 in Tantura between May 22nd and 23rd, (1948)."

To deny this reality, and continue to attempt to bulldoze and kill their way to "victory", will surely not bring true success to Israel. Unfortunately, the easy route is the right-wing militant route, the route people always seem to fall back on, the reason people - and I'm referring to all people, since the dawn of time - always seem to end up fighting endless wars, destroying their own resources, constantly creating enemies.

Now it seems the Israelis in power want to make Gaza a killing field, label all Palestinians as "terrorists", bulldoze whole neighborhoods to make way for Jews, ethnically cleanse their new "homeland" and erase the memory of how it got there. Zokhrot keeps alive the notion that Jews are not all about decimating non-Jews, and Israel's future does not need to rely on creating an island of racially pure Judaic prosperity in a sea of Arab enmity and poverty, or forced subservience and its consequence, seething resentment.

And not all the shared Palestinian-Israeli memories are bad. As Ali Abunimah of The Christian Science Monitor, 14 May 2007, says,

My mother remembers her early childhood and the Jewish neighbors who rented the apartment her father owned. She recalls helping them on the Sabbath and playing with their daughter after school. A life such as this is no more than a distant memory for most Palestinian refugees, who, with their descendants, now number
more than 5 million.

Israel could benefit from generating neighborliness instead of enmity. In fact, they would be well-advised to erect a Nakba memorial near the Holocaust memorial. Start the healing, start being neighbors. I noticed even normally hostile Palestinian sites responding very positively to the work of Zokhrot, and the concept of being good neighbors. Want them to be less like terrorists? Try being more of a mensch.

Hamas-Fatah Split and Violence a US-Israeli Plot - Gazan Children Pay Price

The much-maligned Hamas-Fatah split is actually thanks to the "successful" engineering of US and Israeli conspirators, in their covert efforts to get rid of Hamas, Palestine's democratically-elected government. They pushed Abbas to sell out his own people and fight Hamas, a war which Hamas essentially won, throwing off all plans. Now the US-Israel conspirators are enacting Plan B: starve 'em down. And children and infants in Gaza, of course, as usual, are paying the price.

It makes one ask the question seriously: What exactly does Israel want? Do they want a cessation of violence? Or an annexation of Gaza in toto? Why else would they choose a course which apparently leads to the annihilation of an entire population, or at least its complete suppression, occupation, oppression, dehumanization, near-extermination?

If one Israeli dies, does this mean you kill civilians en masse on the other side? This reminds me of Lebanon, where the kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers - I repeat, soldiers - was sufficient justification to decimate the civilian population of Lebanon, including significant portions of their infrastructure. This is Olmert's mentality, and the mentality of the militant wing of the Israeli government that currently holds the strings, or shall I say, holds the trigger. And that trigger-finger is mighty active, loose, and jumpy. If this is a temper tantrum, why doesn't anyone care about the babies and children caught in the crossfire?

While I attempt to maintain some semblance of calm here, if not the impossible thing of being "objective" or "dispassionate" - to the right-wing, it seems "objectivity" means including their lies as a part of any report, regardless to how outrageous - at least one fact-laden yet empathetic blogger presents the picture in a clear and truly fair way. We need to hear about the Palestinian side of the equation, the side that always gets bulldozed by the media, by Superpower policy, by the pro-Israeli bipolar reporting bloc.

This from Heathlander, that inveterate source of calm, but fair, analysis - please check the original Heathlander post on the link below for invaluable graphics, too:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Engineering a coup in Gaza
04Mar08
The latest escalation of violence in Gaza, sparked by the assassination of five Hamas militants, saw some of the fiercest fighting in the Occupied Territories for years. Between 27 February and 3 March, at least 106 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more were wounded. According to B’Tselem, over half of those killed (including 25 children) were civilians who did not take part in the hostilities.

During the same period, one Israeli civilian and two Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinians.
Israel’s atrocities were so extreme that even the UN Secretary-General, the EU and this clown felt compelled to condemn them as “excessive” and illegal. The British government produced a pathetic statement effectively backing the violence of the Israeli occupation while condemning the “terrorist acts” of the resistance. Israel’s operation (”Warm Winter”) did nothing to stop the Qassams, which are themselves primarily a response to Israeli attacks. This is no surprise: Israel carried out a similar offensive in late 2006, killing hundreds of Palestinians, most of whom were civilians, which failed to halt the rocket fire. Israel now faces a dilemma, reflected succinctly by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who recently told a parliamentary committee that,
“[w]hat happened in recent days was not a one-time event … The objective is reducing the rocket fire and weakening Hamas.”
The problem is that these two objectives - halting the rocket attacks on the one hand and weakening Hamas on the other - are mutually incompatible. In the short-term, the only way to end the rocket attacks short of genocide is to accept Hamas’ overtures and negotiate a ceasefire. This option is supported by a majority of the Israeli public, but is rejected by the U.S. and Israeli governments because it undermines their second objective: “weakening Hamas.”

Indeed, as recently leaked confidential documents show, Israel and the U.S. were bent on toppling Hamas from the moment it entered office in early 2006. In an important article for Vanity Fair, from which I’ll be quoting extensively (apologies for that!), David Rose shows how the U.S. and Israel systematically worked to undermine and destroy the elected Hamas government throughout 2006 and 2007. He further demonstrates that, to quote the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Hamas takeover in Gaza was “a direct result of the policies advocated by Fatah’s ‘old guard’ … [and] US officials in charge of Palestine policy: the neo-conservative Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams, and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch.”
After Hamas’ electoral victory, the U.S. response was unequivocal. According to a senior State Department official quoted by Rose,
“[t]he administration spoke with one voice: ‘We have to squeeze these guys.’ With Hamas’s election victory, the freedom agenda was dead.”
And so the U.S. and Israel resolved to topple the elected Palestinian government. The plan was two-fold. Firstly, “possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions … in modern times” was imposed on the Palestinians to paralyse the government and destroy the economy. In parallel, Israel drastically extended its control over the West Bank, kidnapped 64 Hamas legislators and launched a brutal military assault which extensively destroyed government and civilian infrastructure and killed over 600 people, mostly civilians. The sanctions were designed to undermine public support for Hamas and forment internal Palestinian violence.
As Ha’aretz reported in October 2006,
‘Israeli sources say that the United States is interested in the fall of the Hamas government currently in power in the Palestinian Authority.
During the Quartet meeting in London, the Americans expressed their satisfaction with the results of the boycott of Hamas’ government, which has undermined its standing among the Palestinians.
However, the U.S. administration is also certain that the sanctions against Hamas will inevitably result in a violent confrontation between Hamas and Fatah, and in such a scenario, they would prefer to strengthen the “good guys” headed by Abbas.’
Support for the “good guys” involved arming, financing and training an elite Fatah militia with the goal of destroying Hamas. This force would be under the control of Muhammad Dahlan, a Fatah warlord described by President Bush in 2003 as “our guy”. According to three U.S. officials cited by Rose, this assessment was shared by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Assistant Secretary David Welch, among others:
“[Welch] cared about results, and [he supported] whatever son of a bitch you had to support. Dahlan was the son of a bitch we happened to know best. He was a can-do kind of person. Dahlan was our guy.”
Lieutenant General Keith Dayton was put in charge of the operation. In November 2006 Dayton met with Dahlan to discuss the new “security plan”. According to the notes of the meeting made by an official, Dayton said:
“We need to reform the Palestinian security apparatus … But we also need to build up your forces in order to take on Hamas.”
Rose comments:
“The idea was to simplify the confusing web of Palestinian security forces and have Dahlan assume responsibility for all of them in the newly created role of Palestinian national-security adviser. The Americans would help supply weapons and training.”
Dayton promised Dahlan an immediate package worth $86.4 million, but failed to win approval from a Congress nervous about the possibility that military aid may end up being used against Israel. To get round this, a reduced $59 million package of “non-lethal” aid was approved by Congress in April 2007, while other, covert means were arranged provide the weapons and training. According to a State Department official cited by Rose,
“Those in charge of implementing the policy were saying, ‘Do whatever it takes. We have to be in a position for Fatah to defeat Hamas militarily, and only Muhammad Dahlan has the guile and the muscle to do this.’ The expectation was that this was where it would end up - with a military showdown.”
Throughout the second half of 2006, the violence between Hamas and Fatah increased, as predicted by U.S. planners. According to outgoing UN Middle East envoy Alvaro de Soto, a U.S. official said of this conflict: “I like this violence … It means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas.” Dahlan boasts that he waged “very clever warfare” against the government for months. Indeed, he announced his intentions regarding Hamas quite clearly as early as June 2006:
“Hamas is now the weakest Palestinian faction. They are whining and complaining. Well, they will have to suffer yet more until they are damned to the seventh ancestor. I will haunt them from now till the end of their term in four years. And I swear, whoever within Fatah says ‘we should join the government,” I will humiliate them.”
This “clever warfare” involved kidnappings and torture, among other atrocities that were reciprocated by Hamas. Frustratingly for U.S. officials, despite the sanctions, the Israeli bombing and the increasingly internal conflict, the Hamas government remained steadfast. In late 2006, an impatient Condoleeza Rice met with Abbas and stated, according to an official who witnessed the meeting:
“So we’re agreed? You’ll dissolve the government within two weeks?”
Abbas responded:
“Maybe not two weeks. Give me a month. Let’s wait until after the Eid.”
Rose continues:
‘Rice got into her armored S.U.V., where, the official claims, she told an American colleague, “That damned … [meeting] has cost us another two weeks of Hamas government.’
After weeks passed without any action from Abbas, Jake Walles, the consul general in Jerusalem, was sent to (in Rose’s words) ‘deliver a barely varnished ultimatum to the Palestinian president.’ According to a copy of the “talking points” memo prepared for him by the State Department (and authenticated by U.S. and Palestinian officials), Walles told Abbas:
“We need to understand your plans regarding a new [Palestinian Authority] government,” Walles’s script said. “You told Secretary Rice you would be prepared to move ahead within two to four weeks of your meeting. We believe that the time has come for you to move forward quickly and decisively…
Hamas should be given a clear choice, with a clear deadline: … they either accept a new government that meets the Quartet principles, or they reject it The consequences of Hamas’ decision should also be clear: If Hamas does not agree within the prescribed time, you should make clear your intention to declare a state of emergency and form an emergency government explicitly committed to that platform…
If you act along these lines, we will support you both materially and politically…We will be there to support you.”
In other words, the U.S. was pushing Abbas to overthrow the Hamas government. Recognising the potential for violence, it promised to support Fatah “materially and politically” in the event of a conflict.
However, as the violence continued to deteriorate, Abbas departed from the American script and agreed to a national unity government in February 2007 (the ‘Mecca Agreement’). This agreement, which had real potential to end the inter-Palestinian violence, was supported by an overwhelming majority of the Palestinian population. It received a rather different welcome from the U.S. According to a State Department official quoted by Rose, “Condi was apoplectic.”
The International Crisis Group reported in August 2007 that:
“[I]t would be disingenuous in the extreme to minimise the role of outside players [in the collapse of the national unity government], the U.S. and the European Union in particular.
By refusing to deal with the national unity government and only selectively engaging some of its non-Hamas members, by maintaining economic sanctions and providing security assistance to one of the parties in order to outmanoeuvre the other, they contributed mightily to the outcome they now publicly lament.
The obvious conclusion, though not drawn explicitly by the ICG, is that the U.S. (supported by the EU) wanted the national unity government to fail, so that it could continue with its plans to overthrow Hamas. The documents revealed by David Rose show that, in his words, the U.S. responded to the Mecca Agreement by ‘redoubling the pressure on its Palestinian allies’ to confront Hamas.
This pressure took the form of “Plan B”, which aimed to “enable [Abbas] and his supporters to … produce a [Palestinian Authority] government through democratic means that accepts Quartet principles” by the end of 2007 (quoting a State Department memo). It called for Abbas to “collapse the government” if Hamas continued to reject the (absurd) Quartet “principles” and demanded that Fatah maintain control of the security forces, in violation of the Palestinian constitution, and “avoid Hamas integration with these services, while eliminating the Executive Force or mitigating the challenges posed by its continued existence.” The memo continued:
“Dahlan oversees effort in coordination with General Dayton and Arab [nations] to train and equip 15,000-man force under President Abbas’s control to establish internal law and order, stop terrorism and deter extralegal forces.”
The objective, again, was clear: to give Abbas “the capability to take the required strategic political decisions … such as dismissing the cabinet, establishing an emergency cabinet.” That is, to enable Abbas to overthrow the Hamas government.

(Thinkbridge note: add "against Abbas' will and the will of the Palestinian people". So much for "democracy".)
The plan went through several draft stages, detailing U.S. proposals to expand Fatah forces and provide them with “highly specialized training abroad”, in total amounting to $1.27 billion in “lethal and non-lethal” military aid over five years. The final draft confirmed that Abbas had “approved” the plan, and presented it as if it were a Palestinian idea as opposed to an American one.
On 30 April, an earlier draft of the plan was leaked to a Jordanian newspaper. In mid-May a regiment of 500 newly-trained Fatah militiamen entered the Gaza Strip from Egypt, while Dahlan was appointed national-security advisor, as stipulated by Dayton back in November 2006. On 7 June, Ha’aretz reported that Abbas and Dayton had asked Israel to permit the transport of the biggest arms shipment to Fatah forces to date, including ‘dozens of armored cars, hundreds of armor-piercing rockets, thousands of hand grenades, and millions of rounds of ammunition.’ All these events led Hamas to conclude, quite correctly, that Fatah was preparing to launch a U.S.-backed coup against it.
As Rose writes, ‘[a] few days later, just before the next batch of Fatah recruits was due to leave for training in Egypt, the [Hamas] coup began in earnest.’
Thus David Wurmser, a staunch neo-conservative who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007 and is hardly a pro-Palestinian radical, accused the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He continued,
“It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen”.

Of course, the plan went awry when Hamas took the initiative and soundly defeated Fatah forces in June 2007, taking control of Gaza in the process. Since then the U.S. and Israel have continued their efforts to depose Hamas, specifically by treating the 1.4 million residents of Gaza like vermin, progressively reducing their supply of food, water, electricity and fuel until they learn to follow orders. Aid agencies reported yesterday that Gaza’s medical system is at breaking point. “Children constitute more than half the population of Gaza and are bearing the brunt of the crisis”, said UNICEF in a statement.
The Israeli government appears to be preparing a large-scale invasion in the near future, possibly with a view to re-establishing a permanent military presence in the Strip. Naturally, this will be justified by the claim that “we have no other option“.
In fact, since January 2006 there have been numerous opportunities to make diplomatic progress with Hamas. The organisation entered office in the middle of an 18-month long unilateral ceasefire on a platform that was far closer to the standard two-state settlement (which is explicitly rejected by both Israel and the U.S.) than it was to the movement’s 1988 Charter. It repeatedly called for a power-sharing arrangement with Fatah, as it continues to do, and supported the Prisoner’s Document, which agreed to concentrate resistance in the West Bank and Gaza and called for “an independent Palestinian state with full sovereignty on all land occupied in 1967.” It agreed to abide by any settlement reached by Abbas with Israel provided it be submitted to a Palestinian referendum, and in February 2007 agreed to a government of national unity on a platform that “respected” previous Palestinian agreements signed with Israel. Without exception, Israel and the U.S. reacted to these significant opportunities with violent rejectionism, flatly refusing to engage even superficially in a political process.

This approach continues today - despite almost universal recognition that some basic level of cooperation between Hamas and Fatah is a necessary pre-requisite for any serious attempt at peace, Israel and the U.S. have explicitly conditioned aid and diplomatic engagement with Abbas on his refusal to negotiate with Hamas. This in itself reveals a lot about the sincerity of Israel’s professed intentions.
Those who systematically undermine all alternatives to violence make violence inevitable. As long as Israel and the U.S. view a Palestinian ‘peace offensive’ as something to be feared rather than welcomed, the conflict will continue, and you’ll know just who to blame.
Further reading:
‘Elliot Abrams’ uncivil war‘, Conflicts Forum
‘Victory for Hamas in Gaza‘, The Heathlander
‘The Stage Is Being Set For A U.S.-backed Coup In Gaza‘, The Heathlander