We're All Gazans Now

by Stephen Lendman

The whole world's watching. Growing millions know. Israel’s a rogue terror state. It's amoral, brutish, and ruthless. Arabs are murdered for not being Jews.

Gazans suffer most of all. Israel's been terror-bombing them daily. Civilians are maliciously targeted.

Growing numbers are killed. Official totals way understate the toll. Many others are injured. Children are traumatized. Parents are frantic. How much more of this can people take?

Gazans dig through rubble for survivors. Others bury their dead. Media scoundrels assault truth. They run cover for Israel's worst crimes. Imagine supporting mass murder. Doing so makes them complicit.

A scurrilous New York Times editorial headlined "Hamas's Illegitimacy," saying:

"Hamas, which took control of Gaza in 2007 and is backed by Iran, is so consumed with hatred for Israel that it has repeatedly resorted to violence, no matter the cost to its own people."

Fact check

Vicious lies like this demand condemnation. Setting the record straight is vital. Hamas is Palestine's legitimate government.

In January 2006, Palestinians elected their officials overwhelmingly. Israel and Washington imposed a West Bank coup d'etat regime. It's illegitimate. It's also pro-Israeli.

Conflict followed. Hamas was wrongly blamed. Abbas serves illegitimately as president. Israel rigged his election. His term expired in January 2009.

He won't step down or hold new elections. He's a longtime Israeli collaborator. He sold out at Oslo. He spurns his own people. He replicates Quisling harshness. He's an embarrassment to legitimate governance.

Hamas supports all Palestinians. It spurns violence. It responds defensively when attacked. It's their right and obligation under international law. All governments bear full responsibility to protect their people.

So-called Gaza "militants" are freedom fighters. They heroically resist Israeli terror. Their souls aren't for sale.

Times editors suppress truth and full disclosure. They support wealth, power and privilege. They defend wrong over right. They cheerlead imperial war.

They shame themselves in the process. They also betray their readers. Other media scoundrels do the same thing.

Israeli crimes of war and against humanity are called self-defense.

Legitimate self-defense is called terrorism.

Israel planned Operation Pillar of Cloud months ago. All major military campaigns require detailed planning. Multiple provocations initiated conflict.

Israel deplores peace and stability. It lives by the sword. It's a modern-day Sparta. It threatens the region and humanity. It's leaders are war criminals.

They bear full responsibility for ongoing violence. All Gazans are victims. They're not terrorists. Don't expect Times editors to explain.

Zionist ideology is root cause for decades of conflict and violence. Palestine's Nakba never ended. State terror is official Israeli policy.

Daily Palestinian life includes persecution, home demolitions, dispossessions, land theft, targeted assassinations, mass arrests, incarceration, torture, denial of virtually all rights, living in fear for what's next, and suffering more when Israel wages war.

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the longest unresolved one of our time. Nothing approaches it. It festers because of US/EU complicity. Western nations support Israel's worst crimes. Palestinians struggle to survive against long odds.

Zionist ideology bears full responsibility. It's corrosive, destructive, racist, extremist, undemocratic and hateful.

It claims Jewish supremacy, specialness and uniqueness as God's "chosen people."

It espouses violence. It deplores peaceful coexistence. It chooses confrontation over diplomacy. It believes in strength through militarism, intimidation, and naked aggression.

It's repugnant, indefensible, destructive and malignant. It harms Jews and non-Jews alike. It's the root cause of anti-Semitism. It's a monster. It's consuming its host and humanity.

Besieged Gazans are suffocated and murdered. Historian Ilan Pappe accused Israel of slow-motion genocide. So did Law Professor Francis Boyle, saying:

"What we're seeing in Gaza now, is pretty much slow-motion genocide against the (1.7) million Palestinians who live in Gaza."

"If you read the 1948 Genocide Convention, it clearly says that one instance of genocide is the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a people in whole or in part."

"And that's exactly what has been done to Gaza, since the imposition of the blockade by Israel; then the massacre of 1,400 Palestinians, two-thirds of whom were civilians, in Operation Cast Lead."

"And that also raises the element in the Genocide Convention."

In 1923, revisionist Zionist leader Ze've Jabotinsky said Jews had no choice. Arabs must make way for them. Tolerating and/or partnering with them is out of the question.

Eretz Israel belongs solely to Jews. Dispossess and disperse Palestinians. Remove them entirely. Reinvent them as nomadic savages.

Erect "an iron wall of (superior) Jewish military force." Use it to dictate future events. Discourage Arab hope of prevailing.

Other likeminded Zionists advocated ethnic cleansing or extermination. Not one Arab village should remain. Remove their people by terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation,  dispossession, and mass murder.

Former IDF Chief of Staff Raphael Eitan (1978 - 1983) said:

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel."

"Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours."

In 1937, future Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion said:

"We must expel the Arabs and take their place and if we have to use force, to guarantee our own right to settle in those places - then we have force at our disposal."

Zionist founder Theodore Herzl said Palestine is "our unforgettable historic homeland." He called for establishing it by dispossessing indigenous Palestinians and replacing them with Jews.

In his book "Overcoming Zionism," Joel Kovel wrote:

Zionism seeks "the restoration of tribalism in the guise of a modern, highly militarized and aggressive state."

"(It) cut Jews off from (their) history and led to a fateful identity of interests with antisemitism (becoming) the only thing that united them."

"(It) fell into the ways of imperialist expansion and militarism, and showed signs of the fascist malignancy."

If you accept "the idea of a Jewish state," you mix its twin notions of "particularism (and) exceptionalism."

They're "the actual bane of Judaism." They give "racism an objective, enduring, institutionalized and obdurate character."

Zionism turned Israel "into a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses."

Israel was born in blood. Mass extermination and ethnic cleansing established the Jewish state. At issue always was replacing Palestinians with Jews.

Hard-line militancy used violence to displace Arabs, gain power, keep it, and rule by strength, confrontation, intimidation, and violence.

Longstanding policies continue. State terror, naked aggression, and institutionalized violence are called self-defense. Civilians are legitimate targets. Freedom fighters are called terrorists. Rule of law principles don't apply. Democratic values are mocked.

Israel claims the right to reign terror with impunity. It gets away with murder because world leaders condone and support it. Weapons and other aid are provided. So is diplomatic cover.

Peace process hypocrisy was stillborn from inception. Judaization through land confiscation, displacement, and settlements reflect official policy.

Arabs must be displaced and forcibly driven from all parts of Judea and Sumaria Israel wants. Jerusalem is claimed as Israel's exclusive capital.

Palestinians are seen as existential threats. Israeli Arabs are called fifth-column ones. Conflict is a way of life. Institutionalized violence, racism, and repression define official policies.

Final solution plans call for dispossession and slow-motion genocide. Judaization and de-Arabization are policies. Moshe Dayan once said treat them like "dogs" so they'll leave.

Ben-Gurion favored "terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation," and violence. Netanyahu prefers all that and more. A previous article called him more mad dog than leader. His contempt for non-Jews might make some despots blush.

He bears full responsibility for daily slaughter in Gaza. It shows no signs of ending. How much death and destruction does he crave before calling off his dogs?

How much Palestinian suffering is enough? How many dead children and infants will satisfy him? When will he say enough's enough?

When will world leaders have backbone enough to confront him? When will Palestinian rights be recognized? When will treating them like human beings become policy? Maybe next time. Not now.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled "How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War"

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

this attempt to promote ONLY ONE version of what exists in war and danger zones is called "PROPAGANDA" for the side chosen.

NO, we are not the all the same or in agreement. No we are not idenityfing as victim repeatedly, even to be able to

do violence with victimhood as the easy excuse.

This author uses Indymedia as his own blog spot - unfortunately too often taking up slanted and biased positions trying to INFLUENCE others by repetition and toooooo many posts here.

Do give others a chance too instead of being so long-winded and one-way-winded stephen, who ever you "think" you are.

That Indy readers tend to be the more dissident and rebellious types [ and will take Any Other position than what is called main streamed, or anything other than the one their own taxes and government is taking, often for spite or to feel less helpless] .

All the very anti-USA versions in most positions taken here apparently] does not give credence to being Independent at all, but rather more OPPOSITIONAL - automatic and often futiley. A reflex that says, anything but the country I am in [and benefiting from meanwhile] is 'right'. hmmmm...

No Gaza is Not a victim of just being landed there. History and longer than this recent 50 yrs...and sees how many name peoples landed or moved in and out of those areas with other names and rulers and rebellions. Palestine is not an all inclusive or land-bordered word or definition.

It grows, subsides, moves and becomes others - Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey as populations escape, move and get re-identified.

No Israel is not just 'the' cruel agressor for having won some spaces adjacent to it's 1948 borders. Even when others insist that they must "give up war-won-lands" and then provide goodies too to all their new neighbors.

[Other states do NOT hand over lands they take in any wars won, ever, unless later coerced by other forced shifts of borders, so why is Israel always asked to do so ? Read history. Who returns to prior borders crossed after wars and conquests? ]

No fairness is no-where to be heard, seen, found - - not in mid east nor in our USA landed plutocractic governments.

No more long diatribes that do not give some semblence of recognizing more than merely 1 limited version of reality. Please. Provide varied points of reality, not just sell or advertise for your chosen one.

what does this mean?

"this attempt to promote ONLY ONE version of what exists in war and danger zones is called "PROPAGANDA" for the side chosen. "

Actually the truth is not a piece of silly putty to be molded according to one's own purpose. Truth *is* the only version.

No matter the nerves that become salted with it.

Something the israeli lobby is quite aware of by now.

Like calling a killing field a 'war zone'.

too much...

"No Gaza is Not a victim of just being landed there. History and longer than this recent 50 yrs...and sees how many name peoples landed or moved in and out of those areas with other names and rulers and rebellions. Palestine is not an all inclusive or land-bordered word or definition"

what an incoherent and vague justification for ethnic cleansing and Genocide [ as defined in the GC, so don't make me post it again when the enemy goes into denial mode ] or go into a wank about the Palestinians' ability to increase their population in spite ( or perhaps because of ) of the distress and terror of their last 60 years of occupation.

"No more long diatribes that do not give some semblence of recognizing more than merely 1 limited version of reality."



This is what makes you want to puke... telling the author to stop voiceing its heart felt and in my parallel research, accurate descriptions and analysis, beyond the ComCorp media's 'programed' [ see Operation MOCKINGBIRD ] indoctrination process.

These are code words for anything other than israel's reality inversions where the native population are now immigrants through border manipulations and foreign political meddling, the terrorist gangster israeli state is the victim and all these strangled abused and assaulted Palestinians are "terrorists".

There is more for the grist mill but that will due for now.