Voice of Palestine , 29/03/24
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Asa WinstanleyThe Electronic Intifada7 October 2024
One year ago today Palestinian fighters led by Hamas launched an unprecedented military offensive out of the Gaza Strip.
The immediate goal was to inflict a shattering blow against Israel’s army bases and militarized settlements which have besieged Gaza’s inhabitants for decades – all of which are built on land that Palestinian families were expelled from in 1948.
The bigger goal was to shatter a status quo in which Israel, the United States and their accomplices believed they had effectively sidelined the Palestinian cause, and to bring that struggle for liberation back to the forefront of world attention.
“Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” as Hamas called it, was, by any objective military measure, a stunning success.
It was said at Israel’s military headquarters that day that “the Gaza Division was overpowered,” a high-level source present later recalled to Israeli journalists. “These words still give me the chills.”
Covered from the air by armed drones and a barrage of rockets – which opened the offensive at 6:26 am exactly – Palestinian fighters launched a lightening raid over the Gaza boundary line.
The army bases were conquered for hours. Some of the settlements still had an armed Palestinian presence two days later.
The military communications infrastructure was instantly smashed. Simultaneous attacks took place by land, air and sea.
Palestinian drones took out tanks, guard posts and watchtowers.
The Israelis have long relied on a public diplomacy strategy to dominate the arena of narrative control and information manipulation.
As Israel conducts its latest round of aggression against the Palestinians, the prevailing narrative often peddled in mainstream western media outlets continues to be implicitly framed to favour the Israeli narrative.
Under the guise of neutrality, media discourse has been to describe the conflict flaring up in occupied East Jerusalem as “clashes” between “both sides”. Israel’s ruthless bombardment of Gaza leading to the deaths of hundreds of civilians is rationalised as an act of “self defence” in response to Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket attacks and their use of “human shields”.
The Israeli state is deeply aware that perception shapes reality. While it commits alleged war crimes with impunity, it can only do so if there is a powerful enough propaganda machine it can deploy to counter inevitable public condemnation and international solidarity with Palestinians.
Enter ‘hasbara’ – Israel’s primary messaging tool.
Hasbara – Hebrew for explanation – is a public diplomacy technique which links information warfare with the strategic objectives of the Israeli state. Public diplomacy is to be strategically conceived as a foreign policy priority, whereby a positive image of Israel is cultivated on the world stage, especially considering the image challenges Israel has continuously faced since its creation in 1948.
While rooted in earlier concepts of agitprop and censorship, hasbara does not look to jam the supply of contradictory information to audiences. Instead, it willingly accepts an open marketplace of opinion. What it seeks to do in this context is to promote selective listening by limiting the receptivity of audiences to information, rather than constricting its flow.
To accomplish its mission, hasbara targets diplomats, politicians and the public through mass media. It is also accomplished through numerous institutes and government agencies, as well as in research centres, universities, NGOs and lobbying firms.
Israel even offers hasbara fellowships, scholarships and grants to foster pro-Israeli advocacy, while a number of individuals from journalists to bloggers work to spin a positive image of the country.
Hasbara 2.0
Following the 2006 Lebanon war and ‘Operation Cast Lead’ two years later, both of which seriously damaged Israeli’s international reputation, there was a gradual shift between 2008 to 2012, to what the scholar Miriyam Aouragh called “Hasbara 2.0”: an assertive digital diplomacy that accounted for web 2.0 technologies like social media and YouTube.
Soon, hasbara-styled initiatives from the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) were being synchronised into a new online branch, with a permanent team operating in liaison with the Ministry of Strategic Affairs in 2008.
In 2012, Israel would announce its war against Gaza on Twitter. During ‘Operation Pillar of Defense’, as Israeli-funneled talking points saturated the US and European media landscape, hasbara made heavy use of the more distilled communication channels of social media. It further exploited browser functions, search engine algorithms, and other automated mechanisms that controlled what content were presented to viewers.
In the process, Israel designed a narrative of itself as the innocent victim of Palestinian terrorism, one that was accorded with the sovereign right of defense against existential assault. This, despite the fact of having initiated the escalation, possessing advanced aerial power against an adversary without one, and unloading more than one thousand times as many tons of munitions on Gazans.
In 2014, Israel’s war in Gaza under ‘Operation Protective Edge’ prompted a much greater pushback to its media narrative, clearly underestimating the extent of the global outrage to their actions in Gaza.
As images of destruction and dismembered bodies of innocent civilians flooded social media, hasbara proponents were forced to re-double their efforts in well-orchestrated PR campaigns that attempted to reframe war crimes with talking points to whitewash any disproportionate use of force – which even ended up being ineffective back in Israel.
Desperate measures
In the event this posturing fails, there are a few well-worn strategies in their arsenal that hasbara engineers have resorted to.
One has been to force the public to make a choice between Israel and Hamas. Today, we continually see this dichotomy played out on international broadcast segments; in doing so, Israel is framed as a rational and innocent actor provoked by an irrational terrorist threat, making any criticism of Israel’s actions de facto apologia for terrorism.
While a number of western governments have designated Hamas a terror organisation including the US and the European Union, Norway and Switzerland, they still maintain diplomatic ties with the group. Australia, New Zealand and the UK only consider its military wing a terrorist organisation. A number of other states outside of the West do not label it a terrorist organisation, and the UN in 2018 rejected a US resolution to condemn it as a terror organisation.
Probably the most common tactic has been to link any criticism of Israeli policies, whether its human rights violations or illegal colonisation of Palestinian land, to anti-Semitism.
One of the strategic threats in recent years has been the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Israeli officials have attempted to smear those who support BDS as anti-Semitic and claim it is linked to terrorism, while anti-BDS laws have been passed in the US.
Online, it has translated into pushing prominent social media companies to adoptthe International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of anti-Semitism, which widens potential accusation of anti-Semitism to criticism of Israel.
The weaponisation of social justice issues and appropriation of ‘woke’ language is another frequently adopted strategy. For example the narrative of how Israel is the “only democracy” in the Middle East is repeated ad infinitum; indicating its the lone country which respects human rights and the rule of law in an otherwise regressive and hostile region.
“Pinkwashing” – cynically exploiting LGBTQ+ rights to amplify a progressive veneer and conceal Israeli crimes – has been added to the hasbara repertoire, along with the support for animal rights to “veganwash” occupation.
Ultimately, this discourse is meant to operate in juxtaposition against the “backward” Palestinian – to further dehumanise them among western audiences and soften criticism of Israel.
The consultant and expert in international law, lawyer Muhammad Al-Subaihi, revealed the real motive behind Britain’s failure to recognize the Palestinian state, despite the British House of Commons’ decision to recognize the Palestinian state, and Britain also abstained from voting in the United Nations General Assembly to recognize the Palestinian state.
Al-Subaihi said that the mandate issued by the League of Nations in 1922 granted Britain guardianship over Palestine in all administrative, political, and military affairs, and there was a civil administration under the supervision of the British High Commissioner, including the Palestinian Monetary Authority, which is like a central bank, and it issued the first pound. A Palestinian, with the approval of the Mandatory Authority, to have an equal cover of gold.
He added that the balance on May 15, 1948 was approximately 138 million pounds, and Britain, before ending the mandate, froze all the funds of the Palestine Monetary Council under a law called (the British Financial Defense Act), which is worth a thousand tons of gold and sent it to London, and experts estimate the value of this money. Currently, it is in the range of 70-80 billion dollars, while its cumulative value over the 72 years of its seizure exceeds 6 trillion dollars.
Al-Subaihi stated that in 1950, the Jordanian government returned to Britain the Palestinian pounds it had and obtained its value in gold, and so did the Israeli occupation.
He pointed out that Israel’s recovery of its Palestinian pounds in gold, as well as Jordan’s, has left the deposits of the Palestinian Monetary Authority with Britain until now, awaiting the existence of a legal successor to the government of Palestine. If Britain recognizes the Palestinian state, the Palestinian Authority, or the body that will be the legitimate representative of the Palestinian state, will become the legal successor to the government of Palestine and the Palestinian Authority.
The Palestinian currency before 1948, and Britain must return to it the Palestinian deposits with interest accumulated over the past 72 years, or at a minimum their value in gold, which amounts to 80 billion dollars at today’s price, as the value of the Palestinian pound today is about 800 dollars, otherwise it will face cases before the British and international courts.
He stressed that returning Palestinian funds to the representative of the Palestinian state may mean the bankruptcy of the British treasury, or at a minimum, a financial catastrophe whose effects will last for many years.
In an interview with Mondoweiss, General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative Dr. Mustafa Barghouti reflects on the importance of Palestinian national unity, the challenges facing the Palestinian struggle, and the right to resist.
BY MONDOWEISS EDITORS OCTOBER 7, 2024 0
GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE PALESTINIAN NATIONAL INITIATIVE, MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI, MEETS WITH MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL AND ISLAMIC FORCES IN GAZA CITY ON MARCH 20, 2022. (PHOTO: YOUSSEF ABU WATFA/APA IMAGES)
Dr. Mustafa Barghouti is a Palestinian physician and politician, serving as the General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, which he founded in 2002. Barghouti is also known for founding the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in 1979, which provides medical services to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. He has featured prominently in both English-language and Arabic-language media over the past year since October 7, emerging as a prominent advocate for Palestinian national unity and the holding of immediate democratic elections as an urgent requirement for confronting the threat of genocide and ethnic cleansing faced by Palestinians. He has strongly advocated over the past year for the rights of Palestinians to resist occupation and apartheid, in Gaza and beyond. Mondoweissspoke to Dr. Barghouti on October 2, 2024, to reflect on the ongoing genocide that started a year ago and what it has meant for the Palestinian struggle.
Mondoweiss: It has been an entire year since the Israeli genocide in Gaza began, and it has now expanded into a regional war involving Hezbollah and, potentially, Iran. When Hamas launched its surprise attack a year ago, what went through your mind? Did you expect that the Israeli response would be a genocide like the one you have witnessed?
Mustafa Barghouti: Nobody expected that the second largest and strongest Israeli command brigade, [the Israeli army’s Gaza Brigade] would collapse as it did. That led to many things that, in my opinion, were never planned, such as taking civilians prisoners. There was a certain level of chaos. I didn’t, of course, know that there would be such an attack, but I did expect some sort of explosion [from Gaza], because of the fact that Israel was ignoring any demand to end this state of siege. We witnessed a situation where the Israeli occupation had continued for 57 years. Ethnic cleansing continued for 76 years. The siege on Gaza was becoming unbearable. You’re talking about 17 years of siege on Gaza that led to a situation where people had almost no electricity, only a few hours a day, where 24 percent of the water was either polluted or saltwater, where 80 percent of young graduates were unemployed, and where there was not only a complete economic disaster but a total loss of hope. I think when we reached that moment on October 7, it became clear to all Palestinians that Israel had no plan whatsoever for a peaceful resolution of this situation.
The new Israeli government is a fascist government with people in it like [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir, who are themselves settlers and were previously accused by the Israeli judicial system of being members of terrorist groups. They declared clearly that the Israeli plan is to fill the West Bank with settlers and settlements so that Palestinians would lose any hope for a state of their own, and they would have to choose between leaving, which is ethnic cleansing, living a life of subjugation, which is apartheid, or dying, which is genocide. In reality, this is an officially declared Israeli policy. So, of course, people were expecting some sort of reaction to get us out of a terrible situation in which Israel was literally eliminating the Palestinian cause. Netanyahu was very clear about his plans. He declared that the goal of normalization with Arab countries was to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
And if you want another reason, just two weeks before October 7, Netanyahu appeared before the United Nations General Assembly and showed a map of Israel that included all of the West Bank, all of the Gaza Strip, all of the Golan Heights, and a map of the new Middle East, which he is trying to construct, as he said, for 50 years to come.
Let’s fast forward to today. Israel has announced that it has launched a “limited” ground invasion of southern Lebanon. At the same time, the fighting in Gaza has for now subsided, but airstrikes and massacres against the civilian population continue regularly, and the likelihood of a ceasefire now seems farther than ever. Where do you think things are going, both in Gaza and in terms of a regional escalation?
First of all, you have to understand that Israel did not really scale back its operations in Gaza. It continues, maybe to a lesser degree than before, but they’ve already destroyed almost 80 percent of all homes in Gaza, partially or completely. They’ve destroyed all universities. They’ve destroyed most schools. They’ve destroyed 34 hospitals out of 36. They’ve squeezed more than 1.7 million people into an area that is no more than 12 square miles. On average we see 50 to 100 people killed every day.
And at the same time, they are now invading Lebanon. I don’t believe what they say, that Israel is going to have a limited operation in Lebanon. In my opinion, they will try to conduct a military ground operation that will go in from two directions; one in the direction of the Litani River, trying to push everybody from the south to north of the river, and maybe beyond it, and at the same time, another flank of the Israeli military operation will go into the Beqaa Valley, trying to cut off any contact between Syria and Lebanon.
In my opinion, Israel is planning to occupy the south of Lebanon completely, and maybe more, for a very long time and in a permanent fashion. The only thing that will stop them is the amount of losses they will incur because of the fighting of Hezbollah. Nothing else will stop them.
This raises the question; when Biden, the president of France, and other Western leaders come out and say Israel has the right to defend itself, does that mean that the right of self-defense includes invading other countries, bombarding other capitals, and occupying the land of other people? And if Israel has the right to defend itself, do Palestinians also have the right to defend themselves, especially since they are under occupation? What we see here is a horrible double standard. It is shocking when you see France declaring that it participated in defending Israel from Iranian rockets, alongside the United States and some other regional countries. Did any of them even consider participating in protecting innocent Palestinian civilians, where 51,000 Palestinians have already been killed, including the 10,000 that are still missing under the rubble? The number of Palestinians killed after this war in Gaza will probably exceed 100,000 if we include those who will die from diseases and the injured who will die due to lack of medical treatment.
Iran has already launched an unprecedented missile attack against Israel, but they attacked only military installations. What is interesting here is that both Hezbollah and Hamas are only attacking military installations, while Israel is bombarding a civilian population.
And do you think, then, that this situation might escalate into a regional war if Israel is unwilling to withdraw from southern Lebanon, if it’s indeed going to occupy it?
Absolutely. I think that’s exactly what Netanyahu wants. He wants to drag the region into a war. He wants to drag the United States into it, or maybe he already has a joint plan with the United States — because I don’t think Biden needs to be dragged. He’s already in this. He is complicit in this genocide. I think he’s trying to bring the United States into the war so that it will attack or participate in attacking Iran. I think this is one of his main goals, to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
And so where is the place of Gaza in all of this?
In my opinion, Netanyahu’s original plan was to ethnically cleanse Gaza. And he didn’t hide that. He said it on the second day of the war on October 8. His military spokesperson, Richard Hecht, declared that all Gazans have to be evicted to the Sinai. They failed. They failed because of the steadfastness and heroism of the Palestinian people in Gaza, but also because Egypt did not cooperate. Egypt realized that if Palestinians were pushed into the Sinai, it would be a major security disaster for Egypt and would threaten its national security. Since Netanyahu couldn’t conduct complete ethnic cleansing, he’s conducting genocide in Gaza.
But his ultimate goal, I think, once he’s done with Lebanon, will be to try to evict everybody from northern Gaza and annex it to Israel. This would be the Plan B to completely annexing the Strip or the total ethnic cleansing of the population of Gaza. But that doesn’t mean that he will necessarily succeed.
And would the rest of Gaza continue to witness “low intensity” warfare in that event?
It will continue. Already, Netanyahu declared that he is going to continue the Israeli occupation of Gaza. He wants to create some kind of civil structure of collaborators who would work under the Israeli occupation, as they tried to do with the Village Leagues in the West Bank during the 1980s.
Let’s step back a bit. Palestinians suffer from deep political fragmentation, perhaps today more than ever. There have been talks on achieving national unity more recently in Beijing. What is the significance of these talks and do you think something will come out of them?
Something will come out of them if the Palestinian Authority agrees to implement them. So far, it hasn’t.
Of course, these talks were significant, whether in Moscow or Beijing. I personally drafted both agreements in cooperation with others, and the agreement in Beijing was clearer, more specific. It included three very specific steps [toward national unity]. The first one is the formation of a unified national consensus government, which would be in charge of both the West Bank and Gaza, guaranteeing their unity and preventing Netanyahu’s plan of separating the two entities from one another. The second step would call for a meeting of the so-called interim Palestinian leadership, or unified leadership, according to our previous agreement in Cairo in 2011. And the third step would entail the meeting of all the leaders of the Palestinian factions to draft a plan to implement all these decisions.
“Those who oppose armed resistance oppose any form of resistance.”Mustafa Barghouti
The agreement states that the president should initiate immediate consultations to form a national consensus government, but unfortunately, he hasn’t. So far, the Palestinian Authority has not moved in that direction. As long as it does not, this agreement will remain on paper.
You have very publicly supported the resistance in Gaza and across Palestine, and the role you have played in the media over the past year has been to develop a discourse that supports resistance. Yet the genocide in Gaza has been pointed to by the Palestinian Authority and its supporters that resistance, particularly armed resistance, will only bring about our destruction, and will serve as an excuse by Israel for genocide and ethnic cleansing. How do you respond to this?
Those who oppose armed resistance oppose any form of resistance, not only armed resistance. They are opposing even peaceful and nonviolent resistance. You know me, I’ve been an advocate of and an activist in nonviolent resistance all my life. But I say what international law says. I’m defending the right of the people under occupation to resist in all forms. International law says that people under military occupation, wherever they are, have the right to resist occupation in all forms, including military forms, as long as they respect international humanitarian law.
Israel is not only arresting people engaging in armed resistance. It is arresting people who are even engaging in verbal resistance and other peaceful kinds of resistance.
And by the way, Hamas stuck to nonviolent resistance for at least five years between 2014 and 2019. The Israeli response was severe violence against the peaceful marches that were organized in Gaza and in the West Bank.
It is very important, especially for younger people here, to understand that the oppressor, the colonizer, the aggressor, always tries to prevent the people under oppression from their right to resist injustice. Frantz Fanon spoke about the right of the people who are oppressed to practice violence against the oppressor’s violence, but what we see here is an even worse situation, where the oppressor is trying to prevent Palestinians from resisting in anyform. If you engage in military resistance, they will accuse you of terrorism. If you do peaceful resistance, they will accuse you of violence. If you do verbal resistance, they will accuse you of provocations or incitement. If you are a foreigner supporting the Palestinian cause, you will be accused of anti-Semitism, and if you are a Jewish person supporting Palestinian rights, you will be called a self-hating Jew.
It’s a whole battery of ideological and tactical slogans that are used by the Israeli establishment to deny the people the right to resist. It’s just another way of dehumanizing Palestinians. On October 7, the first Israeli line was to dehumanize Hamas and immediately dehumanize Palestinians in general. That’s why Gallant called us human animals. And the goal is to justify the killing of civilians and the killing of children. Because, for them, we are not human beings.
So your response to some of the criticisms from Palestinians is that Israel doesn’t need an excuse to carry out what it’s been doing.
Of course not. The worst crime in the world is to blame the victim. It is absolutely unacceptable to blame the victim for what the aggressor is doing to them.
And related to the issue of national unity: let’s say that tomorrow the PA agrees to some sort of unity government. What does that unity government even mean when there is a fundamental disagreement not only on how to resist the Israeli occupation but on whether to resist it at all?
Well, of course, that’s a major problem. But in my opinion, the two main causes of internal Palestinian division are the following.
First, disagreement about the program. The Palestinian Authority, and to a large extent, the parties in the Executive Committee of the PLO, believed in Oslo — not only as an agreement but as an approach, which means they believe that the problem can be solved through negotiations with the Israeli side even when we have a severely skewed imbalance of power in Israel’s interest. That line believed in two illusions: the first illusion was that the Zionist movement and Israel as an establishment were ready for a compromise with Palestinians — life has shown that they are not ready for that, which has been proven when the Israeli Knesset decided not to allow a Palestinian state — and second, I think the whole idea of a compromise was demolished when the Israeli Knesset approved the Nation-State Law, which said that self-determination in the land of historic Palestine is exclusive for Jewish people.
So the Oslo line failed, and Israel killed it. And the approach, which believed in a compromise, failed. The other illusion that this approach believed in was that the United States could mediate between Palestinians and Israel. This also failed because the United States is totally biased toward Israel.
Since this line has failed, the programmatic cause of internal division is finished. It’s gone.
The second cause of internal division was that there was competition over authority between Fatah and Hamas. Let’s be fair and admit that. Hamas was running Gaza. Fatah was running the West Bank. Today there is no Authority anymore. Gaza is occupied, and the West Bank is completely occupied. So there is no reason for competition over an Authority that doesn’t exist — it’s an Authority without authority.
But there’s still fundamental disagreement over strategy. Not even over resistance, but over the idea of resistance.
“Had we had elections in 2021, maybe we would not have had this war.”Mustafa Barghouti
Absolutely, because some people are still stuck in believing in Oslo, and they still dream about bringing back what was lost. But they are a very small minority now. That’s why we say the road to unity starts with two stages. The interim stage is to find a way for us to compromise and create some sort of interim unified leadership, because the crisis we are in cannot wait, and the risks we face are too great. And the second stage is to lead to free democratic elections that include Palestinians in Palestine and outside of Palestine. Only then will the people decide which strategy should be adopted democratically.
Of course, I have to tell you, had we had elections in 2021, maybe we would not have had this war.
Do you mean when the sitting PA president canceled the elections by using Jerusalem as an excuse? The excuse was that Palestinians in Jerusalem would not be allowed to participate by the Israelis because they held Israeli permanent residence IDs, correct?
Exactly. It was an excuse, because when we met with all the Palestinian factions in Egypt, we had a plan to get around that, and everybody agreed with this plan. We were going to conduct elections in Jerusalem without Israeli permission, without giving Israel the veto power over our elections, and our plan was to spread 150 ballot boxes all over Jerusalem, and then have 20 cameras monitoring each box. And let Israel try to stop us. I am sure, had we had that system, the number of young Palestinians who would have voted would have been much larger than the number of Palestinians who would have voted in accordance with the Oslo arrangements in Jerusalem — because it would have been an act of defiance and resistance against Israeli authorities. But unfortunately, elections were canceled. Had we had elections, no single party would have held an absolute majority. And by the way, that applies to the situation today, according to all the polls.
Because we have a fully proportional system now. If we had a pluralistic government, a pluralistic system, then I think this would have created a situation where the blockade or the siege on Gaza probably could have been broken. And maybe we would not have had this war.
Many have said that the West Bank did not play a major role in supporting Gaza and in resisting the occupation. People in Gaza hoped that there would be a popular intifada that would serve as its own front in the war. What’s your assessment of the role of the West Bank and what do you think is standing in the way of it having a more active role in resistance?
I never agreed, and I don’t like at all, any approach that separates the West Bank from Gaza and Jerusalem from the West Bank. Look, there was a time when most resistance activities were happening here in the West Bank. And people were screaming, “Where is Gaza? Why does Gaza not do anything?” There was a time in 2021 when most of the center of the Palestinian struggle was in Jerusalem, until Gaza intervened. So I don’t agree with this kind of separation. I think the West Bank is living in a new kind of Intifada since 2015.
“The first goal of the Palestinian struggle today is to stay in Palestine.”Mustafa Barghouti
People are obliged to resist because of Israeli settlement expansion, because of what Israel is trying to do. And I challenge those who say that the West Bank is not participating, because the Israeli army cannot enter any city, any village, any town, any camp without facing increased popular resistance. But the conditions are different in the West Bank — in terms of the presence of the Israeli army, and in terms of the number of people who were arrested. We’re talking about 11,000 people so far. And it also has to do with the passive, negative, and unconstructive behavior of the Palestinian Authority.
We have to understand that the goals of the struggle are many. In this sense, the first goal of the Palestinian struggle today is to stay in Palestine, to be steadfast and remain. The fact that the number of Palestinians that remained in Palestine even after the displacement of 70 percent of the Palestinian people is now larger than the number of Jewish Israeli people, is the greatest dilemma and greatest flaw of the Zionist movement. And that’s why I believe the issue of staying in Palestine is very essential.
“Gaza is happening because of the West Bank.”Mustafa Barghouti
And it’s not just about staying. The people here, the demographic presence, would not have been so effective had we not resisted. So the first line is that people should stay. The second line is that they should resist injustice, occupation, and apartheid. And that’s why I don’t blame the people in 1948 if they are not so active under the system of fascism. As long as they stay in Palestine and remain.
Is the West Bank next after Gaza?
The West Bank is the main target before Gaza. Gaza is happening because of the West Bank. Netanyahu wants to annex the West Bank. And not just Netanyahu and his government, but the Zionist establishment as a whole. But they cannot annex the West Bank with all these people in it. That’s why they are combining settlement expansion and gradual annexation with displacement of Palestinians, whether by force or by creating difficult social and economic conditions. And that’s why we have to understand that the main goal of this whole attack is the West Bank, including, of course, Jerusalem.
Netanyahu openly says that he is correcting Ben-Gurion’s mistake — that he did not displace the Palestinians who stayed in 1948 and did not occupy the West Bank and Gaza and expel its population.
Netanyahu also thinks he’s correcting Rabin’s mistake, who entertained the possibility, or potential, of some limited kind of Palestinian self-governance.
And third, he thinks he is correcting the mistake of Sharon, who had to withdraw from Gaza [in 2005]. This is Netanyahu’s mindset: he believes in himself as the greatest Zionist leader after Jabotinsky. His main goal is the total annexation of all of Palestine — and beyond. You heard what Trump said; he just discovered that Israel is very small, and it has to expand.
Do you think there is any room for hope amidst this despair?
Yes, there is a great amount of hope. There is hope in people’s resilience. There is hope in people’s resistance. I believe in the younger generation in Palestine. I think they are showing fantastic models of resilience and resistance. I’m not talking only about military resistance or even civil resistance. I’m also talking about this fantastic movement among a younger Palestinian generation worldwide, especially in countries like the United States and Europe, where you have a whole new generation of Palestinians who are regenerated and reenergized.
I think that October 7 reenergized a whole Palestinian generation everywhere. And I think this opens the road for a new kind of Palestinian unity around a unified project that includes all Palestinians wherever they live, whether in Palestine or outside Palestine.
by Caitlin Johnston
07/10/24
On this day in particular, I would like to express my deepest sympathies for the victims of Israeli murderousness over the past year.
On this day in particular, I would like to mourn the thousands upon thousands of children who have been killed by western-supplied bullets and bombs in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon over the last twelve months.
On this day in particular I would like to express my sincerest condolences to the Palestinian parents who have had to bury their children, or pieces of their children, or bags of shapeless carnage they’ve been told were their children — if those parents are still alive themselves.
On this day in particular I would like to lift up my heart to the people who are being ethnically cleansed from northern Gaza right at this very moment, and the people in southern Lebanon who are being subjected to daily Israeli massacres.
I wish I could bring myself to express sympathy for other groups on this particular day, like the Israelis who were killed in the Hamas attack one year ago. But I think there’s been enough of that. I really do.
Sympathy for Israel has been used over this past year to manufacture consent for the slaughter of mountains of human beings in advancement of land grabs and military agendas that were planned long before the seventh of October 2023. The sympathy which Israel received after the Hamas attack was immediately weaponized in advancement of those agendas, and has been weaponized every single day since.
When someone is using a weapon to hurt people, a good person will take their weapon away, and won’t give them any more weapons. This is true of actual, physical weapons like the ones the western empire has been pouring into the Israeli war machine, and it is true of the weaponized sympathy that Israel apologists have been using to justify its genocidal atrocities.
Expressing sympathy for Israel on this particular day would be like expressing sympathy for a mother with Munchausen syndrome by proxy who is poisoning her children in order to garner sympathy and attention from her community. That sympathy — which would normally be a very healthy response to the deaths and trauma of others — is in this case the actual problem.
And even if this were not the case, Israel has received more than enough sympathy already. It is an extensively documented fact that the western press have been vastly more sympathetic toward the Israeli victims of the Hamas attack than they have been to Israel’s victims in Gaza, despite the victims of Israeli atrocities being orders of magnitude greater in number. This discrepancy in sympathy is so extensive that it can only be called journalistic malpractice.
So on this day in particular I will be expressing sympathy for the populations upon whom Israel has inflicted many, many times more death and trauma than it received one year ago — and for those populations only.
The Hamas attack was a response from a desperate colonized people against a tyrannical occupying oppressor, and many of the Israelis who were killed on that day are known to have been killed by the Israeli military and its barbaric “Hannibal directive” of murdering its own people to prevent their being taken hostage. Not another word of sympathy needs to be expressed toward Israel for this, here or anywhere else.
So on this day in particular I do not express sympathy toward Israel — in fact, I condemn it.
I condemn Israel’s bombing of hospitals. I condemn Israel’s assassination of journalists. I condemn Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilian buildings known to be packed full of children. I condemn Israel’s deliberate killing of humanitarian aid workers. I condemn Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war and extermination. I condemn Israel’s systematic rape and torture of Palestinian prisoners. I condemn Israel’s practice of murdering children and other noncombatants with snipers. I condemn Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinian territories.
I condemn Israel for bombing an orphanage in Gaza City last week. I condemn Israel for killing five year-old Hind Rajab and her family, and killing medical workers who tried to come to her rescue. I condemn Israel for knowingly targeting a World Kitchen convoy and killing seven aid workers. I condemn Israel for assassinating Refaat Alareer. I condemn Israel for bulldozing a dead man into the dirt like a piece of garbage, unknown and unaccounted for, like God knows how many others. I condemn Israel for the birth of the acronym WCNSF (Wounded Child, No Surviving Family) in Gaza’s medical facilities. I condemn Israel for making me learn what the insides of a dead child look like, and reminding me every motherfucking day for the last year. I condemn Israel for all the tortured, thirsty, lonely, drawn-out deaths of all the countless people buried alive under the rubble of Gaza.
On this day in particular I stand in solidarity with the victims of Israeli atrocities, which are being facilitated by the globe-spanning western empire under which I live. I extend my deepest sympathy to those victims, and my sincerest apologies for failing to do more to stop this nightmare.
Every year has been catastrophic for Palestinians around the world, but the past 12 months have been unimaginableSun 6 Oct 2024 13.00 BSTShare
It has been a year of heartbreak, a year of horror, a year of hell. I know I am not alone when I say that this has been the very worst year of my life. I have lost friends, I have lost job opportunities and, most of all, I have lost my faith in humanity.
But, before I get into that, let me fulfil my duty as a good diaspora Palestinian and recite the obligatory incantation: I condemn Hamas, I condemn Hamas, I condemn Hamas. We Palestinians, you see, are not allowed to open our mouths without someone demanding we denounce violence and condemn Hamas. And then we are told to shut our mouths, to stay silent, while the very same people demanding we decry violence salivate over our deaths and celebrate murder on an unimaginable scale. Anyone an Israeli kills is an act of self-defence. Anyone an Arab kills is an act of terrorism. These are the rules we must all abide by.
The US has never been shy about how much it hates Arabs. But ever since 7 October that hatred has shot to such disturbing new levels that I no longer feel at home in this country. Were it not for the fact that I have built a life and a family here, I would get the hell out. Why would I want to stay in a country where Palestinians are so dehumanised that elected officials such as Senator Lindsey Graham can fantasise about dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza – a place where half of the population are children – without facing any meaningful censure? Where John Fetterman, who is my senator, openly mocks pro-Palestinian protesters and seems to take immense joy in our pain?
And then there’s the fact that, simply by paying my taxes, I am complicit in the slaughter and starvation of my own people. Increasingly I can’t rationalise living in a country where such a large portion of my taxpayer dollars is spent on funding war and what Kamala Harris has gleefully described as the “most lethal fighting force in the world”. I live in Philadelphia, where the schools are so underfunded that just four out of more than 200 schools have full-time librarians and 98% of school buildings’ drinking outlets have tested positive for lead. There is no money for schools in the US; there is plenty of money to help bomb schools in Gaza.
Again, the US has never been shy about how much it hates Arabs – and Palestinians in particular. Well before 7 October I was subject to plenty of racism on that front. I’ve had innumerable people tell me that I can’t possibly be Palestinian because Palestinians don’t exist. Still, even though I thought I was numb to how dehumanised we are, the bloodlust has shocked me. At the time of the Hamas attack I was taking a break from my Guardian column to work on a corporate copywriting gig with a large ad agency. The internal Slack channel for the agency immediately filled with people cheering on the bombing of Gaza. I was in too much of a state of shock to say anything to the agency’s leadership and, if I’m honest, I was too cowardly. It’s hard to make a living as a freelance writer and I normally depend on a few corporate gigs a year. I didn’t want to lose future opportunities by speaking up so I kept my mouth shut, my head down, and waited for the bombing to stop.
But, of course, the bombing hasn’t stopped. Ten thousand dead Palestinians; 20,000 dead Palestinians; 30,000 dead Palestinians; 40,000 dead Palestinians. There doesn’t seem to be any number of dead Palestinians that will satisfy Israel or that will make politicians in the US finally say: enough. For a while I was delusional enough to think the ascent of Harris might mark a change for the better. But the vice-president has refused to shift on Joe Biden’s unconditional weapons policy; she has refused to acknowledge international law. When she was crowned the Democratic nominee in August, the party leadership refused to put a Palestinian-American on the main stage for even a minute. That’s how little the Democrats think of us.
As the death toll mounts, as the humanitarian situation in Gaza – and now Lebanon –grows increasingly desperate, politicians across both sides of the aisle in the US keep telling Palestinians that our suffering is all our own fault. Let’s remember where all this started: 7 October. Harris repeated this line during her debate with Donald Trump. Tim Walz repeated this line in his debate with JD Vance.
But that line is a lie. History did not start on 7 October 2023. While that date may mark a tragedy for Israel, every single day for the last 76 years has marked some sort of catastrophe for Palestinians. My paternal grandparents originally lived in Haifa; in 1948, during the Nakba, they were among the 700,000 Palestinians forced to flee or expelled by Israel. Their home was demolished. They lost everything. Eventually they made it back to the West Bank but then, in 1967, my father had to flee again. He became a refugee, unable to ever return to live in the country where he was born. He has, however, taken me back to visit. I went back to his village when I had just turned six and had a brief taste of what a Palestinian childhood is like – by which I mean Israeli soldiers shot teargas at me and raided our village to burn the Palestinian flag.
History did not start on 7 October. But as the world stops to mourn it will for ever be a reminder of whose lives matter.
OCT 06, 2024
From the very beginning of Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had his hands on the steering wheel. After October 7, Blinken was the first senior U.S. official to arrive in Israel, on October 11. “I’m going with a very simple and clear message… that the United States has Israel’s back,” Blinken reportedly said before boarding the plane.
He returned again days later. This time, Blinken was there to demand that Israel rethink its decision to bomb any humanitarian aid entering Gaza and impose a “total siege” on the Strip. In exchange, U.S. President Joe Biden offered to visit Israel himself. Reportedly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained to Blinken upon his arrival on October 16, 2023: “I have got people in the cabinet who don’t want an aspirin to get into Gaza because of what’s happened.”
From within the Kirya, the Israeli military’s main headquarters in Tel Aviv, Blinken participated in the frantic discussions of the Israeli War Cabinet—the decision-making forum guiding the genocidal campaign—that were occuring in parallel to conversations in the broader Security Cabinet.
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According to Channel 12 reporter Yaron Avraham, on October 16 and 17, “the [Security] Cabinet deliberated for hours over the precise wording of the decision, with each draft being passed between the Cabinet room and Blinken’s room, a distance of a few meters away, inside the Kirya…. Eventually, around 3 a.m., they arrive at an agreed upon text that is read in the Cabinet room in English.”
Avraham’s account of the process was independently corroborated by a reporter for the competing Channel 13, who wrote: “The discussion with Blinken is conducted as follows: he is sitting in a room in the Kirya with his advisors and security team, while Security Cabinet holds the discussion; [Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron] Dermer goes back and forth and interfaces with him.”
Blinken, for his part, concluded the day with a triumphant speech taking responsibility for the restarting of humanitarian aid to Gaza:
To that end, today, and at our request, the United States and Israel have agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza – and them alone – including the possibility of creating areas to help keep civilians our of harm’s way. It is critical that aid begin flowing into Gaza as soon as possible.
We share Israel’s concern that Hamas may seize or destroy aid entering Gaza or otherwise preventing it from reaching the people who need it. If Hamas in any way blocks humanitarian assistance from reaching civilians, including by seizing the aid itself, we’ll be the first to condemn it and we will work to prevent it from happening again.
The following day, after an additional round of Cabinet meetings, this time helmed by both Blinken and Biden, an outline of the decision was publicly announced by Prime Minster’s Netanyahu’s office: “We will not allow humanitarian assistance in the form of food and medicines from our territory to the Gaza Strip” and, in a separate Hebrew version, “In light of President Biden’s demand, Israel will not thwart humanitarian supplies from Egypt as long as it is only food, water and medicine for the civilian population located in the southern Gaza Strip or moving there, and as long as these supplies do not reach Hamas. Any supplies that reach Hamas will be thwarted.” The Hebrew word לסכל, “to thwart,” is frequently used by Israel to describe targeted killings and assassinations. The previous policy of “thwarting” all humanitarian supplies from entering Gaza was conveyed to Egypt as an explicit threat to “bomb” aid trucks.
The substance of the Blinken-approved policy was starkly conveyed by Security Cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich, who later told the Israeli media: “We in the cabinet were promised at the outset that there would be monitoring, and that aid trucks hijacked by Hamas and its organizations [sic] would be bombed from the air, and the aid would be halted.”
State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told Drop Site News: “The suggestion that anyone at the State Department signed off in any way on attacks on humanitarian workers or convoys is absurd. We have always been clear, including in the immediate aftermath of October 7, that Israel has the right to strike Hamas militants. Secretary Blinken has been equally clear that Israel needs to ensure that humanitarian aid is delivered to Gaza and that humanitarian workers inside Gaza are protected.” The State Department did not clarify whether it approved carrying out airstrikes against Hamas militants (or those indiscriminately classified as militants) who secure aid convoys or seize their contents.
For Smotrich and other Israeli policymakers, the U.S.’s approval of the policy presented an opportunity to realize aspirations they had harbored long before October 7th. Already in 2018, as Palestinians in Gaza resisted the Israeli blockade—jokingly referred to by the Israeli government as “an appointment with a dietician”—through mass protests, Smotrich stated: “As far as I’m concerned, Gaza should be hermetically sealed. We shouldn’t provide them anything. Let them die of hunger, thirst, and malaria. I don’t care, they are not my citizens, I owe them nothing”.
The first part of the humanitarian aid policy approved by Blinken—the barring of entry of aid from within Israeli territory—was short-lived. By December 2023, aid had begun entering directly through Israel, and from the very first moment Israel’s monitoring mechanism, implemented shortly after the meetings on October 16 and 17, required all aid, regardless of origin, to go through checks within Israel before reaching Gaza, resulting in major delays. But the second policy—the “thwarting” of aid shipments within Gaza if they “reach Hamas”—also proved to be an effective tool in Israel’s arsenal when it came to starving the Gazan population.
The Hebrew word לסכל, “to thwart,” is frequently used by Israel to describe targeted killings and assassinations.
As 2023 came to an end, the UN Security Council voted on a resolution to facilitate the entry of aid into Gaza, which had been significantly watered down under U.S. pressure. UN Secretary General António Guterres explained: “Many people are measuring the effectiveness of the humanitarian operation in Gaza based on the number of trucks from the Egyptian Red Crescent, the UN, and our partners that are allowed to unload aid across the border. This is a mistake. The real problem is that the way Israel is conducting this offensive is creating massive obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid inside Gaza.”
Aid that had made it through into Gaza without rotting, despite delays caused by the military and by Israeli protesters egged on by the government to block aid trucks, had to then be distributed within Gaza using a handful of trucks Israel allowed to operate in The Strip, running on barely available fuel, driven under fire over destroyed roads filled with unexploded munitions, and delivered without real time communications due to blackouts imposed by the Israeli government. For over a million refugees confined to the south of The Strip, whatever food they had received had to then be stored in tents, using increasingly scarce containers. Meanwhile, the domestic food production capacity of Gaza has been decimated through the deliberate and gleefuldestruction of agriculture by the IDF and bakeries.
Guterres’s remarks were quoted in the application made by the South African government to the International Court of Justice one week later, alongside comments from a senior official from UNRWA, which has coordinated most of the humanitarian efforts in Gaza, characterizing the resolution as “a greenlight for continued genocide.”
On January 26, a panel of 17 judges found “a real and imminent risk” to the rights of Palestinians under the Genocide Convention. On the very same day, the U.S. cut fundingfor UNRWA after a narrative aggressively promoted by Israel Knesset members that the agency—which employed tens of thousands in the Gaza Strip—was also employing an untold number of members of Hamas and that “terrorists” had been students in UNRWA-run schools.
UNRWA “is a complete cover up for Hamas activities and terrorist activities,” Knesset member Sharren Haskel told the foreign media. “Hamas has taken over this organization.”
Speaking to the Israeli media, Haskel, who has along with the rest of the New Hope party joined the government coalition this week, added, “There are 13,000 UNRWA workers in the Gaza Strip, and they are all Hamas members or their relatives.”
The funding freeze, which has been described at the time as a “temporary pause,” has largely persisted to this day, crippling the agency’s humanitarian efforts. In UNRWA’s stead, Israel cultivated relations with foreign NGOs, most notably World Central Kitchen, who refrained from criticizing Israeli policy or insisting on a ceasefire, and lacked the infrastructure and expertise to make up for the debilitation of UNRWA.
Around the same time, Netanyahu repeatedly emphasized in public speeches that the amount of aid Israel is allowing into Gaza is “minimal.” Former Brigadier General Effi Eitam, who reportedly became one of Netanyahu’s close confidants and advisors in the wake of October 7th, shed light on the meaning on the meaning of the phrase: “Regarding the humanitarian aid, minimal aid should be allowed, and when I say minimal this means—not to shy away from a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. There are no innocents in Gaza.”
On February 6th 2024, Security Cabinet member Gidon Sa’ar, head of the right wing New Hope party (which has since left the coalition), criticized the shift in policy. In a Zoom call with party members, Sa’ar declared “I’m currently of the opinion that humanitarian aid to Gaza should be halted immediately, until the formulation of a humanitarian aid [mechanism] which will not be subject to Hamas takeovers, nor the distribution of aid by Hamas to the civilian population.”
This policy, Sa’ar said, was already anchored in “a [Security] Cabinet decision that was made at the beginning of the war, which stated that the humanitarian supply from Egypt will be allowed as long as this supply did not reach Hamas, and that the supply that does reach Hamas will be thwarted.” According to him, the policy was endorsed by “The United States of America … in the talks that took place in the middle of October, including the talks with Secretary of State Blinken, who was visiting [Israel] and took part in discussions, mainly with the War Cabinet, on the subject of humanitarian aid.”
“Right now,” he said, “on the eve of another visit of the American Secretary of State in Israel, we must revive this idea, so as not to undermine the aim I mentioned earlier, which is one of the war aims, which is the destruction of Hamas’s governmental capabilities.”Subscribe
As Sa’ar was speaking, Israeli policy was already shifting. On February 5th, the Israeli military shelled an UNRWA aid truck, leading the agency and the World Food Program to halt aid missions for weeks. The IDF spokesperson told the media the incident was “under review” and refused to provide additional details. One day later, however, Israeli outlet i24NEWS reported, based on unnamed “security sources” that the IDF had targeted “stolen Gaza aid trucks that Hamas uses as transportation for ammunition.”
That same day an Israeli airstrike targeted a police car which provided security escort to a flour truck, “ripping the passengers to pieces” according to witnesses. Leaflets bearing the picture of the destroyed vehicle were later dropped by the Israeli military over Gaza, warning: “Our message is clear; the Israeli security services will not allow the security apparatuses of Hamas to continue working.”
“We know that this can have lifelong detrimental effects on children. Even a short period of malnutrition, let alone one that lasts a year.”
By February 9th, UNRWA’s director, Philippe Lazzarini, told the press that the Israeli military had assassinated eight Palestinian police officers who were providing escorts to humanitarian aid convoys. A few days later, then-U.S. State Department special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues David Satterfield cited the targeting of Hamas’s aid truck security escorts by the Israeli military as a major obstacle for the delivery of aid: “With the departure of police escorts, it has been virtually impossible for the UN or anyone else, Jordan, the UAE, or any other implementer to safely move assistance in Gaza.”
On March 28, the International Court of Justice noted “unprecedented levels of food insecurity experienced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip over recent weeks,” and ordered Israel to “take all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay… the unhindered provision… of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care.”
Less than 24 hours later, Israel reportedlytargeted and killed several local policemen who were securing aid deliveries in two separate attacks, along with some of their family members and unrelated bystander. And on the next day, the Israeli military killed 12 people, among them officials representing tribal committees, who were coordinating aid distribution efforts.
Two days later, Israel’s favored aid provider, World Central Kitchen, fell victim to the same policy: over the course of several minutes an IDF drone pursued a 7-member WCK team driving along a designated, and, in three different airstrikes several kilometers apart, targeted and killed every single one of them. The vehicles, marked with a WCK logo which the IDF claimed was not visible through the drone’s thermal camera, were driving along a preapproved route, escorting an aid convoy on a mission coordinated with the Israeli military.
World Central Kitchen subsequently decided to halt their aid operations in Gaza, though they later resumed it.
The Israeli military ended up putting the blame on Colonel Nochi Mendel, who ordered the strike, and has previously expressed support for halting aid provision to Gaza. Mendel’s punishment amounted to being let go from his military service, and going back to his prestigious day job as director of the Settlement Department at the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
But the right wing Makor Rishon newspaper concluded, on the basis of conversations with drone operators involved in the assassination of the aid workers, that Mendel was only implementing the official policy jointly set by Blinken and the Israeli cabinet back in October: “The mission order made it clear that the IDF is instructed to thwart an attempt by Hamas terrorists to take over the aid trucks that entered Gaza. The IDF received this instruction from the Security Cabinet at the beginning of the war, sometime around October 18, 2023, following heavy pressure from the United States.”
Concerns raised by the drone operators about hitting aid workers were dismissed by their commanders, who insisted on strict adherence to the order, “no matter what.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reacted to the killing of the WCK aid workers by stating: “Humanitarian workers are heroes. They show the best of what humanity has to offer. I extend my deepest condolences to those who lost their lives in the strike on WCK in Gaza. There must be a swift, thorough, and impartial investigation into this incident.”
But follow-ups by U.S. press in the next few months revealed the State Department was happy to have the investigation conducted by the president and CEO of one of Israel’s largest arms manufacturers. The ultimate culprit for the killings—the policy that Blinken had brokered—was not amended.
In his statement to Drop Site News, Patel, the State Department Spokesperson, claimed: “We have intervened directly with the Israeli government on multiple occasions to insist they improve deconfliction mechanisms to avoid harm to humanitarian workers. Strikes on humanitarian workers are unacceptable, and Israel has a responsibility to do everything in its power to avoid them.” Patel’s statement did not specify whether the U.S. has insisted Israel abandon its policy of targeting the Palestinian civil police or armed escorts of aid, nor reiterated their previously reported “concern” over the policy.
On August 29th, the Israeli military assassinated four Palestinian aid delivery workers who accompanied a convoy organized by the U.S.-based NGO Anera. Again, the Israeli government cited the operational policy of targeting armed forces who assume control of the aid as justification for the strike.
The results of the starvation policies in Gaza are no longer a matter of speculation. A study conducted by scholars from various Gaza universities, all of which have now been destroyed by the Israeli military, found the average Palestinian in the Strip has lost over 10 kilograms (or 22 pounds) in weight since October 7, 2023 and the number of underweight individuals has quadrupled. The Global Nutrition Cluster, which coordinates the activity of various NGOs combating malnutrition, assesses that over 50,000 children under the age of 5 require acute malnutrition treatment services.
“We know that this can have lifelong detrimental effects on children. Even a short period of malnutrition, let alone one that lasts a year,” said Dr. Yara Asi, co-director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. “Cognitive growth is slowed, so these children will perform worse in schools. They will be less able to participate in the economy. Physically stunted growth, which is when children do not grow at the normal pace, cannot be reversed.”
“Their bodies will be permanently stunted as a result of the malnutrition they experienced as children,” Asi continued. “There’s likely other effects that we just have not been able to study. You’ll find little surveys done from contexts around the world that look at this in the long term, but they almost all say we simply don’t know enough to know how these children are going to grow up.”
As the U.S. was busy formulating the policies that brought about this outcome, it has simultaneously sought to help Israel construct a narrative that would help it carry on starving the population of Gaza unimpeded. “The images [seen] in America are brutal. There are enemies of Israel that are actively telling the story in a very negative way, and there are a lot of things that can be pointed to if that’s the view you’re taking,” U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, told a crowd of Israeli academics in July. “Israel needs to tell the story that it is making sure that people are getting what they need for there not to be a famine.”
The State Department, meanwhile, continuously offered lip service to the suffering of Palestinians. When asked about the U.S.’s responsibility for the spread of starvation in Gaza, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller responded: “It is the United States that has secured all of the major agreements to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza going back to the very early days, the first week after October 7th, when the Secretary traveled to the region and the President traveled to Israel, and together convinced Israel to open Rafah crossing to allow humanitarian assistance in.”
In fact, Blinken and Biden’s visit resulted in the formulation of the Israeli policy of starvation as it stands today. “The United States, including Blinken and others, have legitimized this tactic,” said Asi. “Starvation as a weapon of war is okay as long as we agree with your aims.” That U.S.-approved policy was then implemented using U.S.-manufactured weapons, with the backing of U.S.-imposed sanctions, under the veil of a U.S.-constructed narrative.
To avenge 7 October, crimes of all kinds are condoned. But politicians should take note: the British public disagreesThu 3 Oct 2024 17.38 BSTShare
Consider these two parallel universes. One is Gaza, the scene of some of the worst atrocities committed in the 21st century, as Israel’s genocidal rampage offers a new reminder of our species’ capacity for depravity. According to research by Oxfam, more women and children have been killed by the Israeli military in the last year “than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades”.
What makes this all the more disturbing is that the figures are conservative: the 11,355 children and 6,297 women listed as violently killed are only those who have been officially identified. Many of the dead have not been recorded in this way, not least the thousands buried under rubble, listed as missing, or incinerated by Israeli missiles, leaving not a trace. Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s hospitals, too, has laid waste to the system of reporting fatalities. Those caveats notwithstanding, in no 12-month period were so many women and children butchered in the killing fields of Iraq and Syria, despite those populations being much greater than Gaza’s.
Then there is a fresh revelation about Israel’s deliberate attempt to starve Gaza’s population. Last week the US investigative outlet ProPublica reported that the US Agency for International Deveopment (USAid) – a government department – had delivered a detailed assessment to the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, concluding that Israel was intentionally blocking the deliveries of food and medicine to Gaza. The agency described Israel “killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine”.
In a particularly egregious example, food was stockpiled less than 30 miles across the border at an Israeli port, including sufficient flour to feed most Gazans for five months; it was deliberately withheld. The state department’s refugee agency also concluded Israel was deliberately blocking aid, and recommended the use of US legislation that mandates the freezing of weapons shipments to states blocking US-backed aid. But Blinken rejected these assessments, and the US government has just approved another military aid package, worth $8.7bn, to a state its own agencies have concluded is deliberately starving the population of Gaza.
Now transport yourself to another universe: that of the British political elite. Two Tory leadership candidates have proposed making loyalty to Israel a central feature of Britishness. The frontrunner, Robert Jenrick, declares the Star of David should be displayed at every point of entry to Britain to show “we stand with Israel”. Kemi Badenoch declares she is struck “by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel”, adding: “That sentiment has no place here.” Meanwhile, after Iran’s ballistic missile attack – with no reported Israeli casualties – the UK’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, passionately declares, “We stand with Israel”, in an official Downing Street address. Here is a man who has not mustered the tiniest fraction of that emotion for the tens of thousands of Arabs slaughtered by Israel, from Palestine to Lebanon. What word is there for that disparity in response, other than racism?
Fortunately, these are not the universes inhabited by the British public. Two thirds of voters now have an unfavourable view of Israel, compared with 17% opting for favourable: a record low. Seven in 10 believe it likely that Israel has committed war crimes (just 8% dissent), while 54% believean arrest warrant should be issued for Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity (with 15% dissenting).
But this devotion to Israel among our rulers has survived both unspeakable atrocities and ever more repulsed public opinion. In a rational world, advocating a heartfelt alliance with a state engaged in such murderous mayhem would leave you driven from public life in disgrace; here it is the mainstream, respectable position, with those dissenting demonised as hateful extremists.
What exactly is Israel supposed to do to shake this? It has conducted the worst massacre of children in our time, from reported sniper shots to the heads of infantsto butchering terrified families in their cars, and now it is clear it deliberately starved an entire population. It stands accused of raping male and female detainees alike, while Save the Children condemns Israeli soldiers for sexually abusing Palestinian children in prisons. It has killed at least 885 healthcare workers, and left women having caesarians and children having amputations without anaesthetics. Its soldiers push Palestinian bodies from roofs in scenes reminiscent of Islamic State. Meanwhile, Israeli ministers, politicians, army officers, soldiers and journalists compete overbloodcurdling murderous and genocidal rhetoric.