Woodstock Times
I am writing in response to the letter from The Jewish Federation of Ulster County in your last issue, which I strongly suspect was not written in Kingston. It reflects perfectly the Israeli position, crowing over its impunity in imagined "victory" over a helpless population, half-starved and deprived of clean water, sewage disposal, medicine, electricity, half of whose children are now anemic with signs of malnutrition, packed into a walled-in concentration camp - an absolutely unequal fight popular opinion here spontaneously calls "shooting fish in a barrel." But these are human beings, children, women, men, civilians, doctors, ambulance drivers, fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, grandparents, attacked not just with armor and jets, but with white phosphorus, depleted uranium, and with Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), with no place to run to shelter. The JDF communication reflects indifference to the suffering Israel caused.
The campaign against Gaza is now the subject of the greatest Israeli propaganda campaign in Israel's history. Certainly, in a large part of the American and world public who have hoped for better or have not previously been following the news, Israel has reaped a harvest of revulsion and loathing that no frantic propaganda campaign can erase.
So where is the victory? The feeble rockets continue, demonstrating that David has in fact survived Goliath, which reinforces Hamas's backing. Israel is likely to repeat the slaughter. And why is Israel doing this?
One of the world's leading political psychologists, the Israeli David Bar Tal, has done a study called "Is an Israeli Jewish sense of victimization perpetuating the conflict with the Palestinians?" Hebrew title: "What do Jews in Israel know about the conflict with the Palestinians?" He says that Israeli Jews' consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering. He and his partner say those with a "Zionist memory" see Israel and the Jews as the victims in the conflict, and don't support agreements or compromises with the Palestinians to obtain peace; they note that changes to eliminate bias and indoctrination in the teaching of the conflict would help.
The esteemed London professor, author and psychoanalyst Jacqueline Rose, who is Jewish, puts it this way: "(criticism) is in no way to diminish the traumatic impact of the Holocaust but to register it all the more powerfully. The effect of trauma is precisely to freeze people in time. There is a psychological dimension to this conflict that seems almost impossibly difficult to shift. In its own eyes, Israel is never the originator and agent of is own violence, and to that extent its violence is always justified. The Palestinians do not count. Even when the worst of what has been done to them is registered inside Israel, it is still the Israeli who suffers more."
Avraham Berg, former president of the World Zionist Organization and speaker of the Knesset, addresses this in his new book "The Holocaust is Over: We Must Rise From The Ashes."
So peace must come from strong outside intervention. George Mitchell is a good person for that. Even though Abraham Foxman told Obama "He is very fair, very even-handed. But that is not the kind of person we need in this situation." It is time for Americans to support a change in policy, and to strongly back a "fair, even-handed' person, to stop the siege of Gaza, and to insist all sides be listened to, including Hamas, in a wide dialogue, to achieve peace.
Sheila Finan
Letter to Editor: Woodstock Times
While I sympathize with the outrage and passion about Israel´s oppression of the Palestinian people in CJ Mellor´s recent letter, `Disgraceful Silence´ - I have to strongly take exception to the concluding statement. Mellor says, "Much of the blame for this sorry state of affairs rests squarely on the shoulders of U.S. Jews, whose silence over Israel´s conduct, with far too few exceptions, has been nothing but disgraceful, and absolutely raises the issue of dual loyalty."
In the first place, the statement is simply not accurate. Yes, certainly there are many Jews, who out of a misguided sense of loyalty to Israel, cannot face the truth of Israeli apartheid and the disgraceful and brutal history of the Occupation.
That said, there are also many, many Jewish activists, artists, writers and scholars who have spoken out forcefully in defense of the Palestinian people and against the Occupation and who have vigorously opposed the continuing American monetary and military aid to Israel. Many of these same American Jews have traveled to the West Bank and Gaza to stand in solidarity with the oppressed. Many have put themselves on the line, both with nonviolent protests and acts of civil disobedience in the cause of justice. There are probably millions of American Jews who oppose the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. But you won´t see, hear or read much of this in the corporate controlled mass media.
As far as blame, all Americans share in that. It is our collective tax dollars that go at the rate of $10,000,000 per day - yes, that´s ten million per day, to support the Israeli military machine. Recently, Amnesty International found evidence of U.S.-made weapons in Gaza, including the misuse of white phosphorus munitions, a breach of our own US stated policy and international law.
I don´t like the idea of singling out US Jews per se as responsible for what Israel has done. AIPAC, and other pro-Zionist lobbyists, the huge block of fundamentalist right wing Christians and the vast majority of American politicians, white, black, Christian and Jewish who unconditionally support Israel´s actions, are all a part of this mashuga mess.
I don´t think CJ Mellor meant it to be so, but that last statement, more or less placing collective blame on "the shoulders of U.S. Jews" is exactly what anti-Semitism feeds upon. The Israeli Prime Minster recently referred to the rising tide of anti-Semitism throughout the world. Olmert suggested that a good part of the reason for it was the blockade of the Gaza Strip. "We need to remember that the Occupation is a problem for us", he explained. He further argued: "As long as we are presented as Occupiers, we will continue suffer from anti-Semitic incidents." Like any other racial or ethic prejudice, anti-Semitism is a disease, not a solution or an answer for anything. The specter of anti-Semitism hangs over our heads ominously enough - thanks to the unfortunate tendency towards prejudice in many, which has been exacerbated by the horrific and cruel actions of Israeli Zionists and it´s supporters over the last 60 years - we don´t need to add to it.
Tarak Kauff
In the first place, the statement is simply not accurate. Yes, certainly there are many Jews, who out of a misguided sense of loyalty to Israel, cannot face the truth of Israeli apartheid and the disgraceful and brutal history of the Occupation.
That said, there are also many, many Jewish activists, artists, writers and scholars who have spoken out forcefully in defense of the Palestinian people and against the Occupation and who have vigorously opposed the continuing American monetary and military aid to Israel. Many of these same American Jews have traveled to the West Bank and Gaza to stand in solidarity with the oppressed. Many have put themselves on the line, both with nonviolent protests and acts of civil disobedience in the cause of justice. There are probably millions of American Jews who oppose the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. But you won´t see, hear or read much of this in the corporate controlled mass media.
As far as blame, all Americans share in that. It is our collective tax dollars that go at the rate of $10,000,000 per day - yes, that´s ten million per day, to support the Israeli military machine. Recently, Amnesty International found evidence of U.S.-made weapons in Gaza, including the misuse of white phosphorus munitions, a breach of our own US stated policy and international law.
I don´t like the idea of singling out US Jews per se as responsible for what Israel has done. AIPAC, and other pro-Zionist lobbyists, the huge block of fundamentalist right wing Christians and the vast majority of American politicians, white, black, Christian and Jewish who unconditionally support Israel´s actions, are all a part of this mashuga mess.
I don´t think CJ Mellor meant it to be so, but that last statement, more or less placing collective blame on "the shoulders of U.S. Jews" is exactly what anti-Semitism feeds upon. The Israeli Prime Minster recently referred to the rising tide of anti-Semitism throughout the world. Olmert suggested that a good part of the reason for it was the blockade of the Gaza Strip. "We need to remember that the Occupation is a problem for us", he explained. He further argued: "As long as we are presented as Occupiers, we will continue suffer from anti-Semitic incidents." Like any other racial or ethic prejudice, anti-Semitism is a disease, not a solution or an answer for anything. The specter of anti-Semitism hangs over our heads ominously enough - thanks to the unfortunate tendency towards prejudice in many, which has been exacerbated by the horrific and cruel actions of Israeli Zionists and it´s supporters over the last 60 years - we don´t need to add to it.
Tarak Kauff
Another War, Another Defeat
January 26, 2009 Issue
Copyright © 2009 The American Conservative
Another War, Another Defeat
The Gaza offensive has succeeded in punishing the Palestinians but not in making Israel more secure.
By John J. Mearsheimer
Israelis and their American supporters claim that Israel learned its lessons well from the disastrous 2006 Lebanon war and has devised a winning strategy for the present war against Hamas. Of course, when a ceasefire comes, Israel will declare victory. Don't believe it. Israel has foolishly started another war it cannot win.
The campaign in Gaza is said to have two objectives: 1) to put an end to the rockets and mortars that Palestinians have been firing into southern Israel since it withdrew from Gaza in August 2005; 2) to restore Israel's deterrent, which was said to be diminished by the Lebanon fiasco, by Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, and by its inability to halt Iran's nuclear program.
But these are not the real goals of Operation Cast Lead. The actual purpose is connected to Israel's long-term vision of how it intends to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a broader strategic goal: the creation of a "Greater Israel." Specifically, Israel's leaders remain determined to control all of what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians would have limited autonomy in a handful of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves, one of which is Gaza. Israel would control the borders around them, movement between them, the air above and the water below them.
The key to achieving this is to inflict massive pain on the Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for controlling their future. This strategy, which was first articulated by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s and has heavily influenced Israeli policy since 1948, is commonly referred to as the "Iron Wall."
What has been happening in Gaza is fully consistent with this strategy.
Let's begin with Israel's decision to withdraw from Gaza in 2005. The conventional wisdom is that Israel was serious about making peace with the Palestinians and that its leaders hoped the exit from Gaza would be a major step toward creating a viable Palestinian state. According to the New York Times' Thomas L. Friedman, Israel was giving the Palestinians an opportunity to "build a decent mini-state there-a Dubai on the Mediterranean," and if they did so, it would "fundamentally reshape the Israeli debate about whether the Palestinians can be handed most of the West Bank."
This is pure fiction. Even before Hamas came to power, the Israelis intended to create an open-air prison for the Palestinians in Gaza and inflict great pain on them until they complied with Israel's wishes. Dov Weisglass, Ariel Sharon's closest adviser at the time, candidly stated that the disengagement from Gaza was aimed at halting the peace process, not encouraging it. He described the disengagement as "formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians." Moreover, he emphasized that the withdrawal "places the Palestinians under tremendous pressure. It forces them into a corner where they hate to be."
Arnon Soffer, a prominent Israeli demographer who also advised Sharon, elaborated on what that pressure would look like. "When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It's going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day."
In January 2006, five months after the Israelis pulled their settlers out of Gaza, Hamas won a decisive victory over Fatah in the Palestinian legislative elections. This meant trouble for Israel's strategy because Hamas was democratically elected, well organized, not corrupt like Fatah, and unwilling to accept Israel's existence. Israel responded by ratcheting up economic pressure on the Palestinians, but it did not work. In fact, the situation took another turn for the worse in March 2007, when Fatah and Hamas came together to form a national unity government. Hamas's stature and political power were growing, and Israel's divide-and-conquer strategy was unraveling.
To make matters worse, the national unity government began pushing for a long-term ceasefire. The Palestinians would end all missile attacks on Israel if the Israelis would stop arresting and assassinating Palestinians and end their economic stranglehold, opening the border crossings into Gaza.
Israel rejected that offer and with American backing set out to foment a civil war between Fatah and Hamas that would wreck the national unity government and put Fatah in charge. The plan backfired when Hamas drove Fatah out of Gaza, leaving Hamas in charge there and the more pliant Fatah in control of the West Bank. Israel then tightened the screws on the blockade around Gaza, causing even greater hardship and suffering among the Palestinians living there.
Hamas responded by continuing to fire rockets and mortars into Israel, while emphasizing that they still sought a long-term ceasefire, perhaps lasting ten years or more. This was not a noble gesture on Hamas's part: they sought a ceasefire because the balance of power heavily favored Israel. The Israelis had no interest in a ceasefire and merely intensified the economic pressure on Gaza. But in the late spring of 2008, pressure from Israelis living under the rocket attacks led the government to agree to a six-month ceasefire starting on June 19. That agreement, which formally ended on Dec. 19, immediately preceded the present war, which began on Dec. 27.
The official Israeli position blames Hamas for undermining the ceasefire. This view is widely accepted in the United States, but it is not true. Israeli leaders disliked the ceasefire from the start, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the IDF to begin preparing for the present war while the ceasefire was being negotiated in June 2008. Furthermore, Dan Gillerman, Israel's former ambassador to the UN, reports that Jerusalem began to prepare the propaganda campaign to sell the present war months before the conflict began. For its part, Hamas drastically reduced the number of missile attacks during the first five months of the ceasefire. A total of two rockets were fired into Israel during September and October, none by Hamas.
How did Israel behave during this same period? It continued arresting and assassinating Palestinians on the West Bank, and it continued the deadly blockade that was slowly strangling Gaza. Then on Nov. 4, as Americans voted for a new president, Israel attacked a tunnel inside Gaza and killed six Palestinians. It was the first major violation of the ceasefire, and the Palestinians-who had been "careful to maintain the ceasefire," according to Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center-responded by resuming rocket attacks. The calm that had prevailed since June vanished as Israel ratcheted up the blockade and its attacks into Gaza and the Palestinians hurled more rockets at Israel. It is worth noting that not a single Israeli was killed by Palestinian missiles between Nov. 4 and the launching of the war on Dec. 27.
As the violence increased, Hamas made clear that it had no interest in extending the ceasefire beyond Dec. 19, which is hardly surprising, since it had not worked as intended. In mid-December, however, Hamas informed Israel that it was still willing to negotiate a long-term ceasefire if it included an end to the arrests and assassinations as well as the lifting of the blockade. But the Israelis, having used the ceasefire to prepare for war against Hamas, rejected this overture. The bombing of Gaza commenced eight days after the failed ceasefire formally ended.
If Israel wanted to stop missile attacks from Gaza, it could have done so by arranging a long-term ceasefire with Hamas. And if Israel were genuinely interested in creating a viable Palestinian state, it could have worked with the national unity government to implement a meaningful ceasefire and change Hamas's thinking about a two-state solution. But Israel has a different agenda: it is determined to employ the Iron Wall strategy to get the Palestinians in Gaza to accept their fate as hapless subjects of a Greater Israel.
This brutal policy is clearly reflected in Israel's conduct of the Gaza War. Israel and its supporters claim that the IDF is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, in some cases taking risks that put Israeli soldiers in jeopardy. Hardly. One reason to doubt these claims is that Israel refuses to allow reporters into the war zone: it does not want the world to see what its soldiers and bombs are doing inside Gaza. At the same time, Israel has launched a massive propaganda campaign to put a positive spin on the horror stories that do emerge.
The best evidence, however, that Israel is deliberately seeking to punish the broader population in Gaza is the death and destruction the IDF has wrought on that small piece of real estate. Israel has killed over 1,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 4,000. Over half of the casualties are civilians, and many are children. The IDF's opening salvo on Dec. 27 took place as children were leaving school, and one of its primary targets that day was a large group of graduating police cadets, who hardly qualified as terrorists. In what Ehud Barak called "an all-out war against Hamas," Israel has targeted a university, schools, mosques, homes, apartment buildings, government offices, and even ambulances. A senior Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, explained the logic behind Israel's expansive target set: "There are many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel." In other words, everyone is a terrorist and everything is a legitimate target.
Israelis tend to be blunt, and they occasionally say what they are really doing. After the IDF killed 40 Palestinian civilians in a UN school on Jan. 6, Ha'aretz reported that "senior officers admit that the IDF has been using enormous firepower." One officer explained, "For us, being cautious means being aggressive. From the minute we entered, we've acted like we're at war. That creates enormous damage on the ground . I just hope those who have fled the area of Gaza City in which we are operating will describe the shock."
One might accept that Israel is waging "a cruel, all-out war against 1.5 million Palestinian civilians," as Ha'aretz put it in an editorial, but argue that it will eventually achieve its war aims and the rest of the world will quickly forget the horrors inflicted on the people of Gaza.
This is wishful thinking. For starters, Israel is unlikely to stop the rocket fire for any appreciable period of time unless it agrees to open Gaza's borders and stop arresting and killing Palestinians. Israelis talk about cutting off the supply of rockets and mortars into Gaza, but weapons will continue to come in via secret tunnels and ships that sneak through Israel's naval blockade. It will also be impossible to police all of the goods sent into Gaza through legitimate channels.
Israel could try to conquer all of Gaza and lock the place down. That would probably stop the rocket attacks if Israel deployed a large enough force. But then the IDF would be bogged down in a costly occupation against a deeply hostile population. They would eventually have to leave, and the rocket fire would resume. And if Israel fails to stop the rocket fire and keep it stopped, as seems likely, its deterrent will be diminished, not strengthened.
More importantly, there is little reason to think that the Israelis can beat Hamas into submission and get the Palestinians to live quietly in a handful of Bantustans inside Greater Israel. Israel has been humiliating, torturing, and killing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967 and has not come close to cowing them. Indeed, Hamas's reaction to Israel's brutality seems to lend credence to Nietzsche's remark that what does not kill you makes you stronger.
But even if the unexpected happens and the Palestinians cave, Israel would still lose because it will become an apartheid state. As Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently said, Israel will "face a South African-style struggle" if the Palestinians do not get a viable state of their own. "As soon as that happens," he argued, "the state of Israel is finished." Yet Olmert has done nothing to stop settlement expansion and create a viable Palestinian state, relying instead on the Iron Wall strategy to deal with the Palestinians.
There is also little chance that people around the world who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will soon forget the appalling punishment that Israel is meting out in Gaza. The destruction is just too obvious to miss, and too many people-especially in the Arab and Islamic world-care about the Palestinians' fate. Moreover, discourse about this longstanding conflict has undergone a sea change in the West in recent years, and many of us who were once wholly sympathetic to Israel now see that the Israelis are the victimizers and the Palestinians are the victims. What is happening in Gaza will accelerate that changing picture of the conflict and long be seen as a dark stain on Israel's reputation.
The bottom line is that no matter what happens on the battlefield, Israel cannot win its war in Gaza. In fact, it is pursuing a strategy-with lots of help from its so-called friends in the Diaspora-that is placing its long-term future at risk.
_____________________
John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and coauthor of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
The American Conservative welcomes letters to the editor.
Send letters to: letters@amconmag.com
Copyright © 2009 The American Conservative
Another War, Another Defeat
The Gaza offensive has succeeded in punishing the Palestinians but not in making Israel more secure.
By John J. Mearsheimer
Israelis and their American supporters claim that Israel learned its lessons well from the disastrous 2006 Lebanon war and has devised a winning strategy for the present war against Hamas. Of course, when a ceasefire comes, Israel will declare victory. Don't believe it. Israel has foolishly started another war it cannot win.
The campaign in Gaza is said to have two objectives: 1) to put an end to the rockets and mortars that Palestinians have been firing into southern Israel since it withdrew from Gaza in August 2005; 2) to restore Israel's deterrent, which was said to be diminished by the Lebanon fiasco, by Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, and by its inability to halt Iran's nuclear program.
But these are not the real goals of Operation Cast Lead. The actual purpose is connected to Israel's long-term vision of how it intends to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a broader strategic goal: the creation of a "Greater Israel." Specifically, Israel's leaders remain determined to control all of what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians would have limited autonomy in a handful of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves, one of which is Gaza. Israel would control the borders around them, movement between them, the air above and the water below them.
The key to achieving this is to inflict massive pain on the Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for controlling their future. This strategy, which was first articulated by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s and has heavily influenced Israeli policy since 1948, is commonly referred to as the "Iron Wall."
What has been happening in Gaza is fully consistent with this strategy.
Let's begin with Israel's decision to withdraw from Gaza in 2005. The conventional wisdom is that Israel was serious about making peace with the Palestinians and that its leaders hoped the exit from Gaza would be a major step toward creating a viable Palestinian state. According to the New York Times' Thomas L. Friedman, Israel was giving the Palestinians an opportunity to "build a decent mini-state there-a Dubai on the Mediterranean," and if they did so, it would "fundamentally reshape the Israeli debate about whether the Palestinians can be handed most of the West Bank."
This is pure fiction. Even before Hamas came to power, the Israelis intended to create an open-air prison for the Palestinians in Gaza and inflict great pain on them until they complied with Israel's wishes. Dov Weisglass, Ariel Sharon's closest adviser at the time, candidly stated that the disengagement from Gaza was aimed at halting the peace process, not encouraging it. He described the disengagement as "formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians." Moreover, he emphasized that the withdrawal "places the Palestinians under tremendous pressure. It forces them into a corner where they hate to be."
Arnon Soffer, a prominent Israeli demographer who also advised Sharon, elaborated on what that pressure would look like. "When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It's going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day."
In January 2006, five months after the Israelis pulled their settlers out of Gaza, Hamas won a decisive victory over Fatah in the Palestinian legislative elections. This meant trouble for Israel's strategy because Hamas was democratically elected, well organized, not corrupt like Fatah, and unwilling to accept Israel's existence. Israel responded by ratcheting up economic pressure on the Palestinians, but it did not work. In fact, the situation took another turn for the worse in March 2007, when Fatah and Hamas came together to form a national unity government. Hamas's stature and political power were growing, and Israel's divide-and-conquer strategy was unraveling.
To make matters worse, the national unity government began pushing for a long-term ceasefire. The Palestinians would end all missile attacks on Israel if the Israelis would stop arresting and assassinating Palestinians and end their economic stranglehold, opening the border crossings into Gaza.
Israel rejected that offer and with American backing set out to foment a civil war between Fatah and Hamas that would wreck the national unity government and put Fatah in charge. The plan backfired when Hamas drove Fatah out of Gaza, leaving Hamas in charge there and the more pliant Fatah in control of the West Bank. Israel then tightened the screws on the blockade around Gaza, causing even greater hardship and suffering among the Palestinians living there.
Hamas responded by continuing to fire rockets and mortars into Israel, while emphasizing that they still sought a long-term ceasefire, perhaps lasting ten years or more. This was not a noble gesture on Hamas's part: they sought a ceasefire because the balance of power heavily favored Israel. The Israelis had no interest in a ceasefire and merely intensified the economic pressure on Gaza. But in the late spring of 2008, pressure from Israelis living under the rocket attacks led the government to agree to a six-month ceasefire starting on June 19. That agreement, which formally ended on Dec. 19, immediately preceded the present war, which began on Dec. 27.
The official Israeli position blames Hamas for undermining the ceasefire. This view is widely accepted in the United States, but it is not true. Israeli leaders disliked the ceasefire from the start, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the IDF to begin preparing for the present war while the ceasefire was being negotiated in June 2008. Furthermore, Dan Gillerman, Israel's former ambassador to the UN, reports that Jerusalem began to prepare the propaganda campaign to sell the present war months before the conflict began. For its part, Hamas drastically reduced the number of missile attacks during the first five months of the ceasefire. A total of two rockets were fired into Israel during September and October, none by Hamas.
How did Israel behave during this same period? It continued arresting and assassinating Palestinians on the West Bank, and it continued the deadly blockade that was slowly strangling Gaza. Then on Nov. 4, as Americans voted for a new president, Israel attacked a tunnel inside Gaza and killed six Palestinians. It was the first major violation of the ceasefire, and the Palestinians-who had been "careful to maintain the ceasefire," according to Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center-responded by resuming rocket attacks. The calm that had prevailed since June vanished as Israel ratcheted up the blockade and its attacks into Gaza and the Palestinians hurled more rockets at Israel. It is worth noting that not a single Israeli was killed by Palestinian missiles between Nov. 4 and the launching of the war on Dec. 27.
As the violence increased, Hamas made clear that it had no interest in extending the ceasefire beyond Dec. 19, which is hardly surprising, since it had not worked as intended. In mid-December, however, Hamas informed Israel that it was still willing to negotiate a long-term ceasefire if it included an end to the arrests and assassinations as well as the lifting of the blockade. But the Israelis, having used the ceasefire to prepare for war against Hamas, rejected this overture. The bombing of Gaza commenced eight days after the failed ceasefire formally ended.
If Israel wanted to stop missile attacks from Gaza, it could have done so by arranging a long-term ceasefire with Hamas. And if Israel were genuinely interested in creating a viable Palestinian state, it could have worked with the national unity government to implement a meaningful ceasefire and change Hamas's thinking about a two-state solution. But Israel has a different agenda: it is determined to employ the Iron Wall strategy to get the Palestinians in Gaza to accept their fate as hapless subjects of a Greater Israel.
This brutal policy is clearly reflected in Israel's conduct of the Gaza War. Israel and its supporters claim that the IDF is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, in some cases taking risks that put Israeli soldiers in jeopardy. Hardly. One reason to doubt these claims is that Israel refuses to allow reporters into the war zone: it does not want the world to see what its soldiers and bombs are doing inside Gaza. At the same time, Israel has launched a massive propaganda campaign to put a positive spin on the horror stories that do emerge.
The best evidence, however, that Israel is deliberately seeking to punish the broader population in Gaza is the death and destruction the IDF has wrought on that small piece of real estate. Israel has killed over 1,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 4,000. Over half of the casualties are civilians, and many are children. The IDF's opening salvo on Dec. 27 took place as children were leaving school, and one of its primary targets that day was a large group of graduating police cadets, who hardly qualified as terrorists. In what Ehud Barak called "an all-out war against Hamas," Israel has targeted a university, schools, mosques, homes, apartment buildings, government offices, and even ambulances. A senior Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, explained the logic behind Israel's expansive target set: "There are many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel." In other words, everyone is a terrorist and everything is a legitimate target.
Israelis tend to be blunt, and they occasionally say what they are really doing. After the IDF killed 40 Palestinian civilians in a UN school on Jan. 6, Ha'aretz reported that "senior officers admit that the IDF has been using enormous firepower." One officer explained, "For us, being cautious means being aggressive. From the minute we entered, we've acted like we're at war. That creates enormous damage on the ground . I just hope those who have fled the area of Gaza City in which we are operating will describe the shock."
One might accept that Israel is waging "a cruel, all-out war against 1.5 million Palestinian civilians," as Ha'aretz put it in an editorial, but argue that it will eventually achieve its war aims and the rest of the world will quickly forget the horrors inflicted on the people of Gaza.
This is wishful thinking. For starters, Israel is unlikely to stop the rocket fire for any appreciable period of time unless it agrees to open Gaza's borders and stop arresting and killing Palestinians. Israelis talk about cutting off the supply of rockets and mortars into Gaza, but weapons will continue to come in via secret tunnels and ships that sneak through Israel's naval blockade. It will also be impossible to police all of the goods sent into Gaza through legitimate channels.
Israel could try to conquer all of Gaza and lock the place down. That would probably stop the rocket attacks if Israel deployed a large enough force. But then the IDF would be bogged down in a costly occupation against a deeply hostile population. They would eventually have to leave, and the rocket fire would resume. And if Israel fails to stop the rocket fire and keep it stopped, as seems likely, its deterrent will be diminished, not strengthened.
More importantly, there is little reason to think that the Israelis can beat Hamas into submission and get the Palestinians to live quietly in a handful of Bantustans inside Greater Israel. Israel has been humiliating, torturing, and killing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967 and has not come close to cowing them. Indeed, Hamas's reaction to Israel's brutality seems to lend credence to Nietzsche's remark that what does not kill you makes you stronger.
But even if the unexpected happens and the Palestinians cave, Israel would still lose because it will become an apartheid state. As Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently said, Israel will "face a South African-style struggle" if the Palestinians do not get a viable state of their own. "As soon as that happens," he argued, "the state of Israel is finished." Yet Olmert has done nothing to stop settlement expansion and create a viable Palestinian state, relying instead on the Iron Wall strategy to deal with the Palestinians.
There is also little chance that people around the world who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will soon forget the appalling punishment that Israel is meting out in Gaza. The destruction is just too obvious to miss, and too many people-especially in the Arab and Islamic world-care about the Palestinians' fate. Moreover, discourse about this longstanding conflict has undergone a sea change in the West in recent years, and many of us who were once wholly sympathetic to Israel now see that the Israelis are the victimizers and the Palestinians are the victims. What is happening in Gaza will accelerate that changing picture of the conflict and long be seen as a dark stain on Israel's reputation.
The bottom line is that no matter what happens on the battlefield, Israel cannot win its war in Gaza. In fact, it is pursuing a strategy-with lots of help from its so-called friends in the Diaspora-that is placing its long-term future at risk.
_____________________
John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and coauthor of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
The American Conservative welcomes letters to the editor.
Send letters to: letters@amconmag.com
Ms Tantalus
URI AVNERY DOES IT AGAIN!
CNI MEMBER DELIVERS A WELL WRITTEN PEACE ON THE ISRAELI ELECTION:
Ms Tantalus
TANTALUS IS punished by the Gods for reasons that are not entirely clear. He is hungry and thirsty, but the water in which he stands recedes when he bends down to drink from it and the fruit above his head continually evades his hand.
Tzipi Livni is now undergoing a similar torture. After winning an impressive personal victory at the polls, the political fruit keeps slipping from her grasp when she stretches out her hand.
Why should she deserve that? What has she done, after all? Supported the war, called for a boycott of Hamas, played around with empty negotiations with the Palestinian Authority? OK, she has indeed.. But such a terrible punishment?
HOWEVER, THE results of the elections are not as clear as they might seem. The victory of the Right is not so unambiguous.
Central to the election campaign was the personal competition between the two contenders for the Prime Minister's office: Livni and Netanyahu (or, as they call themselves, as if they were still at kindergarten, Tzipi and Bibi.)
Contrary to all expectations and all polls, Livni beat Netanyahu. Several factors were involved in this. Among others: the masses of the Left were terrified by the possibility of Netanyahu winning, and flocked to Livni's camp in order to "Stop Bibi!" Also, Livni - who was never identified with feminism - remembered at the last moment to call Israel's women to her banner, and they hearkened to her call.
But it is impossible to ignore the main significance of this choice: Netanyahu symbolizes total opposition to peace, opposition to giving back the occupied territories, to the freezing of the settlements and to a Palestinian state. Livni, on the other hand, has declared more than once her total support for the "Two-Nation-States" solution. Her voters opted for the more moderate line.
True, the big winner in the elections was Avigdor Liberman. But his triumph is far from the fateful breakthrough everyone foresaw. He did not win the 20 seats he had promised. His ascent from 11 to 15 seats is not so dramatic. His party is indeed now the third largest in the Knesset, but that is less due to its own rise than to the collapse of Labor, which fell from 19 to 13. By the way, not one of the parties won even 25% of the vote. Israeli democracy is now very fragile indeed.
The Liberman phenomenon is ominous, but not (yet?) disastrous.
HOWEVER, THERE is no way to deny the most significant message of these elections: the Israeli public has moved to the right. From Likud to the right there are now 65 seats, from Kadima to the left only 55. One cannot argue with numbers.
What has caused this shift?
There are several explanations, all of them valid.
One can consider it as a passing phase after the war. A war arouses strong emotions - nationalist intoxication, hatred of the enemy, fear of the Other, longing for unity and for revenge,. All these naturally serve the Right - a lesson sometimes forgotten by the left when it starts a war.
Others see in it a continuation of a historical process: the Zionist-Palestinian confrontation is becoming wider and more complex, and such a situation feeds the Right.
And then there is, of course, the demographic factor. The rightist bloc attracts the votes of three sectors: the Oriental Jews (a majority of whom vote for Likud), the religious (who mostly vote for the fundamentalists) and the Russians (most of whom vote for Liberman). This is a group vote, almost automatic.
Two sectors in Israel have an especially high birth-rate: the religious Jews and the Arabs. The religious vote almost unanimously for the Right. True, the Orthodox and the National-Religious parties have not increased their strength in the elections, probably because many of their natural voters chose Likud, Liberman or the even more extreme National Union. The Arab citizens almost completely abstained from voting for Jewish parties, as many of them used to in the past, and the three Arab parties together gained one more seat.
The demographic development is ominous. Kadima, Labor and Meretz are identified with the old-established Ashkenazi sector, whose demographic strength is in steady decline. Also, many young Ashkenazis gave their votes - at least four seats worth - to Liberman, who preaches a secular fascism. They hate the Arabs, but they also hate the religious Jews.
The conclusion is quite clear: if the "center-left" does not succeed in breaking out of its elitist ghetto and striking roots within the Oriental and Russian sectors, its decline will continue from election to election.
NOW MS TANTALUS must choose between two bitter options: to retire to the desert where there is neither water nor fruit, or to serve as a fig-leaf for an obnoxious coalition.
Option No. 1: to refuse to join Netanyahu's coalition and to go into opposition. That is not so simple. The Kadima party came into being when Ariel Sharon promised its members - refugees from right and left - power. It will be very hard for Livni to hold the lot together in opposition, far from the seat of power, far from the posh ministers' offices and from luxurious official cars.
That would give us a rightist government which includes open fascists, pupils of Meir Kahane (whose party was banned because of his racist teachings), the advocates of ethnic cleansing, of the expulsion of Israel's Arab citizens and the liquidation of any chance for peace. Such a government would inevitably find itself in confrontation with the United States and in worldwide isolation.
Some people say: that's good. Such a government will necessarily fall soon and break apart. Thus the public will be persuaded that there is no viable rightist option. Kadima, Labor and Meretz will stew in opposition, and perhaps a real center-left alternative will come into being.
Others say: too risky. There is no limit to the disasters that a Netanyahu-Liberman-Kahanist government can bring upon the state, from the enlargement of the settlements that will torpedo any future peace, to outright war. We can't stake everything on one card, when the chip is the State of Israel.
Livni's option No. 2: to swallow the bitter pill, give in and join the Netanyahu government as a second, third or fourth wheel. In that case, she must decide at once, before Netanyahu establishes a fait accompli with an extreme-right coalition which Livni would then be invited to join as a junior partner.
I shall not be surprised if President Shimon Peres takes the initiative unofficially and promotes this option - before starting, in a week's time, the official process of consulting with the Knesset factions and entrusting one of the candidates with the task of forming a government.
Could such a government move towards peace? Conduct real negotiations? Agree to the dismantling of settlements? Accept a Palestinian state? Recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas?
Hard to imagine. In the best case, it will go on with the charade of meaningless negotiations, quietly enlarge the settlements, lead Barack Obama by the nose and mobilize the pro-Israel lobby in order to obstruct any real American moves towards peace. What was will be.
CAN ISRAEL change course? Can a real peace-oriented alternative arise?
The two "Zionist Left" parties have been decisively beaten. Both Labor and Meretz have collapsed. Their two leaders who called for the Gaza War and supported it - Ehud Barak of Labor and Haim Oron of Meretz - have received the punishment they richly deserve. In a normal democracy, both would have resigned the day after the elections. But our democracy is not normal, and both leaders insist on staying on and leading their party to the next disaster.
Labor is a walking corpse - the only "social-democratic" party in the world whose leader's sole aim is to stay on as war minister. When Barak spread the mantra "there is no one to talk with" he overlooked the logical conclusion "therefore we don't need anyone to talk with them".
The Labor Party has no party, no members, no political program, no alternative leadership. It will fail in opposition as it failed in government. Barring a miracle, it will end up in the junkyard of history.
It will find Meretz already there. A socialist party that lost its way a long time ago: a party without any roots in the classes at the foot of the socioeconomic ladder, a party that has supported all our wars.
Some believe in easy solutions: a union of Labor and Meretz, for example. That is a union of the lame and the blind. No reason to expect that they would win the race.
THE REAL task is far more difficult. A completely new building must be erected in place of the one which has collapsed.
The need is for a new Left that will include new leaders from the sectors that have been discriminated against: the Orientals, the Russians and the Arabs. A new Left that will express the ideals of a new generation, people of peace, advocates of social change, feminists and greens, who will all understand that one cannot realize one ideal without realizing all of them. There can be no social justice in a military state; no one is interested in the environment while the cannons are roaring, feminism is incompatible with a society of machos riding on tanks, there can be no respect for Oriental Jews in a society that despises the culture of the Orient.
The Arab citizens will have to leave the ghetto in which they are confined and start to talk with the Jewish public, and the Jewish public must talk with the Arabs on equal terms. The Liberman slogan "No Citizenship Without Loyalty" must be turned around: "No Loyalty Without Real Citizenship".
As Obama has done in the US, a new language, a new lexicon must be created, to replace the old and tired phrases.
Much, much must be changed if we want to save the state.
AS FOR Ms. Tantalus: she can contribute to this process of change, or her torture will continue.
Echoing Pyrrhus, king of Epirus and Macedon, she can well say: Another such victory and we are undone.
CNI MEMBER DELIVERS A WELL WRITTEN PEACE ON THE ISRAELI ELECTION:
Ms Tantalus
TANTALUS IS punished by the Gods for reasons that are not entirely clear. He is hungry and thirsty, but the water in which he stands recedes when he bends down to drink from it and the fruit above his head continually evades his hand.
Tzipi Livni is now undergoing a similar torture. After winning an impressive personal victory at the polls, the political fruit keeps slipping from her grasp when she stretches out her hand.
Why should she deserve that? What has she done, after all? Supported the war, called for a boycott of Hamas, played around with empty negotiations with the Palestinian Authority? OK, she has indeed.. But such a terrible punishment?
HOWEVER, THE results of the elections are not as clear as they might seem. The victory of the Right is not so unambiguous.
Central to the election campaign was the personal competition between the two contenders for the Prime Minister's office: Livni and Netanyahu (or, as they call themselves, as if they were still at kindergarten, Tzipi and Bibi.)
Contrary to all expectations and all polls, Livni beat Netanyahu. Several factors were involved in this. Among others: the masses of the Left were terrified by the possibility of Netanyahu winning, and flocked to Livni's camp in order to "Stop Bibi!" Also, Livni - who was never identified with feminism - remembered at the last moment to call Israel's women to her banner, and they hearkened to her call.
But it is impossible to ignore the main significance of this choice: Netanyahu symbolizes total opposition to peace, opposition to giving back the occupied territories, to the freezing of the settlements and to a Palestinian state. Livni, on the other hand, has declared more than once her total support for the "Two-Nation-States" solution. Her voters opted for the more moderate line.
True, the big winner in the elections was Avigdor Liberman. But his triumph is far from the fateful breakthrough everyone foresaw. He did not win the 20 seats he had promised. His ascent from 11 to 15 seats is not so dramatic. His party is indeed now the third largest in the Knesset, but that is less due to its own rise than to the collapse of Labor, which fell from 19 to 13. By the way, not one of the parties won even 25% of the vote. Israeli democracy is now very fragile indeed.
The Liberman phenomenon is ominous, but not (yet?) disastrous.
HOWEVER, THERE is no way to deny the most significant message of these elections: the Israeli public has moved to the right. From Likud to the right there are now 65 seats, from Kadima to the left only 55. One cannot argue with numbers.
What has caused this shift?
There are several explanations, all of them valid.
One can consider it as a passing phase after the war. A war arouses strong emotions - nationalist intoxication, hatred of the enemy, fear of the Other, longing for unity and for revenge,. All these naturally serve the Right - a lesson sometimes forgotten by the left when it starts a war.
Others see in it a continuation of a historical process: the Zionist-Palestinian confrontation is becoming wider and more complex, and such a situation feeds the Right.
And then there is, of course, the demographic factor. The rightist bloc attracts the votes of three sectors: the Oriental Jews (a majority of whom vote for Likud), the religious (who mostly vote for the fundamentalists) and the Russians (most of whom vote for Liberman). This is a group vote, almost automatic.
Two sectors in Israel have an especially high birth-rate: the religious Jews and the Arabs. The religious vote almost unanimously for the Right. True, the Orthodox and the National-Religious parties have not increased their strength in the elections, probably because many of their natural voters chose Likud, Liberman or the even more extreme National Union. The Arab citizens almost completely abstained from voting for Jewish parties, as many of them used to in the past, and the three Arab parties together gained one more seat.
The demographic development is ominous. Kadima, Labor and Meretz are identified with the old-established Ashkenazi sector, whose demographic strength is in steady decline. Also, many young Ashkenazis gave their votes - at least four seats worth - to Liberman, who preaches a secular fascism. They hate the Arabs, but they also hate the religious Jews.
The conclusion is quite clear: if the "center-left" does not succeed in breaking out of its elitist ghetto and striking roots within the Oriental and Russian sectors, its decline will continue from election to election.
NOW MS TANTALUS must choose between two bitter options: to retire to the desert where there is neither water nor fruit, or to serve as a fig-leaf for an obnoxious coalition.
Option No. 1: to refuse to join Netanyahu's coalition and to go into opposition. That is not so simple. The Kadima party came into being when Ariel Sharon promised its members - refugees from right and left - power. It will be very hard for Livni to hold the lot together in opposition, far from the seat of power, far from the posh ministers' offices and from luxurious official cars.
That would give us a rightist government which includes open fascists, pupils of Meir Kahane (whose party was banned because of his racist teachings), the advocates of ethnic cleansing, of the expulsion of Israel's Arab citizens and the liquidation of any chance for peace. Such a government would inevitably find itself in confrontation with the United States and in worldwide isolation.
Some people say: that's good. Such a government will necessarily fall soon and break apart. Thus the public will be persuaded that there is no viable rightist option. Kadima, Labor and Meretz will stew in opposition, and perhaps a real center-left alternative will come into being.
Others say: too risky. There is no limit to the disasters that a Netanyahu-Liberman-Kahanist government can bring upon the state, from the enlargement of the settlements that will torpedo any future peace, to outright war. We can't stake everything on one card, when the chip is the State of Israel.
Livni's option No. 2: to swallow the bitter pill, give in and join the Netanyahu government as a second, third or fourth wheel. In that case, she must decide at once, before Netanyahu establishes a fait accompli with an extreme-right coalition which Livni would then be invited to join as a junior partner.
I shall not be surprised if President Shimon Peres takes the initiative unofficially and promotes this option - before starting, in a week's time, the official process of consulting with the Knesset factions and entrusting one of the candidates with the task of forming a government.
Could such a government move towards peace? Conduct real negotiations? Agree to the dismantling of settlements? Accept a Palestinian state? Recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas?
Hard to imagine. In the best case, it will go on with the charade of meaningless negotiations, quietly enlarge the settlements, lead Barack Obama by the nose and mobilize the pro-Israel lobby in order to obstruct any real American moves towards peace. What was will be.
CAN ISRAEL change course? Can a real peace-oriented alternative arise?
The two "Zionist Left" parties have been decisively beaten. Both Labor and Meretz have collapsed. Their two leaders who called for the Gaza War and supported it - Ehud Barak of Labor and Haim Oron of Meretz - have received the punishment they richly deserve. In a normal democracy, both would have resigned the day after the elections. But our democracy is not normal, and both leaders insist on staying on and leading their party to the next disaster.
Labor is a walking corpse - the only "social-democratic" party in the world whose leader's sole aim is to stay on as war minister. When Barak spread the mantra "there is no one to talk with" he overlooked the logical conclusion "therefore we don't need anyone to talk with them".
The Labor Party has no party, no members, no political program, no alternative leadership. It will fail in opposition as it failed in government. Barring a miracle, it will end up in the junkyard of history.
It will find Meretz already there. A socialist party that lost its way a long time ago: a party without any roots in the classes at the foot of the socioeconomic ladder, a party that has supported all our wars.
Some believe in easy solutions: a union of Labor and Meretz, for example. That is a union of the lame and the blind. No reason to expect that they would win the race.
THE REAL task is far more difficult. A completely new building must be erected in place of the one which has collapsed.
The need is for a new Left that will include new leaders from the sectors that have been discriminated against: the Orientals, the Russians and the Arabs. A new Left that will express the ideals of a new generation, people of peace, advocates of social change, feminists and greens, who will all understand that one cannot realize one ideal without realizing all of them. There can be no social justice in a military state; no one is interested in the environment while the cannons are roaring, feminism is incompatible with a society of machos riding on tanks, there can be no respect for Oriental Jews in a society that despises the culture of the Orient.
The Arab citizens will have to leave the ghetto in which they are confined and start to talk with the Jewish public, and the Jewish public must talk with the Arabs on equal terms. The Liberman slogan "No Citizenship Without Loyalty" must be turned around: "No Loyalty Without Real Citizenship".
As Obama has done in the US, a new language, a new lexicon must be created, to replace the old and tired phrases.
Much, much must be changed if we want to save the state.
AS FOR Ms. Tantalus: she can contribute to this process of change, or her torture will continue.
Echoing Pyrrhus, king of Epirus and Macedon, she can well say: Another such victory and we are undone.
It was a rare moment on Capitol Hill
M J Rosenberg is Director of Policy for the Israel Policy Forum.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/congressman-ackerman-spea_b_166802.html
[Excerpts]
Yesterday, Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia convened a hearing on the Gaza situation.
Dr. Ziad J.Asali, President of the American Task Force on Palestine, delivered an eloquent statement explaining why it is morally wrong to punish the people of Gaza and also why it is naïve to believe that Hamas will ever change its terrorist stripes.
Naturally, he was attacked by several of the Representatives in Congress who, with the lobby's talking points in hand, struggled mightily to justify withholding United Nations-sponsored humanitarian aid from innocent people. It was the usual stuff from the usual suspects, one of whom was not Gary Ackerman.
Ackerman has long been Israel's most outspoken advocate in Congress. However, his idea of supporting Israel does not include punishing children. And, wonder of wonders, the Democrat from Queens blames both Palestinians and Israelis for the current horrors. In Congress, it is de rigeuer to insist that the Israelis are always innocent and the Palestinians always guilty.
But, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ackerman said yesterday that Israeli hardliners and Palestinian terrorists are "all part of the same destructive dynamic."
The "downward spiral" in the region "comes from terrorism and the march of settlements. It comes from the firing of rockets and the perpetration of settler pogroms. It comes in daily images of destruction and the constant reiteration that 'they only understand the language of force.' It comes from tunnels in Gaza and, yes, from digging in Jerusalem as well."
Amen.
Will Ackerman catch hell for his statement? Will he be sat down for some friendly warnings by the lobby? Will he be threatened by wealthy donors?
You bet he will. But he knew that before he opened his mouth and, rare on Capitol Hill, he concluded to "damn the consequences." (There won't be any anyway--none that matter--which will encourage his more timid colleagues to follow Ackerman's example).
It was a rare moment on Capitol Hill. A powerful pro-Israel Representative departed from the script and told his listeners that the current course is bad for America, bad for Israel, and bad for the Palestinians. It was, perhaps, the first such moment in a subcommittee that has always been rather predictable when it comes to Israel. But I suspect it won't be the last.
What can you do to help?
Why don't you give Congressman Ackerman a call and thank him? Believe me, the status quo lobby will be calling and reading Ackerman the riot act. Just call 202-225-2601 and tell whoever answers to give the Congressman a message. A hearty "way to go, Gary" will suffice.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/congressman-ackerman-spea_b_166802.html
[Excerpts]
Yesterday, Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia convened a hearing on the Gaza situation.
Dr. Ziad J.Asali, President of the American Task Force on Palestine, delivered an eloquent statement explaining why it is morally wrong to punish the people of Gaza and also why it is naïve to believe that Hamas will ever change its terrorist stripes.
Naturally, he was attacked by several of the Representatives in Congress who, with the lobby's talking points in hand, struggled mightily to justify withholding United Nations-sponsored humanitarian aid from innocent people. It was the usual stuff from the usual suspects, one of whom was not Gary Ackerman.
Ackerman has long been Israel's most outspoken advocate in Congress. However, his idea of supporting Israel does not include punishing children. And, wonder of wonders, the Democrat from Queens blames both Palestinians and Israelis for the current horrors. In Congress, it is de rigeuer to insist that the Israelis are always innocent and the Palestinians always guilty.
But, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ackerman said yesterday that Israeli hardliners and Palestinian terrorists are "all part of the same destructive dynamic."
The "downward spiral" in the region "comes from terrorism and the march of settlements. It comes from the firing of rockets and the perpetration of settler pogroms. It comes in daily images of destruction and the constant reiteration that 'they only understand the language of force.' It comes from tunnels in Gaza and, yes, from digging in Jerusalem as well."
Amen.
Will Ackerman catch hell for his statement? Will he be sat down for some friendly warnings by the lobby? Will he be threatened by wealthy donors?
You bet he will. But he knew that before he opened his mouth and, rare on Capitol Hill, he concluded to "damn the consequences." (There won't be any anyway--none that matter--which will encourage his more timid colleagues to follow Ackerman's example).
It was a rare moment on Capitol Hill. A powerful pro-Israel Representative departed from the script and told his listeners that the current course is bad for America, bad for Israel, and bad for the Palestinians. It was, perhaps, the first such moment in a subcommittee that has always been rather predictable when it comes to Israel. But I suspect it won't be the last.
What can you do to help?
Why don't you give Congressman Ackerman a call and thank him? Believe me, the status quo lobby will be calling and reading Ackerman the riot act. Just call 202-225-2601 and tell whoever answers to give the Congressman a message. A hearty "way to go, Gary" will suffice.
To the Editor: Woodstock Times
I am writing in response to the letter from The Jewish Federation of Ulster County in your last issue, which I strongly suspect was not written in Kingston. It reflects perfectly the Israeli position, crowing over its impunity in imagined "victory" over a helpless population, half-starved and deprived of clean water, sewage disposal, medicine, electricity, half of whose children are now anaemic with signs of malnutrition, packed into a walled-in concentration camp - an absolutely unequal fight popular opinion here spontaneously calls "shooting fish in a barrel". But these are human beings, children, women, men, civilians, doctors, ambulance drivers, fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, grandparents, attacked not just with armor and jets, but with white phosphorus, depleted uranium, and with Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), with no place to run to shelter. This letter reflects no awareness of the suffering caused.
The campaign against Gaza is now the subject of the greatest Israeli propaganda campaign in Israel's history. Certainly, in a large part of the American and world public who have hoped for better or have not previously been following the news, Israel has reaped a harvest of revulsion and loathing that no frantic propaganda campaign can erase.
So where is the victory? The feeble rockets continue, demonstrating that David has in fact survived Goliath, which reinforces Hamas's backing. Israel is likely to repeat the slaughter. And why is Israel doing this?
One of the world's leading political psychologists, the Israeli David Bar Tal, has done a study called "Is an Israeli Jewish sense of victimization perpetuating the conflict with the Palestinians?" Hebrew title: "What do Jews in Israel know about the conflict with the Palestinians?" He says that Israeli Jews' consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering. He and his partner say those with a "Zionist memory" see Israel and the Jews as the victims in the conflict, and don't support agreements or compromises with the Palestinians to obtain peace; they note that changes to eliminate bias and indoctrination in the teaching of the conflict would help.
The esteemed London professor, author and psychoanalyst Jacqueline Rose, who is Jewish, puts it this way: : "(criticism) is in no way to diminish the traumatic impact of the Holocaust but to register it all the more powerfully. The effect of trauma is precisely to freeze people in time. There is a psychological dimension to this conflict that seems almost impossibly difficult to shift. In its own eyes, Israel is never the originator and agent of is own violence, and to that extent its violence is always justified. The Palestinians do not count. Even when the worst of what has been done to them is registered inside Israel, it is still the Israeli who suffers more."
So peace must come from strong outside intervention. George Mitchell is a good person for that. Even though Abraham Foxman told Obama "He is very fair, very even-handed. But that is not the kind of person we need in this situation." It is time for Americans to support a change in policy, and to strongly back a "fair, even-handed' person, to stop the siege of Gaza, and to insist all sides be listened to, including Hamas, in a wide dialogue, to achieve peace.
Sincerely,
Sheila Finan
The campaign against Gaza is now the subject of the greatest Israeli propaganda campaign in Israel's history. Certainly, in a large part of the American and world public who have hoped for better or have not previously been following the news, Israel has reaped a harvest of revulsion and loathing that no frantic propaganda campaign can erase.
So where is the victory? The feeble rockets continue, demonstrating that David has in fact survived Goliath, which reinforces Hamas's backing. Israel is likely to repeat the slaughter. And why is Israel doing this?
One of the world's leading political psychologists, the Israeli David Bar Tal, has done a study called "Is an Israeli Jewish sense of victimization perpetuating the conflict with the Palestinians?" Hebrew title: "What do Jews in Israel know about the conflict with the Palestinians?" He says that Israeli Jews' consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering. He and his partner say those with a "Zionist memory" see Israel and the Jews as the victims in the conflict, and don't support agreements or compromises with the Palestinians to obtain peace; they note that changes to eliminate bias and indoctrination in the teaching of the conflict would help.
The esteemed London professor, author and psychoanalyst Jacqueline Rose, who is Jewish, puts it this way: : "(criticism) is in no way to diminish the traumatic impact of the Holocaust but to register it all the more powerfully. The effect of trauma is precisely to freeze people in time. There is a psychological dimension to this conflict that seems almost impossibly difficult to shift. In its own eyes, Israel is never the originator and agent of is own violence, and to that extent its violence is always justified. The Palestinians do not count. Even when the worst of what has been done to them is registered inside Israel, it is still the Israeli who suffers more."
So peace must come from strong outside intervention. George Mitchell is a good person for that. Even though Abraham Foxman told Obama "He is very fair, very even-handed. But that is not the kind of person we need in this situation." It is time for Americans to support a change in policy, and to strongly back a "fair, even-handed' person, to stop the siege of Gaza, and to insist all sides be listened to, including Hamas, in a wide dialogue, to achieve peace.
Sincerely,
Sheila Finan
CUT AID TO ISRAEL
Woodstock Times Feb. 2009
With millions of Americans out of work, why send over $3 billion a year in aid to an already rich country? The Israeli average income is $31,767 a year (as per International Monetary Fund 2008). U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel is $ 3-5 billion a year.
Israel is the No. 1 recipient of U.S. Foreign Aid in the world. While Israelis lead a country club lifestyle, they use our money and military technology to oppress and attack their neighbors.
Palestinians in Gaza are forced to live on less than $732 a year. Yet Israel is determined to squeeze more out of them. If they resist, they are labeled "terrorists", attacked, and beaten into submission. Can't our foreign aid dollars be put to better use? It's time to break the grip of the Israeli lobby on Washington and cut Foreign Aid to Israel.
Bill Campion
Mt. Tremper
With millions of Americans out of work, why send over $3 billion a year in aid to an already rich country? The Israeli average income is $31,767 a year (as per International Monetary Fund 2008). U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel is $ 3-5 billion a year.
Israel is the No. 1 recipient of U.S. Foreign Aid in the world. While Israelis lead a country club lifestyle, they use our money and military technology to oppress and attack their neighbors.
Palestinians in Gaza are forced to live on less than $732 a year. Yet Israel is determined to squeeze more out of them. If they resist, they are labeled "terrorists", attacked, and beaten into submission. Can't our foreign aid dollars be put to better use? It's time to break the grip of the Israeli lobby on Washington and cut Foreign Aid to Israel.
Bill Campion
Mt. Tremper
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