Palestine after Abbas: The Future of a People at Stake.

=By= Ramzy Baroud, PhD

M. Abbas

Although intended to inspire his Fatah Party followers, a televised speech by Mahmoud Abbas on the 51st Anniversary of the group’s launch highlighted, instead, the unprecedented crisis that continues to wreak havoc on the Palestinian people. Not only did Abbas sound defensive and lacking in any serious or new initiatives, but his ultimate intention appeared as if it was about his political survival, and nothing else.

In his speech on December 31, he tossed in many of the old clichés, chastising Israel at times, although in carefully-worded language, and insisted that any vital decisions concerned with “the future of the land, people and national rights” would be “subject to general elections and (voted on by the Palestine) National Council (PNC), because our people made heavy sacrifices and they are the source of all authorities.”

Ironically, Abbas presides over the Palestinian Authority (PA) with a mandate that expired in January 2009 and his party, Fatah, which refused to accept the results of democratic elections in the Occupied Territories in 2006, continues to behave as the ‘ruling party’ with no mandate, aside from the political validation it receives from Israel, the US and their allies.

As for the PNC, it served as the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) until the PA was established in 1994. Propped up by international funds, the PA was initially formed as a means to an end, that being ‘final status’ negotiations and a Palestinian State. Instead, it became a status quo in itself, and its institutions, which largely reflected the political interests of a specific branch within Fatah, replaced the PLO, the PNC, together with all other institutions that expressed a degree of democracy and inclusiveness.

Whatever PLO structure that symbolically remained in place after the PA soft coup is now a rubber stamp that does not merely reflect the wishes of a single party, Fatah (which lost its majority among Palestinians in 2006), but an elitist, wealthy group within the once-leading party. In some way, Abbas’ current role is largely to serve the interest of this group, as opposed to charting a path of liberation for the entire Palestinian collective, at home, in refugee camps or in the Diaspora.

Nothing was as telling about Abbas’ real mission at the helm of the PA than his statement in his speech of December 31, where he completely ruled out the dismantling of the PA – now that it has failed in its mission, and while an elaborate PLO political structure already exists, which is capable of replacing it. Oddly, Abbas described the PA as one of the greatest achievements of the Palestinian people.

I say, ‘oddly’ because the PA was the outcome of the now practically defunct Oslo ‘peace process’, which was negotiated by Abbas and a few others in secret with Israel, at the behest of the late Palestinian Fatah leader, Yasser Arafat. The whole initiative was founded on secrecy and deceit and was signed without taking the Palestinian people into account. Worse, when Palestinians attempted to vote to challenge the status quo wrought by Oslo, the outcome of the elections was dismissed by Fatah, which led to a civil war in 2007 where hundreds of Palestinians were killed.

But aside from the historical lapses of Abbas, who is now 80-years-old, his words – although meant to assure his supporters – are, in fact, a stark reminder that the Palestinian people, who have been undergoing a violent uprising since October, are practically leaderless.

While Abbas explains that the reason behind the ‘habba’ or the ‘rising’ – a reference to the current Intifada – is Israel’s continued violations and illegal settlement, he failed to endorse the current uprising or behave as if he is the leader of that national mobilization. He constantly tries to hold the proverbial stick in the middle so that he does not invite the ire of his people nor that of Israel.

Like a crafty politician, he is also trying to reap multiple benefits, siding with the people at times, as if a revolutionary leader, to remind Israel and the US of his importance as someone who represents the non-violent strand of Palestinian politics, and ride the wave of the intifada until the old order is restored. In fact, signs of that old order – interminable negotiations – are still evident. The PA’s Chief Negotiator, Saeb Erekat, has recently announced that talks between the PA and Israel are still taking place, a terrible omen at a time when Palestinians are in desperate need for a complete overhaul of their failed approach to politics and national liberation.

However, the problem is much bigger than Mahmoud Abbas. Reducing the Palestinian failure to the character of a single person is deeply rooted in most political analyses pertaining to Palestine for many years. (This is actually more pronounced in Western media than in Arabic media). Alas, once aging Abbas is no longer on the political scene, the problem is likely to persist, if not addressed.

While Fatah has made marked contributions to Palestinian Resistance, its greatest contribution was liberating the Palestinian cause, as much as is practically possible, from the confines and manipulation of Arab politics. Thanks to that generation of young Palestinian leaders, which also included leaders of the PFLP and other socialist groups, there was, for once, a relatively unified Palestinian platform that did represent a degree of Palestinian priorities and objectives.

But that relative unity was splintered among Palestinian factionalism: within the PLO itself, and then outside the PLO, where groups and sub-groups grew into a variety of ideological directions, many of whom were funded by Arab regimes which utilized the Palestinian struggle to serve national and regional agendas. A long and tragic episode of national collapse followed. When the Palestinian Resistance was exiled from Lebanon in 1982, following the Israeli invasion of that country, the PLO and all of its institutions were mostly ruled by a single party. Fatah, by then, grew older and more corrupt, operating within geographical spheres that were far away from Palestine. It dominated the PLO which, by then, grew into a body mired in political tribalism and financial corruption.

True, Abbas is an essential character in that sorry episode which led to the Oslo fiasco in 1993; however, the burgeoning political culture that he partly espoused will continue to operate independent from the aspirations of the Palestinian people, with or without Abbas.

It is this class, which is fed with US-Western money and perks and happily tolerated by Israel, which must be confronted by Palestinians themselves, if they are to have a real chance at reclaiming their national objectives once more.

The current wisdom conveyed by some, that today’s Intifada has superseded the PA, is utter nonsense. No popular mobilization has a chance of succeeding if it is impeded by such a powerful group as those invested in the PA, all unified by a great tug of self-interest.

Moreover, waiting for Abbas to articulate a stronger, more convincing message is also a waste of time, since the ailment is not Abbas’ use of vocabulary, but his group’s refusal to cede an inch of their undeserved privilege, in order to open up space for a more democratic environment – so that all Palestinians, secularists, Islamists and socialists take equal part in the struggle for Palestine.

A starting point would be a unified leadership in the Occupied Territories that manages the Intifada outside the confines of factions, combined with a vision for revamping PLO institutions to become more inclusive and to bring all Palestinians, everywhere, together.

Abbas is soon to depart the political scene, either because of an internal Fatah coup, or as a result of old age. Either way, the future of Palestine cannot be left to his followers, to manage as they see fit and to protect their own interests. The future of an entire nation is at stake.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include ‘Searching Jenin’, ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada’ and his latest ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net.

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Erasing Palestinians from Their Homeland

The Big Lie

=By= Yves Engler

Rafah, Palestine

RThe big lie is a propaganda technique generally employed when telling the truth would be unfavorable to your side. It goes like this: never admit doing any wrong and instead always insist on a story that portrays your side as the good guys. What really happened is irrelevant. The key is repetition. Do it often enough and loudly enough until most people believe you.

While the big lie is most often associated with authoritarian governments, its use is actually quite widespread. For example, the Montreal Gazette recently published a front page article claiming Jewish students at Concordia University were “feeling like the target of a hate campaign.” The reason cited, as far as this writer can tell, was simply that many students were standing in solidarity with Palestinians.

At the end of November, the student group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights organized BDS Week. Without citing a single incident of actual racism, the Gazette painted a picture of the discussion series as hateful. Reporter Karen Seidman simply quoted an individual decrying “a hostile environment on campus” and another who denounced “speakers slandering Israeli tactics and spewing hate.”

In her article, Seidman also labeled a referendum held last year in which undergraduates voted to support the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel as “contentious” and downplayed its significance by saying only “a tiny fraction” of the overall student body participated.

So why is this a big lie?

First, the side favored is portrayed as a victim of “hate” with no evidence presented except criticism of the Israeli state causing hurt feelings. Second, and most important, the article blissfully ignores any historical background that would present Palestinian sympathizers in a positive light or even provide context for what they are doing.

It abjectly fails to even get any comment from any supporter of BDS. The reporter writes that she tried and failed to get a comment from the organizers, but it should surely not be beyond a reporter’s ability to get an alternative pro-BDS voice.

And while portraying a rather modest week of solidarity events as hateful, the reporter also ignores how a well-funded Concordia institute has engaged in an effort to erase Palestinians from historical memory.

In 2011, multibillionaire David Azrieli gave Concordia $5 million to set up the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies.

The institute established the first minor degree program in Israel studies at a Canadian university.

This wasn’t a disinterested, apolitical donation. Azrieli, an Israeli-Canadian real estate magnate who died last year, was a staunch defender of Israel. He did not hide his affiliation, happily asserting that “I am a Zionist and I love the country.”

During the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, he was an officer in a largely Anglo-Saxon brigade of the Haganah, a Zionist military force. Led by Major Ben Dunkelman, a Canadian veteran of the Second World War, the Seventh Brigade played a leading role in the infamous Operation Hiram.

Dozens of villages in the north of Palestine were depopulated and destroyed during that offensive. The operation, initiated in October 1948, included several massacres of Palestinian villagers.

As many as 94 Palestinians were killed in the village of Saliha alone. A Jewish National Fund official, Yosef Nahmani, noted in his diary that between 50 and 60 peasants in Safsaf were killed and buried in a pit after the village’s inhabitants “had raised a white flag.”

In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe notes that few brigade names appear in the oral testimonies that have been gathered about the Nakba: “However, Brigade Seven is mentioned again and again, together with such adjectives as ‘terrorists’ and ‘barbarous.’”

Since opening at Concordia, the Azrieli Institute has proven a potent advocate for Israel on campus. In June, the institute hosted the Association for Israel Studies’ annual conference.

After attending the conference, the right-wing Israeli academic Gerald Steinberg described Azrieli’s $5 million donation as part of a “counterattack” against pro-Palestinian activism at Concordia.

The institute is largely designed to erase Palestinians from their historical connection to their homeland. Its website fails to even mention the word Palestine.

In a December 2014 letter to the Montreal Gazette, Nakina Stratos noted: “Browsing through the website of the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies, I was not able to find the words ‘Palestine’ or ‘Palestinian people.’ How can an institute that teaches about the history of Israel not mention Palestine on its website? This, to me, intersects with the far-right Israeli narrative, which is a total confiscation of Palestinian history, and an attempt to erase the concept of Palestine from the dictionary of the Middle East.”

But rather than investigate how Palestinian students feel about a richly endowed university institute that erases their existence, the Gazette’s education reporter chose to focus on assertions of persecution by those who would do the erasing.

The perpetrators of oppression and their supporters instead become victims. Those who stand up for the oppressed are portrayed as bullies.

That is the big lie at work.

Yves Engler is the author of The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s Foreign Policy. His Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation will be published in September and he will be speaking across the country in the lead up to the election. For information on speaking engagements go to Yvesengler.com.

Source
Article: Dissident Voice
Lead Graphic: Boy in Rafah rubble by Zoriah.net.

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Open Rafah Now: Siege on Gaza is a Cruel and Political Failure

=By= Ramzy Baroud

Lifting the siege for 48 provided a brief a respite, and helped to break the sense of collective captivity felt by entrapped Palestinians.

When Egypt decided to open the Rafah border crossing which separates it from Gaza for two days, December 3 and 4, a sense of guarded relief was felt in the impoverished Strip. True, 48 hours were hardly enough for the tens of thousands of patients, students and other travelers to leave or return to Gaza, but the idea that a respite was on its way helped to break, albeit slightly, the sense of collective captivity felt by entrapped Palestinians.

Of course, the Rafah border crisis will hardly be resolved by a single transitory decision, mainly because Gaza is blockaded for political reasons, and only a sensible political strategy can end the suffering there or, at least, lessen its horrendous impact.

Palestinians speak angrily of an Israel siege on Gaza, a reality that cannot be countered by all the official Israeli hasbara and media distortions. In fact, not only is it far worse than a blockade as an economic restriction but it is a constant violent process aimed at brutalizing, and punishing a community of 1.9 million people. However, the Egyptian closure of the Rafah border crossing, which has contributed to the ‘success’ of the Israeli siege is rarely discussed within the same context: as a political decision first and foremost.

Securing the Border?

In a border-related agreement that was reportedly signed mid-November between Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas and Egypt’s Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, both sides seemed genial and unperturbed about the tragedy bubbling up north of the Egyptian border.

The ‘activities’ near Rafah were intended to “secure the border,” Sisi told Abbas, according to a statement issued by the Egyptian President’s office. These activities “could never be meant to harm the Palestinian brothers in the Gaza Strip.”

The term ‘activities’ here is, of course, a reference to the demolishing of thousands of homes alongside the 12-kilometer border between Rafah in Gaza and Egypt, in addition to the destruction and flooding of hundreds of tunnels, which have served as Gaza’s main lifeline that sustained the Strip throughout the Israeli siege during most of the last decade.

Abbas, of course, has no qualms about the Egyptian action, the result of which has been the closure of the Rafah crossing for 300 days in 2015 alone, according to a new study originating in Gaza.

Graft and the Authority

Last year, in an interview with Egypt’s ‘Al-Akbar’ newspaper, Abbas said that the destruction of the tunnels was the best solution to prevent Gazans from using the smuggling business for their own benefits. He then spoke about 1,800 Gazans becoming millionaires as a result of the tunnel trade, although no corroboration for this specific number was ever divulged.

Of course, Abbas has rarely been concerned about the rising fortunes of the alleged ‘millionaires’, because his Authority, which subsists on international handouts, is rife with them. His grievance is with Hamas, which has been regulating tunnel trade and taxing merchants for the goods they import into the Strip. Not only were the tunnels a lifeline for Gaza’s economy, the underground business helped fill a void in Hamas’ own budget, a fact that has irked Abbas for years.

Following Hamas’ election victory in January 2006 and the bloody clash between the new Government and Abbas’s Fatah faction, Hamas has experienced immense pressure: Israel launched three massive and deadly wars, while maintaining a strict siege; Egypt ensured the near permanent closure of its border; and Abbas continued to pay the salaries for tens of thousands of his supporters in Gaza, on the condition that they did not join the Hamas Government.

Moreover, the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, the turmoil in Egypt and the war in Syria, in particular, lessened Hamas’ chances of escaping the financial stranglehold that made governing Gaza, broken by war and fatigued by the siege, nearly unviable.

While Israel, from the outset, explained that its siege was based on security requirements, Egypt eventually did the same, alleging that destroying the tunnels, demolishing homes and enlarging the buffer zone were necessary steps to stave off the flow of weapons from Gaza to Sinai’s militants who are responsible for deadly attacks on the Egyptian army.

Oddly, the Egyptian logic is the exact opposite of the Israeli logic, upon which the siege was justified in the first place. Israel claims that Gaza’s factions use the tunnels to smuggle weapons and explosives from Sinai, not the other way around.

Indeed, allegedly smuggling weapons from Gaza to Sinai has little to do with the closure of Rafah or even the destruction of the tunnels.

steel wall between Rafah and Egypt With American expertise and aid, Egypt began erecting a steel wall along the Gaza border as early as December 2009. This preceded the Egyptian revolution and the political chasm in that society which was followed by the militant chaos. Indeed, there was little violence in Sinai then, at least, not one blamed partly on Palestinians. The construction of the wall took place during the rule of Hosni Mubarak in order to accommodate Israeli-American pressure to contain Hamas and other fighting groups. Abbas, eager to see the demise of his rivals, was in agreement, as he remains until today, ever ready to entertain any ideas that would once more give rise to his Fatah party in the Strip.

The militant violence in Sinai did not usher in the siege on Gaza, but only hastened the demolishing of homes, destruction of tunnels and provided further justification for the permanent closure of the border.

Life in Gaza became impossible, to the extent that the UN Conference on Trade and Development released a report last September warning that Gaza could become ‘uninhabitable’ in less than five years, if current economic trends continue.

But these economic trends are the result of intentional policies, mostly centered at achieving political ends. Moreover, none of these ends have been achieved after nearly a decade of experimentation. True, many have died as they waited to receive proper medical care and thousands perished in war; many of the maimed cannot even acquire wheelchairs, let alone prosthetics, but neither has Israel managed to stop the Resistance, Egypt quell the rebellion in Sinai nor has Abbas regained his lost factional stronghold.

Yet, things are getting much worse for Gaza. The World Bank issued a report earlier this year stating that 43% of Gaza’s population are unemployed, and that unemployment among the youth has reached 60%. According to the report, these unemployment figures are the highest in the world.

Since the establishment of the border between Palestine and Egypt following an agreement in 1906 between the Ottoman Empire – which controlled Palestine then – and Britain, which controlled Egypt, never was the border subject to such deadly political calculations. In fact, between 1948 and 1967, when Gaza was under Egyptian control, the border was virtually non-existent as the Strip was administered as if a part of Egypt.

Although Gazans are still being referred to as ‘brothers’, there is nothing brotherly in the way they are being treated. 25,000 humanitarian cases are languishing in Gaza, waiting to be allowed access to treatment in Egypt or in other Arab and European countries. These ill Palestinians should not be used as political fodder in a turf war which is not of their making.

Moreover, while countries have the right to protect their sovereignty and security, they are obligated by international law not to collectively punish other nations, no matter the logic or the political context.

An agreement must be reached between the Government in Gaza and Egypt, with the help of regional powers and under the monitoring of the United Nations, to end Gaza’s perpetual suffering and open the border, once and for all.

Graphic Credit: LEAD- Rafah border crossing. Gloucester2Gaza (CC BY-SA 2.0)
BODY – Steel wall between Rafah and Egypt by Tanks No Thanks (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 IT)

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West’s Inaction on Gaza Underscores Bankruptcy of Doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention

what’s left

palestiniansDead

By Stephen Gowans

[A]fter 26 days of Israeli aggression against the 1.8 million people of the Gaza Strip, the right-to-protect (R2P) advocates are conspicuously silent. Israeli occupation forces have slaughtered 1,669 Palestinians, possibly as many as 1,405 of them civilians, according to the United Nations, and 363 of them children. [1] The aggressor state has destroyed civilian infrastructure including Gaza’s lone power plant, disrupting power needed to run machinery to desalinate drinking water and pump human waste. Sewage, along with blood, runs in the streets.

There are no plans for the ‘international community’ to intervene in Gaza to protect civilians. R2P has always been a cover for imperialist conquest, a way to organize regime change—almost invariably to foster a free-trade, free-market, free enterprise economy friendly to investor interests–behind lofty humanitarian goals. It’s not needed for use against Israel. Israel is already a member in good standing of the US imperium. Indeed, it is one of its principal props.

Accordingly, intervention on behalf of Palestinians won’t be happening. Humanitarian intervention is carried out selectively, never against brutish regimes in Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, or Kiev (whose army, assisted by neo-fascist paramilitaries, is shelling Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the country’s east.) These are all US allies, and US allies get R2P exemptions.

The doctrine of humanitarian intervention is a cover for assaults on states that Washington designates as enemies. Intervention doesn’t depend on whether a country’s government tramples human rights, or threatens its own citizens, or practices terrorism, or eschews liberal democracy, or violates international law. It depends on whether rulers are willing to allow their country to become fully integrated into the US-led global economy and bow to the international dictatorship of the United States.

If US foreign policy was really inspired by lofty principles, Washington could hardly count Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, South Korea and Egypt as key allies. All of these countries’ governments exhibit severe shortcomings in the protection of civil and political liberties. Egypt is effectively a military dictatorship and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are absolutist states. If Washington cared one whit about international law and states that practice terrorism, it could hardly continue to send Israel $3 billion every year in military and economic aid. Indeed, it would have to address its own foreign policy shortcomings, from regularly trampling on international law to protecting anti-Cuban terrorists to carrying out terrorist bombing and missile strikes around the globe.

The West could intervene to stop the Israeli massacre in Palestine. To begin, Washington could cancel military and economic aid to Tel Aviv. Western governments could stop providing Israel with diplomatic cover. But none of this is happening.

Instead, Washington has done the opposite, intervening on Israel’s side, not against it, by replenishing the store of munitions Israel forces have used to destroy homes, mosques, hospitals and people in Gaza. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon is allowing Israel to tap an ammunition stockpile to replace the 120 mm tanks rounds and 40 mm illumination rounds it has used to carry out a massacre in Gaza. [2] Behind the slaughter in Gaza stands a complicit Washington.

R2P has always been a cover for imperialist conquest, a way to organize regime change—almost invariably to foster a free-trade, free-market, free enterprise economy friendly to investor interests–behind lofty humanitarian goals.

Of course, Washington might perversely argue that this is an R2P project of another sort—protecting Israeli civilians. But Israeli civilians don’t appear to be in much danger. Not a single Israeli civilian died from rocket or mortar fire from Gaza from the November 2012 ceasefire until Israel renewed its assault on Gaza last month. Three Israeli civilians have died from rocket fire since—one-fifth of one percent of the total civilian casualties of Operation Protective Edge. For every Israeli civilian killed, 467 Palestinian non-combatants have been effaced by Israeli forces.

As to the tunnels that have been invoked, along with rocket fire, to justify the slaughter, not one Israeli civilian has been killed by Palestinian resistance fighters using subterranean pathways into Israel. Indeed, it’s unlikely the tunnels are aimed at civilians at all. According to a senior Israeli intelligence official cited by The Times of Israel, Palestinian resistance fighters “aim primarily to abduct soldiers and not to penetrate into civilian communities along the border with Gaza. “

“The central objective is to kidnap a soldier,” the intelligence official said, “to replicate the success of Gilad Shalit,” the Israeli soldier abducted by Palestinian resistance fighters to bargain for the release of Palestinian political prisoners incarcerated in Israeli dungeons.

In fact, “of the nine cross-border tunnels detected, none actually stretches into the grounds of a civilian community.” Referring to one of these tunnels, the intelligence source said: “They could have gone 500 meters more, into the kibbutz. Why didn’t they do that?” [3]

If Israel had a genuine interest in protecting its citizens from Palestinian rocket fire, it would never have broken its ceasefire with Hamas, blockaded Gaza to collectively punish Palestinians for electing Hamas in 2006 elections, continued its illegal occupation of the West Bank and effective occupation of Gaza, or continued to illegally expand Jewish settlements on the tiny fraction of historic Palestine Zionists forces haven’t already gobbled up.

Former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren said: “It’s very difficult to feel compassion for the other when you have rockets aimed at your family.” [4] It’s also very difficult to feel compassion for the other when he has stolen your land, made you a refugee, and is in his seventh decade of waging a colonial war of aggression against yourself, your family, your neighbors, and your people.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
S. Gowans is a leading Canadian social justice activist. He is What’s Left’s founding editor.

2. Jay Solomon, Joshua Mitnick, and William Mauldin, “Israel-Hamas, agree to 3-day cease-fire”, The Wall Street Journal, July 31, 2014.

3. Aaron J. Klien and Mitch Ginsburg, “Could Israeli soldiers, not civilians, be the target of the attack tunnels?” The Times of Israel, July 29, 2014.

4. Jodi Rudoren, “In Gaza, epithets are fired and euphemisms give shelter,” The New York Times, July 20, 2014.

The assault on Gaza: A historic crime

Despite some cynical blather claiming impartiality, the US remains the chief and indispensable supporter of Israel’s criminal policies.

What will it take for the world to rise and put an end to this horror?

PATRICK MARTIN and BARRY GREY, wsws.org

[A]t least 100 Palestinians were killed Sunday* as Israel escalated its savage land, sea and air attack on Gaza. In a single neighborhood on the east side of Gaza City, Shejaiya, Israeli bombs and artillery shells killed at least 62 people and wounded nearly 300 others. Among the dead were 17 women, 14 children and four elderly people. The corpses of women and children lined the streets of Shejaiya as people fled on foot and in overloaded vehicles.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said more than 63,000 people had sought sanctuary in the 49 shelters it has set up in Gaza. “The number has tripled in the last three days,” UNRWA said, “reflecting the intensity of the conflict and the inordinate threats the fighting is posing to civilians.”

Hospitals in Gaza were overwhelmed by the wounded and other civilians seeking sanctuary from the relentless bombardment. Supplies of bandages and basic medicines were running out. In large parts of the besieged territory, water and electricity were cut off.

The Israeli military defended its use of flechette shells against the Palestinian population, saying it was permitted under the laws of war. Flechette shells spray out thousands of tiny metal darts with sharpened tips, designed to shred human flesh.

Human Rights Watch, a US-based organization generally allied to the American political establishment, released a report indicting Israel for deliberately targeting civilian facilities. “Israeli air attacks in Gaza investigated by Human Rights Watch have been targeting apparent civilian structures and killing civilians in violation of the laws of war,” the report stated.

The Israeli state is carrying out mass murder in Gaza. Its troops, tanks, war planes and gunboats are perpetrating a massacre of defenseless Palestinians trapped inside a tiny, impoverished and densely populated territory. No one really knows how many have been killed in the two weeks of Israeli bombing and shelling. But Palestinian hospital officials as of mid-day Sunday put the figure at 436, with more than 3,000 wounded. The dead include more than 100 children.

If this is not a war crime, then what is?

The lies given out by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to justify this atrocity are beneath contempt. People are told not to believe what they are seeing with their own eyes in news reports and videos, despite the grossly distorted, pro-Israeli coverage provided by most of the corporate-controlled media. Israeli officials have the temerity to claim that their actions are a defensive response to aggression from Hamas. But the facts speak for themselves: the civilian death toll is heading rapidly toward 1,000 on the Palestinian side, while only two Israeli civilians have died as a result of Hamas’ crude rockets.

The measures taken by Hamas are the defensive response of an isolated and besieged people to a savage onslaught, the culmination of decades of unrelenting and ever-escalating Israeli violence. Nearly fifty years after the Six Day War and seizure of the occupied territories, the Zionist regime has utterly failed to crush the resistance of the Palestinian masses. The current paroxysm of violence is an expression of desperation rather than confidence in the future. For all its cynicism and brutality, the Israeli government gives the impression of a regime that has lost its bearings.

In its long and bloody history, Israel in the past four days has crossed a fundamental line. Its actions in Gaza are those of a society in a state of political and moral disintegration—the result of the dead end of Zionism.

It is now clear that the murder two weeks ago of 16-year-old Muhammad Khdeir in East Jerusalem by Israeli fascists, who poured gasoline down the youth’s throat and set him on fire, was only the precursor to a far broader crime, carried out by the highest authorities of the Israeli state.

More and more, Israel is looked upon around the world as a pariah state run by a combination of fascists and lunatics. Outrage against it is mounting among working people and youth internationally.

Israel could not carry out such a naked crime without the support, political and material, of the imperialist powers and capitalist governments around the world. The world is witnessing a globally orchestrated war crime, carried out with the enthusiastic and open support of the international capitalist class.

First and foremost is the United States, which has supplied Israel with the bulk of the weapons it is using to murder Palestinians. Last Wednesday, on the eve of Israel’s ground invasion, President Barack Obama appeared before the press in the White House and gave Israel his full support for the impending bloodbath.

Obama did not even bother to mouth the usual clichés about “restraint” and “limiting casualties.” Instead, he repeated verbatim the lying Israeli line, declaring, “There’s no country on earth that can be expected to live under a daily barrage of rockets.” This was said as Israeli missiles and bombs were killing Palestinians every hour.

He then blamed Hamas for “prolonging the conflict” by refusing to accept a phony ceasefire that was, in fact, a demand for abject surrender made for the purpose of creating a pretext for launching a ground war.

Interviewed Sunday on ABC Television’s “This Week” program, US Secretary of State John Kerry was asked to respond to the statement by Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi that what was happening in Gaza was a “massacre” and “war crime.” Kerry dismissed the charge as Palestinian “rhetoric” and added cynically, “War is ugly and bad things are going to happen.”

Kerry knows full well that he is lying when he defends the Israeli onslaught on Gaza. His cynicism and duplicity were exposed on the “Fox News Sunday” interview program when the moderator played a clip of Kerry holding a cell phone conversation just before he went on air. Speaking of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, he said sarcastically, “It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation… We’ve got to get over there.”

Then there are the European powers, all of whom are giving Israel their full support. The Socialist Party government of France has gone so far as to ban demonstrations against the Israeli onslaught on Gaza and mobilize riot police to attack protesters in Paris with tear gas.

The United Nations, as always, has fallen into line with the wishes of the major imperialist powers, calling on “both sides” to refrain from violence, in what is a completely one-sided slaughter.

The Arab bourgeois regimes are either openly or tacitly collaborating with Israel in the attack on Gaza. The US-client regime headed by the military butcher El Sisi in Egypt has sealed the border to prevent Gazans from fleeing the Israeli military and finding sanctuary in Egypt. El Sisi brokered the bogus ceasefire proposal to provide a pretext for the Israeli ground assault.

The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas is doing the dirty work for the Zionist state and US imperialism, conspiring against Hamas while suppressing anti-Israeli protests on the West Bank.

There is nothing left of the myth of Arab nationalism and unity. All of the bourgeois regimes and parties have been exposed as petty agents of imperialism.

Hamas is exhibiting undoubted courage in seeking to resist the murderous Israeli offensive. But it does not have a viable political perspective. Based on nationalism, it seeks the support of Arab regimes that are completely subordinated to the imperialist powers, leaving the Palestinian masses isolated and virtually defenseless.

The homicidal violence in Gaza that is being aided and abetted by governments around the world is a warning to the working class of every country. It is proof of the complete ruthlessness of imperialism. It will not shrink from any crime to eliminate whatever gets in the way of its global economic and geo-political ambitions.

The defense of the Palestinian people is the task of the international working class. Israeli workers, in the first instance, must separate themselves from the criminals who run their country. Large sections of the Israeli people are being implicated in vile crimes. And there are voices within the Israeli establishment who are openly talking about the physical extermination of the Palestinian people—a Nazi-like “final solution.”

The Israeli workers must oppose the slaughter in Gaza. They must turn to their natural allies, the Arab workers and oppressed masses.

The American, European and international working class must give a lead to the widespread outrage and revulsion felt by millions over what is taking place in Gaza. It must demand an immediate halt to the carnage. Demonstrations of protest and solidarity with the Palestinians must be called in every country.

The demand must be raised to hold accountable the war criminals in Tel Aviv and their accomplices in Washington and every other capital around the world. The struggle must be directed not only against the Israeli government, but against the imperialist and capitalist governments that facilitate its crimes.

Patrick Martin and Barry Grey are senior analysts with wsws.org.
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* As a result of 14 days of the Israeli operations in Gaza, 573 Palestinians were killed, a representative of the Palestinian Authority said. Yesterday, as many as 56 people were killed as a result of the attacks of the Israeli forces. Sixty-eight dead bodies were recovered from under the rubble, said a Palestinian official.

According to him, most of the victims are children, Interfax reports. On the part of Israel, 25 soldiers and two civilians were killed. According to the IDF, during the operation, Hamas fired 1,488 missiles on the Israeli territory, of which 392 were intercepted. (7.21.14)