In the Six Day War of 1967, a war Israel fought against Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan--not Palestine--Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank and decided to stay. In the years since, Israel has relinquished control of some areas, but settlements continue to expand onto Palestinian lands, and since 2007 a blockade has turned Gaza into what some have labeled an open-air prison. To make matters worse, Israel’s military--one of the most advanced and effective militaries in the world, backed by the world’s most advanced and largest military--occasionally conducts airstrikes and ground incursions against the destitute, jobless and hungry imprisoned there.
In a statement on July 21,
2014, President Obama took little to no stand:
“Israel has a right to defend itself against rocket and tunnel attacks from Hamas. And as a result of its operations, Israel has already done significant damage to Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure in Gaza. I’ve also said, however, that we have serious concerns about the rising number of Palestinian civilian deaths and the loss of Israeli lives.”
Meanwhile, this from The Guardian on Monday, August 4:
“A hospital near the site of Sunday’s attack [on a UN school], in the southern town of Rafah, was overwhelmed with the dead and injured. Children’s bodies were stored in an ice cream freezer as the morgue ran out of space.”
I don’t mean to ignore Hamas.
As every good American knows, Israel has a right to defend itself against
terrorists and Hamas’s charter does state the group’s intention of destroying
Israel. We all know Hamas fires rockets that sometimes kill noncombatants, and
even a cursory investigation of the group turns up a long list of ideological and methodological
sins, including the use of human shields.
On the other hand, if I
remember my Noam Chomsky right from Hopes and Prospects, Hamas has shown a willingness to negotiate when Israel has
not, its rockets are often ineffective, and its attacks show a focus on military targets often ignored by Western politicians and news organizations. Hamas is also part of the democratically elected
government of a sovereign state under continuous occupation, siege and military
aggression by a neighbor.
Good Americans also know you
have the right to bite when tread upon.
For decades, many in America
have looked at the historical and political complexities I’ve outlined above
and decided, like President Obama, that the fence is a comfortable place to
sit, but if anything should have the power to inspire them to climb down, it is
the brutality of Israel’s recent invasion of Gaza.
Consider these numbers from The Guardian on August 4:
“Palestinian deaths pass 1,800, while 64 Israeli troops have died.”
Note the numbers, but also the choice of words. “Palestinians” and “Israeli troops”--that’s because
overwhelmingly, the ones dying are Palestinian civilians. (chart, article) Not terrorists, not combatants, just
kids going to school, parents going to work, couples getting married--everyday
folk going about everyday lives and getting bombed while they’re at it.
The horror stories are
numerous and you can find plenty of them on any major news site that claims to
be objective and takes an honest stab at it. Just today, after international
outrage at multiple attacks on schools, Israel declared a “humanitarian window”
of decreased attacks, which it then broke by bombing a refugee camp (article). In a
recent interview (which I can’t find right now) on Democracy Now!, Noam Chomsky discusses a document from some
years back in which the Israeli government explicitly states that it will
target everyday people as a matter of strategy: exact such a toll that no one
will fight back or support anyone who does.
That is what we have just
seen, and what may resume if the ceasefire underway as I write this doesn’t
hold.
Surely, there can be no
sitting on the fence about the wholesale slaughter of innocents, even in a war
against terror. President Obama should grow a spine on this issue (previous blog) and join the rest of the world--save Israel’s government--in strongly
condemning Operation Protective Edge. And to the extent you have a voice, you
should condemn it, too. On occasion, politicians listen to their electorate,
and on occasion, they broker better will between warring states.
Recommended reading:
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter“9 questions about the Israel-Palestine conflict you were too embarrassed to ask” on Vox
