Gaza’s shock attack has terrified Israelis. It should also unveil the context
JVL Introduction
Haggai Matar, responding to the crisis unfolding in Israel and Gaza and deploring the attacks on civilians, stresses that this is not a “unilateral” or “unprovoked” attack.
He writes:
- The dread Israelis are feeling right now, myself included, is a sliver of what Palestinians have been feeling on a daily basis under the decades-long military regime in the West Bank, and under the siege and repeated assaults on Gaza.
- [T]here is a reason to everything that is happening today… as in all previous rounds — there is no military solution to Israel’s problem with Gaza, nor to the resistance that naturally emerges as a response to violent apartheid.”
- The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end of apartheid, occupation, and siege, and promote a future based on justice and equality for all of us. It is not in spite of the horror that we have to change course — it is exactly because of it.
Gaza’s shock attack has terrified Israelis. It should also unveil the context
The dread Israelis are feeling after today's assault, myself included, has been the daily experience of millions of Palestinians for far too long.
This is a terrible day. After waking up to air sirens under a barrage of hundreds of rockets fired on Israeli cities, we have been learning about the unprecedented assault by Palestinian militants from Gaza into Israeli towns bordering the strip.
News is flowing in of at least 40 Israelis killed and hundreds wounded, as well as some reportedly kidnapped into Gaza. Meanwhile, the Israeli army has already begun its own offensive on the blockaded strip, with troops mobilizing along the fence and air strikes killing and wounding scores of Palestinians so far. The absolute dread of people who are seeing armed militants in their streets and homes, or the sight of fighter jets and approaching tanks, is unimaginable. Attacks on civilians are war crimes, and my heart goes to the victims and their families.
Contrary to what many Israelis are saying, and while the army was clearly caught completely off guard by this invasion, this is not a “unilateral” or “unprovoked” attack. The dread Israelis are feeling right now, myself included, is a sliver of what Palestinians have been feeling on a daily basis under the decades-long military regime in the West Bank, and under the siege and repeated assaults on Gaza. The responses we are hearing from many Israelis today — of people calling to “flatten Gaza,” that “these are savages, not people you can negotiate with,” “they are murdering whole families,” “there’s no room to talk with these people” — are exactly what I have heard occupied Palestinians say about Israelis countless times.
The attack this morning also has more recent contexts. One of them is the looming horizon of a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. For years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been making the case that peace can be achieved without talking to Palestinians or making any concessions. The Abraham Accords have stripped Palestinians of one of their last bargaining chips and support bases: the solidarity of Arab governments, despite that solidarity having long been questionable. The high likelihood of losing perhaps the most important of those Arab states may well have helped push Hamas to the edge.
Meanwhile, commentators have been warning for weeks that recent escalations in the occupied West Bank are leading to dangerous paths. Throughout the past year, more Palestinians and Israelis have been killed than in any other year since the Second Intifada of the early 2000s. The Israeli army is routinely raiding into Palestinian cities and refugee camps. The far-right government is giving settlers an entirely free hand to set up new illegal outposts and launch pogroms on Palestinian towns and villages, with soldiers accompanying the settlers and killing or maiming Palestinians trying to defend their homes. Amid the high holidays, Jewish extremists are challenging the “status quo” around the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, backed by politicians who share their ideology.
In Gaza, meanwhile, the ongoing siege is continuously destroying the lives of over two million Palestinians, many of whom are living in extreme poverty, with little access to clean water and about four hours of electricity a day. This siege has no official endgame; even an Israeli State Comptroller report found that the government has never discussed long-term solutions to ending the blockade, nor seriously considered any alternatives to recurring rounds of war and death. It is literally the only option this government, and its predecessors, have on the table.
The only answers that consecutive Israeli governments have offered to the problem of Palestinian attacks from Gaza have been in the form of band aids: if they come from the ground, we will build a wall; if they come through tunnels, we will build an underground barrier; if they fire rockets, we’ll set up interceptors; if they are killing some of ours, we will kill many more of them. And so it goes on and on.
All this is not to justify the killing of civilians — that is absolutely wrong. Rather, it is meant to remind us that there is a reason to everything that is happening today, and that — as in all previous rounds — there is no military solution to Israel’s problem with Gaza, nor to the resistance that naturally emerges as a response to violent apartheid.
In recent months, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been marching for “democracy and equality” across the country, with many even saying they would refuse military service because of this government’s authoritarian trends. What those protestors and reserve soldiers need to understand — especially today, as many of them announced they will halt their protests and join the war with Gaza — is that Palestinians have been struggling for those same demands and more for decades, facing an Israel that to them is already, and has always been, completely authoritarian.
As I write these words, I am sitting at home in Tel Aviv, trying to figure out how to protect my family in a house with no shelter or safe room, following with growing panic the reports and rumors of horrible events taking place in the Israeli towns near Gaza which are under attack. I see people, some of them my friends, calling on social media to attack Gaza more fiercely than ever before. Some Israelis are saying that now is the time to eradicate Gaza entirely — essentially calling for genocide. Through all the explosions, the dread and the bloodshed, speaking about peaceful solutions seems like madness to them.
Yet I remember that everything that I am feeling now, which every Israeli must be sharing, has been the life experience of millions of Palestinians for far too long. The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end of apartheid, occupation, and siege, and promote a future based on justice and equality for all of us. It is not in spite of the horror that we have to change course — it is exactly because of it.
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My Comment :
Sorry, but I can not possibly buy the rather naive supposition here, that this has been an attack, that the ultra-equipped security services somehow seemed to have missed spectacularly.
After all, no part of our globe is been so closely monitored electronically and otherwise by the seemingly totally oblivian security services, as Gaza (and the Occupied Territories).
Cynical as I am in relation to this classical settler-colonial dossier, I
thus would rather opt for the possibility, that this attack has been willingly
allowed (i.e. semi-orchestrated) by the Netanyahu clan itself.
An attack that can be both used to rally the dissatisfied, Netanyahu opponents - (mostly liberal) zionist-Jews, that until very recently even, did organise huge demonstrations against Netanyahu, who used his coalition of Zionist Extremists, to seriously scale back the influence of the Supreme Court - among the electorate around the (recently) heavily critized political leader.
At the same time and in additione, there will be the potential for Netanyahu of organizing another round of ethnic cleansing (Nakba style) among the indigenous People of Palestine, thus nudging even closer to the Jewish mono-ethnis state, which is the main Zionist objective since the days of Herzl
I will go even further than this : I am rather inclined to compare this attack of convenience (my characterization) with the carefully provoked 1929 Hebron massacre.
Provoked that is at that time, by the notorious Ashkenazi Fascist Jabotinsky brigade; its leader, being one of the predecessors of the current Likud leader (whose father once used to be the private secretary of Jabotinsky).
It was the notorious revisionist zionist Zeev - the Iron Wall - Jabotinsky, that let his Mussolini inspired Betar army parading on the Wailing Wall in 1929, while aggressively shouting and flagging, that "this Wall is ours" (knowing of the sacred monuments of both the other two religions at that very place).
Carefully provoked, because a renowned USA journalist and writer of that time - called Vincent Sheean - had been invited by a USA Zionist publication - called The New Palestine - to go to Palestine "fully at their expenses" at exactly that time, "just to experience and write about the peaceful atmosphere over there".
Well he did indeed experience soon enough at first-hand what had happened at that time in August 1929, and he did realize soon enough with what hidden (real) purpose he had been invited : to support and further the Zionist agenda, by writing Zionist friendly propaganda pieces for the USA press about a carefully provoked massacre.
He discovered the underlying pro-zionist propaganda-plot behind that invitation, when he heard a (USA-Jewish) collegue journalist - who stayed at the same hotel as he did - say to him, that "soon something big was supossed to happen". Thus making perfectly clear to him, that she already knew on forehand - by way of insider zionist knowlegde - what was going to happen on that dreadfull day and that he had only been invited by the USA Zionists, to write in the USA Press about the carefully provoked bloodshed.
I will give you a link to his revealing account of affairs of those tumultuous days, so you can judge for yourself what had really happened at that time.
At the same time, you can become aware of the insinuative accusations that Sheean received, when he handed back the money to his (seemingly over-generous) Zionists financiers of his trip to 1929 Palestine.
Handing back the money to the editor of The New Palestine, because that money would have risked his steady reputation of credibility / integrity ruined, by opening up the dangerous suggestion of lack of independence of his (now harrowing) eye witness reports of the terrible events in Palestine of August 1929.
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