Re: Israel comes clean about the use of phosphorus shells, finally!

david7gable@xxxxxxx wrote:
Chomsky on Gaza:

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20316

Chomsky remarks that the attack was planned long in advance. ?That
surely includes the timing of the assault: shortly before noon, when
children were returning from school and crowds were milling in the
streets of densely populated Gaza City. It took only a few minutes
to kill over 225 people and wound 700, an auspicious opening to the
mass slaughter of defenseless civilians trapped in a tiny cage with
nowhere to flee.?

-david gable

Good article, by someone who is well informed and at the same time no part of
the Israeli propaganda machine.

A few quotes (for the bergers, who refuse to read about the truth anyway):



"NYT correspondent Stephen Erlanger reports that Israeli human rights groups are
"troubled by Israel's strikes on buildings they believe should be classified as
civilian, like the parliament, police stations and the presidential palace" -
and, we may add, villages, homes, densely populated refugee camps, water and
sewage systems, hospitals, schools and universities, mosques, UN relief
facilities, ambulances, and indeed anything that might relieve the pain of the
unworthy victims."



"Like others familiar with the region, Middle East specialist Fawwaz Gerges
observes that "What Israeli officials and their American allies do not
appreciate is that Hamas is not merely an armed militia but a social movement
with a large popular base that is deeply entrenched in society." Hence when they
carry out their plans to destroy Hamas's "social wing," they are aiming to
destroy Palestinian society.

Gerges may be too kind. It is highly unlikely that Israeli and American
officials - or the media and other commentators - do not appreciate these facts.
Rather, they implicitly adopt the traditional perspective of those who
monopolize means of violence: our mailed fist can crush any opposition, and if
our furious assault has a heavy civilian toll, that's all to the good: perhaps
the remnants will be properly educated."


"To mention another one, as the latest US-Israeli assault on Gaza began, a small
boat, the Dignity, was on its way from Cyprus to Gaza. The doctors and human
rights activists aboard intended to violate Israel's criminal blockade and to
bring medical supplies to the trapped population. The ship was intercepted in
international waters by Israeli naval vessels, which rammed it severely, almost
sinking it, though it managed to limp to Lebanon. Israel issued the routine
lies, refuted by the journalists and passengers aboard, including CNN
correspondent Karl Penhaul and former US representative and Green Party
presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney. That is a serious crime -- much worse,
for example, than hijacking boats off the coast of Somalia. It passed with
little notice. The tacit acceptance of such crimes reflects the understanding
that Gaza is occupied territory, and that Israel is entitled to maintain its
siege, even authorized by the guardians of international order to carry out
crimes on the high seas to implement its programs of punishing the civilian
population for disobedience to its commands [...]

The lack of attention again makes sense. For decades, Israel had been hijacking
boats in international waters between Cyprus and Lebanon, killing or kidnapping
passengers, sometimes bringing them to prisons in Israel, including secret
prison/torture chambers, to hold as hostages for many years. Since the
practices are routine, why treat the new crime with more than a yawn? Cyprus
and Lebanon reacted quite differently, but who are they in the scheme of
things?"


"Apparently, abduction of Israelis for the purpose of prisoners' exchange is
morally reprehensible, and militarily punishable when it is the Hezbollah who
does the abducting, but not if Israel is doing the very same thing," and on a
far grander scale and over many years.

Israel's regular practices are significant even apart from what they reveal
about Israeli criminality and Western support for it. As Maoz indicates, these
practices underscore the utter hypocrisy of the standard claim that Israel had
the right to invade Lebanon once again in 2006 when soldiers were captured at
the border, the first cross-border action by Hezbollah in the six years since
Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon, which it occupied in violation of
Security Council orders going back 22 years, while during these six years Israel
violated the border almost daily with impunity, and silence here."


"Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and
powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This
crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine
even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning."


"The huge flow of arms to Israel serves many subsidiary purposes. Middle East
policy analyst Mouin Rabbani observes that Israel can test newly developed
weapons systems against defenseless targets."


"There were other notable votes at the December UN session. A resolution on
"the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination" was adopted by 173
to 5 (US, Israel, Pacific island dependencies)."


"There are good reasons why the voting record is consistently unreported and
dispatched deep into the memory hole by the media and conformist intellectuals.
It would not be wise to reveal to the public what the record implies about their
elected representatives. In the present case it would plainly be unhelpful to
let the public know that US-Israeli rejectionism, barring the peaceful
settlement long advocated by the world, reaches such an extreme as to deny
Palestinians even the abstract right to self-determination."


"Israel abandoned Gaza in September 2005. Rational Israeli hardliners, like
Ariel Sharon, the patron saint of the settlers movement, understood that it was
senseless to subsidize a few thousand illegal Israeli settlers in the ruins of
Gaza, protected by the IDF while they used much of the land and scarce
resources. It made more sense to turn Gaza into the world's largest prison and
to transfer settlers to the West Bank, much more valuable territory, where
Israel is quite explicit about its intentions, in word and more importantly in
deed. One goal is to annex the arable land, water supplies, and pleasant
suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that lie within the separation wall,
irrelevantly declared illegal by the World Court. That includes a vastly
expanded Jerusalem, in violation of Security Council orders that go back 40
years, also irrelevant. Israel has also been taking over the Jordan Valley,
about one-third of the West Bank. What remains is therefore imprisoned, and,
furthermore, broken into fragments by salients of Jewish settlement that trisect
the territory: one to the east of Greater Jerusalem through the town of Ma'aleh
Adumim, developed through the Clinton years to split the West Bank; and two to
the north, through the towns of Ariel and Kedumim. What remains to Palestinians
is segregated by hundreds of mostly arbitrary checkpoints."


"The ravings of the political and military leaders are mild as compared to the
preaching of rabbinical authorities. They are not marginal figures. On the
contrary, they are highly influential in the army and in the settler movement,
who Zertal and Eldar reveal to be "lords of the land," with enormous impact on
policy. Soldiers fighting in northern Gaza were afforded an "inspirational"
visit from two leading rabbis, who explained to them that there are no
"innocents" in Gaza, so everyone there is a legitimate target, quoting a famous
passage from Psalms calling on the Lord to seize the infants of Israel's
oppressors and dash them against the rocks. The rabbis were breaking no new
ground. A year earlier, the former chief Sephardic rabbi wrote to Prime
Minister Olmert, informing him that all civilians in Gaza are collectively
guilty for rocket attacks, so that there is "absolutely no moral prohibition
against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive
military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings," as the
Jerusalem Post reported his ruling. His son, chief rabbi of Safed, elaborated:
"If they don't stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand, and if they
do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don't stop we
must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop." "


"Similar views are expressed by prominent American secular figures. When Israel
invaded Lebanon in 2006, Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz explained
in the liberal online journal Huffington Post that all Lebanese are legitimate
targets of Israeli violence. Lebanon's citizens are "paying the price" for
supporting "terrorism" - that is, for supporting resistance to Israel's
invasion. Accordingly, Lebanese civilians are no more immune to attack than
Austrians who supported the Nazis. The fatwa of the Sephardic rabbi applies to
them. In a video on the Jerusalem Post website, Dershowitz went on to ridicule
talk of excessive kill ratios of Palestinians to Israelis: it should be
increased to 1000-to-one, he said, or even 1000-to-zero, meaning the brutes
should be completely exterminated. Of course, he is referring to "terrorists,"
a broad category that includes the victims of Israeli power, since "Israel never
targets civilians," he emphatically declared. It follows that Palestinians,
Lebanese, Tunisians, in fact anyone who gets in the way of the ruthless armies
of the Holy State is a terrorist, or an accidental victim of their just crimes."


"The claim that "our side" never targets civilians is familiar doctrine among
those who monopolize the means of violence. And there is some truth to it. We
do not generally try to kill particular civilians. Rather, we carry out
murderous actions that we know will slaughter many civilians, but without
specific intent to kill particular ones. In law, the routine practices might
fall under the category of depraved indifference, but that is not an adequate
designation for standard imperial practice and doctrine. It is more similar to
walking down a street knowing that we might kill ants, but without intent to do
so, because they rank so low that it just doesn't matter. The same is true
when Israel carries out actions that it knows will kill the "grasshoppers" and
"two-legged beasts" who happen to infest the lands it "liberates." There is no
good term for this form of moral depravity, arguably worse than deliberate
murder, and all too familiar."


"In the West Bank, Israel can pursue its criminal programs with US support and
no disturbance, thanks to its effective military control and by now the
cooperation of the collaborationist Palestinian security forces armed and
trained by the US and allied dictatorships. It can also carry out regular
assassinations and other crimes, while settlers rampage under IDF protection.
But while the West Bank has been effectively subdued by terror, there is still
resistance in the other half of Palestine, the Gaza Strip. That too must be
quelled for the US-Israeli programs of annexation and destruction of Palestine
to proceed undisturbed.

Hence the invasion of Gaza."


"The suspicions were confirmed by Amnesty International after the cessation of
the intense bombardment made inquiry possible. Before, Israel had sensibly
barred all journalists, even Israeli, while its crimes were proceeding in full
fury. Israel's use of white phosphorus against Gaza civilians is "clear and
undeniable," AI reported. Its repeated use in densely populated civilian areas
"is a war crime," AI concluded. They found white phosphorus edges scattered
around residential buildings, still burning, "further endangering the residents
and their property," particularly children "drawn to the detritus of war and
often unaware of the danger." Primary targets, they report, were the UNRWA
compound, where the Israeli "white phosphorus landed next to some fuel trucks
and caused a large fire which destroyed tons of humanitarian aid" after Israeli
authorities "had given assurance that no further strikes would be launched on
the compound." On the same day, "a white phosphorus shell landed in the al-Quds
hospital in Gaza City also causing a fire which forced hospital staff to
evacuate the patients... White phosphorus landing on skin can burn deep through
muscle and into the bone, continuing to burn unless deprived of oxygen."
Purposely intended or beyond depraved indifference, such crimes are inevitable
when this weapon is used in attacks on civilians."


"Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah observed that "There are no
rockets launched at Israel from the West Bank, and yet Israel's extrajudicial
killings, land theft, settler pogroms and kidnappings never stopped for a day
during the truce. The western-backed Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas has
acceded to all Israel's demands. Under the proud eye of United States military
advisors, Abbas has assembled `security forces' to fight the resistance on
Israel's behalf. None of that has spared a single Palestinian in the West Bank
from Israel's relentless colonization" - thanks to firm US backing. The
respected Palestinian parliamentarian Dr. Mustapha Barghouti adds that after
Bush's Annapolis extravaganza in November 2007, with much uplifting rhetoric
about dedication to peace and justice, Israeli attacks on Palestinians escalated
sharply, with an almost 50% increase in the West Bank, along with a sharp
increase in settlements and Israeli check points. Obviously these criminal
actions are not a response to rockets from Gaza, though the converse may well be
the case, Barghouti plausibly suggests."


"Israel has a straightforward means to defend itself: put an end to its criminal
actions in occupied territories, and accept the long-standing international
consensus on a two-state settlement that has been blocked by the US and Israel
for over 30 years, since the US first vetoed a Security Council resolution
calling for a political settlement in these terms in 1976."

"Hamas has repeatedly called for a two-state settlement in terms of the
international consensus. Iran and Hezbollah have made it clear that they will
abide by any agreement that Palestinians accept. That leaves the US-Israel in
splendid isolation, not only in words."


"The steady drumbeat of accusations about the capture of Shalit is, again,
blatant hypocrisy, even putting aside Israel's long history of kidnapping. In
this case, the hypocrisy could not be more glaring. One day before Hamas
captured Shalit, Israeli soldiers entered Gaza City and kidnapped two civilians,
the Muammar brothers, bringing them to Israel to join the thousands of other
prisoners held there, almost 1000 reportedly without charge. Kidnapping
civilians is a far more serious crime than capturing a soldier of an attacking
army, but it was barely reported in contrast to the furor over Shalit. And all
that remains in memory, blocking peace, is the capture of Shalit, another
reflection of the difference between humans and two-legged beasts. Shalit
should be returned - in a fair prisoner exchange."


"After rejecting the June 2008 ceasefire it had formally accepted, Israel
maintained its siege. We may recall that a siege is an act of war. In fact,
Israel has always insisted on an even stronger principle: hampering access to
the outside world, even well short of a siege, is an act of war, justifying
massive violence in response. Interference with Israel's passage through the
Straits of Tiran was part of the pretext for Israel's invasion of Egypt (with
France and England) in 1956, and for its launching of the June 1967 war. The
siege of Gaza is total, not partial, apart from occasional willingness of the
occupiers to relax it slightly. And it is vastly more harmful to Gazans than
closing the Straits of Tiran was to Israel. Supporters of Israeli doctrines and
actions should therefore have no problem justifying rocket attacks on Israeli
territory from the Gaza Strip."


I would like to repeat this:
" *Supporters of Israeli doctrines and actions should therefore have no problem
justifying rocket attacks on Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip*. "


"The civil war that left Hamas in control of Gaza is commonly described as a
Hamas military coup, demonstrating again their evil nature. The real world is a
little different. The civil war was incited by the US and Israel, in a crude
attempt at a military coup to overturn the free elections that brought Hamas to
power. That has been public knowledge at least since April 2008, when David
Rose published in Vanity Fair a detailed and documented account of how Bush,
Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams "backed an armed force
under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza
and leaving Hamas stronger than ever." "


""On Nov. 5, Israel sealed all crossing points into Gaza, vastly reducing and at
times denying food supplies, medicines, fuel, cooking gas, and parts for water
and sanitation systems..." During November, an average of 4.6 trucks of food per
day entered Gaza from Israel compared with an average of 123 trucks per day in
October. Spare parts for the repair and maintenance of water-related equipment
have been denied entry for over a year. The World Health Organization just
reported that half of Gaza's ambulances are now out of order" - and the rest
soon became targets for Israeli attack. Gaza's only power station was forced to
suspend operation for lack of fuel, and could not be started up again because
they needed spare parts, which had been sitting in the Israeli port of Ashdod
for 8 months. Shortage of electricity led to a 300% increase in burn cases at
Shifaa' hospital in the Gaza Strip, resulting from efforts to light wood fires.
Israel barred shipment of Chlorine, so that by mid-December in Gaza City and the
north access to water was limited to six hours every three days. The human
consequences are not counted among Palestinian victims of Israeli terror."


""There clearly was an alternative to the military approach to stopping the
rockets," Pastor said, keeping to the narrow issue of Gaza. There was also a
more far-reaching alternative, which is rarely discussed: namely, accepting a
political settlement including all of the occupied territories."


"Uncontroversially, the Israel-Lebanon border was quiet for a year before the
Israeli invasion, at least from Lebanon to Israel, north to south. Through the
year, the PLO scrupulously observed a US-initiated ceasefire, despite constant
Israeli provocations, including bombing with many civilian casualties,
presumably intended to elicit some reaction that could be used to justify
Israel's carefully planned invasion. The best Israel could achieve was two
light symbolic responses. It then invaded with a pretext too absurd to be taken
seriously."


"The invasion had precisely nothing to do with "intolerable acts of terror,"
though it did have to do with intolerable acts: of diplomacy. That has never
been obscure. Shortly after the US-backed invasion began, Israel's leading
academic specialist on the Palestinians, Yehoshua Porath - no dove -- wrote that
*Arafat's success in maintaining the ceasefire constituted "a veritable
catastrophe in the eyes of the Israeli government," since it opened the way to a
political settlement . The government hoped that the PLO would resort to
terrorism, undermining the threat that it would be "a legitimate negotiating
partner for future political accommodations* ." "


"In 1982, as in 2008, it was necessary to eliminate the threat of political
settlement.

The hope of Israeli propagandists has been that Western intellectuals and media
would buy the tale that Israel reacted to rockets raining on the Galilee,
"intolerable acts of terror." And they have not been disappointed."


"The effort to delay political accommodation has always made perfect sense, as
do the accompanying lies about how "there is no partner for peace." It is hard
to think of another way to take over land where you are not wanted."


"An Amnesty International chronology reports that the June 2008 ceasefire had
"brought enormous improvements in the quality of life in Sderot and other
Israeli villages near Gaza, where before the ceasefire residents lived in fear
of the next Palestinian rocket strike. However, nearby in the Gaza Strip the
Israeli blockade remains in place and the population has so far seen few
dividends from the ceasefire." But the gains in security for Israel towns near
Gaza were evidently outweighed by the felt need to deter diplomatic moves that
might impede West Bank expansion, and to crush any remaining resistance within
Palestine."


"Today, Israel could have security, normalization of relations, and integration
into the region. But it very clearly prefers illegal expansion, conflict, and
repeated exercise of violence, actions that are not only criminal, murderous and
destructive but are also eroding its own long-term security."


"There is good reason to believe that he is right. Israel is deliberately
turning itself into perhaps the most hated country in the world, and is also
losing the allegiance of the population of the West, including younger American
Jews, who are unlikely to tolerate its persistent shocking crimes for long.
Decades ago, I wrote that those who call themselves "supporters of Israel" are
in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate
destruction. Regrettably, that judgment looks more and more plausible."
























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