Friday, 25 July 2014
Blockading the Truth: Obama's Big
Lie About Gaza
by Chris Floyd
1.
It is simply a lie that Israel's slaughter in Gaza is a response to an
"unprovoked attack" by Hamas. Not only is it a lie, it is a
transparent, brazen lie, whose falsehood is glaringly apparent to anyone
who had given even a cursory look at coverage of the Israeli government's
response to the murder of three Israeli teenagers in June.
At that time, we were told in many news reports about an Israeli
"crackdown" in Gaza, including mass arrests, military
operations and, finally, the killing of six Hamas members. It was
after these operations and these killings -- which were clear
breaches of a ceasefire which Hamas had been honoring for 19 months --
that Hamas began its retaliation against Israel's unprovoked
attacks.
(And no, the murder of the teenagers was not a "provocation" by
Hamas, which disclaimed all connection to the crime. It was almost
certainly carried out a rogue clan which has often -- conveniently --
staged provocations whenever it seems that some small movement toward
peace might be made, and has been a thorn in Hamas' side for a long time.
What's more, as Max Blumenthal reported,
the
Israeli government knew the teenagers had been murdered almost
immediately, and who the likely culprits were; but the Netanyahu regime
chose to wage a worldwide campaign of mendacity -- and torment the boys'
parents -- by claiming they might still be alive, and launching
"search" missions for them.)
These are all undisputed facts. The narrative that dominates the
Washington media and political discourse -- "plucky Israel attacked
without motive by demonic foes" -- is, again, an obvious lie. But
that has not stopped it from being repeated endlessly, all across the
political spectrum and in every form of media, day after day after
day.
It is impossible that Barack Obama does not know these undisputed facts.
Standing at the apex of history's most all-pervasive intelligence system
-- and receiving daily digests of news reports on volatile areas like the
Middle East -- he of all people knows that the Hamas rocket fire was a
response to an Israeli military action, an Israeli violation of a long
ceasefire.
It is also impossible that a majority, if not all, of the 100 U.S.
Senators who voted to endorse the Israeli slaughter in Gaza -- including
stalwart "progressives" like Al Franken and
"socialist" Bernie Sanders -- did not know the truth when they
cast their ballots. It is impossible that the editors and reporters of
the nation's leading media organizations do not know these facts -- which
they themselves reported only a few weeks ago.
Yet day after day after day, from the commanding heights of our
"culture" (if the debased goon show of our public discourse
deserves such a word), the Big Lie thunders forth. What's more, Obama is
putting his money (or rather, our money) where his mendacious mouth is,
tacking $225 million for Israel's "Iron Dome" missile
defense system into a bill ostensibly meant to deal with the influx of
child immigrants. Obama and the Senate Democrats are making political
pawns out of these children -- most of whom are fleeing Central American
hellholes created in no small part by decades of bipartisan military and
political backing for repressive oligarchs.
(
Including, of course, Obama's support for an oligarch-militarist
"regime change" coup in Honduras early in his presidency.) With
the new money for Israel's military, the Democrats hope to sucker the
Republicans into voting for the emergency immigration bill (from which
they cut $1 billion -- hey, you don't want to coddle those kids!), or
else put them in a political bind if the immigrant-hating GOP votes
against the bill: "You aren't supporting plucky little Israel!"
A very cynical ploy, yes, but no matter: even if it fails and the
children are left to languish, some other way will be found to get the
money to Israel and, most importantly, show the world that America fully
supports the massacre -- more than 800 Palestinians killed so far,
including whole families, refugees at a UN shelter, patients in hospitals
and other prime military targets.
Eight hundred dead -- and Obama gives the IDF a $225 million bounty.
Maybe when the death count reaches a thousand, he'll buy Netanyahu a pony
or something.
2.
James Marc Leas lays out the timeline leading up to the operation
in this succinct marshaling of the facts in CounterPunch. You should
read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts:
The July 8 ITIC report also divulged why Hamas launched its first rocket
fire at Israel in more than 19 months on July 7: On that night Israeli
forces had bombed and killed 6 Hamas members in Gaza. The ITIC report
includes a picture of the six Hamas members. Thus, a report from an
authoritative Israeli source described the provocation for the resumption
of rocket fire: Hamas rocket fire began only after Israeli forces had
engaged in nearly a month of military operations in violation of the
ceasefire agreement and had killed 6 Hamas members in Gaza. ...
The facts show that Israeli forces had to work quite hard to get Hamas to
end its cease-fire. The killing of the six Hamas members was not an
isolated event. Israeli forces and settlers had gone wild on the West
Bank starting on June 12 after the kidnaping of three Israeli teens.
Israeli forces had also attacked 60 targets in Gaza during those three
weeks of June. Then, on the night of July 7, 2014, the Israeli Air Force
had attacked approximately 50 more “terrorist targets” in the Gaza Strip,
as described in the ITIC report.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on July 3:
Israel’s military operations in the West Bank following the abduction and
killing of three Israeli teenagers have amounted to collective
punishment. The military operations included unlawful use of force,
arbitrary arrests, and illegal home demolitions. ... Giving more details,
several of the weekly reports from the Palestine Center for Human Rights
(PCHR) indicate that Israeli forces and settlers killed 11 Palestinians
and wounded 51 during 369 incursions into the West Bank between June 12
and July 2 and that Israeli forces raided hundreds of houses on the West
Bank each week.
110 bombing raids, a military incursion, 17 killings, mass arrests -- all
before Hamas fired a single rocket. This is what Obama -- and every
single member of the United States Senate -- call an "unprovoked
attack." They say it with a straight face -- nay, with long, somber,
pious faces -- but they know it's a lie.
3.
But let us imagine, just for a moment, that their deceitful narrative was
true. What if Hamas just woke up one fine, clear peaceful morning and
said, "Hey, let's start firing missiles at Israel, fellas! Won't
that be a hoot?" The fact is that even in that scenario, it would
not be an "unprovoked attack," but a legitimate act of
self-defense.
How do we know this? Because one of Israel's most honored statesmen told
us so. As
Jonathan Schwarz notes, Abba Eban, one of the founding fathers of
Israel, used his renowned eloquence to defend Israel in the UN from
charges of aggression for striking first in the 1967 Six-Day War. Rising
to address the global body -- where he had once served as vice-president
of the General Assembly -- Eban put forth his case. The surprise attack
was justified, he said, because Egypt had blockaded an Israeli
port:
The blockade is by definition an act of war, imposed and enforced through
armed violence. Never in history have blockade and peace existed side by
side. From May 24 onward, the question who started the war or who fired
the first shot became momentously irrelevant. There is no difference in
civil law between murdering a man by slow strangulation or killing him by
a shot in the bead. From the moment at which the blockade was imposed,
active hostilities had commenced and Israel owed Egypt nothing of her
Charter rights. If a foreign power sought to close Odessa or Copenhagen
or Marseilles or New York harbour by the use of force, what would happen?
Would there be any discussion about who had fired the first shot? Would
anyone ask whether aggression had begun?
As Schwarz points out -- and which the entirety of the American
political-media establishment perpetually fails to point out --
Gaza has been subject to a stringent and ruinous blockade by Israel since
2007.
As noted here the other day:
Israel has imprisoned the people of Gaza in a stateless limbo while
carefully controlling almost every aspect of their lives, including what
medicines they can have, what manufacturing and building materials they
are allowed and even, at times, how much food they are allowed to eat to
keep the population weakened but just above malnutrition levels. This
brutal regimen in daily life is of course punctuated with regular night
raids, bombings, kidnappings, “disappearings” and almost weekly
civilians deaths at the hands of Israeli overseers. This has gone on year
after year.
Eban said Israel was justified in retaliating with military force when
Egypt had blockaded a port for a few weeks. How much more justified would
the Palestinians be in retaliating against a total blockade -- by land,
sea and air -- that has lasted almost eight years?
I don't agree with lobbing missiles into cities. I believe it's wrong.
But I also realize that I have the great luxury of pondering these moral
and legal and philosophical questions at my leisure, in comfort and
safety. I haven't seen my family half-starved, my children's growth
stunted, my friends and relatives blown to bits. I haven't been trapped
in stateless limbo, with no passport, no freedom, no opportunity, under
threat of violent death or arbitrary arrest every moment of my life. I
don't know what I would do if that was my reality. I don't know what I'd
do if I saw my loved ones suffer that way, year after year. I might
somehow hold on to the ideal of non-violent resistance -- or I very well
might not.
But I do know that by the terms of the world's great and good -- who
speak portentously of the "laws of war" and analyze in great
detail the "justifications" for violent conflict -- the
Palestinians have a right to resist the "slow strangulation" of
the blockade ... and the "shot in the head" (and the missile in
the crib) that they are now being subjected to. By Abba Eban's own
reasoning, from the very first day of the Israeli blockade of Gaza,
"the question who started the war or who fired the first shot became
momentously irrelevant."
Note: Updated 25/7 to reflect increase in the death count.
http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2413-blockading-the-truth-obamas-big-lie-about-gaza.html
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