[Reader-list] Fwd: Israeli Barbarism In Gaza By Avshalom In Israel

[indersalim]

Israeli barbarism in Gaza
By Dekel Avshalom in Israel
Tuesday, 06 January 2009

In a surprise attack last week, Israel's air force infiltrated the
Gaza Strip and started blasting away. On Saturday, the air force was
accompanied by blasting from the navy and infiltration of tanks and
foot soldiers into the Strip causing death and destruction in
horrifying dimensions. Up to this time, the death toll for
Palestinians stands at 526 people, with 2500 injured. Israeli
officials, in particular Defense Minister Ehud Barak, keep reminding
us that "this is just the beginning". Israeli media is overjoyed in
stressing the claim that the "majority" of the victims are Hamas
soldiers. We do not exactly know how they define a "Hamas soldier",
but the fact that 107 of the murdered victims were children, makes it
very hard for us to believe such claims. This attack is overwhelming
in nature. It has been reported that since the 1967 war Israel had
never used such a massive air attack.

After an Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip

This attack was preceded by a series of deceptive manoeuvres on the
part of Israel in order to keep Hamas off guard. Israel kept up the
pretence of negotiations on the ceasefire and even allowed goods to
enter the Strip. This deception should not come as a surprise to
anyone who knows Ehud Barak's tactical mind. Just a short while ago,
Barak used the same deceptive tactics in order to lull some entrenched
Rightist Jewish settlers in Hebron before evacuating them by force.

A statesman in such a high position does not normally use such tactics
unless he is desperate. And Barak's desperation is what lies behind
such an unprecedented attack. Barak apparently saved the attack for a
special moment in which he could improve his position in the polls for
the upcoming national elections. These polls consistently show that
the party under his leadership will receive its lowest number of votes
to date.

For a long time Barak postponed the attack so it would not seem that
he was working under the pressure of his opponents. He wanted the
credit all for himself. Now, the Israeli masses, worked up by the
media, got what the media told them they wanted: revenge. Barak plans
to surf on a wave of Palestinian blood into a position of larger
number of seats in parliament.

In many ways, this attack has similarities with the Lebanese fiasco in
2006. It also is a staggering failure for Israel from the very moment
it was concocted in the twisted minds of Barak and the army generals.
Just as in Lebanon, also here the army has failed to stop the rocket
launching into Israel. Hamas launched hundreds of them
uninterruptedly, killing 3 Israelis in one day and wounding several
others. It would also not be surprising if it comes out that the army
wanted this result in order to incite Israelis against the
Palestinians and to maintain support for the current operation. Just
as in Lebanon, also here the operation has no concrete purpose. It is
obvious that it cannot destroy Hamas, which will surely rearm itself
within a few months of the operation ending. So it all seems just like
an unleashing of random violence by the army for no obvious reason
other than crude revenge. The difference between the current operation
and the Lebanese one is that now the media is full of praises for the
Defense Minister and the army on the exact level of performance that
was shown in Lebanon.

Collaborating democracy with imperialism

How do we explain a situation where the Israeli masses have been
whipped up into such a state of mind of a vengeful and shortsighted
focus of their political worldview on "getting back" at the
Palestinians? What should not be underestimated here is the
psychological warfare the Israeli ruling elite has been waging against
the Israeli masses. The media, the military and the politicians have
been collaborating to create the impression that the rocket launching
from the Gaza Strip has made the surrounding Israeli settlements look
like a war zone. In actual fact, since 2004 to just before the recent
operation began, the number of Israelis killed by such rockets is less
than 15. To put things in perspective, the number of Israeli workers
that died because of accidents in their workplaces during this period,
was over 10 times that number. This number also resembles the number
of Israelis that die in traffic accidents in less than two weeks. So
if Barak is really so eager to protect Israeli lives through military
means, he should be mobilising the air force against the Israeli
bourgeoisie and the state bureaucrats responsible for transport safety
rather than against the Palestinian masses!

The military is making the lives of the Israelis in the settlements
around Gaza as fearful as it can be. It is inducing a feeling of panic
among the public using every means including loud sirens, arbitrary
"defence" measures such as ducking and hiding, and forcing people into
bomb shelters, all in response to rockets that pose a minimal security
threat. All this horror show is designed with one aim in mind: to make
ordinary Israelis support the continuity of Israel's control over
Gaza, and thus to pressure or to help democratically elected
politicians to fall in line with imperialist interests.

In the current economic crisis, control over Gaza is crucial to
Israeli imperialism more than ever since the first Palestinian
uprising in 1987. First of all, it satisfies the military's hunger for
state spending on arms. The military, and the politicians under its
influence, have proven themselves eager to do battle in any period in
which their fiscal prerogatives are at jeopardy.

The most crucial thing for Israeli imperialism, however, is to
maintain stability for the "moderate" PLO in the West Bank which
provide Israel with numerous resources in terms of one of the cheapest
workforces in the world, a captive market that is dependent on
absorbing Israel's surpluses, and land and water resources that Israel
desperately needs. It requires the "pacifying" of Gaza in order to
make sure that the terrorism it hosts will not slide over into the
West Bank and undermine the PLO regime.

This is not to say that Gaza is meaningless to Israel in its own
right. Despite its massive levels of poverty, the fact that the Gaza
masses depend on goods coming through Israel gives the Israeli
capitalists an advantage in terms of a captive market as well, that
is, as a long-term perspective. This may also explain why the Israeli
army has made much more of an effort to destroy the tunnels that
smuggle goods from Egypt than it has to destroy the rocket launchers
which were the formal reason for the operation in the first place!

What does Hamas want?

Unlike common-sense economic reductionism held by many on the Left,
terrorist groups don't simply grow out of poverty. Just as the PLO,
Hamas emerged from within the Palestinian petty bourgeoisie. They use
the masses and their plight mostly as a tool to achieve their class
interests which in this context usually include more lucrative jobs
and positions. After Israel co-opted the PLO into collaboration with
it in exchange for jobs created especially for the PLO members (the
jobs created under the cloak of the "Palestinian Authority"), Hamas
wanted its peace of the pie as well.

Palestinians of the West Bank demonstrate their solidarity with the
people in Gaza

It started to gather support from many frustrated Palestinians in the
face of the PLO's betrayal using, among other things, vengeful acts of
terrorism against Israelis. In parallel, it used similar tactics of
terrorism in order to lure Israel into negotiating with it, carrying
the risk of Israel's military, rather than diplomatic, retaliation.

Just like Israel's ruling class, Hamas also benefits from the
occupation. It uses it in order to gather support by the same populist
means of violent rhetoric and actions used by the Israeli politicians.
It also enjoys political and economic benefits via its control over
smuggling commodities into the Strip: just like Israel, it to can
benefit from the captive market in Gaza.

In such a situation it is puzzling why, some among the international
Left are tempted to take a supportive stance towards Hamas. They
usually state that despite Hamas' reactionary ideology, it should be
supported because of its "progressive fight against Israeli
imperialism". The folly of such an idea becomes obvious if we look at
Hamas from materialistic lines and ask ourselves what would happen if
Hamas were to win this conflict? Will it weaken Israeli imperialism as
the idealistic Leftists assume? A victory for Hamas could only mean
that Israel would be forced to negotiate with it and give it similar
political concessions as it gave to the PLO. The imperial relation of
Israel towards the Palestinians may take a different form, but it will
remain intact. Because under capitalism Palestine cannot be completely
cut off from Israel, and will always be dependent on it, a national
liberation movement that limits itself to struggling within the
confines of capitalism cannot go in any other direction.

Furthermore, bourgeois or petit bourgeois national liberation leaders
have usually tended to push the proletariat in the oppressed nation
into accepting their leadership because they became aware of the
potential power of the workers. Such was the alliance between the
South African workers and the ANC leaders who brought down the
apartheid regime. But Here, Hamas has made very little effort to
create an alliance with the Palestinian workers. Until now it has
mostly just harassed their trade unions. Hamas thus have only the
power of terrorism and collisions with the Israeli army to get
concessions from Israel. Relying on this broken reed, its
"anti-imperialist" credentials appear as somewhat exaggerated.

Is there a way out?

We are entering yet another cycle of violence between Israel's ruling
class and Hamas. Such cycles began with Israel's opening up to the PLO
in 1994. Each cycle brings Israel to a more violent response. However,
the army has no intention of remaining entangled in the Strip for too
long. This operation may last a bit longer and be much more violent
than its predecessors because Barak's election campaign has to be
taken into consideration. Although it is also true that once it ends,
the operation always leaves behind the preconditions for the next
operation.

Demonstration against the war in Amman (Jordan)

The Zionist chauvinism that characterized the first days of the
operation is gradually being replaced by fear of yet another debacle
such as in Lebanon. Journalists are constantly asking political and
military leaders for the actual goals which this operation intends to
achieve. The answers are always vague and illusive, such as "to
radically change the array of deterrence". In that background, the
announcement of Barak on Saturday was especially alarming. He said
that the operation would take a long time and would have numerous
victims. With no one knowing what this operation is for, this holds a
puzzling future for the stability of the political system in Israel:
after the chauvinism fades away, the death toll will keep increasing
and many questions will be raised by the masses.

To the dismay of the Israeli ruling class, thousands of Jews and
Palestinians came this Saturday to Tel Aviv for a mass demonstration
against the war (see video below). This is unprecedented. In the
Lebanese war it took two months of bloody entanglement for so many
protestors to show up. The protestors were constantly harassed by
Zionist counter-protests which show just how frightened they are of
the emerging protest movement in Israel. Small as it is now, the
Zionists are instinctively aware of the fact that it holds the only
real key to their downfall.

As this website has repeated many times over, there cannot be a
solution within the confines of bourgeois politics to this or any
other major political conflict in the world. However, for the moment
Israel and Palestine are deprived of any other form of politics. As
long as this situation persists, these cycles of violence will
continue. We can be sure, though, that from the impossibility of a
solution to the situation under capitalism, new political forces are
bound to emerge on both sides. The nature of these new forces is
impossible to predict at this stage. But if they do not base
themselves on the revolutionary collaboration of Israeli and
Palestinian workers and poor against their mutual oppressors, no
progressive change can be forthcoming from within the
Israeli-Palestinian borders.

Anti war demonstration in Tel Aviv



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See also:

Stop Israel's massacre in Gaza! by Walter Leon (December 30, 2008)
Israel: Tel Aviv municipal elections - a Pyrrhic victory for the Right
by Dekel Avshalom (November 17, 2008)
Three years after Israel's disengagement from Gaza: critical
reassessment by Dekel Avshalom (August 28, 2008)
Hamas and Israel agree on ceasefire by Dekel Avshalom (June 19, 2008)
Much ado about nothing: the Israeli "peace" talks with Syria by Dekel
Avshalom (May 28, 2008)
Israel turns 60 – where next for the Jewish and Palestinian peoples?
by Luke Wilson (May 16, 2008)
Israel storms Gaza: once again "peace" talks prepare war by Francesco
Merli (March 5, 2008)