[Reader-list] With Hamas, Hitlerism comes to the Middle East wearing the mask of anti-Hitlerism

[Britta Ohm]

Oh, what utter rubbish, Pawan. The relations of power and justice are  
so unmistakably clear that falling for this whole 'Hitlerism'-trope  
speaks of nothing but the readiness to buy the dominant discourse - as  
usual, I feel tempted to write...
How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the  
Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its  
merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions


Avi Shlaim

                                      The Guardian, Wednesday 7  
January 2009



  The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is  
through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state  
of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the  
Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American  
partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John  
Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the  
Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed  
by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this  
judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of  
Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have  
reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the  
mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of  
Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the  
Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation  
of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967  
war had very little to do with security and everything to do with  
territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel  
through permanent political, economic and military control over the  
Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most  
prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy  
of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed  
into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural  
resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not  
simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case  
of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel  
turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of  
water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli  
goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to  
make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to  
Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real  
political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial  
era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal  
and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the  
instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In  
Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with  
1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the  
territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce  
water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the  
majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and  
unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less  
than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to  
civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile  
breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a  
unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers  
and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the  
Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive  
the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the  
Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal  
from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution.  
But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West  
Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state.  
Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a  
choice and it chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the  
borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs  
on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus  
not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a  
prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a  
unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my  
view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental  
rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from  
Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any  
independent political existence on their land.

Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to  
control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was  
converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the  
Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make  
sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to  
terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of  
authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done  
anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great  
deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret  
collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian  
nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people  
succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world  
with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair  
elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority  
brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to  
recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas  
is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and  
demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by  
withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus  
developed with a significant part of the international community  
imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the  
occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were  
blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine  
persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists,  
that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their  
nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a  
bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with  
democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a  
normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are  
no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above  
all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom  
and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political  
programme following its rise to power. From the ideological  
rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic  
accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah  
formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long- 
term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with  
a government that included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival  
Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the  
nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist  
movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the  
corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious  
political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American  
neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a  
Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the  
collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to  
seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination  
of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government.  
In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the  
Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power.  
The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the  
pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms.  
The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen  
by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their  
struggle for independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A  
general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to  
the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity  
to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the  
bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain  
left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah  
in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on  
apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind  
support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White  
House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on  
Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate  
ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground  
invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian  
aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides  
leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is  
indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has  
been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a  
heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort  
to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill  
rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self- 
righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve- 
yorim, "crying and shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict.  
Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an  
unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak -  
terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam  
rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza  
until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage  
caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological  
impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its  
government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in  
self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was  
totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the  
three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by  
rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290  
Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to  
Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one  
of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of  
Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire  
came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a  
violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any  
exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord,  
leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1%  
of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted  
drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas  
canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical  
supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the  
civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the  
border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of  
collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international  
humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity  
of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on  
Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core  
messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the  
ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its  
population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to  
hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably  
successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their  
propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric  
of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the  
ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed  
six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its  
population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza  
by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care  
to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of  
a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza,  
now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But  
Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an  
eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of  
more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet  
ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are  
incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket  
attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and  
destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their  
resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that  
glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military  
solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with  
Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most  
elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to  
achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas,  
which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term  
ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20,  
30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same  
reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still  
on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes  
it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state  
with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state  
habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass  
destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against  
civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three  
criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not  
peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military  
domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and  
more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course  
free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not  
mandatory to do so.

• Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the  
University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the  
Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace.

                                     guardian.co.uk © Guardian News  
and Media Limited 2009

Am 08.01.2009 um 13:07 schrieb Pawan Durani:

>  *
> http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjRiODVjOGExYjM5YjhhMmQ1YTMzMzkzYTZlNWY0Njg=&w=MQ
> ==*
>
> *'G*o back to the oven! You need a big oven, that's what you need!"
>
> This is what one young woman thought passed for acceptable discourse  
> during
> an anti-Israel rally last week in, of all places, Fort Lauderdale,  
> Fla.
> Other chants were similarly unlovely. You can watch it on YouTube if  
> you
> like But why bother? The Fort Lauderdale outburst is just one window  
> on the
> upside-down world of Israel hatred. Across the Islamic world, and in  
> too
> many points West, it is still considered a penetrating and poignant  
> insight
> to call Zionists the "new Nazis." For instance, in Sunday's *Gulf  
> News*,
> Mohammad Abdullah al Mutawa, a sociology professor at United Arab  
> Emirates
> University, penned an essay titled "Zionists are the new Nazis." He  
> began:
> "Today, the whole world stands as a witness to the fact that the Nazi
> Holocaust was a mere lie, which was devised by the Zionists to  
> blackmail
> humanity."
>
> At a Saturday protest in New York against Israel's military assault  
> on Gaza,
> some carried signs that read: "Israel: The Fourth Reich," "Holocaust  
> by
> Holocaust Survivors," "Stop Israel's Holocaust," "Holocaust in Gaza"  
> and
> "Stop the Zionist Genocide in Gaza."
>
> Type "Israel" and "Nazi" into any news search engine and you'll be  
> rewarded,
> or punished, with a bounty of such statements from just the last  
> week or so.
> Gaza is the new Auschwitz, the Israeli Defense Forces are SS  
> troops ... I
> find myself tempted to simply write "et cetera" because it's all so  
> familiar
> by now. But to do that is to dismiss, and therefore accept, such
> grotesqueries as trivialities, when in fact such charges are deeply
> revealing — just not about Israel.
>
> First, let us note that if supposedly all-powerful Israel is  
> dedicated to
> exterminating the Palestinian people, it is doing a bad job. The  
> Palestinian
> population has only grown since 1948. There are more Arab citizens  
> living in
> Israel proper today than there were in all of Palestine the year  
> Israel was
> founded.
>
> Perhaps one reason Israel fails at genocide is that it isn't  
> interested in
> genocide? That would explain why Israel warned thousands of Gazans  
> by cell
> phone to leave homes near Hamas rocket stockpiles. It would clarify  
> why,
> even amid all-out war, it offers aid to enemy civilians. It would even
> illuminate the otherwise mysterious clamor from Israelis for a  
> viable "peace
> partner."
>
> But no. For millions of Israel haters, the more plausible  
> explanation is
> that the "defiant" Palestinians have miraculously survived Israel's
> determination to wipe them out.
>
> Meanwhile, calls for the complete extermination of Israel are  
> routine. The
> Hamas charter, invoking the fraudulent "Protocols of the Elders of  
> Zion" as
> justification, demands the destruction of Israel. Hamas exists solely
> because it is dedicated to the complete obliteration of the "Zionist
> entity." Remove that "principle" and Hamas is meaningless.
>
> A sick mixture of Holocaust envy and Holocaust denial is the  
> defining spirit
> of Hamas. Indeed, Holocaust denial passes for a scholarly pursuit  
> not just
> in Gaza but throughout much of the Arab and Muslim world.
> Meanwhile, calls for the complete extermination of Israel are  
> routine. The
> Hamas charter, invoking the fraudulent "Protocols of the Elders of  
> Zion" as
> justification, demands the destruction of Israel. Hamas exists solely
> because it is dedicated to the complete obliteration of the "Zionist
> entity." Remove that "principle" and Hamas is meaningless.
>
> A sick mixture of Holocaust envy and Holocaust denial is the  
> defining spirit
> of Hamas. Indeed, Holocaust denial passes for a scholarly pursuit  
> not just
> in Gaza but throughout much of the Arab and Muslim world.
> *— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and the
> author of **Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left  
> from
> Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning**.
> *
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___________________

Britta Ohm
Postdoc
University of Zurich
UPRP Asia and Europe

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