[Reader-list] Fwd: Robert Fisk :Hamas and Israel---

[Nagraj Adve]

Sunday 18 November 2012
  Hamas and Israel have opened the 'gates of hell' in Gaza yet again. And
the number of journalistic cliches in hell is growing by the day

'Surgical air strikes', 'rooting out terror', and 'cyber-terrorism' cannot
conceal reality
                  Share
 +More
  Ads by Google<http://www.google.com/url?ct=abg&q=https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py%3Fcontact%3Dabg_afc%26url%3Dhttp://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/hamas-and-israel-have-opened-the-gates-of-hell-in-gaza-yet-again-and-the-number-of-journalistic-cliches-in-hell-is-growing-by-the-day-8327133.html%26gl%3DIN%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dca-pub-5964551156905038%26ai0%3DCyM-DnoGqUMiBLsHDigfO_YCwBtmG_M4C8aKMoz_B24OuWRABIN3qsRQoA1Ce1MKVA2Dl6uaDvA7IAQGpAgMaVX1VgFM-qAMBqgSLAk_QOPymWBec_5XuRxaBXMESbt4gDtjuPQ3FSj5SeYGSSfcTQRQvINJGynBlHVgK0DMogknQtKQxzEK-uin7H-wxI9dyowmpXmKN7jZ6KABv0wlX8LjgwasrwNlbTekQvW5oxmNW4MmzKFMAC3E_ORxdSeZa-FtbURTnd3SFYdwGmdSIjAc0afjbrv-j1aInPAc9_vG7oC4y_aaVkukyXN6M9SXTaSQpD1aU9v7Ydbbl5yBUjU5026DQ77EXy8pN8RqGHONDQrOtdsSkZy8lKYhbUBSkUWHRQPK-Hh6S-c0E4cCROPl-kXvO5utAOmI6uBdkQ-qTaQiwkEFlnz-aRIcHhVejuQldLTES8g%26ai1%3DC1ZPTnoGqUMiBLsHDigfO_YCwBrCQ-PcCoIOB_znYn76SYBACIN3qsRQoA1CI9JDpAWDl6uaDvA6gAcjPrt4DyAEBqQIDGlV9VYBTPqgDAaoEjgJP0CjlklkXn_-V7kcWgVzBEm7eIA7Y7j0NxUo-UnmBkkn3E0EULyDSRspwZR1YCtAzKIJJ0LSkMcxCvrop-x_sMSPXcqMJqV5ije42eigAb9MJV_C44MGrK8DZW03pEL1uaMZjVuDJsyhTAAtxPzkcXUnmWvhbW1EU53d0hWHcBpnUiIwHNGn4267_o9WiJzwHPf7xu6AuMv2mlZLpMlzejPUl02kkKQ9WlPb-2HW25ecgVI1OdNug0O-xF8vKTfEahhzjQ0KzrXbEpGcvJSmIW1AUpFFh0UDyvh4ekvnNBOHAkTjBfZZzzlnStf8hk275j7FAf4KnOHu36pzKmUByBLGCoInJW-Qz0yllKg-IBgE%26ai2%3DC6aG0noGqUMiBLsHDigfO_YCwBqz7o_4CpJWp8T_slsSeRxADIN3qsRQoA1CUnse0BGDl6uaDvA6gAdTo39wDyAEBqQIDGlV9VYBTPqgDAaoEiwJP0EjimFgXnv-V7kcWgVzBEm7eIA7Y7j0NxUo-UnmBkkn3E0EULyDSRspwZR1YCtAzKIJJ0LSkMcxCvrop-x_sMSPXcqMJqV5ije42eigAb9MJV_C44MGrK8DZW03pEL1uaMZjVuDJsyhTAAtxPzkcXUnmWvhbW1EU53d0hWHcBpnUiIwHNGn4267_o9WiJzwHPf7xu6AuMv2mlZLpMlzejPUl02kkKQ9WlPb-2HW25ecgVI1OdNug0O-xF8vKTfEahhzjQ0KzrXbEpGcvJSmIW1AUpFFh0UDyvh4ekvnNBOHAkTj5fpF7zqvvZzdiOrgXZEPqk2kIsJBBZZ8_mkSHB4VXo7kJXThgLvKIBgE&usg=AFQjCNFtyfRjKKv_kw_CfktaNnCs-G6tvg>

  Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. Here we go again. Israel is going
to “root out Palestinian terror” – which it has been claiming to do,
unsuccessfully, for 64 years – while Hamas, the latest in “Palestine’s”
morbid militias, announces that Israel has “opened the gates of hell” by
murdering its military leader, Ahmed al-Jabari.

Hezbollah several times announced that Israel had “opened the gates of
hell” for attacking Lebanon. Yasser Arafat, who was a super-terrorist, then
a super-statesman – after capitulating on the White House lawn – and then
became a super-terrorist again when he realised he’d been conned by Camp
David; he, too waffled on about the “gates of hell” in 1982.

And we journos are writing like performing bears, repeating all the clichés
we’ve used for the past 40 years. The killing of Mr Jabari was a “targeted
attack”, it was a “surgical air strike” – like the Israeli “surgical air
strikes” which killed almost 17,000 civilians in Lebanon in 1982, the 1,200
Lebanese, most of them civilians, in 2006, or the 1,300 Palestinians, most
of them civilians, in Gaza in 2008-9, or the pregnant woman and the baby
who were killed by the “surgical air strikes” in Gaza last week – and the
11 civilians killed in one Gaza house yesterday. At least Hamas, with their
Godzilla rockets, don’t claim anything “surgical” about them. They are
meant to murder Israelis – any Israelis, man woman or child.

As, in truth, are the Israeli attacks on Gaza. But don’t say that or you’ll
be an anti-Semitic Nazi; almost as evil, wicked, unspeakable, devilish and
murderous as the Hamas movement with which – again, please don’t mention
this – Israel happily negotiated in the Eighties when they encouraged this
bunch of mobsters to take power in Gaza and thus decapitate the exiled
super-terrorist Arafat. The new exchange rate in Gaza for Palestinian and
Israeli deaths has reached 16:1. It will rise, of course. The exchange rate
in 2008-9 was 100:1.

And we are myth-making too. The last Israeli war in Gaza was such a
stunning success – “rooting out terror”, of course – that their supposedly
élite units couldn’t even find their own captured soldier Gilad Shalit,
eventually produced last year by Mr Jabari in person.

Mr Jabari was the “No 1 shadowy leader” of Hamas, according to the
Associated Press. But how on earth can he be shadowy when we know his date
of birth, family details, his years of imprisonment by Israel during which
he changed allegiance from Fatah to Hamas? So while I’m on it, those years
of Israeli imprisonment didn’t exactly convert Mr Jabari to pacifism, did
they? Well, no tears then; he was a man who lived by the sword and died by
the sword, a fate which, of course, will not afflict Israel’s warriors of
the air as they kill civilians in Gaza.

Washington supports Israel’s “right to defend itself” then claims a
spurious neutrality – as if Israel’s bombs on Gaza didn’t come from the
United States as assuredly as the Fajr-5 rockets come from Iran.

Meanwhile, the pitiful William Hague holds Hamas “principally responsible”
for the latest war. But there is no such evidence that this is true.
According to The Atlantic Monthly, the Israeli killing of a “mentally
unfit” Palestinian who strayed towards the border may have been the start
of the latest war. Others suspect the killing of a small Palestinian boy
may have been the provocation. But he was shot dead by the Israelis when an
armed Palestinian group tried to cross the frontier and was confronted by
Israeli tanks. In which case Palestinian gunmen – albeit not Hamas – may
have kicked-off the whole shooting-match.

But is there nothing to stop this nonsense, this garbage war? Hundreds of
rockets fall on Israel. True. Thousands of acres of land are stolen from
Arabs by Israel –for Jews and Jews only – on the West Bank. There isn’t
even enough land left there now for a Palestinian state.

Delete the last two sentences, please. There are only good guys and bad
guys in this outrageous conflict in which the Israelis claim to be the good
guys to the applause of Western countries (who then wonder why a lot of
Muslims don’t like Westerners very much).

The problem, oddly, is that Israel’s actions in the West Bank and its siege
of Gaza are bringing closer the very event which Israeli trumpets it fears
every day: that Israel faces destruction.

In the battle of rockets – not least Iran’s Fajr-5s and Hezbollah’s drones
– a new warpath is being trodden by both sides. It’s no longer about
Israeli tanks crossing the Lebanese border or the Gaza border. It’s about
rockets and hi-tech drones and computer attacks – or “cyber-terrorism”, of
course, if committed by Muslims – and the human dross ripped apart by the
wayside will be even less relevant than it has been over the past three
days.

The Arab awakening now takes its own path: its leaders are going to have to
follow their public’s mood. So, I suspect, is poor old King Abdullah of
Jordan. America’s clowning for “peace” on Israel’s side is no longer worth
the candle among Arabs. And if Benjamin Netanyahu believes that the arrival
of the first Iranian Fajr rockets necessitates the Israeli big bang on
Iran, and then Iran fires back – and perhaps at the Americans, too– and
brings in Hezbollah – and Obama gets swallowed up in another Western-Muslim
war, what happens then?

Well, Israel will ask for a ceasefire, as it routinely does in wars against
Hezbollah. It will plead yet again for the undying support of the West in
its struggle against world evil, Iran included.

And why not praise the killing of Mr Jabari? Please forget that the
Israelis negotiated via the German secret service with Mr Jabari himself,
less than 12 months ago. You can’t negotiate with “terrorists”, right?
Israel calls this latest bloodbath Operation Pillar of Defence. Pillar of
Hypocrisy, more like.

 --
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Free Binayak Sen" group.
To post to this group, send an email to free-binayaksen at googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
free-binayaksen+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/free-binayaksen?hl=en-GB.