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That
a picture tells a story better than words is the sort of cliché beloved of
songwriters, but with the picture published here, the cliché becomes reality.
And
all the moral equivalence in the world will not change the fact of what this
graphic illustrates.
What
is going on in the Gaza today is not ‘defence’.
It is the continuation of
policies that have been being enacted for a long time, and of an ideology that
is older yet, and any response to it is a direct consequence
of that ideology being put into action.
Here
are detailed statistics on deaths of Palestinians and Israelis killed by both
sides, from the year 2000 to September of this year. If you want to know just
who is the aggressor, they make revealing reading.
These statistics are taken from B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories that, according to its own website, “was established
in 1989 by a group of prominent academics, attorneys, journalists and Knesset
members.
“It
endeavors to document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about
human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, combat the phenomenon of denial
prevalent among the Israeli public, and help create a human rights culture in
Israel.”
The
moral equivalence and the fear of being accused of anti-semitism (with all that that means for Europeans in particular) have, in effect, helped to enable what the maps shown above reveal.
It enables US President Barack Obama to state that Israel has a right to "defend" itself, as though this is what is happening.
It allows UK foreign secretary William Hague to claim that it is all the fault of Hamas – in essence, making the central 'crime' of the Palestinian people their refusal to be simply cowed and murdered and driven off their land.
As though, when more moderate Palestinian leaders are humilated in attempts to negotiate meaningfully and some of the people turn to less moderate voices, it is rocket science that rockets would be the response?
And
if we do nothing else, and if we are feeling impotent as we see pictures of
death and devastation, and as we hear Israel’s interior minister, Eli Yishai, say that the aim of this new campaign (which comes only shortly before elections in Israel) is to bomb Gaza “back to the Middle Ages”, then we must at least stop
the hand-wringing moral equivalence and be quite open that this is an act of
Israeli aggression, following on decades of Israeli aggression, which is based
on a desire to eradicate or force out all Palestinians, and to absorb all the
remaining Palestinian territories into a Ersatz Israel.
A
few links in addition to those included above.
Independent Jewish Voices is also interesting.
Rather differently, Zaytoun offers a different sort of solidarity, selling Palestinian products, including some very good olive oil.
For more in-depth history, Ralph Schoenman’s The Hidden History of
Zionism,
from 1988, is worth reading, and can be accessed here.
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