Party to Murder

[ProgressiveMuslim]

by Chris Hedges

TruthDig.com editor's note: In light of the recent fighting in Gaza, Truthdig asked Chris Hedges, who covered the Mideast for The New York Times for seven years, to update a previous column on Gaza.

Can anyone who is following the Israeli air attacks on Gaza-the buildings blown to rubble, the children killed on their way to school, the long rows of mutilated corpses, the wailing mothers and wives, the crowds of terrified Palestinians not knowing where to flee, the hospitals so overburdened and out of supplies they cannot treat the wounded, and our studied, callous indifference to this widespread human suffering-wonder why we are hated?

Our self-righteous celebration of ourselves and our supposed virtue is as false as that of Israel. We have become monsters, militarized bullies, heartless and savage. We are a party to human slaughter, a flagrant war crime, and do nothing. We forget that the innocents who suffer and die in Gaza are a reflection of ourselves, of how we might have been should fate and time and geography have made the circumstances of our birth different. We forget that we are all absurd and vulnerable creatures. We all have the capacity to fear and hate and love. "Expose thyself to what wretches feel," King Lear said, entering the mud and straw hovel of Poor Tom, "and show the heavens more just."

Privilege and power, especially military power, is a dangerous narcotic. Violence destroys those who bear the brunt of its force, but also those who try to use it to become gods. Over 350 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, and over 1,000 have been wounded since the air attacks began on Saturday. Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, said Israel is engaged in a "war to the bitter end" against Hamas in Gaza. A war? Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command and control, no army, and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is murder.

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, has labeled what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza "a crime against humanity." Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as "a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention." He has asked for "the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law."


read on...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/30-11

[bemildred]

1. Israel's Attempted Endgame in Gaza

The intensity of the bombings on Saturday, which left over 230 people dead and 800 wounded, many seriously, was what struck one witness, R., who claimed never to have heard so many explosions so close together and for such an uninterrupted period of time inside the Gaza Strip. One after another, the explosions sounded, most of them near heavily populated areas; and in one case only 30 meters away from his daughter’s elementary school.

The bombings were timed to cause the maximum number of “enemy” casualties. They occurred at approximately 11:20am on a bustling Saturday morning, just as schools were changing shifts and many children were either leaving for home or coming to afternoon classes; when offices were filled with their employees, and streets busy with the late morning crowds out getting lunch or on quick errands of one sort or another. The day before, Israel had opened some of the crossings into Gaza to let in another trickle of humanitarian aid. ‘See how generous we are to our enemy!’ they exclaim with straight faces to the international media. Each time Gaza reaches the brink of starvation and ruin, they let in just enough food and supplies to silence potential critics. Then the next round begins. It is hardly surprising. After all, this policy was outlined publicly by Dov Weisglass not so long ago when he promised that Israel would put Gaza on a punishing “starvation diet” until it saw reason and evicted its democratically elected government. Many people, including members of the Hamas government, believed that reopening the crossings to international aid signaled another brief lull in military activity, as it usually had, while the IDF General staff prepared its next offensive. In this way were the people and government of Gaza unprepared for the next day’s slaughter

The deliberate ploy to strike at midday when the collective population of Gaza had let down its guard for a few short hours had its intended effect. One of the deadliest massacres in the history of Israel’s occupation of Palestine followed as F-16 fighter jets, helicopter gun ships, tanks, armored vehicles and pilot-less drones closed in on the Gaza Strip. By Monday morning over 300 people were dead and 1000 injured. Hospitals were overflowing with the seriously wounded; the morgues with the dead for whom they had insufficient refrigeration. Insufficient medical personnel, equipment, supplies and services raised the likelihood of many more dying in their overused beds waiting for the help and attention they would never get. The taxi driver R. hailed to get him to his daughter’s school as quickly as possible after those first strikes had begun initially refused, staring in shock as columns of smoke rose from brand new layers of debris.

The sound of F-16s flying overhead dropping bombs is not a sound one ever forgets. In other words, 750,000 children –or half the population of Gaza—have it ingrained in their memories for the rest of their lives. Another equally unacceptable percentage of this group will have had images burned into their minds’ eyes of the devastation and death wrought by these sounds as well, a factor that partially explains why more than 50 per cent of Gaza’s three-quarters of a million children suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: it isn’t easy to see piles of the dead or their blown apart body parts without some kind of reaction. Violent, action-packed Hollywood war and terror films may provide us with virtual reality, but when the severed jaw of a woman is lying at your feet only a few inches away from her bloody and disfigured head, or when the bare leg of a man is lying by itself in a room, the rest of the body blown outside the house, the illusory atmosphere of the virtual world is quickly replaced by the raw, heavy emotions that accompany real world sequences. This is when paralyzing fright grips you so firmly that your legs forget how to move; how to flee the gruesome nightmare scenarios. You can’t run away.

http://www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein12292008.html

[bemildred]

2. Jennifer Loewenstein

Jennifer (Sarin) Loewenstein is a Madison, Wisconsin, political activist and Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, an administrative, not an academic, appointment. <1> <2> She is a member of the board of the Israeli Coalition against House Demolitions-USA branch, founder of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project <3> <4> and a freelance journalist. <5> Lowenstein is married to David Lowenstein, Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin. <6>

Loewenstein lived in Israel in 1963 as a child when her father played first trumpet in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. She went back in 1981 as a junior in college, and returned as an adult, living in Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut and traveling in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where she worked for five months in 2002 at the Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza City <7> and writing in the Palestine Chronicle that "The Israelis are masters in the art of destruction." <8> She has returned to Gaza a number of times. <9>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Loewenstein

[bemildred]

5. Fatah loyalists: Gaza op is 'Allah's revenge' for Hamas actions

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A. sits at home most of the day: "I put my children in the center of the house, and my wife, brothers and I sit in another room. We have no electricity, and there is also no water. The children start crying every time they hear the planes or helicopters overhead, and definitely when there are explosions.

"All we can do is hug them and calm them. They are afraid to go to the bathroom and the little ones wet themselves every once in a while," he explained. A. is not considered a supporter of any of the Palestinian factions, but his anger with Hamas is discernible in his voice: "Look, most Palestinians will not say anything bad about Hamas. They are afraid for their lives. No one here will try to make any trouble or rebel. Forget about it. We saw what they did to families that tried to contend with them, such as Hilles or Dormush . They announced on their radio that if anyone 'harms security' - that means tries to challenge them - God will not have mercy on him. But in private conversations you hear the true criticism against them.

"Mostly it comes from Fatah activists, such as those whose family members were killed during the Hamas revolution in Gaza. The are saying 'It is Allah's revenge on Hamas for killing our children.' But they also do not understand why Israel is avoiding attacking the Hamas leadership and is concentrating on its soldiers. Most of the senior of the military wing, Iz al-Din al-Qassam, and the political leadership have not even been scratched. In the meantime what we see are simple Hamas soldiers or women, children and innocent civilians being killed. You are not even trying to attack the senior ."

Yet A. does not hide his criticism of Israel. "Your operation is directed against the entire Palestinian people, not just against Hamas. See how many women and children were killed. The majority still blames Israel for the deterioration... What have you gained from the bombings? What is the benefit? You have not achieved anything, except that Hamas' standing in the Palestinian street, the Arab world and even the international community has strengthened."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051355.html

[azurnoir]

3. Thank you so much for this

redefining who is civilian and who is Hamas has been an important part of Israel's PR campaign to sell the slaughter in Gaza as acceptable

[bemildred]

4. Yeah, she kicks ass.

She is too hyperbolic for my taste, and some of her other stuff was well ..., but this was tight.

[subsuelo]

6. I lay awake last night thinking the same idea

We in the U.S. are all party to murder. *I* am party to the terrorist crimes of the Israeli regime.

This has to stop.