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Gaza Crisis: Israelis Echoing Bush on Regime Change?
The Israelis appear to have learned from the Bush-Cheney administration.
On Monday morning, NPR ran an interview with Michael Oren, an American-Israeli best-selling military historian and Israeli reservist who is a spokesperson for the Israeli military. (He has also been a contributing editor for The New Republic.) Asked if the goal of the current Israeli operation in Gaza is regime change--that is, the expulsion of Hamas from power--he replied that Israelis "do not want to see continuation of Hamas rule in Gaza," but added, "It is not Israel's explicit goal to topple the Hamas government....That is not the stated goal of this operation. If it happens...there will be many people happy about it...The stated goal is to restore security to the southern part of Israel."
This line echoes the rhetoric used by Bush-Cheney officials in 2002 and 2003. They repeatedly noted that the United States officially favored regime change in Iraq but that the invasion to come was about WMDs and security. If it took regime change to neutralize that supposed dire WMD threat posed by Saddam Hussein, so be it.
The parallels between the Gaza offensive and the Iraq invasion are limited. Palestinian militants, with their rocket attacks, have posed a real threat to Israelis--thirteen Israelis have been killed by the rocket fire since 2005--and Saddam, despite the Bush-Cheney hype, had not posed a direct threat to Americans. (This is not to say the Israeli response, which has led to the deaths of scores of civilians, is either justified or wise.) But Oren's phrasing does mirror that used by the Bushies: we're not in this for regime change, but....
One question, though, is, what is the alternative in Gaza to Hamas? As The Washington Post noted,
With Hamas's political rival, Fatah, committed to negotiating with Israel rather than fighting it, Hamas has a virtual monopoly on armed Palestinian resistance. That status has the potential to add to the movement's popularity among Palestinians, and in the broader Arab world.
Regime destruction is not the same as regime change. Can the Israelis even literally destroy Hamas? That's debatable. And it may be harder to replace Hamas than to eradicate it.
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Unfortunately, Israel is behaving like the Germans did in treating the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Israel had allowed in some trucks of humanitarian supplies at the start of this offensive but that comes after months of severe economic blockade and major shortfalls in Gaza of food and medical supplies. The UN said it was still well short of what was needed.
One Hamas spokesman in Gaza said the group was open to another ceasefire, but wanted Israel's economic blockade lifted. For more than a year Israel has prevented all imports, except limited humanitarian supplies, and prevented all exports from Gaza ? in effect destroying private business. Israel broke the cease fire over the last 12 months by these war crimes. The people of Gaza could not take it anymore and struck out the only way they could against the world's fifth largest nuclear military.
The President of the United Nations General Assembly 11/28/08 called for
international sanctions to be imposed on the state of Israel.
Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann said that the international community should
engage in a 'boycott, divestment and sanctions' campaign against Israel,
similar to those enacted against South Africa two decades ago."
Israel has engaged in a military occupation of the Palestinian territories
since 1967, with an increase in military presence since the year 2000.
The people of Palestine continue to live under martial law, with no control
of their land, sea or water. In his remarks, d'Escoto said that Israeli
policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories appear similar to the
apartheid of an earlier era, a continent away.
He said that the United Nations should not be afraid to use the term
apartheid to describe what is happening in occupied Palestine.
Former US President Jimmy Carter came under fire for using the term
'apartheid' in reference to the Israel-Palestine conflict. He was even
prevented from speaking at the Democratic National Convention this year
because of his position on the issue.
Why do the American people send Israel $5billion a year of taxpayer money to commit war crimes?
It will be interesting to follow "coverage" of the situation in Palestine after Obama's inauguration.
is israel the only country whose national sport is people hunting? the hunt also including children?
the hunt for palestinians has been going on for 60 years but there more palestinians now than ever.
so, the hunt may be abandoned and mass starvation implemented?
either that or sterilize all boys/men so that they wldn't make so many babies.
expulsion of all palestinians from israel and the west bank might work even better but US is not in mood for that right now.
maybe in a century? thnx
The Hamas charter includes the following statements:
- Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. (second paragraph)
- Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes. (Article 8)
- There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. (Article 13)
Given the principles of its rulers, is it surprising Gaza is filled with death, destruction and misery?
Unfortunately, Israel is behaving like the Germans did in treating the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Israel had allowed in some trucks of humanitarian supplies at the start of this offensive but that comes after months of severe economic blockade and major shortfalls in Gaza of food and medical supplies. The UN said it was still well short of what was needed.
One Hamas spokesman in Gaza said the group was open to another ceasefire, but wanted Israel's economic blockade lifted. For more than a year Israel has prevented all imports, except limited humanitarian supplies, and prevented all exports from Gaza in effect destroying private business. Israel broke the cease fire over the last 12 months by these war crimes. The people of Gaza could not take it anymore and struck out the only way they could against the world's fifth largest nuclear military.
The President of the United Nations General Assembly 11/28/08 called for
international sanctions to be imposed on the state of Israel.
Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann said that the international community should
engage in a 'boycott, divestment and sanctions' campaign against Israel,
similar to those enacted against South Africa two decades ago."
Israel has engaged in a military occupation of the Palestinian territories
since 1967, with an increase in military presence since the year 2000.
The people of Palestine continue to live under martial law, with no control
of their land, sea or water. In his remarks, d'Escoto said that Israeli
policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories appear similar to the
apartheid of an earlier era, a continent away.
He said that the United Nations should not be afraid to use the term
apartheid to describe what is happening in occupied Palestine.
Former US President Jimmy Carter came under fire for using the term
'apartheid' in reference to the Israel-Palestine conflict. He was even
prevented from speaking at the Democratic National Convention this year
because of his position on the issue.
Why do the American people send Israel $5billion a year of taxpayer money to commit war crimes?
While the United States must support Israel's right to defend her towns and to strike bases from which Israelis are being attacked, Obama should denounce the collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, by Israel's cutting off their electricity in the dead of winter and denying them the food and medicine many need to survive.
For us to remain silent in the face of this comports neither with our interests or our values. Israel's policy of withholding from the weak and innocent of Gaza, women and children, the necessities of life, to punish the guilty who rule at the point of a gun, is a policy that Obama should declare the United States will no longer support with tax dollars.
Dec. 28, 2008: Jewish Voice for Peace joins millions around the world, including the 1,000 Israelis who protested in the streets of Tel Aviv this weekend, in condemning ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza. We call for an immediate end to attacks on all civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli.Israel's slow strangulation of Gaza through blockade has caused widespread suffering to the 1.5 million people of Gaza due to lack of food, electricity, water treatment supplies and medical equipment. It is a violation of humanitarian law and has been widely condemned around the world.
In resisting this strangulation, Hamas resumed launching rockets and mortars from Gaza into southern Israel, directly targeting civilians, which is also a war crime. Over the years, these poorly made rockets have been responsible for the deaths of 15 Israelis since 2004.
Massive Israeli air strikes have proven an indiscriminate and brutal weapon. In just three days, the known death toll is close to 400, and the attacks are continuing. By targeting the infrastructure of a poor and densely populated area, Israel has ensured widespread civilian casualties among this already suffering and vulnerable population.
This massive destruction of Palestinian life will not protect the citizens of Israel. It is illegal and immoral and should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. And it threatens to ignite the West Bank and add flames to the other fires burning in the Middle East and beyond for years to come.
The timing of this attack, during the waning days of a US administration that has undertaken a catastrophic policy toward the Middle East and during the run-up to an Israeli election, suggests an opportunistic agenda for short-term political gain at an immense cost in Palestinian lives. In the long run this policy will benefit no-one except those who always profit from war and exploitation. Only a just and lasting peace, achieved through a negotiated agreement, can provide both Palestinians and Israelis the security they want and deserve.
The parallels to Palestine, and Gaza in particular, to the Warshaw Ghetto under the Germans are simply undeniable. The establishment and massive economic, political, and military backing of Israel is in service of the strategic interests of U.S. empire in the Middle East, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is a product of that. One result: two thirds of the 1.5 million people packed into the tiny, impoverished territory of Gaza were driven from their homes in other parts of Israeli-occupied Palestine through Zionist terror (for documentation of Zionist ethnic cleansing and terror, see "The Nakba: Ethnic Cleansing and the Birth of Israel," Revolution #130, May 25, 2008, and other resources at revcom.us).
Within Gaza, conditions were horrific even before Israel's current invasion. When Israel ended occupation and direct military rule over Gaza in 2005, it kept complete control of the land, sea and air borders. Israel sent armored bulldozers to destroy Gaza's fruit orchards, blockaded the fishing port, cut off supplies to factories and other businesses, and forbade most Gaza residents the right to work elsewhere or even leave. As a result, approximately a million of Gaza's people are dependent on UN food distribution, and food and supplies smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt. And the situation has gotten much worse since Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007. Even before the current massacre, Israel was strangling the people of Gaza. Israeli blockades have cut off food, medicine, and fuel. A partially leaked but still-secret report by the International Red Cross reported that a "dramatic fall in living standards has triggered a shift in diet that will damage the long-term health of those living in Gaza and has led to alarming deficiencies in iron, vitamin A and vitamin D." ("Chronic malnutrition in Gaza blamed on Israel," Independent, November 15, 2008) And, like the Nazis, Israel (and its U.S. sponsor) claim that any resistance to what they are doing to the people of Gaza then justifies even more brutality and death.