By Tuesday afternoon,
the exchange rate of death in two days was 40-0 in favour of Israel. But now
for the Gaza story you won’t be hearing from anyone else.
It’s
about land. The Israelis of Sederot are coming under rocket fire from the
Palestinians of Gaza and now the Palestinians are getting their comeuppance.
Sure. But wait, how come all those Palestinians — all 1.5 million — are crammed
into Gaza in the first place?
Well,
their families once lived, didn’t they, in what is now called Israel? And got
chucked out — or fled for their lives — when the Israeli state was created.
And
— a drawing in of breath is now perhaps required — the people who lived in
Sederot in early 1948 were not Israelis, but Palestinian Arabs. Their village
was called Huj. Nor were they enemies of Israel. Two years earlier, these same
Arabs had actually hidden Jewish Haganah fighters from the British Army. But
when the Israeli army turned up at Huj on May 31, 1948, they expelled all the
Arab villagers — to the Gaza Strip!
Refugees,
they became. David Ben Gurion (Israel’s first prime minister) called it an
“unjust and unjustified action”.
Too
bad. The Palestinians of Huj were never allowed back.
And
today, well over 6,000 descendants of the Palestinians from Huj — now Sederot —
live in the squalor of Gaza, among the “terrorists” Israel is claiming to
destroy and who are shooting at what was Huj. Interesting story.
And
same again for Israel’s right to self-defence. We heard it again this week.
What if the people of London were being rocketed like the people of Israel?
Wouldn’t they strike back? Well yes, but we Brits don’t have more than a
million former inhabitants of the UK cooped up in refugee camps over a few
square miles around Hastings.
The
last time this specious argument was used was in 2008, when Israel invaded Gaza
and killed 1,100 Palestinians (exchange rate: 1,100 to 13). What if Dublin was
under rocket attack, the Israeli ambassador asked then? But the UK town of
Crossmaglen, in Northern Ireland, was under rocket attack from the Irish
Republic in the 1970s - yet the RAF didn’t bomb Dublin in retaliation, killing
Irish women and children.
In
Canada in 2008, Israel’s supporters were making the same fraudulent point. What
if the people of Vancouver or Toronto or Montreal were being rocket-attacked
from the suburbs of their own cities?
How
would they feel? But the Canadians haven’t pushed the original inhabitants of
Canadian territory into refugee camps.
And
now let’s cross to the West Bank. First of all, Benjamin Netanyahu said he couldn’t
talk to Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas because he didn’t also represent
Hamas. Then when Abbas formed a unity government, Netanyahu said he couldn’t
talk to Abbas because he had unified himself with the “terrorist” Hamas. Now he
says he can only talk to him if he breaks with Hamas — even though he won’t
then represent Hamas.
OBSESSION
WITH ISIS: Meanwhile, that great leftist Israeli philosopher Uri Avnery — 90
years old and still, thankfully, going strong — has picked up on his country’s
latest obsession: the danger that Isis will storm west from its Iraqi/Syrian
“caliphate” and arrive on the east bank of the Jordan river.
“And
Netanyahu said,” according to Avnery, “if they are not stopped by the permanent
Israeli garrison there (on the Jordan river), they will appear at the gates of
Tel Aviv.” The truth, of course, is that the Israeli air force would have
crushed Isis the moment it dared to cross the Jordanian border from Iraq or
Syria.
The
importance of this, however, is that if Israel keeps its army on the Jordan (to
protect Israel from Isis), a future “Palestine” state will have no borders and
will be an enclave within Israel, surrounded on all sides by Israeli-held
territory.
“Much
like the South African Bantustans,” says Avnery. In other words, no “viable”
state of Palestine will ever exist. After all, aren’t Isis just the same as
Hamas? Of course not.
But
that’s not what we heard from Mark Regev, Netanyahu’s spokesman. No, what he
told Al Jazeera was that Hamas was “an extremist terrorist organisation not
very different from Isis in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Boko Haram ...”
Tosh.
Hezbollah is a Shia militia now fighting to the death inside Syria against
theSunnis of Isis. And Boko Haram - thousands of kilometres from Israel - is
not a threat to Tel Aviv.
But
you get the point. The Palestinians of Gaza - and please forget, forever, the
6,000 Palestinians whose families come from the land of Sederot - are allied to
the tens of thousands of Islamists threatening Maliki of Baghdad, Assad of
Damascus or President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja.
Even
more to the point, if Isis is heading towards the edge of the West Bank, why is
the Israeli government still building colonies there - illegally, and on Arab
land - for Israeli civilians?
This
is not just about the foul murder of three Israelis in occupied West Bank or
the foul murder of a Palestinian in occupied East Jerusalem. Nor about the
arrest of many Hamas militants and politicians in the West Bank. Nor about
rockets. As usual, it’s about land.
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