John Mearsheimer: Death and Destruction in Gaza

By John J. Mearsheimer, Information Clearing House, Dec 13, 2023

I do not believe that anything I say about what is happening in Gaza will affect Israeli or American policy in that conflict. But I want to be on record so that when historians look back on this moral calamity, they will see that some Americans were on the right side of history.

What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population – with the support of the Biden administration – is a crime against humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose. As J-Street, an important organization in the Israel lobby, puts it, “The scope of the unfolding humanitarian disaster and civilian casualties is nearly unfathomable.”^[1]

Let me elaborate.

First, Israel is purposely massacring huge number of civilians, roughly 70 percent of whom are children and women. The claim that Israel is going to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties is belied by statements from high level Israeli officials. For example, the IDF spokesman said on 10 October 2023 that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” That same day, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced: “I have lowered all the restraints – we will kill everyone we fight against; we will use every means.”^[2]

Moreover, it is clear from the results of the bombing campaign that Israel is indiscriminately killing civilians. Two detailed studies of the IDF’s bombing campaign – both published in Israeli outlets – explain in detail how Israel is murdering huge numbers of civilians. It is worth quoting the titles of the two pieces, which succinctly capture what each has to say:

“‘A Mass Assassination Factory’: Inside Israel’s Calculated Bombing of Gaza”[3]

“The Israeli Army Has Dropped the Restraint in Gaza, and the Data Shows Unprecedented Killing.”[4]

Similarly, the New York Times published an article in late November 2023 titled: “Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace.”[5] Thus, it is hardly surprising that the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said that “We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since” his appointment in January 2017.[6]

Second, Israel is purposely starving the desperate Palestinian population by greatly limiting the amount of food, fuel, cooking gas, medicine, and water that can be brought into Gaza. Moreover, medical care is extremely hard to come by for a population that now includes approximately 50,000 wounded civilians. Not only has Israel greatly limited the supply of fuel into Gaza, which hospitals need to function, but it has targeted hospitals, ambulances, and first aid stations.

Defense Minister Gallant’s comment on 9 October captures Israeli policy: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”[7] Israel has been forced to allow minimal supplies into Gaza, but the amounts are so small that a senior UN official reports that “half of Gaza’s population is starving.” He goes on to report that, “Nine out of 10 families in some areas are spending ‘a full day and night without any food at all’.”[8]

Third, Israeli leaders talk about Palestinians and what they would like to do in Gaza in shocking terms, especially when you consider that some of these leaders also talk incessantly about the horrors of the Holocaust. Indeed, their rhetoric has led Omar Bartov, a prominent Israeli-born scholar of the Holocaust, to conclude that Israel has “genocidal intent.”[9] Other scholars in Holocaust and genocide studies have offered a similar warning.[10]

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To be more specific, it is commonplace for Israeli leaders to refer to Palestinians as “human animals, ”human beasts,” and “horrible inhuman animals.”[11] And as Israeli President Isaac Herzog makes clear, those leaders are referring to all Palestinians, not just Hamas: In his words, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.”[12] Unsurprisingly, as the New York Times reports, it is part of normal Israeli discourse to call for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased,” or “destroyed.”[13] One retired IDF general, who proclaimed that “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist,” also makes the case that “severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer.”[14] Going even further, a minister in the Israeli government suggested dropping a nuclear weapon on Gaza.[15] These statements are not being made by isolated extremists, but by senior members of Israel’s government.

Of course, there is also much talk of ethnically cleansing Gaza (and the West Bank), in effect, producing another Nakba.^[16] To quote Israel’s Agriculture Minister, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”^[17]Perhaps the most shocking evidence of the depths to which Israeli society has sunk is a video of very young children singing a blood-curdling song celebrating Israel’s destruction of Gaza: “Within a year we will annihilate everyone, and then we will return to plow our fields.”^[18]

Fourth, Israel is not just killing, wounding, and starving huge numbers of Palestinians, it is also systematically destroying their homes as well as critical infrastructure – to include mosques, schools, heritage sites, libraries, key government buildings, and hospitals.^[19] As of 1 December 2023, the IDF had damaged or destroyed almost 100,000 buildings, including entire neighborhoods that have been reduced to rubble.^[20] Consequently, a stunning 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes.^[21] Moreover, Israel is making a concerted effort to destroy Gaza’s cultural heritage; as NPR reports, “more than 100 Gaza heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks.”^[22]

Fifth, Israel is not just terrorizing and killing Palestinians, it is also publicly humiliating many of their men who have been rounded up by the IDF in routine searches. Israeli soldiers strip them down to their underwear, blindfold them, and display them in a public way in their neighborhoods – sitting them down in large groups in the middle of the street, for example, or parading them through the streets – before taking them away in trucks to detention camps. In most cases, the detainees are then released as they are not Hamas fighters.^[23]

Sixth, although the Israelis are doing the slaughtering, they could not do it without the Biden administration’s support. Not only was the United States the only country to vote against a recent UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, but it has also been providing Israel with the weaponry necessary to wage this massacre.^[24] As one Israeli general (Yitzhak Brick) recently made clear: “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability.… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”^[25] Remarkably, the Biden administration has sought to expedite sending Israel additional ammunition, by-passing the normal procedures of the Arms Export Control Act.^[26] 

Seventh, while most of the focus is now on Gaza, it is important not to lose sight of what is simultaneously going on in the West Bank. Israeli settlers, working closely with the IDF, continue to kill innocent Palestinians and steal their land. In an excellent article in the New York Review of Books describing these horrors, David Shulman relates a conversation he had with a settler, which clearly reflects the moral dimension of Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians. “What we are doing to these people is actually inhuman,” the settler freely admits, “But if you think about it clearly, it all follows inevitably from the fact that God promised this land to the Jews, and only to them.”^[27] Along with its assault on Gaza, the Israel government has markedly increased the number of arbitrary arrests in the West Bank. According to Amnesty International, there is considerable evidence that these prisoners have been tortured and subjected to degrading treatment.^[28]

As I watch this catastrophe for the Palestinians unfold, I am left with one simple question for Israel’s leaders, their American defenders, and the Biden administration: have you no decency?

NOTES

---

^[1] https://jstreet.org/press-releases/moment-of-truth-for-israels-government/

^[2] Both quotes can be found in: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-09/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/the-israeli-army-has-dropped-the-restraint-in-gaza-and-data-shows-unprecedented-killing/0000018c-4cca-db23-ad9f-6cdae8ad0000

^[3] https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

^[4] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-09/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/the-israeli-army-has-dropped-the-restraint-in-gaza-and-data-shows-unprecedented-killing/0000018c-4cca-db23-ad9f-6cdae8ad0000

^[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/25/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-death-toll.html

^[6] https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/press-encounter/2023-11-20/secretary-generals-press-conference-unep-emissions-gap-report-launch

^[7] https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/

^[8] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67670679

Also see: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/opinion/international-world/us-government-gaza-humanitarian-aid.html

^[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/israel-gaza-genocide-war.html

Also see: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/11/20/an-open-letter-on-the-misuse-of-holocaust-memory/

^[10] https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/global-currents/statement-of-scholars-7-october/

^[11]

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Fr24GcCDgyM?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

^[12] https://news.yahoo.com/israeli-president-says-no-innocent-154330724.html#:~:text=“It%20is%20an%20entire%20nation,It%27s%20absolutely%20not%20true.

^[13] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/15/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-war-rhetoric.html

^[14] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/israel-gaza-genocide-war.html

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-11-23/ty-article-opinion/.premium/giora-eilands-monstrous-gaza-proposal-is-evil-in-plain-sight/0000018b-f84b-d473-affb-f9eb09af0000

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/influential-israeli-national-security-leader-makes-the-case-for-genocide-in-gaza/embed/#?secret=rzxQkv5QIA#?secret=hBFMAN9VdO

^[15] https://www.timesofisrael.com/far-right-minister-says-nuking-gaza-an-option-pm-suspends-him-from-cabinet-meetings/

^[16] https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/israeli-think-tank-lays-out-a-blueprint-for-the-complete-ethnic-cleansing-of-gaza/

^[17] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-12/ty-article/israeli-security-cabinet-member-calls-north-gaza-evacuation-nakba-2023/0000018b-c2be-dea2-a9bf-d2be7b670000

^[18] https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/watch-israeli-children-sing-we-will-annihilate-everyone-gaza

^[19] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-gaza-public-library-destroyed-bombing

The Chris Hedges Report

Israel’s War on Hospitals

Eve of Destruction – by Mr. Fish Israel is not attacking hospitals in Gaza because they are “Hamas command centers.” Israel is systematically and deliberately destroying Gaza’s medical infrastructure as part of a scorched earth campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable and escalate a humanitarian crisis. It intends to force 2.3 million Palestinians over the bo…

Read more

22 days ago · 481 likes · 174 comments · Chris Hedges

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231211-report-israel-destroyed-192-mosques-in-gaza-strip/embed/#?secret=3Jug2qfe0B#?secret=8btQeX0KA5

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/09/1218384968/mosque-gaza-omari-israel-hamas-war

^[20] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67565872#

^[21] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-gaza-attacks-north-south-us-veto-un-ceasefire-resolution/

^[22] https://www.npr.org/2023/12/03/1216200754/gaza-heritage-sites-destroyed-israel

^[23] https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-groups-of-hamas-militants-surrendered-amid-gaza-fighting-7891bc22

^[24] https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-vetoes-un-security-council-resolution-demanding-immediate-gaza-ceasefire/

^[25] https://www.jns.org/biden-is-the-primary-obstacle-to-israeli-victory/

^[26] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/09/world/middleeast/us-israel-tanks-ammunition.html

^[27] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/12/21/a-bitter-season-in-the-west-bank-david-shulman/

^[28] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-horrifying-cases-of-torture-and-degrading-treatment-of-palestinian-detainees-amid-spike-in-arbitrary-arrests/

John Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation.

𝐄𝐔’𝐬 𝐓𝐨𝐩 𝐃𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐭: 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐚 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝐁𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐆𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐖𝐖𝐈𝐈

Israeli officials have invoked the allied strategic bombing campaigns of World War II to justify its mass slaughter in Gaza

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, December 11, 2023

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top foreign policy official, said Monday that the destruction in Gaza as a result of the Israeli bombing campaign could be “even greater” than the damage to German cities during World War II, AFP reported.

Borrell called the situation in Gaza “catastrophic, apocalyptic” and noted that the Israeli onslaught has resulted in “an incredible number of civilian casualties.” Discussing the destruction of buildings in Gaza, he said it is “more or less or even greater than the destruction suffered by the German cities during the Second World War.”

Borrell made similar comments on Friday, saying the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza was “one of the most intense in history” and said the destruction is “comparable, if not higher, to levels of destruction of German cities during World War II.”

A report from Financial Times found the damage to northern Gaza was comparable to the most heavily bombed cities of Germany in World War II. “Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne — some of the world’s heaviest-ever bombings are remembered by their place names,” Robert Pape, a US military historian who focuses on air power, told FT. “Gaza will also go down as a place name denoting one of history’s heaviest conventional bombing campaigns.”

Israeli officials and their supporters in the US have invoked the allied strategic bombing campaigns of World War II to justify the mass slaughter in Gaza. “There were many, many civilians [that] got attacked from your attacks on German cities,” Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, told a Sky News anchor in October, according to The Grayzone.

“Dresden was a symbol, but you attacked Hamburg, you attacked other cities, and altogether it was over 600,000 civilian Germans that got killed … Was it worth it in order to defeat Nazi Germany? And the answer was yes,” she added.

The Israeli bombing campaign has also been compared to the US bombing of Japanese cities during World War II, which includes the fire bombings of Tokyo that killed around 100,000 civilians in one night in 1945, as well as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has said Gaza is “going to look like Tokyo and Berlin at the end of World War II when this is over. And if it doesn’t look that way, Israel made a mistake.” He made the comments in an interview where he said there was “no limit” to the number of civilians Israel kills in Gaza, which is the policy of the Biden administration as it continues to provide unconditional military aid despite the massive civilian death toll.

–

Author: Dave DeCamp

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com

Israeli Government’s War Crimes – Enabled & Defended by Biden & Congress

by Ralph Nader, Counterpuch, Dec 11, 2023

The humiliation of the U.S. government, which is actively complicit in providing the weaponry, funding, and UN vetoes backing the Israeli government’s attack on the civilian Palestinians/Arabs in tiny Gaza, is in plain view daily. All in the name of the unasked American people and taxpayers.

Earlier this week, at a House of Representatives’ hearing, Trump toady Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) repeatedly assailed three University presidents with the question of would they discipline students calling for the genocide of Jews, without any evidence that this hateful speech is prevalent on campus.

Pursuing her fulminations, Stefanik was cruelly oblivious to the real ongoing genocide in Gaza with her support of unconditional shipment of American F-16s, 155mm. missiles and other weapons of mass destruction used to kill children, women and the elderly who had nothing to do with the preventable October 7th Hamas violence.

Meanwhile, a State Department spokesman continues to say that the Israeli government does not intentionally target civilians. With U.S. drones over Gaza daily, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has visual proof that the overwhelming bombing on civilian structures is killing innocent civilians.

The evidence is in the rubble of hospitals, health clinics, ambulances, schools, libraries, places of worship, marketplaces, water mains, homes, apartment buildings, and piles of unburied corpses being eaten by stray dogs. All this information is in the possession of bomber Biden’s regime.

The Bidenites and their bloodthirsty cohorts in Congress were forewarned when the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant and other Israeli officials on October 8th shouted these chilling genocidal orders to their army: “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water.… We are fighting human animals and will act accordingly.” (See, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide). Add an already illegal 16-year Israeli blockade of 2.3 Palestinians suffering from dire poverty, with 40% of their children down with anemia.

Now, about half of Gaza’s population are children, 85% of the entire population is homeless, wandering helplessly into nowhere, afflicted with pending starvation, sickened by spreading infectious diseases and dirty drinking water. There is little or no medicines for diabetics and cancer patients. No surgery, no anesthesia, no emergency transport, no shelter from cold weather, only American-made bombs and missiles blowing up Palestinians into bits with Israeli snipers everywhere.

The Palestinians cannot flee from their open-air prison. They cannot surrender – the Israeli government wants them gone. Bear in mind, the population that is not yet blown up is sick and dying, denied needed outside humanitarian aid. Defying feeble Biden’s wishes, Netanyahu only allows a trickle of aid trucks to enter Gaza, and those that do enter can scarcely reach their destinations.

All this raises the issue of the gross undercount of casualties. The Hamas Health Authority has restricted its count to the names of the deceased and injured supplied by hospitals and morgues. These locations are now largely rubble or inoperative. Bodies under the rubble, many of them children, can’t be counted. Thousands of missing people cannot be counted. The Ministry’s suspended count is over 17,000 fatalities, plus 45,000 injuries. With the far larger carnage unable to be tabulated, the actual fatality toll may reach 100,000 soon.

Nonetheless, about two weeks ago, the New York Times reported the death undercount of children in Gaza in two months was ten times greater than the deaths of Ukrainian children in nearly two years of Russian bombings. One of its headlines – “Smoldering Gaza Becomes a Graveyard for Children.”

There are about 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and about 5,500 of them are due to give birth. Where are they going to do that? How can they be cared for and be nurtured? These mothers are sick and starving. Add the babies to the terrorists toll.

Gaza’s area is about the size of Philadelphia. How many dead, injured, and dying people would there be if 20,000 bombs were dropped on civilians and civilian structures in Philadelphia? Philadelphians trapped without food, water, medicine or any escape route. Imagine 85% of 1.5 million residents homeless, wandering in the streets and alleys. And with virtually no humanitarian aid coming from outside the city. There wouldn’t be any fire trucks or water to extinguish spreading fires.

Over a nine-week period there would have to be over 200,000 deaths and many more permanently disabled for life.

There are courageous Jewish groups (e.g., Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now) and rabbis calling for an end to the slaughter, demanding a ceasefire. There are protestors at all of Biden’s public events/trips reminding him of next November.

Veterans for Peace and other veteran groups are engaged in non-violent civil disobedience in front of the Scranton, Pennsylvania factory producing 155mm missiles for Israel. (Scranton is Biden’s hometown.) Public opinion is turning against the Biden/Israel war without limits on the Palestinians.

Biden wouldn’t want to poll the American people about his $14.3 billion genocide tax, charging American taxpayers to further prosperous Israel’s war of extermination in Gaza. They’ll likely tell Biden that poor children, unaffordable health facilities and other necessities in America need that money first.

There are some 30 Democratic Senators demanding that this Biden bill contain conditions and safeguards so that the money is not used to blow up more Palestinian children and women. But what else are these funds for other than to expand Israel’s military budget? The Israeli extremist ruling coalition under Netanyahu has made no secret of wanting to take over all of remaining Palestine as part of their “Greater Israel” mission to include what they call Judea and Samaria. As Israel’s Founder, David Ben-Gurion, frankly declared referring to the Palestinians, “We have taken their country.” (As quoted in The Jewish Paradox (1978) by Nahum Goldmann.)

It is a cruel irony of history that Israeli state terrorism is producing a Palestinian Holocaust. Netanyahu’s regime has killed over 60 journalists—three of them Israelis—120 United Nations relief workers and instituted total blackouts to keep the grisly events in Gaza out of the news in real time. Netanyahu, to shield his colossal failure to defend Israel on October 7thand to keep his job, is making sure that his country joins the world community of savage, slaughtering regimes, exemplified by the Bush/Cheney unlawful criminal destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by Hillary Clinton toppling Libya into permanent violence and chaos since 2011. (Obama later called his conceding to Hillary’s demands as his worst foreign policy decision).

Capitol Hill and the White House don’t wait for any blood-guilt to be recognized. That will surely come later with the judgment of history and the nightmarish visions of innocents being vaporized because of Washington’s unconditional backing of the Israeli blitzkrieg against what the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has repeatedly called the “totally defenseless people” of Gaza.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! 

 

Evidence of ethnic cleansing growing in West Bank and Gaza

Increasingly brutal IDF activity, official Israeli rhetoric, and settler-led violence is making it harder to deny a policy designed to expel Palestinians

Paul R. Pillar, Responsible Statecraft, Dec 08, 2023

Even if one were to take at face value Israel’s declarations that its assault on the Gaza Strip and its two million residents is all about “destroying Hamas,” the Israeli operation is too misguided for the United States or any other power to support or condone it.

Hamas cannot be destroyed with bombs and a ground invasion, and even if it could, the operation is worsening, not enhancing, the future security of Israeli citizens.

But the Israeli declarations should not be taken at face value in any event. Other motivations are also likely behind the Israeli assault. Almost two months into the Israeli offensive, the evidence is increasingly suggesting that Israel is engaged in nothing less than ethnic cleansing of Palestinians who live in the Strip.

One is the sheer scale and indiscriminate nature of Israel’s military attacks. The leveling of entire neighborhoods and the inflicting of civilian casualties far outnumbering any military ones, with little evidence of any positive result beyond the capture and display of some empty tunnels can hardly be described as an operation sharply focused on destroying Hamas.

Consider the following numbers. Israeli officials claim that their operation in Gaza has so far killed 5,000 Hamas fighters. The officials admit that this is a squishy estimate, and the outside world has no way of knowing whether it is even close to being true. But assume for the moment that it is. By the Israeli military’s own estimates, Hamas’ military wing numbered about 30,000 fighters at the start of this war, implying there are still 25,000 yet to be eliminated. The latest estimates of the fast-rising count of total Palestinian casualties from the war so far are 16,000 dead, including more than 5,000 children.

Do the math. At the current pace and with Israel’s current methods, finishing the supposed job of destroying the Hamas military wing would entail almost 100,000 dead Palestinians, including more than 30,000 dead children. And that does not include the damage from Israel going after the rest of Hamas besides its military wing, including the senior leadership whom Israel has vowed to kill, as well as the Hamas-run civil administration of the Gaza Strip which Israel has vowed to eliminate. Nor does it consider that the rate of civilian casualties from Israeli military operations currently escalating in the southern part of the Strip — now crammed with those who had fled the north — is likely to be at least as high as from the previous operations in the north.

These numbers are not only orders of magnitude greater than anything that could be justified as a response to the brutality Hamas committed in Israel in October. They strongly suggest that in addition to eliminating Hamas, killing civilians and pushing as many Palestinians as possible out of Gaza is an Israeli objective.

The Israeli military’s claim to have used warnings to try to reduce civilian casualties has become little more than a cruel joke. Residents are ordered to flee their homes but then are bombed anyway either en route or at the location to which they were told to flee. Then they are ordered to move again—if there is any place at all they can go—and get bombed yet again. QR codes on leaflets promising information about safe zones are useless with communications knocked out and most Palestinians having no access to the internet.

Israel is not even bothering to use its previous “knock on the roof” practice of using a small munition to warn occupants of a building that it was about to be destroyed — as if it ever were acceptable to bomb someone’s home as long as they are advised a few minutes earlier that it is going to be bombed.

Further evidence of Israel’s objectives in Gaza comes from simultaneous events in the West Bank. For the last two months, Israeli settlers there, acting largely with the acquiescence of Israeli authorities, have been using violence and intimidation to drive longtime Palestinian residents out of their villages.

Then there is the rhetoric of Israeli political leaders, which some observers have described as genocidal. Examples over the past two months abound. About Gaza, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “we will eliminate everything.” Meanwhile, deputy Knesset speaker Nissim Vaturi said of Palestinians in Gaza, “expel them all,” while Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter said, “we are now rolling out the Gaza nakba,” (the original nakba, or catastrophe, being the forced displacement of 750,000 Palestinians when Israel was created in 1948). Heritage Minister Amachai Eliyahu suggested that Israel should consider dropping a nuclear weapon on Gaza.

Added to all this is evidence of planning within the Israeli government. A report in October revealed a proposal from the intelligence ministry to transfer the entire population of the Gaza Strip to Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, to be housed first in tents and then in permanently constructed cities. This proposal did not explain how Israel would overcome Egypt’s strong opposition to any such population transfer, but other reports confirmed that Israeli leaders and diplomats were quietly proposing to other governments the transfer of several hundred thousand Gazans to Egypt.

The Israelis contended this would be a temporary movement for the duration of the current war, but their interlocutors rejected the idea given the likelihood that such a displacement, like earlier displacements of Palestinians, would become permanent.

More recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reported to have tasked his U.S.-born Minister of Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer, with developing a plan to “dilute” the population of the Gaza Strip to a minimum. That story was broken by the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, which has supported, and is considered to have good access to, Netanyahu.

As a possible reflection of such planning, other Israeli press reports that a proposal has already been quietly floated with members of the U.S. Congress to have two million Gazans move through Egypt for ultimate settlement both there and in Iraq, Turkey, and Yemen. The United States would be expected to use aid to those countries as leverage to pressure them into accepting the arrangement.

Since the Hamas attack on October 7 demonstrated that the conflict with the Palestinians could not be removed from the regional equation, the Israeli government has rejected as forcefully as ever the only avenue for ending such troubles, which is to resolve the conflict through peaceful negotiations that permit Palestinian self-determination, whether through a two-state solution or equal rights in one state.

Instead, it is increasingly looking like Israel is trying to remove the Palestinians themselves from the equation through death and displacement. Israel’s apparent strategy is no more likely to bring peace to Israelis or anyone else than its earlier gambits, as long as there are dissatisfied exiles. For just one example, think of how Israel went after the exiled Palestine Liberation Organization beginning in the 1980s and how it led to multiple wars, the rise of Lebanese Hezbollah, and the loss of almost any hope for stability in Lebanon.

The Biden administration has shown some signs of recognizing what is going on. Vice President Harris, speaking at the climate meeting in Dubai, stated that “under no circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank.” And the United States has begun imposing visa bans on Israeli settlers guilty of violence in the West Bank.

But those signs fall short of fully dissociating Washington from abhorrent policies and practices — a dissociation necessary to spare the United States from any more of the international opprobrium it already has incurred through its association with Israeli conduct.

Human Rights Monitor Says 90% Killed by Israel in Gaza Were Civilians

Injured Palestinian children wait to receive medical treatment at Nasser Hospital after an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis, Gaza on December 5, 2023.

(Photo: Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The Israeli military has admitted to a 66% civilian death rate, which it has called “tremendously positive.”

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, Dec 06, 2023

Israel’s public admission that it has killed two civilians in the Gaza Strip for every Hamas militant—a roughly 66% noncombatant death rate—is a major understatement, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

Based on preliminary statistics, the Geneva-based nonprofit estimated that at least 90% of the people killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza thus far have been civilians, a rate that exceeds those of the U.S. wars on Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Euro-Med Monitor found that when including those believed to be missing under the rubble of Gaza’s decimated infrastructure, Israeli forces have killed 21,022 people in the besieged Palestinian territory since October 7, an estimated 19,660 of whom were civilians. The nonprofit said that 60% of the civilians killed were women and children.

The group said its figures “clearly refute” Israel’s claim of a two-to-one ratio of civilians to militants killed, which an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson hailed as “tremendously positive” in a CNNinterview earlier this week. Israeli forces believe they have killed around 5,000 Hamas fighters since October 7.

“If you compare that ratio to any other conflict in urban terrain between a military and a terrorist organization using civilians as their human shields, and embedded in the civilian population, you will find that that ratio is tremendous, tremendously positive, and perhaps unique in the world,” said the IDF’s Jonathan Conricus.

But an analysis released last month by the watchdog Action on Armed Violence found that Israel’s latest assault on Gaza—carried out with the help of artificial intelligence, according to recent reports—has been far deadlier for civilians than even its previous attacks on the strip.

The group estimated that each of Israel’s casualty-causing strikes on Gaza since October 7 have killed an average of 10.1 civilians.

“This significantly surpasses previous Gaza operations which, at its historic recent worst in Operation Protective Edge, was just 2.5 civilian fatalities per casualty-causing strike,” the watchdog said. “As such, the current operation appears to be four times more lethal, based on per injurious strike data, than previous Israeli operations. It also exceeds the global average of 7.4.”

Citing military analysts, the Financial Timesreported Tuesday that “the destruction of northern Gaza in less than seven weeks has approached that caused by the yearslong carpet-bombing of German cities during the Second World War.”

“Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne—some of the world’s heaviest-ever bombings are remembered by their place names,” U.S. military historian Robert Pape told the newspaper. “Gaza will also go down as a place name denoting one of history’s heaviest conventional bombing campaigns.”

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said Tuesday that the “pulverizing of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age.”

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Jake Johnson

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

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Disarming: Gaza or Israel?

–
Nasir Khan, August 7, 2014

Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation; they have been frequent targets of destructive Israeli wars and massacres. If common sense can be our guide in this situation than the solution is to disarm Israel and prosecute its war criminals for war crimes and crimes against humanity in ICC. Disarming Hamas? Hamas has no army, no air force, no missiles, no navy, no naval gunships, no tanks, no anti-aircraft missiles. If Israel has played havoc with the homes and buildings of the Gazans and killed people then the main reason for the Gazan tragedy lies in their inability to defend themselves.

Ideally, for Gazans to defend themselves against Israel’s military might they need a matching military power and weapons. It is obvious that without this they have no chance to defend themselves and their homes. We have seen this what Israel is capable of doing in the 29-day war on Gaza. The Gazans have been at the mercy of Israeli missiles and powerful bombs that pulverised their homes and other structures. Unless Israel lifts the blockade, ends the occupation and develops a new approach towards the people of Palestine the conflict will not disappear.

But how can the Gazans under Hamas do that, to defend themselves militarily, remains an open question. The leaders of the ‘New World Order’ especially the United States will not allow that. There is no major country that is ready to give substantive material support to the Palestinians. Therefore the prevailing conditions will remain intact.

We need to keep in mind that Gaza is beleaguered by Israel from all sides including its air space. It is the largest open-air prison in the world. Now Israel by intentional destruction of the infrastructure of Gaza has made sure that its people would not raise their heads again against the ongoing occupation and blockade for years to come. But if they did at some stage then they would have Israeli war-machine on their heads again. It is as simple as that if we want to understand the Israeli position.

No doubt, this is an undefendable situation. To my mind the only explanation lies in the fact that it is military might that decides the fate of a subjugated people, not their rights according to international law or humane considerations. Yet the struggle of the Palestinians for their national liberation from the Zionist yoke needs universal support. The public demonstrations in many countries around the world denouncing the Israeli genocide and carnage in Gaza have been positive. They show a growing awareness among the people of the world about the plight of the colonised Palestinians.

Israeli war on Gaza is to crush Fatah-Hamas unity and any resistance to Israeli occupation

.
Nasir Khan, July 19, 2014

There are many people who think that Israel has invaded Gaza in response to the rockets from Gaza. But there is more to this scenario then many casual readers know. Therefore I present a brief account of what happened. After the killing of three young ultra-rightist Jewish settlers by some unknown people and the burning alive of a Palestinian youth by the Zionists, the Netanyahu government accused Hamas of the killings. This Hamas categorically denied and declared that such accusations were totally unfounded. Hamas had nothing to do with the killings; it also condemned such killings because it was apprehensive that the Israeli government would use it an excuse to unleash terror in the West Bank and also Gaza. That’s exactly what happened.

Israeli police and army started a large-scale crack down on all members and sympathisers of Hamas in the West Bank. They also killed many Palestinians during these operations. As a reaction to the victimisation of its members by Israel, some resistance-fighters from Gaza fired rockets into Israel without causing much damage or death. There is no credible evidence that one Israeli citizen was killed by the rocket fire. As expected by many political observers Israel used firing of rockets from Gaza as a casus belli for a full scale aerial bombardment indiscriminately that was followed by a ground invasion. But what are the real reasons for Israeli war on Gaza? One prime reason is to strike at the Palestinian unity government that the two factions Fatah and Hamas had formed after the collapse of the US charade of peace talks between the parties.

Gaza is burning and the Arabs sit and watch

–

Dr Mohammed Al-Misfer, MEM, Monday, 14 July 2014 

Dr Mohammed Al-Misfer

There have been many times when oppressed people resisting their oppressors gain international solidarity for their cause as public opinion sways in their favour. They embody bravery as they continue to resist against their enemies. We saw this pattern manifest itself in Vietnam when the people struggled against the biggest superpower in the world. The Vietnamese demonstrated how they turned to each other for support when the northern city of Hanoi stood as a beacon of light for its counterpart Saigon in the south. Soon after, the southern Vietnamese people embodied the spirit of resistance and achieved all of their goals.

–

When it comes to the Palestinian case, the situation is entirely different, for in the Gaza Strip (Southern Palestine) we see true armed resistance being engaged in the battle against the Zionist enemy, which is armed with the most sophisticated weapons and is using all of its power and influence throughout the world to frame this conflict as it sees fit; it is from this that the Palestinian people in Gaza can find no escape. Gaza is burning and its natural supporters, the Arabs of the region, sit and watch. The Palestinian Authority under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, based in the West Bank city of Ramallah (which we can consider here to be the northern region of Palestine), should be the biggest advocate for its people in Gaza. And yet, all we here are murmurs and useless statements being made here and there.

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Richard Falk: An Open Letter of Response to CRIF (Counsèil Représentif des Institutions juives de France)

Richard Falk, 30 Dec  2012

An Open Letter of Response to CRIF (Counsèil Représentif des Institutions juives de France)

I am shocked and saddened that your organization would label me as an anti-Semite and self-hating Jew. It is utterly defamatory, and such allegations are entirely based on distortions of what I believe and what I have done. To confuse my criticisms of Israel with self-hatred of myself as a Jew or with hatred of Jews is a calumny. I have long been a critic of American foreign policy but that does not make me anti-American; it is freedom of conscience that is the core defining reality of a genuinely democratic society, and its exercise is crucial to the quality of political life in a particular country, especially here in the United States where its size and influence often has such a large impact on the lives and destiny of many peoples excluded from participating in its policy debates or elections.

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Tony and the Shah of Palestine

by Yvonne Ridley, Media Monitors Network,  July 5, 2010)

“There are fewer checkpoints because the Israelis are grabbing more land and huge swathes of stolen land are merging into other tracts of stolen land, making some checkpoints redundant. That doesn’t change the fact that the West Bank is now a series of small islands, cut off by Israel and its Apartheid Wall and settler-only roads, as well as the illegal settlements.”

Ever since a group of ordinary people from more than 40 different countries came together and set sail for Gaza have we seen various world leaders scramble to persuade Israel to lift the blockade on Gaza. Why? To honour the memory of those martyred by Israeli soldiers who shot nine unarmed peace activists at virtually point-blank range? Hell no!

They realize that people power has achieved more in that one heroic action, than any of them have achieved for the people of Palestine. And, despite that brutal episode, they know that more flotillas and convoys are being planned because people power is achieving more than anything else has over the past 60 years for the people of Palestine.

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