Marc Trius's Open Salon Blog

The Gaza Siege

Thu, 3 Jun 2010 14:06:54 -0400

It has now been three years since Israel imposed its cruel and crippling siege of the Gaza Strip. I find it incredible, as a Jew and as a human being, that Israel—which calls itself the Jewish State—would blockade nearly a million and a half people in a small territory, effectively turning it into an enormous ghetto, periodically raid and murder them, and deprive them of a list of goods that seems to have been compiled for sadistic effect.

I wish I could say that I cannot imagine why Israel does this. In fact I can imagine all too well: What Israel is trying to do is ‘train’ the Palestinians to accept their status as a subjugated and defeated people. By destroying their industry and economy it hopes to keep them weak and undeveloped, and make them forever dependent on it for aid; by repeatedly humiliating and brutalizing them, Israel hopes that the Palestinians will despair of their hopes to be free.

Looking at the list of prohibited goods that Gisha (an Israeli legal center for freedom of movement) has compiled, Israel’s oppressive goals become very clear. One category of goods is building materials and industrial raw materials: things such as cement, tar, iron, wood for construction, tarpaulin for huts, and fabric that are all necessary to rebuild Gaza’s infrastructure and keep its factories going.

The prohibition to import those materials is clearly having its desired effect: According to a UN report, Gaza is still in much the same state as it was immediately after Israel’s incredibly destructive assault in December 2008–January 2009; and according to a July 2007 report by Gisha, 75% of the factories in Gaza had closed due to lack of raw materials. That was three years ago, only one month after the siege had begun. I assume that, with the siege still in place, the situation has not improved.

Another category of prohibited goods is agricultural supplies and materials: things such as fishing rods, fishing nets, nylon nets for greenhouses, dairies for cowsheds, irrigation systems, heaters for chicken farms, and spare parts for tractors are all necessary to produce food. Along with Israeli bombing of sewage facilities, causing raw sewage to run off into the sea, the lack of these materials has ruined fishing and agriculture in Gaza, which once was famous for its fisheries and orchards.

The previous two categories of prohibited goods are in place to prevent economic self-suï¬ƒciency and a modern industry in Gaza; but there are other types of goods that are prohibited, with purposes that are more subtle and grim.

Chocolate, jam, fresh and dried fruit, biscuits, sweets, even potato chips cannot be imported into Gaza. Presumably Israel fears that Hamas will shower Sderot with chocolate rockets and dried fruit bombs; imagine the carnage that would ensue! People would be trampled scrambling over scattered truffles, and get indigestion from gobbling up too many potato chips; businesses would close because of the drop in candy prices, and everyone would have to visit a dentist. Maybe if fruit preserves are allowed in Gaza, Hamas would be able to jam Israeli radars.

Not really. The purpose of prohibiting the import of delicacies into Gaza is different: to deprive Gazans of the slightest luxury, to take away their ability to forget their pain even for the moment it takes for a bit of chocolate to melt on the tongue. It is a cruel prohibition.

What else is prohibited? Toys, musical instruments, notebooks, and writing implements. Does Israel fear that Gazan student bagpipe players will cause, if they are allowed instruments with which to practice, a mental breakdown among Israeli citizens in towns surrounding the Gaza Strip? Perhaps it thinks that its soldiers will flee in horror from the unpracticed squeals and wails and suffer from terrible psychic wounds for the rest of their lives. Or maybe the Israeli leadership, having heard the saying that the pen is mightier than the sword, fear that Gazan students bearing pens will rout its tank battalions and bring down its fighter jets on routine bombing missions.

Israel does not want the people of Gaza to learn, to develop, and to create. It does not want them to have a vibrant culture, a prosperous economy, or a good environment to live in. It would rather see them walk amongst ruins, sleep in tents and live on a “diet,” as Dov Weisglass put it back in 2006.

Israel wants to make the Palestinians suffer to the point of desperation, to cause them so much pain that they cannot take it any more. It wants them to give up. We cannot stand aside and let Israel continue in its campaign of atrocity. Whether Jew or non-Jew, we must all stand up and say Enough! No human being of conscience can accept this outrage.

http://freefromzion.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/the-siege-of-gaza/

Who Delegitimizes Israel?

Mon, 31 May 2010 18:05:46 -0400

Israel has said that the Freedom Flotilla, a maritime convoy carrying 10,000 tons of much-needed aid for the destitute population of Gaza and around 750 international activists protesting Israel’s siege of the territory, is “a provocation intended to delegitimize Israel.” If that were a just characterization, then the Flotilla would be unnessecary; it seems that Israel is doing a great job of delegitimizing itself.

On Monday, May 31st 2010, at around 4 o’clock in the morning, in international waters some 40 miles off the Israeli coast, elite IDF troops stormed the ships of the Flotilla and took the lives of 10-20 international peace activists. Israel says that the activists attacked its soldiers with iron bars and knives and attempted to snatch firearms from the soldiers, and that the troops fired in self-defense.

Even if Israel’s claim is true — which, we must remember, might or might not be the case — and a handful of civilian activists on board the aid ship resisted the troops boarding their vessels, can that be a justification to open fire on board the ship? Was there no other solution?

Quite apart from the option of retreating and disabling the ship’s rudder, opening fire was an extreme overreaction. Even Israeli soldiers who are not destined for combat roles receive martial arts training for circumstances such as the one that occured on board the MV Mavi Marmara; the troops who boarded the ship were not secretaries and supply offcers; they were Marine commandos of Shayetet 13 (S’13), one of the most elite units in the Israeli military. S’13 candidates undergo incredibly grueling and advanced training in marine, land, and airborne warfare, making them (according to Israel) one of the best Special Forces units in the world. Surely they could defend themselves against a bunch of angry peaceniks without firing their guns.

The Israeli military has become accustomed to responding disproportionately. From last year’s brutal assault on Gaza, to the enormous destruction and death it inflicted on Lebanon in 2006, to the ongoing cruel siege of Gaza, and even back to the 1967 war, deterrence through the use of overwhelming force is an established Israeli doctrine. The increasing use of this doctrine on civilian rather than military targets shows the moral condition of that country, and the short and selective memory of Zionist Jews.

It seems that Israel somehow cannot stop mimicking and repeating the crimes committed against Jews in our long history of persecution and displacement. Through the siege of Gaza Israel has created a grand-scale copy of the WWII European Ghettos, complete with a destroyed infrastructure and a starving population. Its attack on the Freedom Flotilla — which was trying to protest and break that siege — mirrors one of the most important foundational stories of the Israeli State: the story of Exodus 1947, a ship that carried more than 4,500 Holocaust survivors from France to British Mandate Palestine. Like the Israelis, the British Navy stopped the ship from reaching the shore and unloading its desparate cargo. Despite fierce resistance by the four and a half thousand men, women, and children on board, only three people were killed when the British took over the ship.

The price Israel pays for its sins is that is that by sinning it sows the seeds of its own destruction. Every time it commits a fresh atrocity it loses friends and gains enemies. Every time it maims, starves, displaces, and kills, it destroys what shred of legitimacy it might once have had as a haven for the tattered remains of European Jewry. By its brutality and cruelty it has already destroyed the goodwill and remorse felt by the world towards the Jews after World War II.

For those of us who are Jews, Israel has not made the world a safer place. For all of us who are human, Israel is a moral abomination that must be stopped.

Now is the time to protest not only the pain and death that was inflicted upon international activists last night, but also the death and pain that has been inflicted with an increasing intensity upon the Palestinians for the last 80 years. Now is the time to isolate Israel and boycott Israel’s goods and sports teams, and to condemn and prosecute its leaders — but also to welcome its dissidents and scientists, and to reach out to its people, who are beleaguered not by the Palestinians but by the insanity of Zionism. Together, we might just be able to bring an end to this tragic chapter in the History of the world.

Correction: In the original post I wrote that there were almost a thousand refugees on Exodus 1947; in fact there were 4,515 refugees on board the ship. I also wrote that no-one was killed. Three people were in fact killed during the takeover.

Israel: a Democracy for Jews Only

Fri, 14 May 2010 17:05:05 -0400

I would like to start with a simple statement: a racially stratified, undemocratic, and warlike State isn’t good for anybody. It certainly isn’t good for those who get ground under the unsympathetic wheels of racial domination, or shot, blown, and burned by the fires of war. But neither is it good for those who benefit from enforced privilege or sit safe and secure in the bunker while the war is happening to someone else. Those who live by the sword will eventually die by the sword no matter how good their sword technology is, and those who live on the backs of others will end up consumed by their own cruelty and arrogance, no matter how long they themselves have previously been downtrodden.

Israel is a racially stratified, undemocratic, and warlike State. Israel is a State in which a fifth of the citizenry is denied a stake of ownership and required to forswear their own identity and history to avoid being branded enemies of the State. Even to call for equal rights is sufficient for an Israeli Arab to be hounded by the Security Services; to make alliances with Palestinians who are not citizens of Israel is even worse. When Azmi Bishara, a Palestinian Member of Knesset(MK)—the Israeli Congress—called for a ‘State of all its Citizens’ and refused to deny his cultural and political links with other Arabs, he was stripped of parliamentary immunity by special legislation, and eventually driven out of the country by harassment and threats of a trial for High Treason.

The so-called ‘Nakba Law’ is another attack on Palestinian identity, history, and self-expression. This law forbids public commemoration of the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from Israel in 1948; any public institution that commemorates the Day of the Nakba (May 15th) will be fined ten times the amount it spent on the event. This law passed the first reading in the Knesset last month, and has two more votes before it goes on the books.

There’s more: A series of ‘Loyalty Laws’ have been proposed that would strip anyone of citizenship for reasons such as refusing to swear fealty to Israel as a Jewish State; still pending is a law that would require Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that receive funds from sources outside of Israel to register on a special list; and a law, inspired by the Goldstone Report, that would shut down any organization which “provides information to foreign authorities and act to bring Israeli Military oï¬ƒcers or Israeli leaders to trial on alleged war crimes” (from Ha’aretz Newspaper) has been proposed by MKs from Kadima, a centrist Israeli party, and from the National Union, a far-right party.

This onslaught of legislation is partly the result of the last elections, when far-right parties such as Israel Our Home and The National Union entered the governing coalition. The underlying reasons, however, include the rising civic consciousness among the Israeli Arab public and the increasing threat it poses to Jewish supremacy in Israel.

That is why Arab civil society is targeted with such verve. A recent example is the arrest of Ameer Makhoul on May 6th. Makhoul, the head of an Arab NGO called ‘Ittijah’, or The Union of Arab Community-Based Associations, and chairman of the Public Committee for the Defense of Political Freedom, was taken from his home at 3:10am by Israeli Security Services, and is being held for the allegation of ‘grave espionage.’ A gag order on news coverage of this event stood for a few days, until Israeli and international bloggers brought it to light. While the Security Services claim that Makhoul was giving secrets to a Hizbullah agent in Lebanon, it was eventually revealed that the accusation relies on a meeting between Makhoul and a Palestinian environmentalist from Jordan. This is what happens to Arab citizens of Israel who, like Makhoul and Bishara, speak to Arabs who are not also Israeli citizens.

For a State that sees the Palestinian Arab minority, which comprises a fifth of its population, as a “Strategic Threat,” as Avi Diskin, head of the Israeli General Security Services, proclaimed in 2007, acts of repression are inescapable. The grudging grant of citizenship to those Palestinians who failed to flee in 1948 (an event which, as we recall, it may soon be a crime to commemorate) does not change the fact that, as Bishara wrote in the Los Angeles Times, they have been transformed into “foreigners in [their] own country,” made to face discrimination in housing, education, and employment, turned into scapegoats for anything that goes wrong in the land, and denied political freedom.

It takes more than elections to make a Democracy: it takes a system where the rule of law, freedom of expression and conscience, and equality are paramount. As the new, draconian legislation and Makhoul’s and Bishara’s cases demonstrate so clearly along with many other cases here unmentioned, whatever can be said of Israel—whether it’s good or bad, necessary or counterproductive, Jewish or anti-Jewish—a Democracy is certainly isn’t.