NOVANEWS
As we go to press, Israeli forces are carrying out another brutal military campaign, this time in the Gaza Strip, home to 1.3 million Palestinians.
Israeli bombs have knocked out the power plant that provides nearly half of Gaza’s electricity. Other targets include water facilities and the main roads connecting the north and south. Fighter planes constantly fly low over residential areas, intentionally causing sonic booms that shatter windows and terrify children.
On July 1, the office of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh was bombed. At least one-third of the Palestine National Authority (PNA) cabinet and many members of parliament, mayors and other officials have been arrested and added to the ranks of more than 9,000 Palestinian political prisoners.
Israel’s current military operation follows several years of economic strangulation, which became a near-complete blockade of Gaza after the January 2006 Palestinian elections.
Israel’s pretext for these latest actions is the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants. But the actual goal, without a doubt, is to undermine the democratically elected PNA government, now led by the Hamas organization.
The deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure and the collective punishment of a civilian population are violations of the Geneva Conventions, to which both Israel and the United States are signatories.
That means that, according to international law, Israel’s actions constitute war crimes.
And the U.S. government is an accomplice to these crimes. Why? Because every Israeli bomb and bullet is paid for with U.S. tax dollars. Without U.S. support, Israel could not conduct this aggression. In fact, without U.S. dollars, the Israeli state couldn’t last a day.
Israel is the world’s largest single recipient of U.S. foreign aid. But don’t be fooled into thinking that Washington sends money to Tel Aviv because of any sympathy for Jewish people. Military aid is given to control military policy. That’s why the second biggest recipient of U.S. aid is Egypt, an Arab country led by a government that also serves Washington’s interests in the Middle East.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often portrayed as two peoples locked in ancient tribal warfare. Or else we’re told that Israel is a Western-style democracy under siege by anti-democratic Arabs and Muslims motivated by virulent anti-Semitism.
Both explanations are false.
Before the early 20th century, Muslims, Christians and Jews lived in relative peace in what was then called Palestine. But then Europeans began promoting mass migration to Palestine in order to create a pro-Western state in the heart of a region increasingly important for both its oil and its strategic position between Europe, Asia and what was then the Soviet Union.
It was in reaction to this aggressive mass migration that Palestine’s Arab inhabitants began to fight back.
The truth is that Israel is an historical anomaly. It is a settler state founded in an era of global decolonization. Far from being a refuge against anti-Semitism, the establishment of a racialist state on Palestinian land has isolated the Jewish people from all other oppressed peoples fighting for self-determination. Israel’s history of suppressing the national aspirations of the Palestinian people, its alliance with apartheid-era South Africa and its slavish following of U.S. foreign policy has made it a pariah nation among the peoples of the world.
The only real solution to the present crisis in Gaza and to the whole Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the acknowledgment by all sides that Israel, by its very nature as a racist settler state, violates the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. In this conflict, Israel is the oppressor, the Palestinians are the oppressed and U.S. support for Israel is the ultimate obstacle to peace, justice and prosperity for Arab and Jew alike.
There are many possible ways out of the current conflict, including one united secular state, two separate and sovereign states or some other formation. But as the oppressed people in this equation, only the Palestinians have the right to decide which solution is correct.
Meanwhile, progressive people here in this country have the responsibility to support the Palestinians’ right to self-determination by demanding an immediate and unconditional end to all U.S. support for Israel.
