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roachboy · 09-03-2006, 03:34 PM

i think polarization in debate about israel here reflects the polarized information streams within the united states about israel. support for israel in the states seems to entail a much higher degree of refusal to the lot of the palestinians than it does in israel itself. the idf's treatment of the palestinians is in the main truly barbaric---it causes trouble in many sectors of israeli political life because it introduces ambiguity about the rationale for the continued occupation of the west bank and gaza. the israeli right has used "terrorism"--which i see largely as a response to sustained, brutal oppression--to justify continuation of military repression--an entirely self-defeating policy that is, to my mind, THE single most important cause of "terrorism"...if you put yourself in the place of the population of gaza, a snapshot of which is given in the editorial from todays ha'aretz below, what would you do? if this kind of action was the norm, if there seemed no hope of stopping it, how would you react?

i am not sure of the causes that one could point to in order to explain the polarized information context the americans have created for themselves. but this polarization is one of the roots of the vitriol in debates, there seems to me no doubt about that.

here's the edito:

Quote:

Gaza's darkness

By Gideon Levy

Gaza has been reoccupied. The world must know this and Israelis must know it, too. It is in its worst condition, ever. Since the abduction of Gilad Shalit, and more so since the outbreak of the Lebanon war, the Israel Defense Forces has been rampaging through Gaza - there's no other word to describe it - killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately.

Nobody thinks about setting up a commission of inquiry; the issue isn't even on the agenda. Nobody asks why it is being done and who decided to do it. But under the cover of the darkness of the Lebanon war, the IDF returned to its old practices in Gaza as if there had been no disengagement. So it must be said forthrightly, the disengagement is dead. Aside from the settlements that remain piles of rubble, nothing is left of the disengagement and its promises. How contemptible all the sublime and nonsensical talk about "the end of the occupation" and "partitioning the land" now appears. Gaza is occupied, and with greater brutality than before. The fact that it is more convenient for the occupier to control it from outside has nothing to do with the intolerable living conditions of the occupied.

In large parts of Gaza nowadays, there is no electricity. Israel bombed the only power station in Gaza, and more than half the electricity supply will be cut off for at least another year. There's hardly any water. Since there is no electricity, supplying homes with water is nearly impossible. Gaza is filthier and smellier than ever: Because of the embargo Israel and the world have imposed on the elected authority, no salaries are being paid and the street cleaners have been on strike for the past few weeks. Piles of garbage and obnoxious clouds of stink strangle the coastal strip, turning it into Calcutta.

More than ever, Gaza is also like a prison. The Erez crossing is empty, the Karni crossing has been open only a few days over the last two months, and the same is true for the Rafah crossing. Some 15,000 people waited for two months to enter Egypt, some are still waiting, including many ailing and wounded people. Another 5,000 waited on the other side to return to their homes. Some died during the wait. One must see the scenes at Rafah to understand how profound a human tragedy is taking place. A crossing that was not supposed to have an Israeli presence continues to be Israel's means to pressure 1.5 million inhabitants. This is disgraceful and shocking collective punishment. The U.S. and Europe, whose police are at the Rafah crossing, also bear responsibility for the situation.

Gaza is also poorer and hungrier than ever before. There is nearly no merchandise moving in and out, fishing is banned, the tens of thousands of PA workers receive no salaries, and the possibility of working in Israel is out of the question.

And we still haven't mentioned the death, destruction and horror. In the last two months, Israel killed 224 Palestinians, 62 of them children and 25 of them women. It bombed and assassinated, destroyed and shelled, and no one stopped it. No Qassam cell or smuggling tunnel justifies such wide-scale killing. A day doesn't go by without deaths, most of them innocent civilians.

Where are the days when there was still a debate inside Israel about the assassinations? Today, Israel drops innumerable missiles, shells and bombs on houses and kills entire families on its way to another assassination. Hospitals are collapsing with more than 900 people undergoing treatment. At Shifa Hospital, the only such facility in Gaza that might be worthy of being called a hospital, I saw heartrending scenes last week. Children who lost limbs, on respirators, paralyzed, crippled for the rest of their lives.

Families have been killed in their sleep, while riding on donkeys or working in fields. Frightened children, traumatized by what they have seen, huddle in their homes with a horror in their eyes that is difficult to describe in words. A journalist from Spain who spent time in Gaza recently, a veteran of war and disaster zones around the world, said he had never been exposed to scenes as horrific as the ones he saw and documented over the last two months.

It is difficult to determine who decided on all this. It is doubtful the ministers are aware of the reality in Gaza. They are responsible for it, starting with the bad decision on the embargo, through the bombing of Gaza's bridges and power station and the mass assassinations. Israel is responsible now once again for all that happens in Gaza.

The events in Gaza expose the great fraud of Kadima: It came to power on the coattails of the virtual success of the disengagement, which is now going up in flames, and it promised convergence, a promise that the prime minister has already rescinded. Those who think Kadima is a centrist party should now know it is nothing other than another rightist occupation party. The same is true of Labor. Defense Minister Amir Peretz is responsible for what is happening in Gaza no less than the prime minister, and Peretz's hands are as blood-soaked as Olmert's. He can never present himself as a 'man of peace' again. The ground invasions every week, each time somewhere else, the kill and destroy operations from the sea, air and land are all dubbed with names to whitewash the reality, like 'Summer Rains' or 'Locked Kindergarten.' No security excuse can explain the cycle of madness, and no civic argument can excuse the outrageous silence of us all. Gilad Shalit will not be released and the Qassams will not cease. On the contrary, there is a horror taking place in Gaza, and while it might prevent a few terror attacks in the short run, it is bound to give birth to much more murderous terror. Israel will then say with its self-righteousness: 'But we returned Gaza to them.'

source: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/757768.html

other causes have been mentioned in passing in the context of various threads on lebanon and gaza---the fact that there was considerable debate within zionism before 1948 about how to address coexistence with the palestinian/arab populations and that, to my mind at least, the wrong side won out in the longer run...the notion that israel must be a jewish state, which is at the heart of the refusal of the "right of return" the results of which have been that thousands of palestinians have been left to rot...

another problem: american supporters of israel refuse to recognize that the situation endured by israel changed fundamentally after 1967. there is no threat to israel's existence as such. there simply is no such threat. israel is a regional superpower and no combination of forces are in a position to destroy it. the appeal to such threats---which it routine in the american press when it comes to pro-israeli coverage----is totally disengenous. but folk believe it and their positions often follow from that.

then there is the bush administration's virtual sanction of racism directed against arabs/muslims. this is another problem. echoes of it poison almost every debate on any issue related to this question. it is often a quite foul type of racism, and you see it routinely from folk on the far right who post on the topic. i find this personally offensive and find it really difficult to remain open in a conversation when i find this kind of racism operating.

this is a tough, complex and emotional area.

on the other hand, i should say that while i think i understand why conditions imposed in the occupied territories would lead the people under occupation to consider "terrorism" i do not endorse the tactics themselves. but it seems to me that a rethinking of approach is the only way out, not more of the same oppression that is at the root of this phenomena to begin with.