A terrorist state and a declining US empire wage genocide
Mar 21, 2024
Hamas is the excuse for the Israeli attack on Gaza. The real intent is to expel all Palestinians not just from Gaza but from the West Bank as well.
Or as Jonathan Cook put it ‘Israel is not primarily eradicating Hamas. It is eradicating Gaza’
Professor Richard Falk said .. ‘In Gaza, the west is enabling the most transparent genocide in human history’ And Australia is complicit.
The Finance Minister in the Netanyahu Government says ‘there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people‘. So why not get rid of them!
The settler colonisation of Palestine started with the Nakba in 1948. It is continuing. In Australia we are very familiar with settler colonisation – driving out the original inhabitants.
In 1948 Palestinians owned 94% of all land; now Israelis own 82%. These figures tell the real story. Israel is an occupying power.
Palestinians are humiliated every day of their lives as John Lyons showed us the other night on Four Corners. The former head of Shin Bet Ami Ayalon said ‘we control the lives of millions’ .
Israel has stolen vast areas of Palestinian lands. Yet the defenders of Israel like the Albanese Government parrot on that Israel has a right to defend itself. But surely Palestinian have a greater right to resist the occupation of their lands.
Asked how Palestinians might regard Israel, Ami Ayalon said ‘I would fight against Israel in order to achieve my liberty…I would do everything to achieve my liberty’.
Moshe Dayan said much the same in 1956, ‘What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived’.
If Country J had occupied Australia in WW2, would Country J have the right to defend itself on our soil? Surely occupied people have a much greater right than the occupier to defend themselves. The slave has more rights to act against oppression than the slave owner to oppress the slave.
October 7 did not occur in a vacuum. It was the result of decades long Israeli occupation, imprisonment, apartheid and never ending violence and oppression. The pressure cooker exploded!
Apologists for Israel want us to ignore the history and context. The expelling and killing of Palestinians by Israel started 76 years ago in 1948, not 5 months ago in October last year.
Hamas is described by its critics as a terrorist organisation. Maybe. But Israel is much more a terrorist organisation, a Terrorist State, with enormous military power to crush its opponents, supported by the most powerful military in the world. US support of state terrorism is on ghastly show.
Ehud Barak a former Prime Minister told John Lyons. ‘I once was asked some 30 years ago what I have been doing if I were a Palestinian and 30 years ago I was new enough in politics to tell the truth that if I were born Palestinian probably would’ve joined one of the terror organisations.’
That 1200 Israelis were killed by Hamas on October 7 is appalling. Some were killed by Israeli helicopters and tanks. Israeli allegations about Hamas killing babies together with other atrocities has been found to be highly dubious. President Biden fell for Israeli propaganda. Media around the world has been complicit in the huge Israel/US propaganda campaign.
The crimes are now being overwhelmingly committed by Israel and supported by the US
How do we balance the tragic Israeli loss of life compared with over 11,000 Palestinians killed by Israel before October 7 last year and over 30,000 killed by Israel since October 7.
Israelis are naturally concerned about 134 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza. Yet 10,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons. Palestinians regard them as hostages held by Israel. And that is what they are. Many of the detainees in Israeli prisons are young Palestinians arrested for doing not much more than throwing stones at heavily armed Israeli vehicles.
We follow the US with lip service to a two state solution but we do nothing to advance it. We talk about it to ease our consciences about continuing Israeli barbarity.Australian support for the Israeli genocide is a disgrace.
I thought we elected a Labor Government that would be different and better! But not so, on so many fronts.
Netanyahu says that Israel has no one he can negotiate with for a political solution. The most popular Palestinian leader, Martin Barghouti has been in an Israeli gaol for 22 years–shades of Nelson Mandela. President Abbas of Fatah is a creature of the Israelis, not of the Palestinian people.
In 2016, Netanyahu began sending money to Hamas with the help of the Qataris. His motive for this secret funding was to build Hamas as the rival to Fatah and President Abbas. Netanyahu is now hoist with his own petard. And Palestinians are paying the price with high tech Israeli/US killing.
Recognising Palestine would be a first step in a political settlement. But the Israeli government rejects it. Netanyahu boasts that he has thwarted a Palestinian State.
Ehud Barak said of Netanyahu, ‘I don’t think that anyone can trust him. So he basically lies to everyone and no one can trust him’.
Even if the military defeat of Hamas was possible as Netanyahu hopes, it would not end Palestinian resistance. It would continue in another and stronger form.
Hamas is certainly not winning in our Washington manipulated media. But it is winning overwhelmingly in the Arab street and the Global South. It shows in the UN General Assembly and the ICJ.
The Zionist Lobby has become tiresome in accusing its critics of anti semitism. It uses it as a battering ram against all its critics. It employs the holocaust as a cloak to hide its barbarity in Gaza. Or as Jonathan Glazer called it at the Oscars ‘We refute our Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked’.
The latest US propaganda trick is to try to blame Netanyahu and not Israel for the killing. But polls suggest that 75% of Israelis believe that the war should continue.
The media trick is telling us that Palestinians are starving. The honest story is that Israel is starving the people of Gaza.
Israel’s reputation will be for ever sullied by its barbarity in Gaza. With its sadistic behaviour the IDF is no longer ‘the most moral army’ in the world. It never was.
There has to be a political settlement acceptable to both Palestinians and Israelis. The US has the power to force that settlement but it is in thrall and manipulated by the very powerful Israeli Lobby in the US.
US’ failing global ‘leadership’ and domestic sickness can no longer be hidden. Gaza and Ukraine will be seen as historic hinge events.
The US makes no attempt to practice what it preaches about human rights and international law.
We are attached like limpets to a sinking Empire.
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
Contributions to Pearls and Irritations
Your contribution will fund quality independent comment and analysis in Pearls and Irritations
Contribute
