ADDRESSING THE ISRAELI AND AMERICAN MESSAGING ON GAZA GENOCIDE

Israel’s war on Gaza is a response to Hamas’ October 7 atrocities.

Israel’s Intelligence Ministry constructed a plan to eliminate or ethnically cleanse all Palestinians from Gaza.  That’s the real goal.  10-7 created the opportunity to do it.  Conferences are already being held to discuss re-occupation of Gaza by Jewish settlers.  Ethnic cleansing would facilitate the annexation of Gaza and a Jewish majority.

Expel all Palestinians from Gaza, recommends Israel government ministry
Israeli settlers cross into Gaza, build ‘symbolic’ outpost
Turning Zeitoun into Shivat Zion: Israeli summit envisions Gaza resettlement

Israel’s objectives in the war are to free the hostages and to dismantle Hamas

Hostages concern the Israeli people, but to the government they are expendable.  On 10-7 the IDF enacted their “Hannibal Directive” which says prevent hostage-taking by killing them yourself.  This doesn’t excuse the war crime of hostage taking, but it’s estimated that hundreds of civilian captives died from IDF helicopter and tank fire on 10-7.  65 hostages in Gaza have been killed by Israeli bombing.  Israel also holds 3000 Palestinian administrative detainees hostage, many women and children.  All hostages from both sides should be freed immediately.

Released hostages slam Israel, say, they feared ‘airstrikes would kill us’
“Bring them back”: Freed Israeli Hostages Plead with Netanyahu for Deal
What is the Hannibal Directive and how Israel uses it.
How Israel’s bombing frenzy endangered hostages
IDF Kills 3 Shirtless Israeli Hostages Waving White Flag; Calling for Help in Hebrew 

What Israelis won’t be asking about the Palestinians released for hostages
What Palestinian children face in Israeli prisons

Israel’s ruling Likud Party created Hamas decades ago and provided it with substantial funding through conduits in Qatar. It adopted this policy in order to weaken parties representing Palestinian secular nationalism, including the Palestinian Authority, and to divide and continue subjugating the Palestinians.  Hamas is a convenient propaganda scapegoat to stir up Israeli hatred, but Likud needs them and everyone admits they won’t be eradicated, especially by collective punishment, which will only make them popular.

Israeli arrogance thwarted a Palestinian political path. October 7 revealed the cost.
For years Netanyahu propped up Hamas‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas

Palestinians want Israel to free them from the rule of Hamas.

This is Orwellian language. People aren’t “freed” by slaughtering with bombs, starvation, dehydration, disease, and destroying their homes, hospitals, food and water sources and all other material conditions necessary for living in a place. Many Palestinians dislike Hamas, but grudgingly support them because they are the only Palestinian political entity still committed to freeing them from half a century of brutal Israeli occupation. 

The beginning of the end? The hypothetical future of Palestinian politics

Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2005 and received copious international aid.  Still, they managed to turn it into a disaster zone of poverty, while spending the money on tunnels and rockets.

Israel has control over every aspect of life in Gaza.  It is widely described as an open-air prison or concentration camp.  The siege prevented trade, travel, medical referrals, food production and commerce.  Five separate military campaigns by Israel have wreaked destruction on any infrastructure progress.  Materials like concrete to repair bombed structures were prohibited. Food intake has been rationed for 16 years.

Gaza Strip: A beginner’s guide to an enclave under blockade
The Gaza siege isn’t about security. It’s collective punishment, pure and simple
Myths and realities about Israel’s siege of Gaza
Trapped ‘from fence to fence’ in Gaza

Destroying Hamas will solve Israel’s security problem.

The genocide in Gaza has made Israelis and Jews across the world less safe. If Hamas vanished today, another Jihadi group would take their place as long as Palestinians are forced to live without rights in an apartheid occupation.  Palestinians also need security from Israeli military and vigilante violence.   

Israel’s attempt to destroy Hamas will breed more radicalisation, UN expert says
Israel’s war cabinet has learned nothing from its failures

There was a ceasefire before Oct. 7 and Hamas broke it

Only if you call pogroms against unarmed civilians, a crushing siege and an apartheid military regime peace. During the 2018 peaceful Gazan Great March of Return Israeli snipers killed medics, journalists and people in wheelchairs and disabled thousands by shooting them in the legs.  Israel will never be safe until it either negotiates a just settlement with Palestinians based on the principle of equality and freedom for every inhabitant of the region, or until it kills every Palestinian across the world.

The Oct. 7 Hamas invasion caught Israel by surprise

Israeli intelligence obtained the exact blueprint of the 10-7 attack one full year in advance 10-7, paragliders and all.  They also received intelligence that an attack was brewing a week before the attack from their own soldiers yet they stood down their defenses; two battalions were transferred from the Southern border to protect illegal settlers celebrating in the Palestinian West Bank city of Huwara, where just months before the settlers had mounted a pogrom against city residents.  Incompetence, or worse?

Israel Knew Hamas’ Attack Plan more than a year ago
Did Israel’s reliance on tech cause October 7 intelligence failure?

Hamas killed 1200 Israeli civilians

Actually 400 or so were soldiers and police, and hundreds of the civilians were probably killed by “Hannibal” friendly fire.  The murder of hundreds of civilians in Southern Israel was an atrocity.  But, it will NEVER JUSTIFY the killing of 35,000 Gazan civilians, with twice that many expected to die from starvation and unattended medical problems and intentional epidemics.

Israeli HQ ordered troops to shoot Israeli captives on 7 October

Hamas beheaded 40 babies, cut babies from wombs, hung dead babies from clotheslines and put babies in ovens.

These stories have been DEBUNKED by both the Israeli press and the government after using the racist propaganda to inflame Israeli citizens and shock the world enough to elicit wide support. This tactic is called manufacturing consent and has been used by the imperialist west many times.

American media keep citing Zaka – though its October 7 atrocity stories are discredited in Israel

Hamas carried out a campaign of mass rape on Oct 7 

No evidence of systematic rape.  U.N. team reports some circumstantial evidence of both Israeli victims on 10-7 and after, as well as Palestinian victims during incarceration and home searches by IDF and settlers. The issue has been grossly and hatefully manipulated in the media for propaganda purposes so skepticism is advised.  The team leader of the UN report has actually confessed to fabricating fraudulent rape atrocity stories about Russian troops being issued Viagra to commit systematic rape.  Families of Israeli 10-7 casualties have reported that NYT reporters repeatedly badgered them to allege rape in order to help the Israeli propaganda effort.  But even if any of these allegations turn out to be true, still not a justification for genocide, and even this UN report urges a permanent ceasefire.    

The story behind the New York Times October 7 expose

There are no innocent Gazans; they voted for Hamas.

More than half of Gazans are children not yet born at the time of the 2005 Hamas election, in which Hamas received less than half the total vote. Regardless of votes, there is no legal justification for the act of genocide. Perpetuating the myth of “no innocent Gazans” is a tactic of dehumanization, which is designed to maintain support for genocidal action towards Palestinians.  Dehumanizing a whole people is racism, pure and simple.

Israel directed Gazan civilians to safe zones

Safe zones not observed by IOF.  Population was forcibly evacuated, concentrated in “safe zones” then bombed intentionally. This is currently being documented in Rafah, where 1.5 million people, mostly displaced refugees, are sheltering in tents while bombarded by airstrikes. Israel plans to mount a ground invasion at the start of Ramadan on this last remaining “safe zone.”

Safe Zones: Israel’s technologies of genocide
Israel struck areas it directed civilians to in Gaza, CNN analysis shows
Israel bombards Rafah as ground invasion looms
UN alarmed as Israel says preparing for Rafah invasion

Israel is providing humanitarian food and medical aid to Gazans

Israel denies aid and denies access to NGO trucks bringing aid.  Using forced starvation as a weapon is a war crime.  Israeli civilian protesters  have been blocking aid trucks entering Gaza, with IDF cooperation.

Israel/OPT: Israel must lift illegal and inhumane blockade on Gaza as power plant runs out of fuel
Young Israelis block aid to Gaza while IDF soldiers stand and watch
Palestinian children die of malnutrition as Israel blocks aid into Gaza

The United Nations Refugee and Works Administration collaborated with Hamas on 10-7 terror.

9 out of 30,000 employees were accused by Israel and fired without evidence by UNWRA, but US and many other donors have still cut off funds.  UNRWA is the main supplier of humanitarian aid in Gaza.

UN urges reversal of funding pause for Palestinian refugee agency
UNWRA funding cuts are immoral
UNRWA: Claims versus Facts – Press Release

Israel claims killing  2 civilians for each  Hamas fighter it kills.

While it is hard to get a clear number on combatants vs. civilians killed in Gaza, independent estimates on civilian casualties run up to 90%. Israel’s numbers include almost all adult men in Gaza as “military age men ” in their estimates of Hamas fighters killed, despite the fact that all men of military age are not Hamas fighters.

Counting casualties in Israel’s war on Gaza
Gaza’s death toll now exceeds 30,000. Here’s why it’s an incomplete count.

Critics of Israeli policy are antisemitic.

If so, then the whole world is antisemitic, including Jews and Israelis.  16 of 17 judges at the world’s highest court (ICJ) indicted Israel for genocide.  The US has now vetoed a UN ceasefire three times since October 7, most recently two weeks ago, when 13 voted for, US voted against, and Britain abstained.  Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, the Pope, and many more charge genocide. Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, Jewish Currents are but a few of the Jewish organizations in the US who criticize Israeli policy. Haaretz, the Israeli equivalent of the NYTimes, publishes articles daily criticizing Israeli policy. This claim is nonsensical – criticizing a government is not antisemitic – but lobbying groups like AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel, funded by wealthy Republicans, use their hundreds of millions in campaign donations to promote it, and to silence Congress and the White House.  

Israel keeps American Jews safe.

Israel wants us to equate Israeli Zionism with Judaism.  Many American Jews reject that idea and are risking arrest by the thousands to protest the Israeli atrocities – they do not want to be held responsible for the war crimes being committed by the Israeli and US governments.  Many Jews, including local Jewish ceasefire proponents understand our antisemitism risk comes from white supremacists here, not Palestinian rights activists.

The ADL wants to conflate critiques of Israel with antisemitism. That won’t make Jews safer. 

Israel is a beacon of democracy in a despotic region.

Yes—for one ethnic group.  For all others: apartheid and colonial occupation.

Not a ‘Vibrant Democracy’. This is Apartheid

It’s not genocide.  Genocide is when Jews are the victims, which would occur if Palestinians were free.

The ICJ and many human rights groups and scholars of genocide have determined that it is a genocide.

Brutal occupation, apartheid and genocide only increase the risk to Jews of eventual revenge.  A just negotiated solution can result in a safe country for all.  South Africa ended apartheid without any white genocides.  

A Textbook Case of Genocide

Palestinians could have accepted a state during the Oslo Accords, but they rejected it.

Palestinian leadership accepted a state in just 22% of historic Palestine during the Oslo Accords. This was a major compromise. Israel has never respected the terms of Oslo – it continued building settlements while the Accords were negotiated and signed and during the designated transitional period after which the entire territory was to be handed over to the PLO. Those Accords have  resulted in an Israeli military dictatorship rather than a sovereign Palestinian state, with isolated Bantustan pockets amid a sea of settlers, with no refugee right of return and no ability for Palestinians to defend themselves.  

The Oslo trap: how the PLO signed its own death warrant

This is not an issue for local governments, and will only sow discord.

It has been well documented that local, grass roots activism greatly contributed to the fall of apartheid in South Africa. At the time, that action was likely discounted as “not a local issue.” Arguably a US funded genocide, (where the US is the only other country in the world blocking a UN resolution) is much closer to home.

Our federal government, universities and the media, captured by giant lobbies like AIPAC and DMFI, are being extorted into sending our tax dollars to collaborate with genocide and silencing dissent.  Local governments, standing together, can force  that to change.  More than 70 municipalities have already passed ceasefire resolutions.

Giving a platform to genocide deniers is harming our community. Our silence and complacency in genocide sets a dangerous precedent for humanity.

Our representatives in Congress are not listening to their constituents that have been calling, emailing and confronting them. Asking our local officials is the only channel of democracy we have real access to.

Pressure to end apartheid began at grass roots in US

Amnesty International Report: Israeli Apartheid

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/