excerpt - Israel’s “war” against Gaza did not, of course, start on October 7th. In 2006, after Gazans elected Hamas to govern them, Israel imposed a siege on the Strip. As lawyer Dov Weisglass, then an aide to the prime minister, said at the time, he wanted to keep Gazans *just below starvation level* <https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-starvation-diet-gaza/11810> — not enough to kill them, but not enough to fill them either. The present siege has turned Gaza into what’s been called the largest open-air prison on earth, a virtual concentration camp. *A U.N. commentator* <https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n21/sara-roy/a-dubai-on-the-mediterranean> *described this* <https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n21/sara-roy/a-dubai-on-the-mediterranean> as “possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions imposed in modern times.” Such conditions helped produce the October attack.
Occupying the West Bank since 1967, Israel has distinctly contravened international law. *Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention* <https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/article-49> stipulates that “the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory.” Israel, however, has settled about 700,000 Israeli Jews in the West Bank. Once upon a time, there was indeed room for a separate Palestinian state. *No more* <https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/sorry-there-is-no-two-state-solution> . When I visited the West Bank city of Hebron in the 1980s, I saw graffiti on walls that proclaimed: “ARABS TO THE GAS CHAMBERS.” Back then, the renowned Israeli public intellectual *Yeshayahu Leibowitz* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshayahu_Leibowitz#:~:text=Leibowitz%20was%20an%20Orthodox%20Jew,or%20the%20world%20to%20come.> warned that Israel was turning its soldiers into Judeonazis. Recent YouTube videos of soldiers *mocking their victims* <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRptiehg_Jo> bear out his prophecy. Fascism is now pervasive in Israel. There are courageous exceptions like journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy who write for the newspaper *Haaretz* and the group *Combatants for Peace* <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/10/world/middleeast/israelis-palestinians-peace-activists.html>. But *all too many* <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-24/ty-article/.premium/dont-ask-israelis-right-now-about-palestinian-casualties-in-gaza/0000018d-3770-d32b-adcf-f77227570000> Israelis have supported their country’s assault on Gaza, or even wanted something worse. I wish I could have told my classmates that, should they care about Israel, it’s their responsibility to speak out now. The genocide in Gaza has been enabled, of course, by President Biden, who *continues to send* <https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/04/04/world-central-kitchen-us-weapons-israel/> billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry, including *devastating 2,000-pound bombs* <https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/29/us-weapons-israel-gaza-war/>, to Israel. Without those arms, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu couldn’t be acting as it is. While it purports to be searching for and killing Hamas perpetrators of the October 7th atrocities, it’s actually gone to war against the entire population of Gaza. Israeli historian *Ilan Pappe* <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwx1KhYvTg0> *sees it* <https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/31/ilan_pappe_israel_invades_gaza> as “a massive operation of killing, of ethnic cleansing of depopulation.” Full article - https://tomdispatch.com/dead-on-arrival/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29910): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29910 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/105527098/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
