A few days ago, I speculated that the Mosul "Liberation" cost the lives of 20-30,000 civilians, not the "hundreds" or even the few thousand that was initially claimed. And then word started appearing in some of the foreign press -- not so far as I know in the domestic media -- that the civilian death toll was more like 40,000 -- and rising, as air strikes continue to "mop up," revenge killings continue, and searches of the destruction of the city turn up more and more rotting corpses.
In any sane world, this would be considered a catastrophe of major proportions, not a liberation at all.
The ISIS rebels may have been cruel and destructive, but they didn't slaughter tens of thousands of civilians, and they didn't destroy entire cities in their quest for their Caliphate, and this will be remembered in the Middle East for ages to come.
The Imperial Storm Troopers their air wings, and their allies, on the other hand, are all about slaughter, annihilation, and destruction of homes, families and entire cities, leaving abundant smoking ruins in their wake and calling it "liberation".
"Liberty?" For whom? To do what?
Given the figure of 40,000 civilians killed in Mosul now being bruited about, I'd venture to guess the actual figure is more like 100,000, but we shall never know, in part because the count will never be complete, and even if it were, the Imperium would never let it be verified.
Do Americans have any idea how many cities in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia have so far faced destruction in the Imperial "Fight Against Terror?" How many civilians have been randomly and/or deliberately exterminated in this futile quest? I would assume not because Americans seem not to care. They have become immunized to the slaughter of brown people and the destruction of their homes and cities. If they know anything about it, it's all a blur, and besides when Trump is acting up, who cares what's happening to brown people far away? I mean, really.
Priorities.
Media Lens did a compare and contrast exercise, The Siege of Aleppo vs Mosul, to show something of how the stories are twisted to fit a prepared narrative. East Aleppo's valiant struggle against the Soviets (damn near) vs the valiant struggle of the West against the perfidious Islamist threat to civilization in Mosul.
The propaganda was constant and heavy and essentially false. That's what we're dealing with, and the more we're immersed in it, the more likely it is that one day -- sooner rather than later -- blowback and karma will come back to haunt the West. Oh my yes.
When will they ever learn?
Showing posts with label Slaughter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Slaughter. Show all posts
Saturday, July 22, 2017
Monday, July 10, 2017
Destroying the City to Save It
Celebrate! Dance to the music!
Mosul, they say, is "liberated."
Battered and bombed into rubble, its people slaughtered and left to rot in the streets, but they're Free Now, aren't they? Free from the oppression of... whomever the Enemy of the Moment might be. Free to dance in the streets, throw flowers and chocolates at their Liberators, the few wretched and wounded survivors Free to live what remains of their crippled lives in the debris of the conflict.
Whoopee!
I heard a mention of civilian deaths in the conflict with (whomever) in the Middle East since 2014. The stated number? "Almost 600." Wow. Really? Gee golly. That's a lot, isn't it?
Of course if that's the stated number due to Our Glorious Side's operations, it's not just a lie, it's deliberate fraud and deception. Remember when Our Glorious Side refused to count any casualties except those of Our Valiant Troops? If Wogs died, so be it, but their numbers were to be uncounted and unknown.
It's been suggested (by NGOs) that as many as2000 4000 6000 8000 and rising civilians have been killed ("by both sides") in the Liberation of Mosul. Given the apparent scale of destruction of what was once a city of well over a million population (prior to "Liberation" from Whomever) it would be no surprise if actual civilian deaths are closer to 20,000 or 30,000 and civilian casualties are in the hundreds of thousands.
They will not be counted.
They are Wogs and Wogs don't count -- they never have counted in the Imperial Liberation of Wogistan.
How many cities in the Middle East have now been destroyed in progress of its Liberation? A dozen? Two dozen? No one keeps count, do they? Falluja of course set the pattern.
Total destruction of a city, merciless slaughter of its people, Apocalypse justified by... rebellion.
One does not rebel against ones overlords without paying a heavy price, no?
And so it has gone, rebel city after rebel city leveled to the ground, depopulated, destroyed, wiped from the map and the memory of man. Or so the story goes.
The Empire shall not be defied.
Mosul, they say, is "liberated."
Battered and bombed into rubble, its people slaughtered and left to rot in the streets, but they're Free Now, aren't they? Free from the oppression of... whomever the Enemy of the Moment might be. Free to dance in the streets, throw flowers and chocolates at their Liberators, the few wretched and wounded survivors Free to live what remains of their crippled lives in the debris of the conflict.
Whoopee!
I heard a mention of civilian deaths in the conflict with (whomever) in the Middle East since 2014. The stated number? "Almost 600." Wow. Really? Gee golly. That's a lot, isn't it?
Of course if that's the stated number due to Our Glorious Side's operations, it's not just a lie, it's deliberate fraud and deception. Remember when Our Glorious Side refused to count any casualties except those of Our Valiant Troops? If Wogs died, so be it, but their numbers were to be uncounted and unknown.
It's been suggested (by NGOs) that as many as
They will not be counted.
They are Wogs and Wogs don't count -- they never have counted in the Imperial Liberation of Wogistan.
How many cities in the Middle East have now been destroyed in progress of its Liberation? A dozen? Two dozen? No one keeps count, do they? Falluja of course set the pattern.
Total destruction of a city, merciless slaughter of its people, Apocalypse justified by... rebellion.
One does not rebel against ones overlords without paying a heavy price, no?
And so it has gone, rebel city after rebel city leveled to the ground, depopulated, destroyed, wiped from the map and the memory of man. Or so the story goes.
The Empire shall not be defied.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Playing Rough in the Abattoirs
The summer slaughter season seems to be just revving up if the news out of the various global abattoirs is any indication. Yesterday's slaughter and destruction in Gaza seems merely a warmup for what is to come in that corner of creation, and the saber rattling over the Malaysian plane crash in Ukraine is looking more and more like the prelude to a military attack on Russia. Even a light tap could have immense repercussions.
Is this 2014 or 1914?
Has no one learned anything?
Or is this merely the playing out of the "Creative Destruction" and "Chaos for Change" theory so beloved of post modern economics and the rump nations states that exist to serve financial and economic elites?
Those who love to blame the victims for their dire situation and fate are having a field day.
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For the record, Chris Floyd has been writing up a storm on these topics over at his place. Check it out.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Victim Blaming as Art Form, Sport
In the latest round of slaughter and murder in the Middle East -- now stretching in a big arc from the Gaza Strip in the south to the streets of Damascus in the north to the besieged cities of Iraq in the east -- the active participants love to blame the victims of the slaughter for their own demise.
The victims, for the most part, are only trying to stay out of the way of the drones and bombs and missiles and bullets, but unfortunately in the modern practice of "warfighting" there's no place to go. Every place in the "battle space" is a potential or actual target and there are no shelters for the victims.
Blaming them for their demise doesn't even work as a rationalization. It's simply a formula.
The Israelis, of course, have perfected the formula.
Here is an example of nearly perfect hasbara:
The formula mixes fact and fiction with repetition and victim blaming, always with the intention to leave Israel and Israelis utterly blameless, heroic and justified. All the responsibility for the deplorable state of conflict is on the shoulders of Hamas and the Palestinians. The people of Gaza deserve what they get -- because they are who they are and they do what they do.
Thence comes the dehumanizing of the foe. They are animals, savage, barbaric, subhuman, inhuman, vermin. Oh, it never fails. Just as in times past the excuse for killing the women and children of the savage foe has been that "nits breed lice." Ergo, kill them all. God will know His own.
Thus even babes in arms are held responsible for the horrors unleashed against them in classic victim-blaming fashion.
The Israelis are behaving barbarically towards their captive Gazan foe, on the theory that "nits breed lice" and killing a sufficiency of the Gazan women and children -- a sufficiency that varies arbitrarily -- will teach the Garzan warriors a lesson: to yield and surrender is their only option, and even then, it will not be enough to end the slaughter, for they and they alone are responsible for the slaughter, and as they hold human life to be of no particular value -- as opposed to the high value that those who kill them hold it -- they will pay forever with their own lives and those of the people they purport to love.
I've remarked on the tendency of elites and those in power to cast responsibility downwards. According to their own lights, the elites and the oligarchy they serve are not responsible for anything bad that happens. Only the lower orders have responsibility for such evil. They and their various "Hitlers" -- whether in the West Bank and Gaza or lurking under the beds of the high and mighty -- are the responsible parties; the elites and oligarchs who stand with one another to denounce them never are.
Victim blaming is a constant, an art form and a sport.
The victims, for the most part, are only trying to stay out of the way of the drones and bombs and missiles and bullets, but unfortunately in the modern practice of "warfighting" there's no place to go. Every place in the "battle space" is a potential or actual target and there are no shelters for the victims.
Blaming them for their demise doesn't even work as a rationalization. It's simply a formula.
The Israelis, of course, have perfected the formula.
Here is an example of nearly perfect hasbara:
The author apparently ran out of time to finish the thought. But it would be a surprise to few if this hasbara was followed by a revisionist history of the region, going back at least to 1948, if not to 1948 BCE.
The formula mixes fact and fiction with repetition and victim blaming, always with the intention to leave Israel and Israelis utterly blameless, heroic and justified. All the responsibility for the deplorable state of conflict is on the shoulders of Hamas and the Palestinians. The people of Gaza deserve what they get -- because they are who they are and they do what they do.
Thence comes the dehumanizing of the foe. They are animals, savage, barbaric, subhuman, inhuman, vermin. Oh, it never fails. Just as in times past the excuse for killing the women and children of the savage foe has been that "nits breed lice." Ergo, kill them all. God will know His own.
Thus even babes in arms are held responsible for the horrors unleashed against them in classic victim-blaming fashion.
The Israelis are behaving barbarically towards their captive Gazan foe, on the theory that "nits breed lice" and killing a sufficiency of the Gazan women and children -- a sufficiency that varies arbitrarily -- will teach the Garzan warriors a lesson: to yield and surrender is their only option, and even then, it will not be enough to end the slaughter, for they and they alone are responsible for the slaughter, and as they hold human life to be of no particular value -- as opposed to the high value that those who kill them hold it -- they will pay forever with their own lives and those of the people they purport to love.
I've remarked on the tendency of elites and those in power to cast responsibility downwards. According to their own lights, the elites and the oligarchy they serve are not responsible for anything bad that happens. Only the lower orders have responsibility for such evil. They and their various "Hitlers" -- whether in the West Bank and Gaza or lurking under the beds of the high and mighty -- are the responsible parties; the elites and oligarchs who stand with one another to denounce them never are.
Victim blaming is a constant, an art form and a sport.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Summer Slaughter Season
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| Map of Europe, c. 1940. The Summer Slaughter Season was under way and wouldn't end for years to come... |
[Note: I found the map above in my collection of maps and atlases a couple of weeks ago. The map is in a Rand-McNally Atlas that was published in 1936, but the interesting thing to me was that the owner of the Atlas had taken a pink colored pencil to it and shaded in the then-current conquests of Nazi Germany. They include Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Norway. Albania had been invaded and occupied by Italy in 1939, and it is included in the conquests. Also indicated as partially absorbed into the Fatherland are Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland... We know that the Axis wasn't by any means satisfied... Don't forget Spain and Portugal...]
The sharks are in the water. Have you noticed?
The Summer Slaughter Season is upon us, and the various conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere are in full swing. Bloodlust is catching.
Of course the slaughter in Gaza rivets the attention of many among us -- partly because it is so telegenic, what with the constant exploding shells, the running, screaming Arabs, holding the broken bodies that once were their children, and of course the breathless "terror" of the Israelis dashing to their shelters if by chance one of the Gazan "missiles" gets through the protective Iron Dome. (Actually, according to statistics I've seen, most get through. It's just that they land and explode -- or not -- where they have no effect.)
It's telegenic, too, because of the massive propaganda campaign Israelis undertake when they go to slaughter Arabs, a campaign that has only been matched recently by the coup-regime run by the Freaks in Kiev (h/t Saker) as they go to slaughter in the Donbass and along the Black Sea coast, committing atrocity after atrocity, but none as telegenic recently as the slaughter of Arabs in Gaza.
What became of this Ukrainian slaughter? It's still going on, with sieges under way, villages destroyed, hundreds then thousands of dead, millions made refugees. But the news is practically nil. The businesses that bring us the "news" are almost entirely focused on the slaughter in Gaza, for that's where the real action is.
Word has it that the ethnic cleansing an extermination campaign in Ukraine is perhaps going better than planned -- assuming it was planned, and I'm not sure it was -- partly because "Putin blinked" and refused in the end to send more than token assistance (if that) to his Russian/Russian speaking comrades in the Donbass and southeast. The rebels are on their own.
And so, recognizing that they cannot hold out indefinitely, and there's probably no profit in trying to do so, many residents, targets of the coup-regime run by the Freaks in Kiev, are leaving. By the tens of thousands.
Slaviansk fell to the Kiev coup-regime last week, and reports from there have practically ceased. We don't know how many executions there have been, in other words, but given previous indications, we can rest assured that the wet work is proceeding with all due diligence and speed. The armed rebel faction may have abandoned the city, but their collaborators are everywhere within it, no? And how does a bogus government like the Kiev coup-regime establish its authority over resistant areas and peoples? By killing rebels and their collaborators on a massive scale.
See the coup-regime in Cairo for a not-too-long past example.
The killing goes on in Syria unabated, and now the Syrian slaughter -- they say -- has spread to Iraq with the conquests of the ISIS Caliphate which has abolished the border between Syria and Iraq, and is -- they say -- intent on reestablishing the historic rule of the Caliph from Baghdad where once he held forth.
It's an interesting idea. No, really.
There was a time of relative peace and prosperity throughout Araby. It was much more recent than the Caliphate. It was during Ottoman times. Barely a century ago, within the historical memories of most of those in Arab lands today. Anglo-Euro-Americans have no memories of it, because in their histories, they created the Arab nations out of nothing at all; the Ottoman period barely registers.
The arrangements the Ottomans made among the various Arab peoples (and with the Jews too) seemed to work out fairly well all in all, limiting tribal conflict, resolving disputes, providing a reliable sense of security and safety throughout the region for peoples to do pretty much as they wished.
If that or something like it is what the ISIS Caliphate party is trying to re-establish, who am I to say "no?" Except, from reports, it's not. The Ottomans were progressives compared to the Caliphate. Or so we're told. The Caliphate would be going backwards a thousand years, and it would be terrible for the well-being of the people and the region. No, really.
So we, or rather they, can't have that. Must be crushed. And so the anti-ISIS campaign is supposedly under way to re-take the various cities in Iraq that have fallen...
Deja-vu all over again.
We've done this before, haven't we? Wait, wait. We've been on this road so many times.
Fascism/Nazi-ism back in the day was a means of coordinating/uniting fractious Europe's elites and common herd to oppose the Dreaded Communists of the Soviet Union. A rightist form of populism, if you will, intended to do physical battle with the Soviet Bear, which it did with not a lot to show for it.
The Soviet Union dissolved on its own decades after the disaster of the Fascist/Nazi expansion period (with a nudge or two, to be sure).
But now we're in a political/ideological situation where it seems Our Betters believe that the Fascists and Nazis were too advanced, too progressive. Too organized.
Disruption and chaos are now the operative principles of global elites. Disruption in the Middle East and South Asia has been going on for many years, the idea apparently being to prevent any sort of comprehensive -- or even localized -- organization among the Arabs and to disrupt/dismantle any organization among the non-Arabs (such as Persians, Afghanis, and so forth).
Chaos and disruption serve the interests of the High and Mighty, but they cannot do so permanently. At least not historically. At some point, a new status quo has to settle in, but for some reason that is not allowed to happen in the Middle East and adjacent lands.
The current slaughter in Gaza is part of Israel's ongoing attempts to maintain chaos and disruption in its almost-conquered dependencies of Gaza and the West Bank. To what object is the question. How are Israeli interests served by such tactics?
But we can ask the same questions about Iraq or Syria or Libya or Ukraine or pretty much anywhere chaos and disruption -- and slaughter -- are the current ruling principles. How is anyone's interest served more than temporarily, indeed more than momentarily?
There have been more than a few suggestions that the ISIS advance in Iraq is a false flag engineered by the United States in order to disrupt/overthrow the corrupt regime of al-Maliki who was previously installed by the US. That would be par for the course given the way the Great Game has been played from the bunkers of the West for some time now, but there's no telling whether it's true -- or even relevant if it were true -- at this point.
The indications are that the Ukraine Thing was engineered by the US and EU over a long period, indeed over decades, and came to fruition by "accident" when Yanukovych said "no" to EU/IMF demands that would have caused domestic chaos and disruption in order meet them. Chaos and disruption ensued anyway.
Much the same can be said for Syria, Libya, and anywhere else the neo-imperial project is being implemented.
There is no escape apparently; there is no way to avoid the impositions and social/political/economic destruction that ensues.
Much the same was the case in Europe and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in prelude to the American entry into WWII.
While Americans were content to sit back and watch things spiral out of control in 1940 and '41-- at least until the attack on Pearl Harbor -- today, it appears the US Government, or a faction of it, is leading a global campaign of disruption and chaos.
We have become the enemy we once fought against...
Friday, November 23, 2012
The Gaza Thing
I've purposely stayed well away from the latest ritual Gaza slaughterfest.
It seems clear that unless Israelis slake their thirst for Palestinian blood from time to time they aren't fulfilled. The periodic death and destruction in the vast prison/ghetto that is Gaza turns the stomach and outrages the conscience of anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention.
Israel lies, thieves and murders with near impunity, hollering constantly about all the "rockets raining down" on their sleeping innocent citizens while hundreds or thousands or however many Arabs it takes are mowed down in the Gaza, regardless of "guilt" or "innocence."
And the United States is the enabler.
Is this what it takes for a nation-state to exist? Lying? Thieving? Murdering? Enabling?
Maybe it's time to re-think the nation-state notion.
It's long past time for Zionism to fade away.
[Meanwhile, Egypt seems to be undergoing a bit of... political strain. Ahem.]
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The Carnage Stops for the Moment
Image of white phosphorous falling inside the UN school in northern Gaza where a woman and a child were killed on January 17.
So they've stopped for the moment. Snipers have no doubt fanned out to liquidate/exterminate the usual "pockets of resistance," but for the moment "quiet" has descended on the smoking, blood-drenched ruins of Gaza.
Hamas, so far as we can tell from afar, didn't fight. There was no resistance to Israeli tanks and bombs and bullets. The entirety of Gaza was an Israeli free-fire zone, and there was no where at all for Gazans to find safe refuge within Gaza, no way at all for non-combatants to flee. They are trapped, encaged, without succor, without hope, to be slaughtered at will by the dartk forces of death and destruction arrayed against them.
All the European heads of state are assembled at Sharm el-Sheikh to assure Israel that they support its right to defend itself against the perfidy of the Palestinians, that they are determined to get humanitarian aid to the Gazans as quickly as possible, and (according to Gordon Brown) to provide counseling services to children who have been traumatized by the struggle.
Mouin Rabbani comments on the proceedings that it is breathtakingly inconceivable that not one of these glittering heads of state has mentioned the word "occupation". How can they discuss what's happened without mentioning the occupation? Rabanni's counclusion? The Two State Settlement is dead. The very notion of "negotiations" has been discredited.
Rabbani opines that the next step is not a One State Solution, as that ideal is unlikely in our lifetimes. The next step is more likely an extistential struggle. He doesn't describe it, not yet. But given past history, the "extistential" solution is the elimination of the Palestinians by force.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Warsaw/Gaza
Throughout the current Israeli Aktion against the Gaza Strip, observers who wish to incite Zionist Israel defenders have compared the Israeli operations to the Nazi liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942-43.
The comparison is not exact, of course. For one thing, the Germans and their allies didn't use air power against the Ghetto inmates, at least not to any great extent. They didn't have helicopters, and their fighter planes and bombers stayed on the ground. There were only about a 1000 Jewish fighters in the Ghetto, and their numbers were reduced smartly and consistently by the Germans and their allies.
The Germans had been emptying the Ghetto for months before the Uprising in 1943, and there were only about 55-60,000 people left in the Ghetto by that time. Deportations continued during the Uprising, the point being, of course, to remove all the inmates and obliterate the Ghetto.
By contrast, Gaza is sealed off completely, and there has been no effort whatsoever to get people out of there. The cordon is complete. At best, no more than a few hundred wounded and civilians with foreign passports have been allowed to leave. 1.5 million Palestinians are trapped in Gaza with no means of escape. There is no safe place, no refuge at all anywhere in the Gaza Ghetto. The Israelis bomb and shell at will, and they are using horrific weapons like White Phosphorous shells, "bunker busters", and possibly DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) weapons as well.
For its part, Hamas has been a pathetic defender of Gaza and its people. While there are supposed to be some 15-20,000 Hamas fighters in the enclave -- a small number in proportion to the population -- they have been utterly unable to defend against he Israeli onslaught. Their rocket squads have never been an effective assault mechanism, and the number of Hamas rockets fired from Gaza has been reduced to no more than a few per day. From the sketchy reports out of Gaza, mostly on Al Jazeera, it appears that there is sporadic guerilla action from Hamas, but very limited, and hardly even noticed by the Israeli Death Machine.
Israel claims that every military aged male in Gaza is a "terrorist," and so all the dead male adolescents and adults are by definition "Hamas Terrorists" in their eyes. But the casualty figures, right now being reported on Al Jazeera as 905 dead and over 4,000 injured, indicate that at least 40% of the casualties are women and children, and of the dead and injured men, only a few are actually "Hamas." There is no sign that the Israelis actually intend to wipe out or even seriously reduce the numbers of Hamas in Gaza. Many Israelis have appeared on Al Jazeera who have said that "Hamas can stay," as long as the rocket fire stops and they do not rearm. Of course the Israelis lie, but still.
Almost all the Hamas spokespeople who have appeared on Al Jazeera have been in Syria; I cannot recall seeing even one interviewed in Gaza itself, though I could be wrong. Al Jazeera does have reporters on the ground in Gaza, and they are reporting live from their Gaza studios and on location (mostly at the hospitals) in the warzone throughout the day, but their reports seem oddly sterile. It seems they are being very careful in what they show and how they report on what is happening, as if they are under some sort of censorship rule, but by whom is the question. Their reports from Israel are obviously under some Israeli control -- although it seems to be relatively light -- but their reports from inside Gaza seem to be almost sanitized, only showing the bombing and shelling from a "safe" distance (although often live), rarely going out on the streets for face to face interviews with Gaza residents, never (so far as I can recall) interviewing Hamas officials in Gaza, but very prominently featuring the panicked delivery of the dead and wounded to the hospitals -- with a special emphasis on the children. There have also been a number of reports showing the appearance of "normal life" during the alleged daily "3 hour humanitarian cease fires" -- that are nothing of the sort. Gazans are shown shopping for food and sundries in the outdoor markets, some are interviewed, the usual denunciations of Israel and complicit Arab governments are expressed, and life goes on.
How much of this somewhat tip-toe reporting is due to the nature of the conflict and the real dangers the reporters face -- and they certainly face plenty of dangers, even in London, where one reporter was stoned live on camera when he was reporting on a pro-Israeli demonstration -- and how much is due to management instructions from Doha I can't say, but it is... odd.
They are reporting on Arab government complicity and failure to act to end the carnage, and there are many reports of the massive demonstrations around the world -- and in Israel and Arab capitals as well -- against the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. Al Jazeera had extensive reporting on and from the United Nations about their actions (and inactions) toward some sort of eventual "durable" ceasefire. The extent of the reporting was surprising given the general level of cynicism in the Middle East regarding anything the United Nations Security Council does or doesn't do or say.
They have featured Barack Obama's non-statement statements about the Gaza situation, and they have had panels speculating on how the Incoming will approach the Middle East conundrum. Most panelists seem to be of the opinion that there will be little substantive change in the American government position favoring Israel, but that there may be more "engagement" in the region toward some sort of settlement of the hostilities and conflicts.
[To Be Continued...]
UPDATE: January 15, 2009
I had a wan hope that this bloody Gaza reduction campaign would be over by the time I got back to this post, but no. The efforts at a ceasefire have come to naught thanks to the intransigence of the Israelis backed by the USA, both Outgoing and Incoming Administrations, the appalling corruption of the Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi Arabian governments, along with the languid indifference of other Arab and world governments to the plight of the Palestinians.
It's tough to compare what is going on in Gaza with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and liquidation. As I've said before, it's a comparison we really don't want to make. And yet what's been going on in Gaza, the methodical and deliberate campaign of death and destruction undertaken by the Israelis, the terror the Gazans are experiencing every minute the Israeli Aktion continues, and the near futility of resistance -- no matter how heroic it may be in individual circumstances -- all evoke echoes of what happened in Warsaw in 1943.
What is significantly different is that there is no effort at all, by anyone, to get the Gazans out of there. They are being slaughtered in place and their cities are being destroyed around them. Except for a handful of injured and those with third country passports, no one is being let out -- or taken out -- of the Gaza enclave. The people are sealed in. In Warsaw, the deportations continued while the Uprising was going on. And in every other conflict I can recall, civilians have been able to (or have been required to) flee in advance of the Death Machine. In Gaza, they must stay. There is nowhere to run or to hide, no way out, and the Gazans can only await their doom.
Even the indifference of so many world governments -- not so much the indifference of the Peoples of the world -- is an echo of the disinterest of the world in the plight of the Jews of Europe during the Nazi hey-day.
The reports right now on Al Jazeera describe increasing horror in Gaza, as the Israelis are shelling and bombing UN headquarters and relief supplies warehouses, fuel depots, hospitals with hundreds of patients, apartment houses with hundreds of families still in them (reports are that some have collapsed and that perhaps hundreds of people have been killed in the latest bombings), the Red Crescent hospital is on fire, and a building housing journalists from Reuters and a number of Arab news services has been hit.
Yet the word being passed around the Al Jazeera crew is that this is a last spasm of violence before a ceasefire which, for some reason, they expect to see implemented within the next 24-48 hours. From what they have been saying, the AJ crew seems to believe that Egypt has brokered ceasefire terms with Hamas that are acceptable to Israel, and that there will be an interim agreement today when the Israeli representative arrives in Cairo, and that the fighting will stop sometime in the next couple of days.
If that's true, it will be an echo of how the Israeli campaign against Lebanon and Hezbullah sputtered to an end in 2006. In that conflict, the violence against infrastructure, civilians, and relief efforts increased the closer to the ceasefire things got. Then there was a last spasm of cluster bombing of southern Lebanon villages and then it was over, Israelis pulled out, and Hezbullah declared victory.
The comparison is not exact, of course. For one thing, the Germans and their allies didn't use air power against the Ghetto inmates, at least not to any great extent. They didn't have helicopters, and their fighter planes and bombers stayed on the ground. There were only about a 1000 Jewish fighters in the Ghetto, and their numbers were reduced smartly and consistently by the Germans and their allies.
The Germans had been emptying the Ghetto for months before the Uprising in 1943, and there were only about 55-60,000 people left in the Ghetto by that time. Deportations continued during the Uprising, the point being, of course, to remove all the inmates and obliterate the Ghetto.
By contrast, Gaza is sealed off completely, and there has been no effort whatsoever to get people out of there. The cordon is complete. At best, no more than a few hundred wounded and civilians with foreign passports have been allowed to leave. 1.5 million Palestinians are trapped in Gaza with no means of escape. There is no safe place, no refuge at all anywhere in the Gaza Ghetto. The Israelis bomb and shell at will, and they are using horrific weapons like White Phosphorous shells, "bunker busters", and possibly DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) weapons as well.
For its part, Hamas has been a pathetic defender of Gaza and its people. While there are supposed to be some 15-20,000 Hamas fighters in the enclave -- a small number in proportion to the population -- they have been utterly unable to defend against he Israeli onslaught. Their rocket squads have never been an effective assault mechanism, and the number of Hamas rockets fired from Gaza has been reduced to no more than a few per day. From the sketchy reports out of Gaza, mostly on Al Jazeera, it appears that there is sporadic guerilla action from Hamas, but very limited, and hardly even noticed by the Israeli Death Machine.
Israel claims that every military aged male in Gaza is a "terrorist," and so all the dead male adolescents and adults are by definition "Hamas Terrorists" in their eyes. But the casualty figures, right now being reported on Al Jazeera as 905 dead and over 4,000 injured, indicate that at least 40% of the casualties are women and children, and of the dead and injured men, only a few are actually "Hamas." There is no sign that the Israelis actually intend to wipe out or even seriously reduce the numbers of Hamas in Gaza. Many Israelis have appeared on Al Jazeera who have said that "Hamas can stay," as long as the rocket fire stops and they do not rearm. Of course the Israelis lie, but still.
Almost all the Hamas spokespeople who have appeared on Al Jazeera have been in Syria; I cannot recall seeing even one interviewed in Gaza itself, though I could be wrong. Al Jazeera does have reporters on the ground in Gaza, and they are reporting live from their Gaza studios and on location (mostly at the hospitals) in the warzone throughout the day, but their reports seem oddly sterile. It seems they are being very careful in what they show and how they report on what is happening, as if they are under some sort of censorship rule, but by whom is the question. Their reports from Israel are obviously under some Israeli control -- although it seems to be relatively light -- but their reports from inside Gaza seem to be almost sanitized, only showing the bombing and shelling from a "safe" distance (although often live), rarely going out on the streets for face to face interviews with Gaza residents, never (so far as I can recall) interviewing Hamas officials in Gaza, but very prominently featuring the panicked delivery of the dead and wounded to the hospitals -- with a special emphasis on the children. There have also been a number of reports showing the appearance of "normal life" during the alleged daily "3 hour humanitarian cease fires" -- that are nothing of the sort. Gazans are shown shopping for food and sundries in the outdoor markets, some are interviewed, the usual denunciations of Israel and complicit Arab governments are expressed, and life goes on.
How much of this somewhat tip-toe reporting is due to the nature of the conflict and the real dangers the reporters face -- and they certainly face plenty of dangers, even in London, where one reporter was stoned live on camera when he was reporting on a pro-Israeli demonstration -- and how much is due to management instructions from Doha I can't say, but it is... odd.
They are reporting on Arab government complicity and failure to act to end the carnage, and there are many reports of the massive demonstrations around the world -- and in Israel and Arab capitals as well -- against the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. Al Jazeera had extensive reporting on and from the United Nations about their actions (and inactions) toward some sort of eventual "durable" ceasefire. The extent of the reporting was surprising given the general level of cynicism in the Middle East regarding anything the United Nations Security Council does or doesn't do or say.
They have featured Barack Obama's non-statement statements about the Gaza situation, and they have had panels speculating on how the Incoming will approach the Middle East conundrum. Most panelists seem to be of the opinion that there will be little substantive change in the American government position favoring Israel, but that there may be more "engagement" in the region toward some sort of settlement of the hostilities and conflicts.
[To Be Continued...]
UPDATE: January 15, 2009
I had a wan hope that this bloody Gaza reduction campaign would be over by the time I got back to this post, but no. The efforts at a ceasefire have come to naught thanks to the intransigence of the Israelis backed by the USA, both Outgoing and Incoming Administrations, the appalling corruption of the Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi Arabian governments, along with the languid indifference of other Arab and world governments to the plight of the Palestinians.
It's tough to compare what is going on in Gaza with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and liquidation. As I've said before, it's a comparison we really don't want to make. And yet what's been going on in Gaza, the methodical and deliberate campaign of death and destruction undertaken by the Israelis, the terror the Gazans are experiencing every minute the Israeli Aktion continues, and the near futility of resistance -- no matter how heroic it may be in individual circumstances -- all evoke echoes of what happened in Warsaw in 1943.
What is significantly different is that there is no effort at all, by anyone, to get the Gazans out of there. They are being slaughtered in place and their cities are being destroyed around them. Except for a handful of injured and those with third country passports, no one is being let out -- or taken out -- of the Gaza enclave. The people are sealed in. In Warsaw, the deportations continued while the Uprising was going on. And in every other conflict I can recall, civilians have been able to (or have been required to) flee in advance of the Death Machine. In Gaza, they must stay. There is nowhere to run or to hide, no way out, and the Gazans can only await their doom.
Even the indifference of so many world governments -- not so much the indifference of the Peoples of the world -- is an echo of the disinterest of the world in the plight of the Jews of Europe during the Nazi hey-day.
The reports right now on Al Jazeera describe increasing horror in Gaza, as the Israelis are shelling and bombing UN headquarters and relief supplies warehouses, fuel depots, hospitals with hundreds of patients, apartment houses with hundreds of families still in them (reports are that some have collapsed and that perhaps hundreds of people have been killed in the latest bombings), the Red Crescent hospital is on fire, and a building housing journalists from Reuters and a number of Arab news services has been hit.
Yet the word being passed around the Al Jazeera crew is that this is a last spasm of violence before a ceasefire which, for some reason, they expect to see implemented within the next 24-48 hours. From what they have been saying, the AJ crew seems to believe that Egypt has brokered ceasefire terms with Hamas that are acceptable to Israel, and that there will be an interim agreement today when the Israeli representative arrives in Cairo, and that the fighting will stop sometime in the next couple of days.
If that's true, it will be an echo of how the Israeli campaign against Lebanon and Hezbullah sputtered to an end in 2006. In that conflict, the violence against infrastructure, civilians, and relief efforts increased the closer to the ceasefire things got. Then there was a last spasm of cluster bombing of southern Lebanon villages and then it was over, Israelis pulled out, and Hezbullah declared victory.
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