Did Hamas walk into Israeli trap?
Palestinians look at their destroyed homes following Israeli air strikes on the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah. — Photo by AFP
Enough is enough. Now we have even “national infrastructure” minister Uzi Landau – one of my favourite dogsbodies in the Israeli government – talking about “collateral damage” and the justification for bombing Hamas’s broadcasting station. It could be used for transmitting military instructions, he said.
But wasn’t that exactly what our own beloved Tony Blair (former British premier) said after Nato bombed the Serb television station in Belgrade, when Nato, too, was blathering on about “collateral damage”?
We westerners set the precedents in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq – trains, bridges, TV stations, wedding parties, blocks of civilian apartments, you name it – and now the Israelis can trot along behind and produce, whenever necessary, the same tired list of excuses we invented for Nato.
It’s odd, the way they all get away with it. Tony Blair, whose 92 business class trips to the Middle East have produced a peace beyond all peace, is now talking about how it’s in everybody’s interest to have a truce – is his face getting a bit skeletal, or is that my imagination? – and a truce, I suppose, we shall have, well over 100 Palestinian and three Israeli dead too late.
But is it all worth it? Was the murder by Israel of Hamas’s military leader Ahmed al Jabari in fact not staged to provide an excuse to bomb all those new missiles that Hamas has acquired?
That wise old Israeli owl Uri Avneri – he is 89 years old – thinks this is just the trap that Hamas fell into by launching its preposterous “Gates of Hell” rocket attacks in revenge for Jabari’s death. The whole Operation “Pillar of Defence” was about destroying Hamas’s weapons – not about the largely ineffective missiles themselves.
Isn’t this why Israel gave its operation the name it did? For, despite our constant repetition of “Operation Pillar of Defence”, Israeli friends tell me that the correct Hebrew translation of this sick war is Operation Pillar of Cloud. Which makes a lot more sense. For this comes from the Book of Exodus (13:21) – “And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way.”
I wonder, indeed, if the ridiculous William Hague (British foreign secretary) realised he was doing God’s work when he gave his support to this bloodletting.
But this leads me to another little matter.
One of the new Israeli lines on the war runs like this. Israel kills “terrorists” by the score along with a handful of “collateral damage” innocents – and the world rages against Israel. Yet isn’t the Syrian government killing Syrian innocents by the thousand every month? Where are the mass protests, the venting of wrath at Bashar al Assad? What hypocrisy! But of course, this is in itself a hypocrisy.
We know the old “Hama rules” of Syria; no one asks us to support them. And comparing Israel’s brutality to that of the Assad government is playing the old Lord Blair game: we weren’t perfect in Iraq – but we weren’t as bad as Saddam.
No. Israel claims to hold the same values as the supposedly moral West. It says that it is fighting “terrorism” in our name as well as its own. It says it is fighting like us. It is playing by our western rules. We are all Israelis now; that is what we are meant to say. Hamas is our enemy, as well as Israel’s.
And so – for this is the effect – we too must be contaminated by the war crimes of Israel’s pilots. That, I believe, is why we protest against Israel. Operation Pillar of Cloud must not be committed in our name.
By arrangement with The Independent
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Its amazing what lengths politicians go to in order to secure an election victory. After all of this bloodshed, it is now certain that Netanyahu will lead Israel again in January.
We need to lean real peace and how to live peacefully.
Pakistan cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
Pakistan and Gaza should not be a Pakistani peoples issue. At the U.N. it is an issue for Pakistan, of course.
Palestine is a distraction. Pakistanis need to focus on their own very crucial problems with government. There is no solution in Palestine, but solutions had better be found for Pakistan.
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After the United States was founded – 70 years later there was a devastating civil war. 730,000 soldiers died in four years of fighting. Slavery was an issue that had to wait 70 years for a solution. Pakistan is a divided country as well. Ethnic problems have not found their own solutions. There comes a time when talking and negotiating give way to fighting. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is 65 years old. What can we see happening to Pakistan in five more years?
this is such one-sided basis non-sense. 100″s of rockets get fired into southern Israeli day. Not a word from the international community. What a bunch of hypocrites.
great article. God bless you Robert
It takes two hands to clap. If you know your enemy isn’t very wise and does not have ability to control it’s emotions and reactions, then, yes, you set them up.
As I said, if Israle provoked, hamas retaliated. And earned itself the dubious distinction of getting it’s own house in deeper trouble. The Israelis will laugh all the way to the bank, and palestinians in Gaza will be left wondering if they trusted the hamas too much as against the older PLO?
Divide. And rule.
Hamas now needs to answer to Palestinians.Are they serious about an enduring solution , whatever final form, are they just a bunch who sneeze when Syria and Iran catch a cold???
Palestinians are literally out of options here. Israel is not interested in Peace and definitely not going to stop the illegal settlements which is the core of the conflict which began when Zionists declared their own state.
People might not remember this, but whoever the Palestinians chose as their representatives are automatically labeled a terrorists. Yasir Arafat has been called a terrorist many times whenever he spoke for the rights of Palestinians, the same conniving Israeli politicians along with their western allies were in support of a few Hamas leaders when they were denouncing PLO’s policies. And Now after Hamas controls Gaza they are the current terrorists.
No matter how you look at it, there has never been real peace between the strong and the weak. There is no justification for Israel’s existence or it’s War Crimes.
I completely agree with Mr.Hayyat! An occupier can never silence a whole population with bombs! may be if they stopped with the land grabbing and building more settlements, there would be some room to talk. As far as i see, israelis are using the conflict and prolonging it so that they can squeeze the palestinians further and further till they become refugees and have no state. Isnt this how the israelis started out, if i recall correctly? This is a man made disaster! make no mistake!
Ciao Raoul, both to you and your moribund comments. Read Mr. Fisk and learn, better to listen and read than to open one’s mouth and show ignorance.