Israeli and American officers, like a lot of their supporters, have referred to as the Hamas incursion on Saturday “Israel’s 9/11”, drawing parallels between Hamas and al-Qaeda and between Israel and the USA.
“If the USA skilled what Israel is experiencing,” President Joe Biden mentioned, “our response can be swift, decisive and overwhelming.” The “brutality” and “the bloodthirstiness” of Hamas, he added, “brings to thoughts the worst rampages of ISIS”. He even repeated the sensationalist and unsubstantiated claims that Hamas fighters had “raped girls” and “beheaded infants”.
Main European capitals bolstered the false analogy of 9/11 and the harmful notion of “us vs them” by draping their most iconic buildings in Israeli flags as if to declare “they’re all Israelis” identical to they declared – with disastrous penalties – that “they’re all Individuals” after the 9/11 assaults on New York and Washington, DC.
Like a well-rehearsed orchestra, Western powers condemned the “unprovoked” assaults on civilians and voiced their unconditional help for the fanatical Israeli authorities to do no matter it takes so long as it takes to “defend” its individuals towards “evil”.
The diploma of hysteria and the hypocrisy are as mind-boggling, as they’re reckless.
A few of the photographs from Israel are little question grotesque – however the photographs from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and so on have been no much less horrific. 20 years of Western and Israeli wars within the Center East have led to not hundreds, however hundreds of thousands of Arab and Palestinian casualties
Within the eyes of the West, it appears, Israel has a “obligation” to defend its individuals, however the Palestinians don’t have the suitable to guard themselves as if they’re individuals of a lesser god! Israel seemingly additionally has a proper to defend and even broaden its occupation and apartheid regime, however the Palestinians don’t have any proper to precise their frustration or battle for freedom and justice after seven a long time of dispossession, oppression and siege.
For European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen, “Russia’s assaults towards civilian infrastructure, particularly electrical energy, are struggle crimes. Reducing off males, girls, youngsters of water, electrical energy … are acts of pure terror.” However Israel doing the identical towards Palestinians in Gaza is official self-defense! That’s the very embodiment of hypocrisy and double customary.
To be clear, Hamas is an Islamist group that has routinely used and remains to be utilizing controversial and unsavoury strategies to additional its agenda. However like different anti-colonial actions that employed questionable strategies, it’s before everything, a nationalist motion that lengthy condemned al-Qaeda and ISIL, and by no means staged an assault exterior historic Palestine. Not like al-Qaeda, Hamas has received a majority in parliament in Gaza’s final legislative elections in 2006, and – after surviving an American orchestrated coup – it has acted because the de facto authorities of the besieged strip.
Above all else, the hysterical comparisons between Hamas’s operation on Saturday and 9/11 are reckless and completely harmful, for they serve to fabricate the case for a wider struggle, as we witnessed previous to the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq on false pretences. Such comparisons assist demonise Palestinian leaders and dehumanise Palestinian individuals, paving the way in which for a genocidal struggle, beginning in Gaza. To make sure, demonising different leaders is ugly politics, however dehumanising an entire individuals, is racism, pure and easy.
In that means, this false and hysterical analogy quantities to a inexperienced mild for Israel to comply with up its illegal siege and indiscriminate bombardment of the Gaza Strip with an much more horrifying land invasion that may devastate the greater than two million Palestinians dwelling there.
Certainly, after failing to decrease Hamas with 4 wars and a 17-year-long siege, the Israeli authorities now appears decided to annihilate Hamas, each politically and militarily, by way of an invasion and reoccupation of Gaza.
For that goal, it has already recalled some 350,000 navy reservists and amassed 100,000 troopers in addition to numerous tanks on its southern border. In the meantime, the makes an attempt to create a humanitarian hall to ship individuals from Gaza into the Sinai to maintain them “protected” and to make it simpler for Israel to invade are sure to be rejected by Palestinian and Arab leaders alike as not more than a pretext to expel Palestinians from their homeland, once more.
The anticipated floor invasion of densely populated Gaza with no escape routes offered for the individuals who dwell there, is sure to trigger tens or lots of of hundreds of casualties amongst Palestinians over weeks or months of preventing, particularly if, as anticipated, Israel makes use of heavy weapons and extreme bombardment to attempt to cut back casualties amongst its personal forces. Certainly, Israel’s looming invasion of Gaza is sure to show into essentially the most bloody city battle for the reason that Second World Struggle – an armageddon with disastrous regional implications.
Even when Israel efficiently reoccupies the Gaza Strip, albeit at a excessive price, and dismantles the navy and administrative infrastructure of Hamas, what then? Will it merely hand it over to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah after Israelis paid a excessive worth for taking it over, because it did prior to now? Will it maintain the Gaza Strip completely, offering meals and providers to its inhabitants? Will it be capable to finish the thought of Hamas as a resistance motion towards occupation?
Israel doesn’t appear to have any solutions to those thorny questions on “the day after”. Certainly, there isn’t any telling what’s going to occur after such a genocidal invasion and occupation in Gaza, Palestine or the area normally.
There are already indicators of the struggle spilling over to the north and east, forcing, or fairly permitting, Israel to widen its circle of destruction. This might simply result in the USA and its newly deployed naval armadas being drawn into one more damaging regional struggle, as if twenty years of perpetually wars weren’t sufficient.
Israel and the USA should not repeat the identical blunders many times as in the event that they discovered nothing from a long time of struggle, occupation and human struggling attributable to their bungles. It’s excessive time for Western powers to begin performing like grown-ups and cease parroting Israel’s debunked lies and cliches. Make no mistake, there isn’t any navy reply for the Palestine tragedy, solely a political and diplomatic resolution.