ONDON – The former Deputy PM and foreign minister has been accused by activists of war crimes in the 2008 – 09 GAZA War during which 1,300 Palestinians were killed. She had been invited to a UK conference last week organised by Haaretz newspaper and the British Jewish community. The UK says there’s no war crimes investigation into TZIPI Livni.
ANALYSIS – Since October 1, 77 Palestinians have been killed in a wave of slaughter that has it’s immediate roots in the actions of the Israeli military and settlers, but whose greviance stretches back all the way to 1948. Then, Palestinians were driven away from their homes by the terror of Irgun, Haganah and the Stern gang. Then they were expected to accept their fate. When Israel’s military achieved a lightning win in 1967, those who were driven away were joined in occupation as Tel Aviv seized west Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem. Israel had proved itself to its superpower patron and Washington would now back the Zionist state no matter how appalling its behaviour towards the Palestinians and its weaker neighbour Lebanon. In 1982 Israel plumbed new depths and in doing so set a murderous precedent whose ramifications are being felt to this day. When the ‘world’ said nothing to the government of Menachem Begin and his defence minister Ariel Sharon after it perpetrated the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, Israel took this as a green light to behave as she liked against the people it regarded as inferior. From now onwards an army backed by a navy, airforce and atom bomb would successfully claim it was under attack from terrorism no matter how murderous it’s actions. The first intifada was an unarmed struggle that was met by live gunfire which struck stone throwing children in the throat and chest. The second intifada which was inspired by Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, brought suicide bombers and bloodshed to the streets of Israel but far more suffering and murder to the Palestinians. Even then Israel refused to accept the root cause of the conflict – the rights of the Palestinians to live in a homeland that had been theirs for more than two thousand years. Ariel Sharon simply built a wall and set in place the current state of affairs – by welcoming Russian immigrants into the Zionist state, he ensured settlers now had a harder edge. Today those settlers and their children have fought in Israel’s three murderous campaigns against the imprisoned people of Gaza, and walk in the occupied territories of west Bank and east Jerusalem openly brandishing rifles and knives attacking ordinary Palestinians at will. To this day, no one has been held to account for the burning alive of Ali Dawabshah and his mother and father by Zionist settlers. No one too is held responsible as Zionist settlers and the Israeli army conduct arbitrary ‘justice’ on the streets of Hebron and against the Palestinians trapped in Gaza – one million of whom are children. More than a thousand children were killed in the three wars that were conducted in the full glare of the media spotlight since Israel’s ‘withdrawal’ from Gaza in 2005 – 551 alone in last year’s war which was cheered on by Israelis who were sat on a mountain watching the unfolding horror as if there were at a boxing match. If the current unrest is indeed the third intifada one thing is certain, that the Palestinians will continue to die and that the ‘world’ will do nothing because Washington has decided that this is Israel defending itself, that this is Israel fighting a war against terror.
WORLD BANK report blames ‘blockades, war and poor governance’ for pushing Gaza’s economy to the verge of collapse. Gaza has been blockaded by Israel and Egypt since 2007 after Hamas seized control of the strip because Fateh and the international community would not accept the outcome of an election that gave the militants control of the occupied territories. Since then, Israel has attacked Gaza three times on the pretext of self defence.
ANALYSIS – What the Americans learned in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, what the Soviet Union learned in Afghanistan, what Israel should have learned in its war with Hezbollah it is now learning in this its latest war against the Palestinians of Gaza – that you can not conquer a people that don’t want to be conquered. Since its creation in 1948, the Israeli state was assured of one thing – that the people they had driven out of historic Palestine would never be able to fight back, after all how could an ant crush a tank? Technological superiority failed the Germans in the second world war, it did so the Americans in its many battles with the third world, as well as the Soviet Union. Those Goliaths inflicted horrendous damage on the enemy killing millions of people – but eventually they left the lands they tried to bend to their will. Israel’s mighty army is finding that what ever it throws from its deep armour, the enemy is still able to fight back. The doctrine of the harder you hit them the less likely they are to come back, may have succeeded in Chechnya for Putin’s Russia, but that success remains a temporary one and will not help the Israelis in Gaza. The Palestinians are more united than before, and whats more Hamas’ actions have scored some spectacular successes especially when the fighting is man on man before retreating into tunnels, as well as downing a F16 plane and forcing the cancellation of flights to Tel Aviv from an outside world still reeling from the downing of flight MH17 over the skies of war torn Ukraine. What this all means is that Tel Aviv will be unable to achieve its stated aim – to crush Hamas, which like Hezbollah did in the Lebanon war of 2006, is able to meet a vastly superior hitech army with low tech asymmetric resistance. Israel will feel less secure after this war – for it knows that the Palestinians are no longer the defenseless people it could once push around. And will find as the French did in Algeria, that the court of world opinion will never forget the biblical scenes it is witnessing in this war against the Palestinians of Gaza.
At least 100 people have died in the Gaza Strip in six days of violence, Hamas officials say.
Monday’s fatalities include a commander of the Islamic Jihad militant group.
More than 500 Palestinians have been injured.
Three Israelis have died since Wednesday.
The Israeli Defence Force has attacked more than 1,350 targets in the Gaza Strip since the start of Operation Pillar of Defense, while more than 1,000 rockets have been fired at Israel,according to figures published in Hararetz.
Efforts to secure a ceasefire continue, with a senior Egyptian official saying there are “encouraging signs”.
Israel has presented conditions for a ceasefire, which include no hostile fire of any kind from Gaza and international efforts to prevent Hamas from rearming.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described Israel as a “terrorist state”, citing the “massacre of children” during its bombardments of Gaza.
Meanwhile, CNN poll released today shows a majority of Americans believe Israel’s military action in the Gaza Strip is justified.
The CNN/ORC International poll indicated that 57 percent of Americans support Israel’s offensive against Hamas, while 25 percent of U.S. citizens believe Israel’s attacks on Gaza are unjustified.
Click here for Israelis protesting against the war.
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