By: Othman Atta, Esq.
Yesterday, Israel began its ground attack on Gaza to complement its weeklong air, naval and artillery attack on the besieged population. This is being done with the complicity of a Bush administration that has failed to achieve any progress toward peace during its eight years in office.
Israel’s savage military assault has worsened the humanitarian catastrophe that was created by Israel’s long siege of the territory. Medicines and other essential supplies are in extremely short supply. In the cold of winter, under merciless bombardment, Palestinians are suffering from lack of food, heat, electricity and water.
Since the Israeli assault on Gaza, which ironically coincided with Israel’s celebration of the end of Hanukkah, nearly 500 Palestinians have been killed and thousands have been injured. Because of the mass casualties, which are overwhelmingly civilian, the rudimentary hospitals in Gaza are overwhelmed. Due to lack of space, physicians try to complete complex medical procedures on the floors of hospitals. Surgeries are being completed without anesthesia or painkillers.
Israel claims that it has only been targeting Hamas forces. This is a lie. Israel’s extremist Jewish forces have killed, injured, dismembered and disfigured thousands of civilians. Mosques, universities, apartment complexes and government buildings – all owned by the Palestinian people and not Hamas – have been destroyed. Friday, another mosque was targeted while worshippers were inside, killing thirteen civilians and injuring scores, including children. The main reason that Israel continues to prevent foreign journalists from entering Gaza is to hide the nature and extent of its atrocities from the world.
Even those who the Israeli government categorizes as “Hamas forces” are often innocent civilians. In the first day of its attack, Israel massacred nearly 100 police cadets attending their own graduation. These civilian police were simply seeking jobs to enable them to feed their families. They were not Hamas operatives. They were recruited to enforce traffic laws and minor criminal matters. Living in Gaza – under Hamas government rule – was simply their destiny. Being slaughtered by Israel’s extremist leaders using U.S. supplied F-16 jet fighters was a willful, planned atrocity.
Gaza is a small, squalid territory, less than 140 square miles. It is twenty-five miles long and between four and seven and a half miles wide. Populated by over 1.5 million people, fifty percent of whom are children, it is one of the most densely populated places on earth. It did not become this way by accident. Nearly 80% of the Palestinians residing in Gaza are refugees. They became refugees in 1948, at the hands of militant Jewish terrorists who ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their lands in preparation for the creation of Israel. Palestinians who were expelled from their homes, or who fled the massacres and bloodshed perpetrated by militant Jewish forces, now reside in Gaza.
For over sixty years, successive Israeli governments – in violation of international law – have prevented surviving Palestinians and their descendents from returning to their homes, farms, orchards, villages and towns in what is now Israel. Palestinians want to return to their homes but they are prevented from doing so by Israel. Successive U.S. governments has willfully failed to enforce international laws and United Nations resolutions that preserve Palestinian rights.
Why have the Palestinians not been allowed to return to their homes? It is simply because they are not Jews. This discriminatory policy is enshrined in Israeli law.
It is ironic that Israel and its supporters – who accuse Hamas of being intolerant religious fanatics – justify their crimes against Palestinians as being the fulfillment of what they believe to be God’s promise to Jews. God, we are supposed to believe, would accept Israel’s ethnic cleansing, theft of land and murder of innocents.
It is even more hypocritical for Israel and its propagandists to accuse Hamas of working to destroy Israel when it was Jewish extremists who carried out the actual destruction of Palestine.
The Palestinians of Gaza have suffered more than just eviction from their homes. Beginning in 1967, they had to endure an Israeli military occupation that lasted for 38 years. An entire generation of Palestinians was made to suffer unspeakable brutality and deprivation because their oppressors considered them to be children of a lesser God.
When the Israeli government pulled its illegal Jewish colonies out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, the world was assured that Palestinians would be free. In fact, Israel only redeployed its military forces to the perimeter of the Gaza Strip, controlling all points of entry and exit. The occupation continued. The world’s largest open air prison was created. The entire Palestinian population was placed under siege, with Israeli limiting the entry of water, food, electricity, medicine and other essentials. Sadly, collective punishment – a war crime under international law – is a practice that has always received the blessing of Israel’s political and religious leaders. Palestinian militias responded to Israel’s illegal actions by desperately lobbing crude rockets over the walls of their Gaza prison.
The Israeli defense minister acknowledged that the massive assault on Gaza was being planned for more than six months. During these same six months, there was an informal truce between Hamas and the Israeli government during which Hamas was successful in preventing most rocket fire. Hamas offered a long term truce if Israel ended its illegal siege. Israel broke the truce by failing to end its siege and by launching an unprovoked and deadly attack against Gazans in early November followed by many more deadly attacks in December.
Israel had no real commitment to the truce because its stated goal has been the destruction of the elected government of Gaza, a goal shared by the Bush administration. Palestinian rocket fire was simply Israel’s convenient excuse to launch a massive attack. Israel, a country the U.S. provides with our most advanced weaponry, claimed that it was threatened by largely primitive, scrap metal rockets. Israel, the fourth strongest military in the world, the owner of hundreds of nuclear weapons, claimed that it was threatened by a population that does not own one jet airplane, one tank, one artillery piece or even one personnel carrier. Israel, which exercised ruthless military rule over a civilian population for 38 years, now claimed it was threatened by that same population, even though it has continued to subject them to a complete siege and blockade.
Compare the proportionality. In only one day of its savage assault, Israel killed and injured more Palestinian children under five years old than all Israelis killed by all Palestinian rocket fire since the Israeli occupation of Gaza began in 1967.
What are the reasons for Israel’s massive attack on Gaza?
First, during its 2006 war against Lebanon, Israel’s military failed to achieve its aim of disarming and toppling Hezbollah. To repair the damage to the Israeli military’s reputation and to reinforce Israel’s deterrence policy, Israel needed to score a decisive military success. Apparently, a “win” against an impoverished civilian population that has no military forces, would be sufficient to repair Israeli self-esteem.
Second, Israel is several months away from its national elections. Israeli leaders vie with one another to prove their toughness in dealing with Palestinians. Violence against Palestinian civilians — including assassinations, home demolitions, missile strikes and other violent attacks — play well with Israel’s extremist Jewish voters. Sadly, there has not been a nationwide Israeli election in recent memory that has not been preceded by a bloody attack against Palestinians.
The most important reason for Israel’s ruthless assault is its plans to bring down the Palestinian government of Gaza. The problem with Hamas is not its military ability or its rockets or its ideology. Hamas’ strength lies in its continued unwillingness to be bullied or co-opted by Israel and its allies.
Israel wants a weak, compliant Palestinian regime that will cooperate with Israel by entering into peace agreements that that will validate Israel’s historic crimes against the Palestinian people. Israel wants a Palestinian regime that will accept Israeli demands. Israel does not want to allow Palestinians refugees, including those in Gaza, to return to their homes in what is now Israel. Israel does not want to end its occupation of Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem. Israel does not want to dismantle its large colonies on the West Bank. Israel does not want to apply existing United Nations resolutions and international laws. By vetoing United Nation resolutions meant to enforce international law, successive U.S. governments have perpetuated the conflict and encouraged Israel to carry out even more outrageous crimes.
Hamas’ popularity, in the eyes of Palestinians, is not derived from its extremely limited “military” capability or its ideology but from its unwillingness to kow-tow to Israeli demands. Hamas’ biggest crime, in the eyes of Israel, is its unwillingness to accept Israeli dictates.
By attacking the Palestinian people of Gaza, Israel thinks that it will make them more compliant. In fact, previous acts of Israeli and militant Jewish brutality have only reinforced Palestinian determination, steadfastness and resistance.
We call on our government to end the savage attacks on Gaza. We call on our government to end the billions of tax dollars we give to Israel on an annual basis as well as the delivery of modern weaponry that Israel uses to occupy and terrorize the Palestinian population. We call for the end of Israel’s occupation and siege of Palestinian lands. We call for the implementation of international laws and U.N. resolutions. We call for the return of Palestinian refugees, especially those in Gaza, to their homes in what is now Israel.
Peace will never be obtained until the Palestinian people are guaranteed their rights under international law and the international community is willing to address the decades of injustice that Palestinians have endured.
Othman Atta is an attorney in Milwaukee, WI and has taught classes at local universities about Middle East politics and Islam. He has also been a guest lecturer at various conventions around the United States. He is a community activist and a spokesperson in the Milwaukee area. The statement above was read by him at a vigil for the victims of Gaza.