Israeli and American officers, like lots 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 could 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 damaging 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 folks in opposition to “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 doubt ugly – however the photographs from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and many others have been no much less horrific. Twenty years of Western and Israeli wars within the Center East have led to not hundreds, however thousands and thousands of Arab and Palestinian casualties
Within the eyes of the West, it appears, Israel has a “responsibility” to defend its folks, however the Palestinians don’t have the best to guard themselves as if they’re folks of a lesser god! Israel seemingly additionally has a proper to defend and even develop 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 in opposition to civilian infrastructure, particularly electrical energy, are battle crimes. Slicing off males, girls, youngsters of water, electrical energy … are acts of pure terror.” However Israel doing the identical in opposition to Palestinians in Gaza is legit self-defense! That’s the very embodiment of hypocrisy and double normal.
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 initially, a nationalist motion that lengthy condemned al-Qaeda and ISIL, and by no means staged an assault outdoors historic Palestine. In contrast to al-Qaeda, Hamas has gained 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 totally harmful, for they serve to fabricate the case for a wider battle, 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 folks, paving the best way for a genocidal battle, beginning in Gaza. To make certain, demonising different leaders is ugly politics, however dehumanising an entire folks, is racism, pure and easy.
In that manner, this false and hysterical analogy quantities to a inexperienced gentle for Israel to observe up its illegal siege and indiscriminate bombardment of the Gaza Strip with an much more horrifying land invasion that might devastate the greater than two million Palestinians residing 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, via an invasion and reoccupation of Gaza.
For that function, it has already recalled some 350,000 army reservists and amassed 100,000 troopers in addition to a lot of tanks on its southern border. In the meantime, the makes an attempt to create a humanitarian hall to ship folks from Gaza into the Sinai to maintain them “secure” and to make it simpler for Israel to invade are certain 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 supplied for the individuals who stay there, is certain to trigger tens or a whole lot of hundreds of casualties amongst Palestinians over weeks or months of combating, particularly if, as anticipated, Israel makes use of heavy weapons and extreme bombardment to attempt to scale back casualties amongst its personal forces. Certainly, Israel’s looming invasion of Gaza is certain to show into essentially the most bloody city battle for the reason that Second World Conflict – an armageddon with disastrous regional implications.
Even when Israel efficiently reoccupies the Gaza Strip, albeit at a excessive value, and dismantles the army 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 up to now? Will it maintain the Gaza Strip completely, offering meals and providers to its inhabitants? Will it have the ability to finish the concept of Hamas as a resistance motion in opposition to 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 battle spilling over to the north and east, forcing, or relatively permitting, Israel to widen its circle of destruction. This might simply result in the USA and its newly deployed naval armadas being drawn into yet one more harmful regional battle, as if twenty years of perpetually wars weren’t sufficient.
Israel and the USA should not repeat the identical blunders repeatedly as in the event that they discovered nothing from a long time of battle, occupation and human struggling attributable to their bungles. It’s excessive time for Western powers to start out appearing like grown-ups and cease parroting Israel’s debunked lies and cliches. Make no mistake, there isn’t any army reply for the Palestine tragedy, solely a political and diplomatic resolution.
