The
Reoccupation Of Gaza:
Israel And The Big Lie
By Chris Marsden
10 July 2006
World Socialist Web
There
is arguably no modern state that more shamelessly employs the propaganda
technique of the Big Lie than Israel. Since July 6, Israel has been
deploying its military forces in an operation to reoccupy Northern Gaza,
killing dozens of Palestinians, including civilians, and injuring many
more.
Tanks have rolled into the
northern town of Beit Lahiya, bulldozing land, trees and houses. Some
local residents have fled. Others hide in fear. One told the BBC, “We
are living in a war. Everything is targeted by the Army...Because of
the tanks, it is too dangerous to move. I didn’t go to work today.
I counted 30 tanks moving in overnight, divided into two groups. They
were covered by helicopters. They killed two civilians this morning.”
Israel has sought to justify
the latest escalation in its assault on Gaza as a necessary measure
to create a “buffer zone” following a July 5 Qassam rocket
attack on the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.
The rocket hit the parking
lot of a high school, which was empty at the time, causing light damage
but no injuries. The Israeli government and media immediately portrayed
this event as a major act of aggression by the Palestinians.
The rocket had exploded 10
kilometers from the border with the Gaza Strip, the furthest penetration
yet, and showed that the lives of scores of Israeli citizens were now
being threatened, it was claimed. The furor intensified later after
a second rocket hit a sports field.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert issued a stream of apocalyptic threats. The rocket attack, he
declared, was “an escalation of unprecedented gravity,”
a “major escalation in the war of terror that the Hamas organization
is responsible for,” and an “attempt meant to harm Israeli
civilians that live within the sovereign borders of Israel” that
would “have far-reaching consequences.” Israel would not
“hold back or limit ourselves” in its retaliatory actions.
An emergency cabinet meeting
was convened, which authorized Olmert and Defense Minister and Labour
Party leader Amir Peretz “to continue [their] preparations for
prolonged and graduated security activity... with emphasis on striking
at institutions and infrastructures that serve terrorism” and
“reducing terrorists’ freedom of movement by continuing
to section off the Gaza Strip.”
Zeev Boim, a senior minister
in the Security Cabinet, threatened, “As far as I’m concerned,
the people of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya can start packing.”
The tone of many media commentators
was just as bellicose. The worst culprit was Zeev Schiff, military analyst
for the Labour Party-oriented Haaretz, who described the rocket attack
on Ashkelon as “an unequivocal Hamas invitation to war.”
As Goebbels famously insisted,
the art of propaganda is to “lie big” and “stick to
it.” There is no bigger lie than turning reality on its head.
To claim that Israel is responding to Palestinian aggression requires
more than a gross exaggeration of the threat posed by the crude rockets
possessed by Hamas. It means ignoring everything that went on before
Tuesday night.
Israel has been waging an
unequal and increasingly bloody campaign against the Palestinians since
it first invaded Southern Gaza on June 28 on the pretext of securing
the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit. The rocket attack on Ashkalon
came after a week in which Israel had made clear it intended to bring
about the downfall of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority and inflict
collective punishment on the Palestinians in order to end all resistance
to Olmert’s plan to annex close to half of the West Bank.
The Israeli Defence Forces
(IDF) have rounded up eight Hamas ministers, fully one-third of the
Palestinian cabinet, and nearly two dozen lawmakers in the West Bank.
Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres has said they will be put on trial
for terrorism.
The IDF have twice bombed
the offices of Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and threatened to assassinate
Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal and others exiled in Damascus.
Israeli jets last week buzzed the palace of President Bashar al-Assad
in Damascus and Olmert has threatened military reprisals against Syria.
Thousands of well-armed troops
have been massed against an impoverished people and militants possessing
little more than rifles, who are reduced to threatening suicide bomb
attacks against tanks.
Israel mounts daily air attacks
on Gaza’s already decrepit infrastructure, destroying roads, bridges
and its only power plant. With the aid of Egypt, it has sealed all the
borders to prevent anyone from seeking respite from the collective punishment
of the civilian population.
One resident in the Nuseirat
refugee camp, in the centre of the Gaza Strip, told the BBC of the humanitarian
disaster now looming. Mahmoud Mughari, 40, said, “A week ago we
had electricity all the time, now it is just eight hours a day. Before,
we had water two days in three, now it is four hours once every three
days.... I am worried for the children, worried about disease.”
Speaking of Israel’s
use of low-flying war planes to set off sonic booms, he added, “The
smaller children do not understand that the sonic booms are just noise.
My four-year-old daughter Mai thinks it’s an explosion and wakes
up screaming, running into my room.”
These are actions that genuinely
constitute an “unequivocal invitation to war”—an illegal
war of aggression waged by a regime that cynically portrays itself as
the victim.
Israel has one advantage
not enjoyed by previous regimes, such as the Nazis, which employed the
Big Lie as a centerpiece of their foreign policy: its lies are treated
as good coin by the United States and the European powers. Washington
was, as usual, able to block a resolution in the United Nations Security
Council condemning Israel’s incursion into Gaza by using its veto
power. But it could not quash a resolution condemning Israel’s
collective punishment of the Palestinians from being moved at the recently
formed United Nations Human Rights Council.
The resolution, which was
brought by Islamic states, expressed “grave concern at the violations
of the human rights of the Palestinian people caused by the Israeli
occupation, including the current extensive Israeli military operations.”
It urged “Israel, the
occupying power, to immediately release the arrested Palestinian ministers...
and all other arrested Palestinian civilians” and called “for
a negotiated solution to the current crisis.”
Twenty-nine of the council’s
47 member states backed the resolution, 11 voted against, five abstained
and two members were absent. Those opposing the resolution included
Britain, France and Germany.
The US representative to
the UN in Geneva, Warren Tichenor, called the resolution “an unbalanced
effort to single out and focus on Israel alone.”
The European states justified
their opposition to the resolution with similar claims that it was unbalanced.
This is despite amendments calling on “all concerned parties to
respect the rules of international humanitarian law and to refrain from
violence against civilians” and for both sides to “treat
under all circumstances all detained combatants and civilians in accordance
with the Geneva Conventions.”
The European Union has issued
a statement condemning “the loss of lives caused by disproportionate
use of force by the Israeli Defence Forces and the humanitarian crisis
it has aggravated.” But their performance in the United Nations
makes abundantly clear that, when it comes to the crunch, none of the
European powers will do anything that might risk antagonising Washington—the
real sponsor of Israel’s war crimes.