The Israeli army is continuing its decades old agenda of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians to create a homogeneous Israeli state. The current chapter of this war has claimed the lives of 1,822 Palestinians, a large majority of them being civilians and the most vulnerable, namely Palestinian children. In addition, nearly 1.8 million people have been made homeless as the infrastructure of the Gaza strip is subjected to the Israeli army’s demolition. The bombardment of the Gaza strip has also targeted important and vital areas, including the electricity supply of Gaza. Also, the water supply to the Palestinians has also been affected, creating far and wide shortages.
The international outcry about the war, including global protests in major cities in Europe, America, and Middle East, has been met with blatant media twisting of the Western state officials. While calling for an end to the bombardment of the Palestinians and for a “dialogue” between Hamas and the Israeli state, the West, namely the United States government, continues its support of the war via financial support ($3 Billion) and replenishing Israeli military stockpile of weapons.
The shrinking map of Palestine from post WWII till today is a major testament to Israeli agenda in the area. If that is not enough to reveal the bloody hand of the Israeli state, than one only needs to listen to the outrageous comments made by the officials of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling party (Likud Party). This week Moshe Feiglin called for the “the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters”. This is only one of the many comments made by the Israeli state and these are coupled by the many Israeli state friendly guests on major media networks.
There is not an atom of excuse left for the Israeli state as the victims of the Holocaust (as a shield against international critique), that has not been vaporized by the crimes against humanity that Israel is committing as we speak. To be very clear, there must be a clear and important separation made here. The Israeli people cannot be directly blamed for the actions of the Israeli state, just as the working people in the West cannot be blamed or made guilty of the military and financial support of their governments for Israel. The same can be said about the people of Palestine who are being punished via endless bombings of the Israeli army for the actions of Hamas (although as I stated above the ridiculously disproportional rockets that have been fired and intercepted by the Iron Dome, is only an excuse to continue a very old Israeli ethnic cleansing agenda).
The reaction of the international so called “left” has been populist at best, and at times extremely right wing. The first cry of the “left” has been to join the world in an outcry against the atrocities and crimes against humanity committed against Palestinians. Further, the Western “left” and other populist movements have used this continuing war waged on the Palestinian people as an opportunity and platform to somehow illuminate Islam (via murdered Muslims in Palestine) as a victimized religion and that it must be defended as the frontline revolutionary ideology against the pillages of imperialism. This is the age old ideology that dictates “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, which is a very convoluted and twisted interpretation of the current and on-going Middle East crisis. This so called “left” includes pickled Soviet era “communist” and “socialist” parties from almost all Western countries, opportunist street-pamphlet-handing Trotskyists, and even sections of the Occupy movement. These interpretations of the current situation in Gaza are depleted and empty. These are not clarification and elucidation of the road forward for the Palestinians and the working people who want an end to the blood bath in the Gaza strip, but they are instead a meagre attempt at putting blinders on the working people: a reactionary defence of Islam at the cost of innocent Palestinians.
How can the so called “left” be so far behind in its analysis of the genocide in Gaza? Every human being on planet earth that has witnessed, or has been subjected to, or has even the simplest understanding of Islam knows that it is indefensible. In fact, the decade war in the Middle East waged in Afghanistan and Iraq have made it abundantly clear that the raging bull of Islam is a front against humanity all on its own and its roots are predicated on the Western Imperialist foreign policy. How many car bombs, poisoned and abducted school girls, market place bombing does it takes for the so called “left” to stop cheering for religion (both Judaism and Islam in this case)?
Hamas is not the revolutionary saviour of the Palestinian people. In the way that Hamas is throwing stones, in this case rockets, towards Israel when it knows full well of the devastating consequences to its glass house. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people, and its military, political and ideological strategies have only played into the colonizing hands of Israel. A group of mullahs chanting “allah-o-akbar” before launching rockets towards the most well equipped modern army of our time speaks volumes about the emptiness of Hamas as a realistic opposition or a rallying cry for peace and security in the region.
The Palestinian people are calling for an alliance of the Arab states to come to their aid. The people in Gaza are calling for international viewers of the genocide to continue their protest and the pressure on their governments to stop this war. The only way forward now, after decades of misguided leadership of Hamas, is to Occupy all Israeli state institutions as well as their financial supporters (the U.S.) such as US and Israeli consulates all around the world. The greater the pressure on Israel and the US, through street protest and the media, the greater opportunity to create ceasefires and humanitarian safe roads for the Palestinians. Hamas and the Israeli state have both robbed the Palestinians from laying the foundations of real political alternatives. The urgency and priority today is to save Palestinian lives, and not to enter the historical ownership debate about who has the right to live there, or to join reactionary left in glorifying Islam, as it plays to the hands of the Israeli state that wants nothing less than to turn the focus away from the genocide in Gaza.
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