Gaza Genocide

www.placerherald.com

Posted by: Skeptic

Maybe it's just me, but the more I read about Israel's assault on Gaza, the more I'm convinced that the Zionist movement is in serious trouble.

With each fresh round of bombing, Israel's reputation gets worse, allowing growing numbers of people who might never have said a critical word about that country to finally speak up. The Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip continue, but with few military targets remaining, air strikes are killing more and more civilians.

At approximately 2:40pm New Years Day, Thursday, 1 Jan. 2008, Israeli F-15s fired heavy missiles at the house of Nizar Rayyan, a leader in the Hamas movement in the Jabaliya refugee camp, causing massive destruction in the neighborhood and killing 16 of its residents, 11 of whom were children. All 16 victims were members of one family. It has been obliterated.

It is obviously misleading for Israel to claim self-defense in a conflict with such an overwhelming asymmetry of power. Israel is the largest military force in the middle east, and has the fifth largest armed forces in the world. Furthermore, it is the fourth largest exporter of arms and has a military-industrial complex rivaling that of the United States. In other words, Israel has always had a comprehensive monopoly on the use of force, and with its super power ally [the United States], Israel uses war as a testing ground and to advertise its many efficient instruments of death. Remember, the "terrorist" is the one with the tiny bomb. "Because I do it with a small boat, I am called a pirate while you who do it with a great fleet are called an emperor.” (St.Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Libri XXII)

Liberal bloggers are increasingly unafraid to voice strong criticism, if not direct condemnation, of Israel's actions. This naturally alarms and frightens the few oldsters still swallowing and spewing back the myths of "tiny, peace-loving" Israel, driving many of them into rhetorical overkill or angry incoherence. It may be a tiny shift online, but it is significant. The full historical narrative is spreading and, as the civilian body count rises, perceptions are sharpening. No amount of Israeli spin will reverse this trend.

While many people are finally waking up to this reality, there are still a few who claim that Palestinians are a sub-human terrorist race of Nazis that deserve annihilation. By pushing such grotesque analogies, those supportive of Israeli violence expose their morally bankrupt arguments to a very large audience. The more people read how Hamas is the modern day version of the Third Reich, then look at the actual facts on the ground, the less they'll take what's considered the "pro-Israel" position. If you must rely on this type of argumentation, your case is already lost.

None of this means that elite opinion will change overnight. But it does show a new awareness stirring within the avalanche of pro-Israel propaganda. That doesn't bode well for the warmongers and their apologists. They may control us militarily and economically but their spin is fooling fewer people. Resistance is steadily building. Let's put our hope in that rather than project it on the politicians who serve the propagandists.

We will never learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

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JG: The United States has always had a very self serving and hypocritical definition of the word terrorism.