While scumbags celebrated the opening of the new US embassy in Jerusalem, Gaza burned, with 60 dead, and 2200 injured. If there were any Israeli casualties, I haven’t seen the numbers – surely it is much, much less.
Making this even more cruel and indefensible, the embassy opening was scheduled one day before Nakba Day, a “day of commemoration of the displacement that preceded and followed the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948.”
Setting the geopolitical ramifications of the embassy move aside, what kind of person, when considering the vast power disparity between the state of Israel and those forced to live in what amounts to a literal open-air prison, would side with the gaolers?
How can anyone feel that, were they in Palestinian shoes, that they wouldn’t be seething with rage at the power structures that dominate and kill them with impunity? And, no less, a power structure that is composed of people that fucking hate them. I wonder if they celebrated as they did in 2014:
“Die! Die! Bye!” laughing teenage girls shout at the celebration in Tel Aviv. “Bye, Palestine!”
“Fucking Arabs! Fuck Muhammad!” a young man yells.
“Gaza is a graveyard! Gaza is a graveyard! Ole, ole, ole, ole,” the crowd in Tel Aviv sings as it dances in jubilation. “There is no school tomorrow! There are no children left in Gaza!”
For context, this is what was the cause for such jubilation:
Palestinian militias, armed with little more than light weapons, had just faced Israeli tanks, artillery, fighter jets, infantry units and missiles in a 51-day Israeli assault that left 2,314 Palestinians dead and 17,125 injured. Some 500,000 Palestinians were displaced and about 100,000 homes were destroyed or damaged.
[…]
Terrified Palestinian families huddled inside their homes as Israel dropped more than 100 one-ton bombs and fired thousands of high-explosive artillery shells into Shuja’iyya. Those who tried to escape in the face of the advancing Israelis often were gunned down with their hands in the air, and the bodies were left to rot in the scorching heat for days.”
I hope I’d have the courage to stand against tanks, bombs and armored soldiers with nothing but a rock in my hand and a t-shirt wrapped around my face. But maybe I’d work within the system, repeatedly smashing my head against a metaphorical wall that shows no signs of breaking. Or maybe, with or without hope, I’d do nothing and just try to get by. I don’t know.
But I do know that I would hate my oppressors with every ounce of my being. There would be no hope for reconciliation, except in a fantasy-world where they would beg for my forgiveness. In the real world, of course, the Israeli state wants nothing more than docile obedience. Ideally, this would be without any form of meaningful resistance. Resistance is tolerable more or less – surely Israel knows that without changing strategies the status quo will continue. But better for the subjugated to live with their tails between their legs in fear of overwhelming, state-sanctioned violence, though it doesn’t appear that this will occur anytime soon.
This shit’s been going on for far longer than I’ve been paying attention. And I, living a relatively comfortable life get fatigued with what amounts to being a spectator. That’s pretty fucking selfish, but I don’t know how else to process so much human misery for which I have no means of lessening.
If there were any Israeli casualties, I haven’t seen the numbers – surely it is much, much less.
If there had been Israeli casualties there would have been even bigger mass killings.
I wonder if anyone’s worked out the proper ratio for Palestinian/Israeli lives
That all depends on your definition of “proper”.
Trying, from the US, to follow the last intifada, I estimated about 3 Palestinians deaths for each Israeli killed.
Relatively egalitarian, when compared to the home/visitors ratio of about 40-to-1 racked up by the US in Vietnam, or the 100-to-1 score in Iraq.
Not sure what methodology you’re using. Vox (summarizing research by B’Tselem) estimates 87% Palestinian since 2000. From 2005-2014, that jumps to 95%. (https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2014/7/30/5937119/palestinian-civilian-casualties-gaza-israel)
That article came out before the 51 day offensive, described in the Truthout article I linked in the post. All in all, in 2014 there were 2,314 Palestinian and 12 Israeli deaths (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/27/israel-kills-more-palestinians-2014-than-any-other-year-since-1967)
My “methodology” was simply tallying deaths from reports in the local newspaper – it looks like another huge lump of corpses got swept under the carpet.
Using the peak year of 2014, Israel pushed its kill ratio to 193:1, which sfaik the US hasn’t reached since the “Indian Wars”. No doubt the Netanyahu Gang intends to beat their own record this year.
The lack of self-awareness on top of the murders is especially galling. I honestly wonder if there are some Israelis trying to come up with a “final solution” for their Palestinian “problem”. It pains me to make that comparison, but the seeming lack of concern for Palestinian lives is alarming.
I think Israel is largely okay with how things are, since they suffer far fewer casualties than their adversaries. I guess, in the long term, they’d like to make it shitty enough that Palestinians leave en masse, and thus they won’t need a “final solution” (which I would envision as forced expulsions). Though, with the current administration of their protector state, there’s never been a more fruitful time for that than now.
@Tabby Lavalamp : There are various, differing Israeli groups and ideas for the end result of the conflict, some of them appalling such as the idea of “transfer” which some advocate involving expelling most (all?) Palestinians from Israel. A version of this was the euphemistically phrased “Populated-Area Exchange Plan” proposed in May 2004 by Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the Israeli secularist and right-wing nationalist political party Yisrael Beiteinu & current Defence Minister :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieberman_Plan
FWIW. There’s also the idea of an 8 state solution involving the creation (imposition?) of a set of Palestinian Emirates separated from each other as isolated city-states :
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19570
As well as the obvious fairly well known Two state solution – which seems to be rapidly becoming a practical impossibility based on the various settlements, barriers infrastructure, politics etc .. and the One-State bi-national multi-ethnic state solution which neither side desires but the leaders on both sides have made increasingly inevitable.
There are also Israeli peace groups see listing with links here :
http://www.mepn.org/peace-groups-palestine-israel/
Opposing such policies and the current Likud govt too.
If I was religious, I might say that Gawd gave them both* this land as related peoples to learn how to share with each other – but since I’m not, I’m just going to note that neither side is going away despite whatever sickening atrocities they swap with each other and so they’ve really both just got to learn to live with each other somehow.
I see little if any hope of peace whilst Trump and Pence hold power and I recall Bush the Lesser stating there’d be a Palestinian state by the end of 2004, the year Arafat died, which, well, look where we are now and how many plans and roadmaps and wars have come and gone and re-emerged since.
Of course the Israelis and Palestinians alike are all individual humans who have been born into particular awful circumstances and raised in an environment saturated in one-sided propaganda and hatred and Othering and Demonisation of each other. Somehow the effects of this even-worse-than-Fox-news-conditioning-isation are going to need to be reversed and countered in a large enough scale that the vast majority of all sides here see each other as human individuals deserving of all the respect and rights all people. I think there are huge cultural and educational obstacles to this but with enough time and good will and people actually learning to be reasonable to each other, lets hope.
I don’t know if any of this helps, not sure what will, but hope it is informative.
* Over-simplification really since its also Samaritans, Druze, etc .. & the groups are divided internally massively too but anyhow.
That’s really good context. I didn’t look into solutions – just made a haphazard pessimistic prediction. I hope you’re right but it’s so hard (for me anyways) to visualize a roadmap that can lead to de-othering, which is so so crucial.
Oh, hi StevoR.
@Tabby: the comparison that came to my mind was Amritsar.
In hindsight, a lot of people think that after the massacre there was a downward trend in British violence towards Indians seeking independence and self-rule. Though of course neither that massacre nor yesterday’s are in any way justifiable, it would be nice if there was a similar downward trend in violence committed by the IDF.
I’m not holding my breath, however.
This is from an obscure show – Conflict Zone – that really deserves to be far better known and really does NOT pull any punches with really confrontational but not insulting interviews :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBQRFQwlGGE&list=PLT6yxVwBEbi3l8n22yR_aXD49AM4W0O7b&index=1
That really debates intensely this issue (plus Iran) – and *_WOW_* does it get Intense – capitalisation deliberate – here.
This might be tough to watch but I think it is well worth watching in full and neither person backs down here at all.
My view of this? There were metaphorical blows struck on both sides but a lot of pointing fingers at what others do & questions asked about what questions get asked without taking responsibility or showing empathy on Oren’s part there.
My advice for the Palestinians is to look at what Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela did. Please, use strict non-violence and do NOT give even the slightest whiff of an excuse for what they do unto you.
My advice to Israel would be to negotiate now from a position of strength offering the Palestinians a deal they can accept and that acknowledges their humanity and right to live safe, happy lives as you want them to grant you that same recognition to live secure, safe, happy lives with your humanity and culture recognised.
Both sides are human beings, individuals, both sides can make valid claims to the land, somehow each side is going to have to learn to share and treat each other reasonably as human because neither side is going away.
Of course, I’m not in a position really to advise either side. I’m just an observer, horrified, saddened and powerless here.