Israeli Massacre in Gaza?Last Moment before Obama and Israeli Election
Spin
Written by Michael Warschawski, Alternative Information Center
(AIC)
Sunday, 28 December 2008

Israeli troops getting ready to invade Gaza. "The death of one Israeli
victim justifies the killing of a hundred Palestinians.  One Israeli
life is worth a hundred Palestinian lives. This is what the Israeli
State and the world media more or less?with marginal questioning?
mindlessly repeat.  And this claim, which has accompanied and justified
the longest Occupation of foreign territories in 20th C. European
history, is viscerally racist.  That the Jewish people should accept
this, that the world should concur, that the Palestinians should submit
to it - is one of history's ironic jokes.  There's no laughter
anywhere?"
John Berger
While the whole world is in shock from the horrible pictures broadcast
from Gaza, Israeli public opinion is massively supporting the bloody
offensive of Barak-Olmert. This includes the left parliamentarian
opposition Meretz. Though Meretz leader MK Haim Oron did express his
concern about civilian casualties, in an interview on Israeli
television he joined the official propaganda argument blaming Hamas for
the bloodshed. Such a mystified discourse has been duplicated by most
of the leaders of the Western world, with France?s Foreign Ministry
outflanking even US Secretary of State Rice. Let's put the facts
straight:



*    Gaza has been targeted by the Israeli army since the victory of
Hamas, and the siege imposed on more than one and a half million
civilians?by Israel, but also by the so-call international community?is
in itself an act of violence and a war-crime;

*    The Israeli attack is a planned aggression: according to the
Israeli news, Ehud Barak planned the attack on Gaza already in August;

*    The rockets fired on Israeli towns were a retaliation to previous
Israeli military aggressions, and were NOT fired by Hamas but by the
small Islamic Jihad organization;

*    The attack on Gaza is an integral part of the neo-conservative
holy war against the Islamic world, and the outgoing US neo-
conservative administration, as well as Egypt and other Arab
reactionary regimes, have urged the Israeli authorities to launch the
offensive before Obama enters the White House;

*     Barak Obama?s declared intention to open talks with the Iranian
Islamic Republic is one of the main concerns of the outgoing
administrations in Tel Aviv and Washington, and the offensive against
Gaza is an attempt to provoke an Iranian reaction that will allow an
Israeli/US retaliation. During the last days, Israeli Deputy Minister
of Defense, Ephraim Sneh, who is well known for his anti-Iranian
obsession, has systematically connected Hamas (sic) rockets to Iran,
without any evidence, of course.

Such an overall strategy, based on the mystification of a "clash of
civilizations" and a global war against Islam, is shared by all the
Zionist Israeli political parties and explains the support of Meretz to
the ongoing aggression.

Though one should not expect a quick change in the US policy in West
Asia, Israeli leaders and their neo-con sponsors in Washington are
nevertheless worried by the change in the US administration, and fear a
new strategy that may break with the global, never-ending, pre-emptive
war. The attack on Gaza is a "last minute" attempt to change the
relation of forces in the Middle East, before the end of the neo-
conservative era.

And, before concluding, let us not forget the obscene dimension: the
hundreds of victims of the Israeli bombardment and shelling of Gaza are
collateral victims of the Israeli elections campaign; in order to
increase their popular support before the coming elections, all Israeli
leaders are competing over who is the toughest and who is ready to kill
more. Ehud Barak, however, has a very short memory, and Shimon Peres
can remind him that this cynical calculation is not necessarily the
good one: the massacre of Qana, that was supposed to bring victory to
Shimon Peres, provoked hundreds of thousands of Palestinian citizens to
turn their back on the Labor Party. Despite his brutality, however,
Ehud Barak remains one of the most unpopular leaders in the Israeli
arena, and the thousands of demonstrators who came yesterday, almost
without warning, to demonstrate against the massacre, may indicate that
all those who are behind it, including Meretz, will not receive their
votes. It is predictable that the international outrage and relatively
broad anti-war sentiment among its voters will push, once again, Meretz
to revise its position. They should, however, remember the very old
truth that voters always prefer the original thing: when Meretz
endorses Netanyahu?s war strategy and lies, the voters will vote for
Netanyahu rather than for its pale and tasteless copy.

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