Israeli Aggression in Gaza

(written in 6-1-09)

Human ingenuity is such that it is possible to extract some kind of benefit from the worst kind of poison. A single drop of snake venom is currently worth more than the equivalent amount of gold. As far as I know, the few existing breeders of the most dangerous species of snakes prosper as a result of their activities. They supply and export the precious liquid to laboratories producing antiophidic serums. It is a pity that human venom (much more lethal, as it is produced in the brain rather than the mouth) has not yet been fully industrialized. But we should not despair - the venomous and disproportional aggression in the Gaza Strip could still be a significant driving force (without the invader actually being aware of it) for development of a conflict resolution technique. An Evil that will be transformed into Good.

Showing, even unnecessarily, that Good may lie sleeping, latently, in Evil (although the opposite could also be true), we come to the sad scenario that is unfolding in the Gaza Strip.

There is no doubt that the Israeli attack is unjust, given its enormously disproportional nature. For each dead Israeli soldier, one hundred Palestinians become transformed into cadavers, without counting two hundred or more wounded. A Massacre. The invading tanks - the adjective is unnecessary, given that the Palestinians only have tanks for washing clothes; even though these are made unusable due to a shortage of water, cut off by the aggressors - are so thoroughly armored that is almost impossible to kill the soldiers that are inside them. Thus the incursion is practically a cowardly Israeli “jaunt”, a “picnic”, as already labeled in the media.

Alleged justification for the massacre lies in the fact that the Palestinians have been firing rockets which, although causing alarm, have not killed or even injured many Israelis in areas closest to the frontier.

When the Palestinian Authority (the moderate political wing, to the contrary of Hamas) governed the area in question, it did not manage to prevent the most hot-headed individuals (or those strangely induced to hot-headedness...) from firing rockets against Israel. Such missiles are of limited range and make more noise than physical injury. This is because it is practically impossible for any government (without exception, including Israel) to prevent certain individuals in the country concerned from practicing acts of violence. If, in all societies, there are crimes and violations of legal standards, irrespective of the existence of a police force, why “blame” the Palestinian Authority for not managing to ensure that all Palestinians abstain from harassing Israel? The Palestinian Authority would have no means of maintaining groups of soldiers, every one hundred meters, with the mission of apprehending or killing whoever is making preparations to fire rockets. Israeli politicians, possibly interested in territorial expansion, have pretended not to understand the difficulty faced by the Palestinian Authority in guaranteeing the total passivity of its citizens.

A few days ago, newspapers published articles stating that dozens or hundreds of Jews were refusing to abandon their land in settlements in Palestinian areas, irrespective of the express orders of the Israeli government. By the same standard, how, then, could the Israeli government recriminate against the Palestinian Authority because it has not been able to prevent a few citizens from acting on their own account, when Israel is also unable to ensure the total compliance of its subjects with respect to the issue of orders to abandon settlements? Israel managed to enforce removal (I do not know whether it was complete) because, in this case, the task is easier: settlements are fixed in one place - a rather different scenario from that involving the ever-changing points used for firing Palestinian rockets.

When Hamas, via elections in Gaza, took the place of the Palestinian authority, it concluded (and perhaps rightly so) - after a reasonable wait for a definitive agreement - that Israel was only interested in gaining time. So it lost its patience, turning a blind eye to such missiles, or even encouraging them, although fully aware that their purpose was psychological (infusing fear) rather than that of causing enemy casualties. Apparently, at least, the objective of Israel was that of simply avoiding, in a disguised manner, the finalization of an agreement out of which a Palestinian State would emerge with full legal status - this is the real fear of Israel. Fear, because a formalized Palestinian State would have the necessary means to cause inconvenience to Israel in international courts.

Irrespective of whether the above arguments are well-founded or ill-founded, critics will disagree, their opposite opinions varying according to the Jewish or Arab surnames of the individuals concerned, the “bare” fact being that peace in Palestine will only come to exist through the international community. More specifically, the legal area. Not the Security Council (in its current configuration), which acts with an impressive degree of undisguised cynicism in authorizing the power of veto of any of its five permanent members - the “big shots” that place themselves above such notions as Good and Evil.

In the Security Council, the power of veto of a country can solely signify a guarantee of impunity regarding its acts of violence, practiced directly or by an allied country. In legal terms, the country with the power of veto is able to commit atrocities and, when the planet rises up in indignation, demanding some kind of collective forceful response against it, the simple phrase “I disagree!” is sufficient to prevent any kind of more concrete measures against the holder of the veto or the country that it is protecting, which also tends to abuse the military and political power of the protector.

The power of veto is a vestigial legal absurdity that still remains in the imponent but not highly respected United Nations Organization. Not respected, precisely due to the existence of the power of veto in the Security Council. Sooner or later, the world will wake up to this current absurdity, no longer tolerating the veto of an individual country, when one is dealing with topics of such importance as international security. It is my hope that Barack Obama, a man of apparently great integrity, sensitivity and moral courage, will bring pressure to bear on his own country, with a view to changing the UN Charter regarding this item. At least denying the power of veto, and that of voting, in the Security Council when an accusation of abuse is directed against a particular country. For example, if China were accused of abuse (on its own part or that or a country clearly under its protection), it becomes a “suspect” and is “prevented” from voting and, even more importantly, exercising its power of veto. A basic standard in any kind of trial. Defendants, throughout the world, cannot cast their vote when it is they themselves that are being judged. The Security Council “judges” intervention proposals. If there were no power of veto in the Security Council, Israel would certainly not be currently practicing violent acts in Gaza.

Perhaps with the Gaza massacre, which could evolve into something worse - the “Jewish Iraq”, the world, including a large portion of the more lucid minds in America, may arrive at the conclusion - at last! - that peace in Palestine will only be able to come from an external source, i.e., the global community. Not from those involved in this insoluble war, blinded by hatred and capable of the most refined political “chicanery” in order to upset the conclusion of negotiations. This is because part of the Israeli government cannot imagine a division of Jerusalem on any account. In addition, this government fraction, clearly “falcon” in outlook, cultivates the inadmissible desire of creating a great Jewish nation, “evaporating” the presence of Palestinians, who are only seen as an irritating “thorn in its side”.

As far as many Palestinians are concerned (the most accustomed to war), they cannot “swallow” the fact that their land was invaded by people who left it almost two thousand years ago (expelled without any blame on the part of the Palestinians) and only managed to return, with the superior status of a State because the international community sympathized with the victims of the Holocaust unleashed by Hitler. Although opposed to the idea, the Palestinians would have accepted the return of the Jews, if in lesser numbers. However, it was not this that occurred. The number of people returning from the second diaspora was unlimited. The British, who governed Palestine as a protectorate, did everything they could to prevent such a massive return, but the Zionists did not accept any quantitative restrictions and recurred to terrorism. Menachem Begin was a terrorist, fighting against the British, during this period. In the same way that the Jews would not currently accept the label of being ex-terrorists (as they have already achieved what they desired), today, the Palestinians of Hamas only consider themselves to be “patriots”, much in the same way that the Jews considered themselves when they exploded bombs against the British.

Considering all this, it is almost unbelievable that the presidents and prime ministers of civilized nations still have the vain hope of attaining a peace agreement that is draughted and fulfilled by enemies tormented by decades of bitter memories, with the establishment of two sovereign States in Palestine. “Living together in harmony?” Maybe, but only with significant initial external pressure. It is up to the international community to go one step beyond this, making advances in the perfection of international rules in such a manner that it is possible to transfer this already ailing outstanding issue to a reliable international agency (prima facie, the most suitable would be the International Court of Justice, based in The Hague) which, in an impartial manner, would hear the interested parties and establish the most judicious possible solution. In my opinion, any solution (even that originating from an impartial court) will not be easily accepted - as in the case with any court decision, however just it may be. Nevertheless, it would be better for a solution to come from an external source (in all certainty, establishing monetary compensation for those that have been expelled from their homes, if this be the case), rather than waiting for the enemy populations to drown in blood and destruction, perhaps for successive generations. And even worse: involving other neighboring or even distant countries. Perhaps with nuclear repercussions. Sooner or later, atomic weapons will be more accessible to countries, it not being currently understood or accepted that, due to elitism, some countries can have such weapons, whereas others (considered to be “inferior”) cannot.

On December 15th 2008, Newsweek magazine printed an article on page 22 by Denis MacShane entitled “Europe’s Jewish Problem”, showing that phantasmagorical winds of anti-Semitism were blowing through Europe, even before the current massacre in Gaza. Serious surveys undertaken by the Pew Institute show that, in Germany, the number of Germans who have an unfavorable view of the Jews has risen from 20% (2004) to 25% (date of the survey). In France, in four years, this unfavorable view of Jews has increased from 11% to 20%. In Spain, 21% of the population had a negative view of Jews in 2005, whereas now (prior to the invasion of Gaza), for every two Spaniards, one has antipathy for the Jews. In England, generally a highly open and tolerant country, those with a negative view of Jews has remained at 9%, although this percentage is already affected by isolated facts, such as the need for young Jews to return to schools, in north London, on private buses, bearing in mind the attacks they have been subject to on public buses. Even in Poland, where the Jews were persecuted in an especially virulent manner, the number of people with unfavorable opinions regarding Jews rose from 27% (in 2004) to 36% (date of the survey, but prior to the incursion into Gaza).

About a month and a half ago, I read in a newspaper or on the Internet (making no note of the location, as I did not know that I would be subsequently writing on the subject) that in a cinema in a certain country, a portion of the audience showed its noisy approval, clapping hands and shouting, the part of the film in which scenes appeared of concentration camps at the time of Nazism. Instead of the due respectful silence that usually accompanies a vision of piled corpses and living human skeletons behind the barbed wire, part of the audience showed its noisy approval of these scenes of horror. Shouldn’t this distorted psychological “climate” be studied by the Israeli government?

If a survey were conducted today, after Gaza (with an abundance of photos of dead or wounded Palestinian children), it is possible to foresee a high degree of worldwide hostility against the Jewish people. Add to this there mere “unfavorable view” prevalent in Europe + the deep-seated hatred of the neighboring Arab world + a probable decrease in sympathy on the part of the future Obama government and the actual American (non-Jewish) people, and the result of the equation is a clear warning that responsibility for resolution of the Palestinian conflict must be placed in the hands of the international community (forgetting the Security Council in its current form). Nobody is able to be a good judge when the proceedings involve their own case.

At the beginning of the last century, the British wanted to offer the Zionist Movement a large area in Uganda, on a plateau with a climate very similar to that found in the Mediterranean, in order to serve as a Jewish homeland. This offer was refused by the Zionist commission that visited the area because there were many wild animals in the region, as well people of the Masai tribe. Besides all this, there was the issue of religion, which specifically required a return to Jerusalem. The problem is that (as stubborn Physics insists) two bodies cannot occupy the same place in space. “Someone” has to leave, for better or worse, and the “survival of the fittest” prevails. A primitive and ignorant way of conducting oneself in the world.

This is the origin of the tragedy. And, in this case, if those involved are unable to think with sufficient clarity (arteries half-blocked with the fatty deposits of hatred), the international community is still able to do so - for the time being.

Returning once again to the topic of “venom” that can become beneficial, perhaps the massacre in Gaza will come to drive or give an impulse to the infinitely more intelligent practice of removing any responsibility for resolution of their problems from the hands of those wrestling with others with eyes clouded by hatred. “Their” problems - only in certain terms - considering that globalization is no longer solely commercial in nature.

(06-01-09)