Scoop has an Ethical Paywall
Work smarter with a Pro licence Learn More
Top Scoops

Book Reviews | Gordon Campbell | Scoop News | Wellington Scoop | Community Scoop | Search

 

Media Don't Tell the Real Reason Israel Kills People in Gaza

The Media Don't Tell the Real Reason Israel Kills People in Gaza

by John Spritzler
November 26, 2012

http://newdemocracyworld.org/war/gaza2.html

The reason Israel periodically kills men, women and children in Gaza is not because Hamas fires rockets. Nor is the purpose of the killing to weaken the power and influence of Hamas (every reporter regardless of political orientation notes that the effect is always the opposite, to strengthen Hamas, as Israeli leaders know all too well.)

The actual purpose of the killing is to strengthen the power of the Israeli Zionist leadership class of generals and billionaires and politicians, specifically to strengthen their control of the Israeli population of ordinary Jews. The strategy for securing this control over the Jewish population is simple: keep them so fearful of an external enemy--"Arabs"/Palestinians--and so convinced that Zionist leaders are their protectors against this enemy, that no matter how bad they think their Zionist leaders are otherwise, no matter how angry they are at being impoverished by this Jewish upper class, they will never seriously challenge the power and authority of the Zionist ruling elite. Thus in August of 2011 hundreds of thousands of Israelis, starting with people who set up tents on Rochschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv and spreading across the whole country, demonstrated against the Israeli rulers demanding relief from the economic hardships that had become so bad that ordinary Jews couldn't afford to rent an apartment. The demonstrations were the largest in Israeli history. But all Prime Minister Netanyahu had to do to neutralize them was to provoke an incident to focus attention on the "threat from the real enemy--Hamas in Gaza" and, forced to choose between being "patriotic" and supporting the government in a "crisis" or continuing the struggle against the government and the upper class that controls it, the Israelis chose the former.

Advertisement - scroll to continue reading

Are you getting our free newsletter?

Subscribe to Scoop’s 'The Catch Up' our free weekly newsletter sent to your inbox every Monday with stories from across our network.

What would people like Netanyahu do if it were not for Hamas and their earlier suicide bombings and current rocket firings at non-combatant Israeli Jewish civilians? Without a credible frightening boogieman enemy, Zionist leaders would lack their most effective means of social control. To produce such an enemy is precisely the strategy of Zionist leaders. It is why Zionist leaders periodically massacre people in Gaza.

More fundamentally, this is why Zionist leaders carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the name of the Jewish people: to produce a credible "enemy of the Jews." It is why all Zionist leaders of Israel, from David Ben Gurion in 1948 to Netanyahu today, insist that the most important thing in the world is to do whatever it takes to ensure that the population of Israel remains forever at least 80%* Jewish. It is why Israeli leaders violently drove out 750,000 people, 80% of the non-Jews then living in what is now Israel in 1947-48. It is why they carried out further ethnic cleansing in 1967, extending Israel's borders into the occupied territories. It is why the previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, could declare that he wanted to end discrimination against non-Jews inside Israel but would absolutely never allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and villages inside Israel--never!

Most people living in Gaza are refugees from this ethnic cleansing. Israel refuses to let them return to their homes. Palestinians oppose Israel not because of anti-Semitism but outrage at being driven out of their homes and villages by Israel. The Zionist strategy of social control is to provoke Palestinian anger and then to make sure that Israeli Jews (and the whole world, for that matter) wrongly believe that the anger is hateful irrational anti-Semitism, that the Palestinians want to "drive the Jews into the sea" or "wipe them off the face of the map" or kill every last one of them.

The truth is that most Palestinians who voted for Hamas did so in order to reject the only other choice, the Fatah leaders who are notoriously corrupt and who collude shamelessly with the Israeli government. Most Palestinians do not agree with Hamas leaders who say the goal is to make Islam sovereign in all of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. On the contrary, most Palestinians say their main concern is a) to have the right to return to the homes and villages inside of Israel where they (or their parents or grandparents) lived until they were driven out by the Zionists, b) to have the property that the Zionists stole from them (land, homes, and other things) be returned or to be fairly compensated for it, and c) to live as the equals of Jews under the law in all of Palestine from the River to the Sea.

If Israel would give to the Palestinians these basic rights, which they fully deserve, then the conflict would end immediately. If the conflict were ended this way, then Hamas would no longer have any support whatsoever from Palestinians for continuing to fire rockets aimed at Jewish non-combatants. Israeli leaders claim to have done everything possible to achieve peace before slaughtering innocent people in Gaza, but they don't do the most obvious thing they could do: let the Palestinians return to their homes. The establishment media reveal none of these facts.

The mass media virtually never inform people about the ethnic cleansing that is the very basis of the Jewish state of Israel. Instead they make people believe that the conflict is about where a border should be drawn separating Jews and Arabs who can never live together peacefully. They tell people that the conflict is about whether Israel should continue to occupy the West Bank and control Gaza (as an outdoor prison). Israel insists that it needs to maintain the occupation and control over Gaza because otherwise Palestinians will be able to use these areas as a base from which to launch military attacks on Israel, motivated by their anti-Semitic hatred and wish to destroy Israel. Never mentioned is the fact that Israel, being a state based on ethnic cleansing, has no right to exist in the first place, and everything it does to defend its right to exist is therefore morally wrong. The mass media never explain that even if Israel were to end its occupation of the West Bank and its control of Gaza, the Palestinian anger at being victims of ethnic cleansing, and their opposition to a state based entirely on that ethnic cleansing, would remain, and it would be entirely morally justifiable anger.

*************

*Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, page 48 of the hardcover edition, provides the following quotation from a speech by David Ben-Gurion (later Israel's first prime minister) given on December 3, 1947 in front of senior members of his Mapai party (the Eretz Israel Workers Party), in which he said (referring to the UN partition resolution):

There are 40% non-Jews in the areas allocated to the Jewish state. This composition is not a solid basis for a Jewish state. And we have to face this new reality with all of its severity and distinctness. Such a demographic balance questions our ability to maintain Jewish sovereignty...Only a state with at least 80% Jews is a viable and stable state.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Advertisement - scroll to continue reading
 
 
 
Top Scoops Headlines

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Join Our Free Newsletter

Subscribe to Scoop’s 'The Catch Up' our free weekly newsletter sent to your inbox every Monday with stories from across our network.