WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, FDCA, Il Cantiere #21: Gaza: colonialism, apartheid and suprematism at the origin of the carnage - Pierre Stambul * (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

15 October 2023. ---- As I write these lines, the worst images arrive
from Gaza: pulverized neighborhoods, corpses of civilians arriving by
the hundreds in hospitals that no longer have electricity or medicine,
when they have not been destroyed. A new "Nakba" (catastrophe, ethnic
cleansing) is underway. Unbearable images also arrived from Israel. As
in many colonial wars, it happens that even the civilians of the
colonizing country suffer the extreme violence experienced by the
colonized. ---- We must carefully read the correspondence from Gaza of
the Palestinian representative of the Union Juive Française pour la Paix
(French Jewish Union for peace). In my opinion they are very
representative of public opinion in Gaza:
October 9th.
The day before yesterday morning, the world woke up to the news of the
entry of the Palestinian resistance into the Israeli settlements
surrounding Gaza. The world denounced this act and directly accused the
Palestinians of terrorism, without thinking about the reasons that led
to this situation.
We have always been peaceful people who love life and peace. But the
Israeli occupation has left us no room for life and has not respected
any agreement or treaty. They have continued to confiscate land, from
1948 to today, and kill all Palestinians. They have besieged more than
two million Palestinians since 2006 and turned the Gaza Strip into a
huge prison. For years, entire families have been removed from the
registry because their homes were bombed without warning.
The Palestinians did not seek war, but the Israelis gave the
Palestinians no chance to live. The Palestinians have repeatedly called
on the world to stop Israel's aggression and break the blockade of the
Gaza Strip. But the world was deaf and dumb. He turned his back on the
Palestinians, indifferent to their suffering.
What happened today was predictable, knowing the injustice towards the
Palestinians and the continued marginalization of their society.
The international community is therefore primarily responsible for the
shedding of this blood on both sides. The international community must
evaluate the consequences of what is happening and change its pro-Israel
strategy.
October 13th.
   Nothing is more false than presenting today's situation as "a war
between Hamas and Israel." It is the entire population of Gaza that is
suffering a massacre, and it is also the entire population of Gaza that
is clamoring for its right to exist, its right to live. At a time when
the narrative repeated by all the media claims that the bombings are
"justified" by the "eradication of Hamas", we must instead be aware that
Gaza's society is pluralist, divided politically, but united, by force
and with the will, in shouting its right to exist. To silence this cry
it will be necessary to kill a large part of this population, and that
is what is happening before our eyes.
We must listen to the voices of Gaza. Do you think the bombs only target
Hamas members? It is a stupid lie. People, regardless of their opinions,
are driven by the bombings to gather in large groups in buildings which
are then bombed. These massacres affect entire families. What will
happen when more than two million people find themselves in the south of
Gaza?
A new Nakba is occurring. The urgency is to stop the bombing of the
population of Gaza. It is absolutely necessary to get it from the
so-called international community.
Denial and complicity
Today we are witnessing real denialism towards the Palestinians. They
were victims of premeditated ethnic cleansing in 1948. The occupier
deliberately violated UN Resolution 194 on the return of refugees and
destroyed hundreds of villages, going so far as to erase all traces of
Palestine. Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem are occupied by 1967,
while Resolution 242 called for Israel's withdrawal from these
territories. One million Palestinians suffered imprisonment. Since 2006,
more than two million Gazans have been isolated by land, air and sea. A
seven hundred kilometer long wall scars the West Bank and contributes to
land theft. All human rights groups, including Israeli ones, have come
to the conclusion that Israel is an apartheid state. As a logical
consequence, Zionism led to the coming to power in Israel of fascists ,
racists, supremacists, fundamentalists.
Denying that Palestine has been the victim of war crimes and crimes
against humanity for decades is denialism. In this colonial war there is
an occupier and an occupied.

Israelis are not victims. They are citizens of a colonial state and, as
in France at the time of the Algerian war, very few of them say no.
This situation is made possible by decades of impunity that have caused
the majority of Israelis to lose all moral sense. The "international
community" has a great responsibility. Arm Israel. He defends his regime
in all circumstances, regardless of the crimes he commits.
It is false to believe that Israel is supported because the West feels
guilty about anti-Semitism and Nazi genocide. The memory of these crimes
is used to support a racist government. Israel is supported by the West
because this state has become an example of colonial reconquest and a
laboratory for modern technologies of repression and surveillance of
populations deemed "dangerous". To hold the Middle East, the West needs
Israel and the feudal, dictatorial and patriarchal of the region.
The current carnage is also made possible by the "Abraham Accords". The
West has put leaders at the head of the Arab world who belong to the
same camp and who "normalize" their relations with Israel by accepting
the eradication of Palestine.
What happened on October 7th?
A very limited number of people prepared the October 7 attack. Hamas has
learned the lessons from its past failures. The tapped phones were not
used. People susceptible to being potential "spies" (all methods are
used to push a Palestinian to "collaborate": money, blackmail, "honor",
safety of loved ones, etc.) were kept away from this project. But above
all Hamas made use of hackers who neutralized all the computer systems
for a few hours of the Israeli army. The planes failed to take off. The
"Iron Dome" anti-missile shield, offered by the United States, was slow
to work. The patrol boats remained blocked. The forty-kilometer
separation barrier that isolates Gaza from Israel was destroyed in
stretches of several kilometers without any Israeli military response.
The so-called "killer towers", remotely controlled weapons systems used
by the Israeli army, were blown up. The Israeli troops, busy protecting
the pogroms carried out by settlers in the West Bank, were left
undefended and the attackers themselves ( arrived?? in some cases with
ultralight aircraft or paragliders) they did not expect to be able to
penetrate so deeply into Israeli territory.
Without a doubt, war crimes have been committed. Amnesty International's
denunciation in this regard is certainly reliable, as is the fact that
Israel is an apartheid state. On the other hand, stories of children
being disemboweled or beheaded are part of propaganda. The CNN
journalists who arrived at the place where this horror was supposed to
have occurred formally denied it.
Gaza is a very pluralistic society. I have heard extremely violent
criticism against Hamas, its authoritarianism, its desire to dictate its
laws to society, its corruption. But there was unanimity in approving
the October 7 attack. For once, the inhabitants of Gaza had the
impression that they were no longer just victims of the continuing
aggression and destruction of their society. This is what the population
of Gaza clearly perceived. And, as far as I know, Hamas asked all the
political factions in Gaza to take hostages and they all agreed,
including Fatah and the left.
Civilian victims
Killing civilians, even when they belong to the enemy camp, is
unforgivable. This was already true in Dresden or Hiroshima in 1945. I
don't excuse anything, I just try to explain how this is perceived.
In Gaza the civilian population has been systematically massacred for
years: 1400 dead in 2008-2009, 170 in 2012, 2400 in 2014, 350 during the
"Marches of Return" with 8000 mutilated.
As I write these lines, the 2014 figure has already been exceeded. Most
of the victims are women, children and the elderly. Hospitals are
bombed. Without electricity or medicine, the wounded die there. Several
hundred thousand people are displaced and the Israeli army orders more
than a million people to leave.
The compassion of our leaders and our media stopped at the Israeli victims.
Why this double standard?
There were hundreds of Israeli civilians killed on kibbutzim, during a
rave party, in Ashkelon and Sderot. Why did the oppressed (Gaza
residents) attack the civilian population?

When you are on the eastern border of Gaza, you see lush plantations and
swimming pools on the other side of the border. In Gaza 97% of the water
is not drinkable. As the Israelis have massively pumped water from the
aquifer, it has been encroached upon by the sea and, it is documented,
there are 150 wells along the border on the Israeli side.
In Ashkelon, the tourist office suggests visiting a small hill
overlooking Gaza. With every bombing the view is fantastic. During a
previous bombing, on the beaches of Ashkelon, people applauded between
dives.
Is Hamas a terrorist group?
The word "terrorist" is used inappropriately. For the Nazis the
Resistance was an "army of criminals". The Algerian FLN has been
declared terrorist, as have Nelson Mandela and the ANC. And if there is
a country that has been led by terrorists, it is Israel with Begin and
Shamir. And what should we say about state terrorism? In Iraq as in the
West Bank.
Hamas won the 2006 elections (perfectly democratic) with a double
rejection: the Oslo Accords and corruption. In the Gaza Strip he
obtained 40% of the votes. It is clearly hated by a part of the
population. But it is seen (rightly) as one of the forces of the
Palestinian resistance. The reasons for its attack (perhaps to prevent
the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia) and the
methods used have never been discussed in a democratic way, but the
support for what he has done goes far beyond his social base.
The ongoing war is not a war against Hamas. It is a war of destruction
against Palestinian society. Asking that Hamas be defined as terrorist
when Israel uses truly terrorist methods against the civilian population
is obscenity.
A new Nakba?
When Minister Galant treats Palestinians like human beasts and orders
more than a million people to leave under the bombs, we are no longer
dealing with what the media smugly calls a response or retaliatory
action. In Gaza I was told of a plan to gather hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians in North Sinai and call it a "Palestinian state," while
most of the West Bank would be annexed by Israel. I didn't believe it.
Then Trump and the Kushner Plan revived this idea .
Many Palestinians say they would rather die on their land than leave. At
the same time, they explain that more bombs have fallen on Gaza in three
days than on Afghanistan in a year, that the population no longer has
water, food, electricity or medicine. They talk about genocide. There is
no doubt that if the border of Egypt, Israel's accomplice, was opened,
many would flee. What if this was the objective of the Israeli government?
The media spreads one-sided narratives. Anti-Zionism, like
anti-capitalism, is becoming a crime in European countries, the same
ones that let migrants drown. The far right supports Israel without
reservation.
Support for the threatened and abandoned Palestinian people is
fundamental in our fight for another possible world.
*Pierre Stambul, former mathematics teacher in Marseille, is
co-president of the Union Juive Française pour la Paix, (French Jewish
Union for Peace), a pacifist and anti-Zionist organisation.
Translated and adapted from the original French:
Gaza: colonialism, apartheid and suprémacisme à l'origine du carnage,
available on the website of the Organization Communiste Libertaire at
https://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article3960.

Construction site no. 21 November 2023 ilcantiere@autistici.org

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