14 posts tagged “free palestine”

This is a guest post written by Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative. Barghouti is a former secular candidate for President of Palestine and has been a strong advocate of non-violent responses to Israeli occupation. Barghouti is thought by many to be a leading contender in the next Palestinian presidential election. Perspectives have also been solicited from various national leaders and incumbent Knesset leaders in Israel.

Here is a link to an interview that Steve Clemons did with Barghouti in July 2008 regarding Barack Obama's trip to Israel and Palestine.

From The Huffington Post

Palestine's Guernica and the Myths of Israeli Victimhood

The Israeli campaign of 'death from above' began around 11 am, on Saturday morning, the 27th of December, and stretched straight through the night into this morning. The massacre continues Sunday as I write these words.

The bloodiest single day in Palestine since the War of 1967 is far from over following on Israel's promised that this is 'only the beginning' of their campaign of state terror. At least 290 people have been murdered thus far, but the body count continues to rise at a dramatic pace as more mutilated bodies are pulled from the rubble, previous victims succumb to their wounds and new casualties are created by the minute.

What has and is occurring is nothing short of a war crime, yet the Israeli public relations machine is in full-swing, churning out lies by the minute.

Once and for all it is time to expose the myths that they have created.

1. Israelis have claimed to have ended the occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005.

While Israel has indeed removed the settlements from the tiny coastal Strip, they have in no way ended the occupation. They remained in control of the borders, the airspace and the waterways of Gaza, and have carried out frequent raids and targeted assassinations since the disengagement.

Furthermore, since 2006 Israel has imposed a comprehensive siege on the Strip. For over two years, Gazans have lived on the edge of starvation and without the most basic necessities of human life, such as cooking or heating oil and basic medications. This siege has already caused a humanitarian catastrophe which has only been exacerbated by the dramatic increase in Israeli military aggression.

2. Israel claims that Hamas violated the cease-fire and pulled out of it unilaterally.

Hamas indeed respected their side of the ceasefire, except on those occasions early on when Israel carried out major offensives in the West Bank. In the last two months, the ceasefire broke down with Israelis killing several Palestinians and resulting in the response of Hamas. In other words, Hamas has not carried out an unprovoked attack throughout the period of the cease-fire.

Israel, however, did not live up to any of its obligations of ending the siege and allowing vital humanitarian aid to resume in Gaza. Rather than the average of 450 trucks per day being allowed across the border, on the best days, only eighty have been allowed in - with the border remaining hermetically sealed 70% of the time. Throughout the supposed 'cease-fire' Gazans have been forced to live like animals, with a total of 262 dying due to the inaccessibility of proper medical care.

Now after hundreds dead and counting, it is Israel who refuses to re-enter talks over a cease-fire. They are not intent on securing peace as they claim; it is more and more clear that they are seeking regime change - whatever the cost.

3. Israel claims to be pursuing peace with 'peaceful Palestinians'.

Before the on-going massacre in the Gaza Strip, and throughout the entirety of the Annapolis Peace Process, Israel has continued and even intensified its occupation of the West Bank. In 2008, settlement expansion increased by a factor of 38, a further 4,950 Palestinians were arrested - mostly from the West Bank, and checkpoints rose from 521 to 699.

Furthermore, since the onset of the peace talks, Israel has killed 546 Palestinians, among them 76 children. These gruesome statistics are set to rise dramatically now, but previous Israeli transgressions should not be forgotten amidst this most recent horror.

Only this morning, Israel shot and killed a young peaceful protester in the West Bank village of Nihlin, and has injured dozens more over the last few hours. It is certain that they will continue to employ deadly force at non-violent demonstrations and we expect a sizable body count in the West Bank as a result. If Israel is in fact pursuing peace with 'good Palestinians', who are they talking about?

4. Israel is acting in self-defense.

It is difficult to claim self defense in a confrontation which they themselves have sparked, but they are doing it anyway. Self-defense is reactionary, while the actions of Israel over the last two days have been clearly premeditated. Not only did the Israeli press widely report the ongoing public relations campaign being undertaken by Israel to prepare Israeli and international public opinion for the attack, but Israel has also reportedly tried to convince the Palestinians that an attack was not coming by briefly opening crossings and reporting future meetings on the topic. They did so to insure that casualties would be maximized and that the citizens of Gaza would be unprepared for their impending slaughter.

It is also misleading to claim self-defense in a conflict with such an overwhelming asymmetry of power. Israel is the largest military force in the region, and the fifth largest in the world. Furthermore, they are the fourth largest exporter of arms and have a military industrial complex rivaling that of the United States. In other words, Israel has always had a comprehensive monopoly over the use of force, and much like its super power ally, Israel uses war as an advertising showcase of its many instruments of death.

5. Israel claims to have struck military targets only.

Even while image after image of dead and mutilated women and children flash across our televisions, Israel brazenly claims that their munitions expertly struck only military installations. We know this to be false as many other civilian sites have been hit by airstrikes including a hospital and mosque.

In the most densely populated area on the planet, tons upon tons of explosives have been dropped. The first estimates of injured are in the thousands. Israel will claim that these are merely 'collateral damage' or accidental deaths. The sheer ridiculousness and inhumanity of such a claim should sicken the world community.

6. Israel claims that it is attacking Hamas and not the Palestinian people.

First and foremost, missiles do not differentiate people by their political affiliation; they simply kill everyone in their path. Israel knows this, and so do Palestinians. What Israel also knows, but is not saying public ally, is how much their recent actions will actually strengthen Hamas - whose message of resistance and revenge is being echoed by the angry and grieving.

The targets of the strike, police and not Hamas militants, give us some clue as to Israel's mistaken intention. They are hoping to create anarchy in the Strip by removing the pillar of law and order.

7. Israel claims that Palestinians are the source of violence.

Let us be clear and unequivocal. The occupation of Palestine since the War of 1967 has been and remains the root of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Violence can be ended with the occupation and the granting of Palestine's national and human rights. Hamas does not control the West Bank and yet we remain occupied, our rights violated and our children killed.

With these myths understood, let us ponder the real reasons behind these airstrikes; what we find may be even more disgusting than the act itself.

The leaders Israel are holding press conferences, dressed in black, with sleeves rolled up.

'It's time to fight', they say, 'but it won't be easy.'

To prove just how hard it is, Livni, Olmert and Barak did not even wear make-up to the press conference, and Barak has ended his presidential campaign to focus on the Gaza campaign. What heroes...what leaders...

We all know the truth: the suspension of the electioneering is exactly that - electioneering.

Like John McCain's suspension of his presidential campaign to return to Washington to 'deal with' the financial crisis, this act is little more than a publicity stunt.

The candidates have to appear 'tough enough to lead', and there is seemingly no better way of doing that than bathing in Palestinian blood.

'Look at me,' Livni says in her black suit and unkempt hair, 'I am a warrior. I am strong enough to pull the trigger. Don't you feel more confident about voting for me, now that you know I am as ruthless as Bibi Netanyahu?'

I do not know which is more disturbing, her and Barak, or the constituency they are trying to please.

In the end, this will in no way improve the security of the average Israeli; in fact it can be expected to get much worse in the coming days as the massacre could presumably provoke a new generation of suicide bombers.

It will not undermine Hamas either, and it will not result in the three fools, Barak, Livni and Olmert, looking 'tough'. Their misguided political venture will likely blow up in their faces as did the brutally similar 2006 invasion of Lebanon.

In closing, there is another reason - beyond the internal politics of Israel - why this attack has been allowed to occur: the complicity and silence of the international community.

Israel cannot and would not act against the will of its economic allies in Europe or its military allies in the US. Israel may be pulling the trigger ending hundreds, perhaps even thousands of lives this week, but it is the apathy of the world and the inhumane tolerance of Palestinian suffering which allows this to occur.

'The evil only exists because the good remain silent'

From Occupied Palestine. . .

-- Dr. Mustafa Baghouthi

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mustafa-barghouthi/palestines-guernica-and-t_b_153958.html

                    http://palestinian.ning.com/photo/wipingoffmap-1

                                                                         

http://palestinian.ning.com/photo/ad2labelbarcode-1

By Mark LeVine

The Israeli government's justifications for the war are being scrutinised [GALLO/GETTY] One by one the justifications given by Israel for its latest war in Gaza are unravelling. The argument that this is a purely defensive war, launched only after Hamas broke a six-month ceasefire has been challenged, not just by observers in the know such as Jimmy Carter, the former US president who helped facilitate the truce, but by centre-right Israeli intelligence think tanks. The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, whose December 31 report titled "Six Months of the Lull Arrangement Intelligence Report," confirmed that the June 19 truce was only "sporadically violated, and then not by Hamas but instead by ... "rogue terrorist organisations". Instead, "the escalation and erosion of the lull arrangement" occurred after Israel killed six Hamas members on November 4 without provocation and then placed the entire Strip under an even more intensive siege the next day.

According to a joint Tel Aviv University-European University study, this fits a larger pattern in which Israeli violence has been responsible for ending 79 per cent of all lulls in violence since the outbreak of the second intifada, compared with only 8 per cent for Hamas and other Palestinian factions. Indeed, the Israeli foreign ministry seems to realise that this argument is losing credibility.

During a conference call with half a dozen pro-Israel professors on Thursday, Asaf Shariv, the Consul General of Israel in New York, focused more on the importance of destroying the intricate tunnel system connecting Gaza to the Sinai.

He claimed that such tunnels were "as big as the Holland and Lincoln tunnels," and offered as proof the "fact" that lions and monkeys had been smuggled through them to a zoo in Gaza. In reality, the lions were two small cubs that were drugged, thrown in sacks, and dragged through a tunnel on their way to a private zoo.

Israel's self-image

The claim that Hamas will never accept the existence of Israel has proved equally misinformed, as Hamas leaders explicitly announce their intention to do just that in the pages of the Los Angeles Times or to any international leader or journalist who will meet with them.

With each new family, 10, 20 and 30 strong, buried under the rubble of a building in Gaza, the claim that the Israeli forces have gone out of their way to diminish civilian casualties - long a centre-piece of Israel's image as an enlightened and moral democracy - is falling apart.

Anyone with an internet connection can Google "Gaza humanitarian catastrophe" and find the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Territories and read the thousands of pages of evidence documenting the reality of the current fighting, and the long term siege on Gaza that preceded it.

The Red Cross, normally scrupulous in its unwillingness to single out parties to a conflict for criticism, sharply criticised Israel for preventing medical personnel from reaching wounded Palestinians, some of whom remained trapped for days, slowly starving and dying in the Gazan rubble amidst their dead relatives.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has flatly denied Israeli claims that Palestinian fighters were using the UNRWA school compound bombed on January 6, in which 40 civilians were killed, to launch attacks, and has challenged Israel to prove otherwise.

War crimes admission

Additionally, numerous flippant remarks by senior Israeli politicians and generals, including Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, refusing to make a distinction between civilian people and institutions and fighters - "Hamas doesn't ... and neither should we" is how Livni puts it - are rightly being seen as admissions of war crimes.

Indeed, in reviewing statements by Israeli military planners leading up to the invasion, it is clear that there was a well thought out decision to go after Gaza's civilian infrastructure - and with it, civilians.

The following quote from an interview with Major-General Gadi Eisenkot that appeared in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth in October, is telling:

"We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective these [the villages] are military bases," he said.

"This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorised."

Causing "immense damage and destruction" and considering entire villages "military bases" is absolutely prohibited under international law.

Eisenkot's description of this planning in light of what is now unfolding in Gaza is a clear admission of conspiracy and intent to commit war crimes, and when taken with the comments above, and numerous others, renders any argument by Israel that it has tried to protect civilians and is not engaging in disproportionate force unbelievable.

International laws violated

On the ground, the evidence mounts ever higher that Israel is systematically violating a host of international laws, including but not limited to Article 56 of the IV Hague Convention of 1907, the First Additional Protocol of the Geneva Convention, the Fourth Geneva Convention (more specifically known as the "Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949", the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the principles of Customary International Humanitarian Law.

None of this excuses or legitimises the firing of rockets or mortars by any Palestinian group at Israeli civilians and non-military targets.

As Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur, declared in his most recent statement on Gaza: "It should be pointed out unambiguously that there is no legal (or moral) justification for firing rockets at civilian targets, and that such behavior is a violation of IHR, associated with the right to life, as well as constitutes a war crime."

By the same logic, however, Israel does not have the right to use such attacks as an excuse to launch an all-out assault on the entire population of Gaza.

In this context, even Israel's suffering from the constant barrage of rockets is hard to pay due attention to when the numbers of dead and wounded on each side are counted. Any sense of proportion is impossible to sustain with such a calculus.

'Rogue' state

Israeli commentators and scholars, self-described "loyal" Zionists who served proudly in the army in wars past, are now publicly describing their country, in the words of Oxford University professor Avi Shlaim, as a "rogue" and gangster" state led by "completely unscrupulous leaders".

Gazans inspect the damage after an air strike hit a mosque [GALLO/GETTY]

Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University, has declared that Israel's actions in Gaza are like "raising animals for slaughter on a farm" and represent a "bizarre new moral element" in warfare.

"The moral voice of restraint has been left behind ... Everything is permitted" against Palestinians, writes a disgusted Haaretz columnist, Gideon Levy.

Fellow Haaretz columnist and daughter of Holocaust survivors, Amira Haas writes of her late parents disgust at how Israeli leaders justified Israel's wars with a "language laundromat" aimed at redefining reality and Israel's moral compass. "Lucky my parents aren't alive to see this," she exclaimed.

Around the world people are beginning to compare Israel's attack on Gaza, which after the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli forces and settlers was turned literally into the world's largest prison, to the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Extremist Muslims are using internet forums to collect names and addresses of prominent European Jews with the goal, it seems clear, of assassinating them in retaliation for Israel's actions in Gaza.

Al-Qaeda is attempting to exploit this crisis to gain a foothold in Gaza and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria, as well as through attacking Jewish communities globally.

Iran's defiance of both Israel and its main sponsor, the US, is winning it increasing sympathy with each passing day.

Democratic values eroded

Inside Israel, the violence will continue to erode both democratic values in the Jewish community, and any acceptance of the Jewish state's legitimacy in the eyes of its Palestinian citizens.

And yet in the US - at least in Washington and in the offices of the mainstream Jewish organisations - the chorus of support for Israel's war on Gaza continues to sing in tight harmony with official Israeli policy, seemingly deaf to the fact that they have become so out of tune with the reality exploding around them.

At my university, UCI, where last summer Jewish and Muslim students organised a trip together through the occupied territories and Israel so they could see with their own eyes the realities there, old battle lines are being redrawn.

The Anteaters for Israel, the college pro-Israel group at the University of California, Irvine, sent out an urgent email to the community explaining that, "Over the past week, increasing amounts of evidence lead us to believe that Hamas is largely responsible for any alleged humanitarian crisis in Gaza".

I have no idea who the "us" is that is referred to in the appeal, although I am sure that the membership of that group is shrinking.

Indeed, one of the sad facts of this latest tragedy is that with each claim publicly refuted by facts on the ground, more and more Americans, including Jews, are refusing to trust the assertions of Israeli and American Jewish leaders.

Trap

Even worse, in the Arab/Muslim world, the horrific images pouring out of Gaza daily are allowing preachers and politicians to deploy well-worn yet still dangerous and inciteful stereotypes against Jews as they rally the masses against Israel - and through it - their own governments.

What is most frightening is that the most important of Israel's so-called friends, the US political establishment and the mainstream Jewish leadership, seem clueless to the devastating trap that Israel has led itself into - in good measure with their indulgence and even help.

It is one that threatens the country's existence far more than any Qassam rockets, with their 0.4 per cent kill rate; even more than the disastrous 2006 invasion of southern Lebanon, which by weakening Israel's deterrence capability in some measure made this war inevitable.

First, it is clear that Israel cannot destroy Hamas, it cannot stop the rockets unless it agrees to a truce that will go far to meeting the primary demand of Hamas - an end to the siege.

Merely by surviving (and it surely will survive) Hamas, like Hezbollah in 2006, will have won.

Support for the war remains high in Israel[GALLO/GETTY]

Israel is succeeding in doing little more than creating another generation of Palestinians with hearts filled with rage and a need for revenge.

Second, Israel's main patron, the US, along with the conservative Arab autocracies and monarchies that are its only allies left in the Muslim world, are losing whatever crumbs of legitimacy they still had with their young and angry populations.

The weaker the US and its axis becomes in the Middle East, the more precarious becomes Israel's long-term security. Indeed, any chance that the US could convince the Muslim world to pressure Iran to give up its quest for nuclear weapons has been buried in Gaza.

Third, as Israel brutalises Palestinians, it brutalises its own people. You cannot occupy another people and engage in violence against them at this scale without doing even greater damage to your soul.

The high incidence of violent crimes committed by veterans returning from combat duty in Iraq is but one example of how the violence of occupation and war eat away at people's moral centre.

While in the US only a small fraction of the population participates in war; in Israel, most able-bodied men end up participating.

The effects of the latest violence perpetrated against Palestinians upon the collective Israeli soul is incalculable; the notion that it can survive as an "ethnocracy" - favouring one ethnic group, Jews, yet by and large democratic - is becoming a fiction.

Violence-as-power

Who will save Israel from herself?

Israelis are clearly incapable. Their addiction as a society to the illusion of violence-as-power has reached the level of collective mental illness.

As Haaretz reporter Yossi Melman described it on January 10, "Israel has created an image of itself of a madman that has lost it".

Not Palestinians, too many of whom have fallen prey to the same condition.

Not the Middle East Quartet, the European Union, the United Nations, or the Arab League, all of whom are utterly powerless to influence Israeli policy.

Not the organised Jewish leadership in the US and Europe, who are even more blind to what is happening than most Israelis, who at least allow internal debate about the wisdom of their government's policies.

Not the growing progressive Jewish community, which will need years to achieve enough social and political power to challenge the status quo.

And not senior American politicians and policy-makers who are either unwilling to risk alienating American Jewish voters, or have been so brainwashed by the constant barrage of propaganda put out by the "Israel Lobby" that they are incapable of reaching an independent judgment about the conflict.

During the US presidential race, Barack Obama was ridiculed for being a messiah-like figure. The idea does not sound so funny now. It is hard to imagine anyone less saving Israel, the Palestinians, and the world from another four years of mindless violence.

Mark LeVine is a professor of Middle East history at the University of California, Irvine, and is the author of Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam and the soon to be published An Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/2009110112723260741.html

“If he has not virtue, man is the most unholy and the most savage of animals…” Aristotle

In America and Israel it is frequently said that Hamas is guilty of killing the political process evolving between Israel and the Palestinians, owing to its obscurantist insistence on Israel’s destruction. The truth of the matter is that the political process died long before Hamas even ascended to power. Although it is frequently stated, again in Israel and America, that there is no meaningful political process between Israel and the Palestinians because Israel can find no Palestinian partners desiring peace, the truth of the situation, captured by what Henry Siegman writes in the New York Review of Books, is to the contrary:

Whatever one’s reading of Hamas’s intentions as it takes over the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, the notion that its sweeping electoral victory spells “the end of the peace process” is nonsense. The peace process died when Sharon was elected prime minister in 2000. More correctly, it was killed—with malice aforethought—by Sharon’s “unilateralism” with which he implemented the disengagement from Gaza, which in turn provided cover for his continued unilateralism. That he was bringing off the disengagement against the wishes of the settlers helped to divert attention from his refusal to have any negotiations with the Palestinians.

Unilateralism continues to serve as the euphemism for Israeli policies that are expropriating half of what was to have been the state of Palestine, and are concentrating the Palestinian population, about to outnumber the Jewish population, in territorially disconnected Bantustans that make a mockery of the promise of an independent, sovereign, and viable Palestinian state made in the “road map” of 2003, which was put forward by the Quartet of the US, the EU, the UN, and Russia. [1]

Israel’s unilateralism and the callous disregard for Palestinian suffering that it involves is the real reason for the collapse of any viable political process between the Palestinians and Israel. The arrogant political morality that such unilateralism is predicated on is captured in the remarks made by Dov Weissglas, a top Israeli political advisor and a member of the Israeli government’s “Hamas Team” when he joked about the prospects for the Palestinians in the aftermath of their electing the Hamas government, to the raucous laughter of an assembly of high-ranking Israeli officials: “It’s like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but they won’t die.” [2]

Weissglas’ callous statement marked the beginning of the Israeli campaign to destroy Gaza. The current crisis, like the punishing invasion in the aftermath of the capture of Gilad Shilat by Palestinian forces, are just murderous escalations in a campaign dating back to the Palestinians’ election of the Hamas government. Contrary to Weissglas’ quip, many Palestinians have died as a result of the sanctions, bombardments, and extra-judicial assassinations preceding Israel’s all-out assault on Gaza.

As for Hamas, it was never given a chance to prove its commitment to the peace process. Looking beyond the absolutist nature of its founding charter, and the pathetic reality of its strategic capabilities, symbolized by the ill-conceived rocket attacks against Israel, Siegman was able to discern the following facts about Hamas’ political program in an interview with a member of Hamas’s political committee, conducted shortly after the elections that brought the Islamic group to power:

• Members of Hamas’s political directorate do not preclude significant changes over time in their policies toward Israel and in their founding charter, including recognition of Israel, and even mutual minor border adjustments. Such changes depend on Israel’s recognition of Palestinian rights. Hamas will settle for nothing less than full reciprocity.

• Hamas is not opposed to negotiations with Israel, provided negotiations are based on the provision that neither party may act unilaterally to change the situation that prevailed before the 1967 war, and that negotiations, when they are resumed, will take the pre-1967 border as their starting point.

• Hamas will not renounce its religious belief that Palestine is a waqf, or religious endowment, assigned by God to Muslims for all time. However, this theological belief does not preclude accommodation to temporal realities and international law, including Israel’s statehood.

• Hamas is prepared to abide by a long-term hudna, or cease-fire, which would end all violence. Here again, complete reciprocity must prevail, and Israel must end all attacks on Palestinians. If Israel agrees to the cease-fire, Hamas will take responsibility for preventing and punishing Palestinian violations, whether committed by Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Intifada, or its own people. Hamas understands that it cannot demand recognition as the legitimate government of Palestine if it is not prepared to enforce such a cease-fire, in the context of its responsibility for law and order.

• Hamas’s first priority will be to revitalize Palestinian society by strengthening the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, the separation of powers between various branches of government, and the professionalizing and accountability of the security services. It will aim to end corruption in government and implement new economic and social initiatives that are appropriate to the Palestinians’ present circumstances. (My Hamas informant told me that well before the recent legislative elections, Hamas had commissioned teams of experts to prepare detailed plans for the economic and social recovery of Palestinian society; he said that the implementation of these plans would be Hamas’s highest priority, but he did not discuss their content.)

• Hamas will not seek to impose standards of religious behavior and piety on the Palestinian population, such as the wearing of the veil or the abaya, although Hamas believes that certain standards of public modesty—but not of religious observance—should be followed by everyone. [3]

Unfortunately, the promise represented by meaningful talks with Hamas, talks which would have gone a long way towards defusing a lot of the anti-Israeli/American fervor in the Muslim World was not grasped by the Israeli government. Israel’s failure to understand the deeper implications of the legitimacy crisis confronting the “moderate” Arab regimes in the area, her commitment to preemptive warfare, the dictates of pre-election Israeli politics, and her imprisonment to atavistic notions of tribe, nation, and state are too strong to allow her to venture into the moral territory where peace resides. Hence, the gates have been opened to the succession of events that have culminated in the ongoing slaughter occurring in the Gaza Strip.

However, enough is being written about the moral and political failings of the Zionist state. Here, I wish to write about something a lot more difficult for Muslims to examine, namely, our own moral and political failures. The emotional outbursts and enraged diatribes of many Muslims in the aftermath of the latest assault on Gaza have served, in some instances, to highlight many of those failures.

In the anger ensuing during the aftermath of the Israeli assault on Gaza, many Muslims have been moved to unacceptable levels of anger. Unacceptable anger does not lie in outraged reactions to scenes of dead Palestinian babies and decimated property. Such scenes should elicit anger. Hence, when our Prophet Muhammad, peace upon him, counseled against anger when he repeated stated, “Do not become angry,” he was not urging us to rid ourselves of this natural human reaction as that would be impossible. Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali explains his counsel in the following manner:

His counseling, mercy and peace of God upon him, one seeking his advice to not become angry bears two meanings. The first is that he intends to counsel with [taking] the means that obligate good character, such as nobility, generosity, forbearance, humility, bearing abuse, withholding ones harm to others, overlooking the faults of others, pardoning transgressions, maintaining a cheerful countenance and attitude, and similar beautiful traits. For when the souls adopts these traits until they become second nature, this allows one to repulse anger when those things that precipitate it occur.

The second is that he means you should not act on the demands of anger when it occurs. Rather, you should struggle against your soul to leave implementing anger and acting on its commands. When anger owns a human being it becomes the source of his commandments and prohibitions. [4]

Hence the danger of being overwhelmed by anger is that it commands to actions that are contrary to prophetic teachings and the divine law.

As the scenes of carnage and destruction mount in Gaza the Muslim blogosphere is filling up with angry calls for the indiscriminate murder of Jews: soldiers, civilians, men, women, and children. Such calls for indiscriminate killing have nothing to do with our religion. Our Prophet, peace upon him, forbade the killing of women and children in combat. This is one of the points that scholarly consensus has been established concerning. He also forbade the killing of non-combatants. Based on these prophetic teachings Muslim scholars outlined strict rules of engagement governing the conduct of war, as it relates to upholding the sanctity of human life.

Currently, there are those who argue on the basis of the isolated opinions of a minority of jurists, or on the basis of “Jewish exceptionalism,” an idea unknown in our history, that the prophetic teachings relating to the sanctity of civilian life, as well as those protecting women and children should currently be discarded. As a spokesman for Hamas exclaimed, “They have legitimized the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine…” [5]

Discarding such teachings not only allows Israel to claim a moral equivalency between empty words threatening the death of Jewish children and Israeli actions that actually result in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian children, it also leads many Muslims to miss the opportunity to demonstrate the loftiness of the ethical standard our Prophet, peace upon him, defined for us. We are the followers of a merciful Prophet, peace upon him, and not the ideological and philosophical children of those who have introduced the idea that the slaughter of an opponent’s civilian population is an acceptable stratagem or consequence of warfare.

The idea of total warfare is not an Islamic innovation. It is one of the bastard children of the political morality emerging in the post-Enlightenment West. During World War II, it led to both Hitler’s atrocities against the civilian populations of Eastern Europe and Russian, as well as the Nazi Blitzkrieg against London. It also led to the Allied fire-bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and Tokyo, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If anyone were to argue that the flawed morality that made those atrocities possible disappeared with the end of World War II, America’s excesses in Vietnam, her recent destruction of Iraq, with the ensuing deaths of one million Iraqi civilians, Israel’s destruction of Beirut in 1982, an operation that resulted in the deaths of 25,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, along with the current carnage in Gaza all belie that claim.

As Muslims, we must ask ourselves if we wish do go down this slippery slope? This is a question we must consider now as an Ummah, and as individuals, because the advancement and proliferation of weapons technology will one day allow us to potentially wreak upon others the wanton death and destruction that is frequently visited upon us. We must take the high road that warns against killing innocent civilians in the strongest terms:  On that account [Cain’s murder of Abel]: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one killed a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading murderous sedition in the land - it would be as if he killed the whole of humanity: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the whole of humanity. Then although there came to them Our Prophets with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land. (Qur’an 5:32)

If we chose to tread this high road, as a community, we will be a source of hope for a human family that has grown weary of seeing the blood of innocent people flow in the name of causes deemed lofty or base, and we will invite divine grace and providence into our individual lives and into the life of our community. These two factors are the only guarantors that we will be able to repulse the assaults of oppressive enemies.

On the other hand, if we choose to tread the low road, possibly because we think that we can hasten a victory through our own atrocities and abominations that God has denied us, or by imitating our enemies, we are sorely mistaken. Victory only comes from God, as He reminds us in the Qur’an, Victory only comes from God, the Mighty, the Wise. (Qur’an 3:126) God is Mighty, He is capable of giving victory to whomsoever He pleases, and He is Wise, He knows when and unto whom to bestow victory. Victory will never come from our hands. Knowing that we should understand that there will never be a Muslim victory that comes via hands that are stained with the blood of innocent people.

As we move deeper into this new century, we are in the process of defining our faith for the coming generations of Muslims. Will we be a community of virtue, or will we be a community of expediency? We should understand that expediency will never be a substitute for virtue. Our Lord has called us to be a community of virtue; circumstances are calling us to be a community of expediency. Virtue is its own reward in this world, and it is rewarded handsomely by God in the next. Expediency can bring about short-term gains in this world. However, it has no heavenly reward, and history has shown that in the long-run it leads into the abyss of immorality.

Israel has fallen into that abyss. We must ask ourselves if we wish to follow her.

Not equal are good and evil. Repel [evil] with what is best. Unexpectedly, you will find one whom between you and he there was enmity become an intimate friend. (Qur’an 41:34)

Notes:

1. Henry Siegman, “Hamas: The Last Chance for Peace,” New York Review of Books, 53:7, April 27, 2006.
2. Gideon Levy, “Joking About Palestinian Suffering,” Haaretz, February 19, 2006.
3. Siegman, “Hamas: The Last Chance for Peace.”
4. Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali, Jami’ al-‘Ulum wa’l-Hikam (Beirut: Muassasah al-Risalah, 1414/1994), 1:363-364.
5. From a video released by Palestinian spokesman, Mahmud Zahar, quoted in Timesonline, January 6, 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/to/news/world/middle_east/article5454204.ece.

http://www.newislamicdirections.com/nid/articles/into_the_abyss_gaza_and_the_crisis_of_political_morality/

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/10/naomi-klein-boycott-israel

 By Habib Battah

The mainstream US media has been careful to balance images of Gazan suffering with those of Israelis, leading to accusations it is not reflecting the unequal death toll [EPA]

The images of two women on the front page of an edition of The Washington Post last week illustrates how mainstream US media has been reporting Israel's war on Gaza.

On the left was a Palestinian mother who had lost five children. On the right was a nearly equally sized picture of an Israeli woman who was distressed by the fighting, according to the caption.

As the Palestinian woman cradled the dead body of one child, another infant son, his face blackened and disfigured with bruises, cried beside her.

The Israeli woman did not appear to be wounded in any way but also wept.

Arab frustration

To understand the frustration often felt in the Arab world over US media coverage, one only needs to imagine the same front page had the situation been reversed.

If an Israeli woman had lost five daughters in a Palestinian attack, would The Washington Post run an equally sized photograph of a relatively unharmed Palestinian woman, who was merely distraught over Israeli missile fire?

When the front page photographs of the two women were published on December 30, over 350 Palestinians had reportedly been killed compared to just four Israelis.

What if 350 Israelis had been killed and only four Palestinians - would the newspaper have run the stories side by side as if equal in news value?

Like many major news organisations in the US, The Washington Post has chosen to cover the conflict from a perspective that reflects the US government's relationship with Israel. This means prioritising Israel's version of events while underplaying the views of Palestinian groups.

For example, the newspaper's lead article on Tuesday, which was published above the mothers' photographs, quotes Israeli military and civilian sources nine times before quoting a single Palestinian. The first seven paragraphs explain Israel's military strategy. The ninth paragraph describes the anxiety among Israelis, spending evenings in bomb shelters. Ordinary Palestinians, who generally have no access to bomb shelters, do not make an appearance until the 23rd paragraph.

To balance this top story, The Washington Post published another article on the bottom half of the front page about the Palestinian mother and her children. But would the paper have ever considered balancing a story about a massive attack on Israelis with an in-depth lead piece on the strategy of Palestinian militants?

Context stripped

Major US television channels also adopted the equal time approach, despite the reality that Palestinian casualties exceeded Israeli ones by a hundred fold. However, such comparisons were rare because the scripts read by American correspondents often excluded the overall Palestinian death count.

By stripping the context, American viewers may have easily assumed a level playing field, rather than a case of disproportionate force.

Take the opening lines of a report filed by NBC's Martin Fletcher on December 30: "In Gaza two little girls were taking out the rubbish and killed by an Israeli rocket - while in Israel, a woman had been driving home and was killed by a Hamas rocket. No let up today on either side on the fou

rth day of this battle." Omitted from the report was the overall Palestinian death toll, dropped continuously in subsequent reports filed by NBC correspondents over the next several days. When number of deaths did appear - sometimes as a graphic at the bottom of the screen - it was identified as the number of "people killed" rather than being attributed specifically to Palestinians. No wonder the overwhelmingly asymmetrical bombardment of Gaza has been framed vaguely as "rising tensions in the Middle East" by news anchors. With the lack of context, the power dynamic on the ground becomes unclear. ABC news, for example, regularly introduced events in Gaza as "Mideast Violence". And Like NBC, reporters excluded the Palestinian death toll. On December 31, when Palestinian deaths stood at almost 400, ABC correspondent Simon McGergor-Wood began a video package by describing damage to an Israeli school by Hamas rockets. The reporter's script can be paraphrased as follows: Israel wanted a sustainable ceasefire; Israel needed to prevent Hamas from rearming; Hamas targets were hit; Israel was sending in aid and letting the injured out; Israel was doing "everything they can to alleviate the humanitarian crisis". And with that McGregor-Wood signed off. Palestinian perspective missing There was no parallel telling of the Palestinian perspective, and no mention of any damages to Palestinian lives, although news agencies that day had reported five Palestinians dead. For the ABC correspondent, it seemed the Palestinian deaths contained less news value than damage to Israeli buildings. His narration of events, meanwhile, amounted to no less than a parroting of the official Israeli line.   In fact, the Israeli government view typically went unchallenged on major US networks. The US media has been accused of prioritising Israel's version of events [EPA] Interviews with Israeli spokesmen and ambassadors were not juxtaposed with the voices of Palestinian leaders. Prominent American news anchors frequently adopted the Israeli viewpoint. In talk show discussions, instead of debating events on the ground, the pundits often reinforced each other's views. Such an episode occurred on a December 30 broadcast of the MSNBC show, Morning Joe, during which host Joe Scarborough repeatedly insisted that Israel should not be judged. Israel was defending itself just as the US had done throughout history. "How many people did we kill in Germany?" Scarborough posed. The blame rested on the Palestinians, he concluded, connecting the Gaza attacks to the Camp David negotiations of 2000. "They gave the Palestinians everything they could ask for, and they walked away from the table," he said repeatedly. Although this view was challenged once by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US official, who appeared briefly on the show, subsequent guests agreed incessantly with Scarborough's characterisation of the Palestinians as negligent, if not criminal in nature. According to guest Dan Bartlett, a former White House counsel, the Palestinian leadership had made it "very clear" that they were uninterested in peace talks. Another guest, NBC anchor David Gregory, began by noting that Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian president, "could not be trusted", according to Bill Clinton, the former US president. Gregory then added that Hamas had "undercut the peace process" and actually welcomed the attacks. "The reality is that Hamas wanted this, they didn't want the ceasefire," he said. Columnist Margaret Carlson also joined the show, agreeing in principal that Hamas should be "crushed" but voicing concern over the cost of such action. Thus the debate was not whether Israel was justified, but rather what Israel should do next. The Palestinian human tragedy received little to no attention. Victim's perspective Arab audiences saw a different picture altogether. Rather than mulling Israel's dilemma, the Arab news networks captured the air assault in chilling detail from the perspective of its victims. The divide in coverage was staggering. For US networks, the bombing of Gaza has largely been limited to two-minute video packages or five minute talk show segments. This has usually meant a few snippets of jumbled video: explosions from a distance and a momentary glance at victims; barely enough time to remember a face, let alone a personality. Victims were rarely interviewed. The availability of time and space, American broadcast executives might argue, were mitigating factors. On MSNBC for example, Gaza competed for air time last week with stories about the economy, such as a hike in liquor sales, or celebrity news, such as speculation over the publishing of photographs of Sarah Palin's new grandchild. Most US networks have reported exclusively from Israel [GALLO/GETTY] On Arab TV, however, Gaza has been the only story. For hours on end, live images from the streets of Gaza are beamed into Arab households. Unlike the correspondents from ABC and NBC, who have filed their reports exclusively from Israeli cities, Arab crews are inside Gaza, with many correspondents native Gazans themselves. The images they capture are often broadcast unedited, and over the last week, a grizzly news gathering routine has been established. The cycle begins with rooftop-mounted cameras, capturing the air raids live. After moments of quiet, thunderous bombing commences and plumes of smoke rise over the skyline. Then, anguish on the streets. Panicked civilians run for cover as ambulances careen through narrow alleys. Rescue workers hurriedly pick through the rubble, often pulling out mangled bodies. Fathers with tears of rage hold dead children up to the cameras, vowing revenge. The wounded are carried out in stretchers, gushing with blood. Later, local journalists visit the hospitals and more gruesome images, more dead children are broadcast. Doctors wrap up the tiny bodies and carry them into overflowing morgues. The survivors speak to reporters. Their distraught voices are heard around the region; the outflow of misery and destruction is constant. Palestinian voices The coverage extends beyond Gaza. Unlike the US networks, which are often limited to one or two correspondents in Israel, major Arab television channels maintain correspondents and bureaus throughout the region. As angry protests take place on a near daily basis, the crews are there to capture the action live. Even in Israel, Arab reporters are employed, and Israeli politicians are regularly interviewed. But so are members of Hamas and the other Palestinian factions. The inclusion of Palestinian voices is not unique to Arab media. On a number of international broadcasters, including  BBC World and CNN International, Palestinian leaders and Gazans in particular are regularly heard. And the Palestinian death toll has been provided every day, in most broadcasts and by most correspondents on the ground. Reports are also filed from Arab capitals. On some level, the relatively small American broadcasting output can be attributed to a general trend in downsizing foreign reporting. But had a bloodbath on this scale happened in Israel, would the networks not have sent in reinforcements? For now, the Israeli viewpoint seems slated to continue to dominate Gaza coverage. The latest narrative comes from the White House, which has called for a "durable" ceasefire, preventing Hamas terrorists from launching more rockets. Naturally the soundbites are parroted by US broadcasters throughout the day and then reinforced by pundits, fearing the dangerous Hamas. Arab channels, however, see a different outcome. Many have begun referring to Hamas, once controversial, as simply "the Palestinian resistance". While American analysts map out Israel's strategy, Arab broadcasters are drawing their own maps, plotting the expanding range of Hamas rockets, and predicting a strengthened hand for opposition to Israel, rather than a weakened one. Habib Battah is a freelance journalist and media analyst based in Beirut and New York. The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera. http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/20091585448204690.html

By Shane Bauer in Damascus

Abu Marzouq insists Hamas will win the war against Israel [Reuters]

Israel's war on Gaza has left more than 700 Palestinians dead - nearly a third of them women and children - and more than 3,000 injured.

But at the organisation's headquarters in Damascus, 100km miles from the territory, Musa Abu Marzouq, the deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, told Al Jazeera why he believes his organisation is on the verge of victory against Israel.

Al Jazeera: Under what conditions will Hamas agree a ceasefire with Israel?

Abu Marzouq: We have three conditions for any peace initiative coming from any state.

First, the aggression of the Israelis should stop. All of the gates should be opened, including the gate of Rafah between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Finally, Israel has to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

We are not saying we will stop firing rockets from the Gaza Strip to Israel - we are only talking about stopping the aggression from the Israelis against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.

When others talk about a ceasefire, they are saying all military operations should stop.

But we are sending a message [by firing rockets]: "We will not surrender. We have to fight the Israelis and we will win this battle."

We know we are going to lose a lot of people from our side, but we are going to win, inshallah.

Members of Hamas have said that Israel is using collective punishment by targeting civilians who support Hamas. But is Hamas' targeting of Israeli civilians also not a type of collective punishment?

We are defending ourselves.

When you talk about any occupation, people should resist the soldiers and the army who occupy their country.

We don't have weapons sophisticated enough to launch at exact targets.

We are sending a message: "You can't provide security to your side until you bring security to the Palestinian side."

We are looking for freedom and for security for the Palestinian people. This is our message to Israel.

They need to understand that we are working for an independent state.

How do you think Israel's war on Gaza will affect Hamas' position?

The Israeli push against Hamas has increased our popularity sharply among the Palestinian people and throughout the Muslim world.

After the Israelis killed Hamas leaders like Ahmed Yassin and Ismail Abu Shanab, Hamas won the elections with 76 seats out of a 132-seat parliament.

Using these means doesn't decrease the popularity of Hamas, it increases it.

What exactly would you consider to be "victory" for Hamas?

A victory for Hamas would mean the Israelis did not accomplish their objectives.

If they can't stop rockets from coming into Israel, that means they failed.

But the real reason for Israel's aggression is to change the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip - they have been thinking about this since Hamas won the elections - it is not because of the rockets.

They failed to lead the people in an uprising against Hamas in the Gaza Strip with their economic embargo.

They tried to push Fatah to stand and fight Hamas, but we defeated them in the Gaza Strip, so the Israelis have taken action themselves.

Why, at the beginning of this conflict, did Hamas decide not to renew the six-month ceasefire?

We agreed to this ceasefire under Egyptian mediation with certain conditions.

All military operations were to be stopped by June 19. All of the six gates between Israel and Gaza were to remain open. In the first 10 days of the truce, 30 per cent of the goods coming from Israel to the Gaza Strip were to be allowed in and, after that 10-day period, all supplies were to be allowed to enter. Also, there was to be a meeting between the Europeans, Egyptians, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to discuss how to open the Rafah gate. Finally, the ceasefire was supposed to be extended to the West Bank. During those six months, the Israelis kept the border crossings closed most of the time. Only 15 per cent of goods were allowed to enter the Gaza Strip from Israel. They killed more than 40 people in the last month of the ceasefire, eight of which were in the last week. On many occasions, the Egyptians told us that the Israelis were not respecting the agreement. Their refusal to allow supplies to enter was a type of slow killing of the Palestinians. The Palestinians eventually asked: "What is the use of this ceasefire for us?" For that reason, we didn't renew that agreement. Khalid Meshaal, the leader of Hamas, in December called for a "military intifada against the Zionist enemy" and as a "peaceful intifada internally". What did he mean by an internal peaceful intifada? I think he meant that there needs to be internal change among the Palestinians. Right now the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank controls everything. This is not acceptable. We need to peacefully change these conditions. How are relations between Hamas and Fatah now? Now the priority for Hamas, Fatah or any Palestinian organisation is to stand against the Israeli aggression. After we finish with this battle, I guess we can talk about reconciliation or reuniting with Fatah. We openly welcome any kind of negotiation or dialogue between Fatah and Hamas to end the separation of the Palestinians. When French president Nicolas Sarkozy met with Syrian president Bahsar al-Assad, many said he tried to encourage Damascus to put pressure on Hamas to stop firing rockets. Have you faced any kind of pressure from Syria? We haven't seen any pressure from Syria. They respect our independence. They respect our choices. They respect the policies we chose for our people. Has Hamas had any contact with the administration of Barack Obama, the US president-elect? No, we haven't had any direct contact. Do you have any expectations regarding the approach of Hillary Clinton, the US nominee-designate for the post of US secretary of state? We cannot evaluate something that lies in the future. We know that in the US senate, Hillary Clinton's vote was always with Israel, but maybe there will be some differences when she becomes secretary of state.

Source: Al Jazeera

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/200918155333111890.html