Despite ravages of war, Gaza supports armed resistance to lift the siege

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/despite-supports-resistance.html

Hours before the latest ceasefire was set to expire last night, Israel resumed attacks on the Gaza Strip and Hamas again began to launch rockets. Both sides blamed each other for the failed ceasefire. Five missiles hit the al-Dalou family home in Gaza City, killing the wife, son and three-year-old daughter of Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif, and injuring 18. The al-Dalou family was targeted in 2012 when an airstrike destroyed their home.

With airstrikes throughout Gaza, 22 have died and 100 wounded since the collapse of the most recent ceasefire. Rockets have landed as far into Israel as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, demonstrating Hamas’ unabated capability to continue attacks.

While Israel’s assault on Gaza has now claimed at least 2,030 lives and caused more than 10,302 injuries, along with entire neighborhoods destroyed, frustration with the status quo has boiled over into near-total support for armed resistance. As exhausted as they are with the war, everyone I spoke to across Gaza said they were willing to endure another round of fighting if it meant an improvement in the long term humanitarian situation. Beyond that, no one seemed willing to take Israel’s assault lying down.

Kamal Qadan’s family barely escaped from Rafah during the Black Friday massacre, when 120 civilians were killed after Israel invoked the Hannibal Directive — the order to conduct an all-out assault on the circumference of an area where a soldier was supposedly captured. As we sat in his home, his grandchildren played with bombs that Israeli jets had dropped through their roof. Israel had attacked them and their neighbors with F-16s, tanks, artillery, Apache helicopters, bulldozers, and snipers.

[4now]

1. Israel must end the illegal siege of Gaza

If it ever expects to find peace.

[hack89]

3. Hamas should stop shooting rockets

If it ever expects the blockade to be lifted.

[Turbineguy]

2. They should

love their children more than hating Jews.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

5. The Israelis should love their children more than the love hurting Palestinians.

[oberliner]

4. According to one guy Dan Cohen talked to in Gaza?

That seems to be all the evidence provided in the article for the rather dubious headline.

[faisal akbar]

7. And how

exactly do you propose he could prove his claim?

[leftynyc]

9. How about the terrorist hamas

finally allowing an election? That would show how Gazans feel about a whole host of issues. But no, the terrorist hamas will not allow that. They'll just continue to execute anyone who goes against them.

[oberliner]

10. Don't make a claim with just one piece of anecdotal evidence

I know the site where this article was posted is not really interested in journalism so I should cut them some slack, but still.

[Jefferson23]

6. snip* The distinguished human rights lawyer Raji Sourani:

who has remained in Gaza through years of Israeli brutality and terror, writes that “The most common sentence I heard when people began to talk about ceasefire: everybody says it's better for all of us to die and not go back to the situation we used to have before this war. We don't want that again. We have no dignity, no pride; we are just soft targets, and we are very cheap. Either this situation really improves or it is better to just die. I am talking about intellectuals, academics, ordinary people: everybody is saying that.”

Similar sentiments have been widely heard: it is better to die with dignity than to be slowly strangled by the torturer.



For Gaza, the plans for the norm were explained forthrightly by Dov Weissglass, the confidant of Ariel Sharon who negotiated the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005. Hailed as a grand gesture in Israel and among acolytes and the deluded elsewhere, the withdrawal was in reality a carefully staged “national trauma,” properly ridiculed by informed Israeli commentators, among them Israel’s leading sociologist, the late Baruch Kimmerling.

What actually happened is that Israeli hawks, led by Sharon, realized that it made good sense to transfer the illegal settlers from their subsidized communities in devastated Gaza to subsidized settlements in the other occupied territories, which Israel intends to keep. But instead of simply transferring them, as would have been simple enough, it was considered more effective to present the world with images of little children pleading with soldiers not to destroy their homes, amidst cries of “Never Again,” with the implication obvious. What made the farce even more transparent was that it was a replica of the staged trauma when Israel had to evacuate the Egyptian Sinai in 1982. But it played very well for the intended audience abroad.

remainder: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20140814.htm

[faisal akbar]

8. credibility

Raji Sourani is a very credible source who is a lawyer.