U.S. and Israel Blame the Victims to Justify Crimes Against Humanity Israeli and U.S. government officials, as well as the U.S. media, claim that Israel’s attack was provoked by rocket attacks by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas (that controls Gaza) into Israel. The Bush regime called Hamas “thugs,” blaming Hamas for provoking Israel and demanding it end its rocket attacks—while pointedly refusing to call on Israel to stop its assault.
During the campaign, Barack Obama said (of the small-scale Hamas attacks on Israel), “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that.” He made clear throughout the campaign, including in what can only be called a bloodthirsty speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), that he supported these same policies. It could well be the case that Israel timed this attack in such a way (before Obama was inaugurated) as to allow Obama to maintain the appearance of being “above the fray” while in fact being fully on board and supportive of this attack. His silence in face of this massacre speaks loudly indeed.
Blaming the Palestinians for the massacre in Gaza turns reality completely upside down. It is a pretext, and justification for mass murder.
Israel’s latest attack is the continuation of over 60 years of violent efforts to crush the Palestinian people and break any resistance to Israeli designs—going back to Israel’s founding in 1948 as a settler colonial state and an arm of Western imperialism in the Middle East.
This step-by-step campaign of ethnic cleansing began with violently driving some 750,000 Palestinians from their lands during the 1947-48 Arab-Israeli war; the destruction of hundreds of conquered Palestinian villages; the military conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 war; the illegal colonialization of these “occupied territories" afterward, coupled with a steady assault on Palestinian economy and society. Israel claimed each assault was simply a response to Palestinian “terror,” or refusal to make peace; while each Israeli assault furthered its strategic objectives of destroying Palestine.
Most of Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians were forced from their homes in other parts of Palestine during the establishment of Israel. From 1967 until 2005, Israel militarily occupied Gaza. After ending the occupation, Israel kept complete control of this desert strip’s land, sea and air borders. Israel sent armored bulldozers to destroy Gaza’s fruit orchards, blockaded the fishing port, cut off supplies to factories and other businesses, and forbid most Gaza residents the right to work elsewhere or even leave. Gaza today is a humanitarian crisis, its population living in prison-like conditions.
http://revcom.us/a/151online/gaza-en.htmlThe continuing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the fundamental cause of the continuing violence. U.S. pressure on Palestinian authorities to accept a partial withdrawal by Israeli forces must end.
Negotiations stemming from the recent summit that seek to formulate a compromise' solution based on the continued Israeli occupation of sections of the West Bank are bound to fail. The Socialist Party calls upon the Israeli government to immediately withdraw its military forces from all of the Occupied Territories, and to recognize the authority of a Palestinian state within these boundaries. The five billion dollars in U.S. aid currently going to Israel should be redirected to the education, health care and housing of the Palestinian people.
Once Israeli troops have withdrawn from the Occupied Territories, the Arab countries will fully recognize Israel and negotiations will begin on a fair process by which to return the millions of Palestinian refugees to the area. This will require the Israelis to accept some of the refugees into Israel, with others returning to the West Bank and Gaza. The negotiations will have to work out a means by which East Jerusalem can be returned to Arab control, while access to Jerusalem's religious sites is fully guaranteed to Jews, Christians and everyone else.
Once Israel has totally withdrawn from the Occupied Territories the two sides can begin to develop a framework that can make it possible for Jews and Arabs to live in peace within a setting that guarantees equal rights for everyone, whatever their religion or ethnicity.
http://socialistparty-usa.org/statements/israelpalestine1207.html
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