Naomi Klein writes:
It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.
Amen to that.
The carnage in Gaza should appall anyone with a conscience, and yet, as Free Learner points out, our own Senate--on a voice vote, so there's no record of who voted which way--passed a resolution expressing unequivocal support of the Israelis.
The Israelis have shelled ambulances, schools, and hospitals. They have refused to let humanitarian aid through to the wounded in Gaza. They have rounded people up into a single house and then shelled the house. Humanitarian workers have found emaciated children left for days, without food or water, near the corpses of their parents. The Israelis have used white phosphorus, which burns deep into tissue and, because the phosphorus is absorbed by the body, can cause multi-organ failure.
Yet Hamas is to be condemned as entirely at fault and Israel is to be lauded for "defending" itself.
Claims of genocide are said to be inappropriate, yet there is evidence that Israel's intentions are nothing short of genocidal. Yet we are never to say the word, never to levy the charge; there is a collusion of silence on this topic. John Pilger on the silence of "the Anglo-American intelligentsia":
They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist." They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine's right to exist was canceled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing." Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, ‘Expel them'. The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted "how easily" Israel's leaders spoke of how it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy … who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war … we are appalled."
Pilger quotes Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, who wrote on January 2:
It seems that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system … Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology – in its most consensual and simplistic variety – has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide].
So, as Naomi Klein says, the time has come--or came quite a while back--for boycott, divest, sanctions.
(As I was writing this, I just saw a diary on Daily Kos that says Israel has now banned Arab parties from running in next month's election. So much for any idea that Israel is a democracy.)
In fact, the Palestinians called for BDS back in 2005. Israel has ignored UN resolutions and the rulings of the International Court of Justice, building a wall to sequester the Palestinians, refusing them food, fuel, and humanitarian aid, and condemning the Palestinians to misery and death.
Visit this site to endorse the call for BDS and for more information.
Go here to find out how you, personally, can boycott Israeli-made products. A barcode of 729 indicates that the product comes from Israel. In addition, you can learn more about what companies draw on Israeli technology and components. In addition, some Western companies manufacture equipment used by the Israeli military against the Palestinians. It's time we educated ourselves about how we are complicit in the slaughtering of the Palestinians.
According to Naomi Klein, support for BDS is growing worldwide. The recent events in Gaza should intensify this movement. I hope my readers will do their part to join in this movement to make Israel understand that the enormity, unacceptability, and immorality of its actions have consequences.
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