Gaza has been invaded by Israel many times since the indigenous people of Palestine were run off their ancestral land and herded there by a newly-formed state, the year I was a newly-formed human. I remember 2008, 2012 and 2014; that was the year I wrote the following, for a forum on U.S. policy in the Middle East under Professor Michael Schwartz (Stony Brook State University, author, "Levers of Power").
If I would change anything, it would be the word, "mitigate," toward the end. I think I meant "modify" or "render moot." I pick this nit to highlight the extraordinary amount of change (zero), except for the increase in bloody civilian deaths (logarithmic) after a full ten years since.
There are links at the bottom that may provide a glimpse into the relationship between Israel and al-Shifa Hospital, since destroyed by Israel.
Thank you (all) for holding an honest conversation, in which disagreement is permissible.
Thank you for asking for my comment, and that's all it is, for I have no solutions. It boils down to this: I live in a peaceful, rural, beautiful part of the world, on a meager income from farm labor and other work, some seasonal, some sporadic. I'm 66, with no retirement plan and no nest egg. The minimally functional local economy would not function even at this level but for the war-and-extraction economy that is currently exterminating the Palestinian people and making Israel a monster. It keeps gas prices low here, and myriad other petroleum-derived benefits we don't even think about, like the synthetics in our cars, houses, clothes, fertilizers, foods and medicines. Let me try to articulate the connection.
The background to all this, as I understand it, is that stateless political entities hope to get land and resources for their stateless constituencies, and a seat among the high stakes players in the "international community." The entrance requirements to that lofty fraternity are steep, because the members only wish to use the new aspirants as pawns in their own games, and steal their resources; anything but move over and make room at the top. Nevertheless the newcomers have little other choice if they and their people are to survive. So, they do what all the established nations did as startups, e.g., extortion, murder and hijacking, hoping to amass sufficient economic and political power to grab the bottom rung of civilization. Until they do, they are called "Terrorists," as were all the others, including the USA when it was a ragtag band of angry farmers (and incidentally, radical religionists in their times).
Lest readers think I'm describing one or another of the antagonists, please notice I have not made any assignments above. My view is that this same drama plays out over and over and over. All our art and literature deals with it; all our military and political and religious traditions. I can't think of a culture that has not been immersed in this struggle, and the older ones have played every bloody, miserable role at one time or another.
The various participants emerge in this churning arena at quite different stages of competence and circumstance, so when there is a "conflict" such as the one under discussion, it is actually rather unlikely in modern times that the antagonists will be closely matched unless they are both quite small in the scheme of things. What seems historically new is that we spend so much time on these horrendously bloody acts without completing them. Something like this would have taken about a week, a hundred years ago, the bodies disposed of, the victors victorious, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The difference, besides sheer population density, is that a participant with the overwhelming economic and military might to ride on the surface of this maelstrom mediates these "conflicts" so as to keep the rest busy while extracting their resources.
A pretty kettle of fish indeed.
Against this context, to argue about who broke a ceasefire first, or whose hidden agenda precludes any serious peacemaking efforts, seems quite futile to me. Peace is not in the program in Washington, which is both playing and being played by Israel, but is the keystone that keeps the carnage rolling. To have peace in Gaza, short of the peace of the graveyard of course, we have to deal with the non-democratic, transnational corporate system that drives the economy of continual warfare and resource extraction, without which the present American way of life (which now extends globally) will collapse. In fact it has collapsed quite substantially already for "the 99%". As long is the system functions as it does now, peace and prosperity for a very large and growing portion of humanity is out of the question. And if it is not moderated somehow, it will grind on until life for everyone becomes untenable.
It doesn't help to see it as an evil plot. It may be more useful to declare it a form of addictive disease that we didn't count on when we took that first free hit of petroleum. There were earlier versions of this, sugar, rum and slaves come to mind, but now scale is a major factor. Now we can't live without it, and we can't live with it: population and resources are on unsustainable trajectories, and whole generations of terribly abused individuals are coming of age in a world of awful weaponry.
I, a 1966 highschool dropout, presume to enter into this conversation among true experts because my taxes are the reason Israel's government can do all that shooting and shelling and bombing in a densely populated area they already control utterly. They even control the water supply, the amount of food in Gaza, even the paychecks for public service jobs. The Israeli government gets a great deal more Federal money from Washington than my little State of Vermont does. Israel, with more policy clout in Washington than our own representatives, might as well be our fifty-first State, except that would be a demotion. This is all simple arithmetic.
From where I sit it appears that a gang of ruthless thugs is bludgeoning the hapless population of a vast concentration camp to death, to take over their land and resources. I don't buy any of the rhetoric that attempts to explain why this is the action of a civilized people; it's pretty much what civilized people do all the time. I'd say the same if Vermont was attacking Frackville, PA, with hellfire missiles. (There really is a place called Frackville, PA. The people there have exceptional hair and fingernails, and subsist entirely on pizza and beer, to judge by the predominant businesses on Main Street.) If I accept the popular notion that the USA is a representative democracy, then Gazan children and women and men who aren't dying of starvation and disease are being shot, burned and blown to bits in my name, with my backing and protection. Of course nobody consulted me about it, and I have been ignored on the subject by the policy makers. So have my Senator and my Congressperson, who agree with me.
But the behaviors of all the antagonists conform to the same old synopsis outlined above, and their rank, so to speak, in the global power hierarchy must mitigate some of the arguments about original culpability, as Washington pulls the purse strings and wields the big sticks. And as mentioned, I pay.
In essence, the USA is doing Gaza for reasons having nothing to do with Palestinians or Jews or terrorism or democracy, and the Israeli government is a pawn in a larger game. Later on, Israel may find these favors being called in, as Washington's tender attentions in Africa over the last three or four decades come to their bloody fruition.
Norwegian doctors Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse were at al-Shifa Hospital during Israel's deadly assault on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009. For a time, they were not just the only western doctors in Gaza, but among the handful of western witnesses to what they repeatedly call Israel's massacre of some 1,400 Palestinian men, women and children. Dr. Gilbert's testimonies were broadcast worldwide on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN and more. Dr. Gilbert was one of two foreign doctors allowed into Gaza during "Operation Cast Lead."
BBC, 14 November 2014: "Israel bans Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert from Gaza"
Dr. Mads Gilbert interview, February 2024:
Earlier links (still active) first sent to me in 2012: CBS News and a lecture
