Moral Failure of the Jews

The news from Gaza is horrific. Israeli forces knowingly shelled a U.N. school where Palestinians were cowering in fear, killing at least 40 civilians and injuring over fifty, most of them women and children. A U.N. spokesman said that Israel had been notified that the building was a shelter, given its GPS coordinates, and the facility was clearly marked. Israel's military said its shelling — the deadliest single episode since the campaign against Gaza began a week ago — was a response to mortar fire from within the school compound and said Hamas militants were using civilians "as human shields." Some 15,000 Palestinians have packed the U.N.'s 23 Gaza schools because their homes were destroyed or to flee the violence. Nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed during the 11-day assault and almost 3,000 injured. Israel's devastating attack is in retaliation for rocket attacks by Hamas on its relatively well-off residents, killing four since the war began. Five Israel soldiers have died, three from "friendly" fire. Israel's disproportionate response to the relatively minor irritation of "terrorism" by Hamas, amounting to genocide, is comparable to killing mosquitoes with a bazooka (pick your own metaphor).

"There's nowhere safe in Gaza. Everyone here is terrorized and traumatized," said John Ging, head of Gaza operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, now a Middle East envoy for the EU, said, for "anyone living in Gaza, it is hell." Even Cardinal Renato Martino, the Vatican's minister for justice and peace, charged that conditions in Gaza "increasingly resemble a big concentration camp." Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip is “genocide” and appealed for urgent action by the U.N. Security Council. “Gaza today is living a new Palestinian catastrophe,” Abbas said. “I call upon this council to take the first necessary steps to save my people in Gaza, a resolution calling for an immediate cessation of Israeli aggression.” The night before, three Palestinian men were killed in an Israeli attack on another U.N. school for refugees. “These attacks by Israeli military forces which endanger U.N. facilities acting as places of refuge are totally unacceptable and must not be repeated,” said U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. “Equally unacceptable are any actions by militants which endanger the Palestinian civilian population.” International relief agencies warned that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was becoming increasingly horrorific. Most of the population of 1.5 million are without power, and hundreds of thousands are without running water.

Where are the Jewish voices speaking out against the violence perpetuated by the Jewish state of Israel in their name? I ask this because many people have wondered why so many Muslims are silent in the face of terrorist acts committed by supposedly devout followers of Islam, from the attack on the World Trade Center to the latest suicide bombing in Iraq. Does this "conspiracy of silence" show that Judaism or Islam is an inherently violent religion?

Many radical atheists, like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, believe religion itself is at fault. I don't agree. I think that religious language is a cover for other, more concrete disagreements. Most political disputes are about land and power. This was the case in Ireland and I am certain that the root of the conflict in the Middle East is a struggle for control of land. Palestinians hate Jewish Zionists because their land was stolen to create the state of Israel. Jews feel threatened by every non-Jew and push for a "final solution" in which Jews and Arabs (many of whom are Christians) are separated by a giant fence that will prevent all contact between these disparate and desperate people.

The fence, and the "two-state solution," are as illusory as the belief that a well-financed (by the US.) military machine can enter a dense urban environment and stamp out all guerrilla activity. "Terrorism" is always the weapon of the weak. The rockets Hamas lobs into Israel are more symbolic than dangerous (which is not to say that a rare bull's eye cannot kill). Israel's relentless destruction of Gaza will create thousands, perhaps millions, of new terrorists dedicated to eradicating the state of Israel. When will they ever learn?

Those waiting for Obama to take over from the sycophantic administration of George Bush will probably be disappointed. While visiting Israel in July he said, "If somebody is sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that - and I'd expect Israelis to do the same thing." But what if his daughters were cowering in a U.N. school in Gaza? Yesterday, Obama broke his silence (he wasn't so quiet when terrorists attacked in Mumbai) by telling reporters: "The loss of civilian life in Gaza and in Israel [note the strained attempt at balance] is a source of deep concern to me, and after January 20th I’ll have plenty to say about the issue." But his support for Israel, as well as that of his new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is well known. There is some evidence, however, that the knee-jerk overwhelming support of Israel by U.S. politicians is at odds with the American public.

Hundreds of Thai Muslims have been demonstrating in front of the Israeli embassy in Bangkok. I'm tempted to join them. I feel angry and powerless about what's happening in Gaza. The conflict there seems endless. I watch the speakers in the U.N. Security Council on CNN debate the issue, recycling the same old arguments I've heard for years. As long as the U.S. gives a blank check to the Jewish state, and Jews around the world continue to support the government that commits war crimes in their name, the genocide will continue.

ADDENDUM: Read "Moral Blindness on Gaza" from The Nation by Robert Scheer. The same article appeared as "Why do so few speak up for Gaza" in Truthdig.com where Scheer is an editor. In it, he writes:

Even if we accept the harshest portrayal of the tactics and motives of the Palestinian movements against Israel after the Six-Day War, at what point did that terrorism represent a serious challenge to the survival of the Jewish people or the state that claims to speak in their name? Yet that survival is invoked to justify the vastly excessive use of force by the Israeli war machine, with frequent allusions to the Holocaust previously visited upon the Jewish people, a holocaust that had nothing to do with Palestinians or Muslims, and everything to do with Central Europeans claiming to be Christians. The high moral claim of the Israeli occupation rests not on the objective reality of a Palestinian threat to Israel's survival, but rather on the non sequitur cry that "never again" should harm come to Jews as it did in Central Europe seven decades ago.

Describing how in 1948 "a group of prominent Jewish intellectuals including Albert Einstein, Sidney Hook and Hannah Arendt" warned about the "terrorist" Menachem Begin, leader of the new state of Israel which had been established partly through terrorist acts against the British, Scheer asks, "Where are the voices that reflect the uncompromising morality of Einstein's generation of Jewish intellectuals willing to acknowledge fault and humanity on both sides of the political equation?"

And by all means, if you have the slightest doubt that Israel is guilty of the most horrific war crimes, past and present, read Robert Fisk's angry "Why Do They Hate The West So Much, We Will Ask."