The New Yorker: "Collective Punishment in Gaza" by Rashid Khalidi

[Comrade Grumpy]

It gets even stronger after the first four paragraphs...

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/collective-punishment-gaza

JULY 29, 2014
Collective Punishment in Gaza
BY RASHID KHALIDI

Three days after the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the current war in Gaza, he held a press conference in Tel Aviv during which he said, in Hebrew, according to the Times of Israel, “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.”

It’s worth listening carefully when Netanyahu speaks to the Israeli people. What is going on in Palestine today is not really about Hamas. It is not about rockets. It is not about “human shields” or terrorism or tunnels. It is about Israel’s permanent control over Palestinian land and Palestinian lives. That is what Netanyahu is really saying, and that is what he now admits he has “always” talked about. It is about an unswerving, decades-long Israeli policy of denying Palestine self-determination, freedom, and sovereignty.

What Israel is doing in Gaza now is collective punishment. It is punishment for Gaza’s refusal to be a docile ghetto. It is punishment for the gall of Palestinians in unifying, and of Hamas and other factions in responding to Israel’s siege and its provocations with resistance, armed or otherwise, after Israel repeatedly reacted to unarmed protest with crushing force. Despite years of ceasefires and truces, the siege of Gaza has never been lifted.

As Netanyahu’s own words show, however, Israel will accept nothing short of the acquiescence of Palestinians to their own subordination. It will accept only a Palestinian “state” that is stripped of all the attributes of a real state: control over security, borders, airspace, maritime limits, contiguity, and, therefore, sovereignty. The twenty-three-year charade of the “peace process” has shown that this is all Israel is offering, with the full approval of Washington. Whenever the Palestinians have resisted that pathetic fate (as any nation would), Israel has punished them for their insolence. This is not new.

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Much more at the link.

[msongs]

1. first steal the land. deal with the people later. its human behavior as old as time nt

[bigtree]

2. religious persecution

. . . punishing a people who have absolutely no control over the combatants on either side.

[ReRe]

3. K&R

Excellent article by Rashid Khalidi, and thank you Comrade Grumpy! But there's something that needs to be added to his story at:

http://www.democratiunderground.com/10025309834

It's a guaranteed blow-the-mind-icing for this cake Rashid Khalidi baked.

[Uncle Joe]

4. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Comrade Grumpy.

[Comrade Grumpy]

5. Kick for the daytime crowd. n/t