Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask

Wednesday, 7 January 2009

So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night’s work in Gaza by the army that believes in “purity of arms”. But why should we be surprised?

Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?

What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. “Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties,” yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night’s butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.

What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I’m afraid, it was. After covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle East – by Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops – I suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting our war against “international terror”. The Israelis claim they are fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our security, for our safety, by our standards. And so we are also complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza.

I’ve reported the excuses the Israeli army has served up in the past for these outrages. Since they may well be reheated in the coming hours, here are some of them: that the Palestinians killed their own refugees, that the Palestinians dug up bodies from cemeteries and planted them in the ruins, that ultimately the Palestinians are to blame because they supported an armed faction, or because armed Palestinians deliberately used the innocent refugees as cover.

The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel’s right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel’s own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin’s government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 – a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border – were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn’t even apologise.

Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance carrying civilians from a neighbouring village – again after they were ordered to leave by Israel – and killed three children and two women. The Israelis claimed that a Hizbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It was untrue. I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.

And I write the following without the slightest doubt: we’ll hear all these scandalous fabrications again. We’ll have the Hamas-to-blame lie – heaven knows, there is enough to blame them for without adding this crime – and we may well have the bodies-from-the-cemetery lie and we’ll almost certainly have the Hamas-was-in-the-UN-school lie and we will very definitely have the anti-Semitism lie. And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn’t. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians.

Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948 – when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel – is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.

I am not sure if you are aware that not all Jews believe in Zionism or Israel as a Jewish state. There are Jews who condemn the very establishment of Israel and actively work to reverse what had happened in 1948.

Recently, they have marched in New York against the Israeli atrocities and sported banners that call for Israel to be returned to Palestinian sovereignty and condemns the carnage in Gaza.

If you wish to expand on your knowledge and learn more about them, you may do so at some of their websites:

http://www.NKUSA.org
http://www.TorahTrueJews.org
http://www.nkcanada.ca

Those are the enlightened Jews who did not engage in the calamity that surrounded the illegal creation of that entity called Israel.

Of course the sources I name would support my contentions; there is nothing wrong with that. Your refusal to read is an indication of the level of intellect that you possess and a pointer to your worry to read something that negates what you have been indoctrinated to believe. I am willing to read any book that you may call but only if it is relevant to the points at hand; otherwise I do my own reading.

I was not seeking your being impressed; I was attempting to appeal to your commonsense which you do not seem to have plenty of.

I shall not chronicle for you the many many incidents in which Israel committed extreme atrocities against the Palestinians; starting in 1948 on; it remains your prerogative to research and learn on your own.

As to the events at hand; I presume you feel it proper to lay a siege on Gaza and have the populace starve, no medicine, no electricity, no fuel unless Israel allows it. Hamas’s missiles were the response to that immoral siege and the continuous attacks on Gaza. You make it sound like Israel made no attacks until late December 2008; this cannot be further from the truth.

Hamas,s missiles will continue until the siege is lifted completely, the Israelis leave for good, and all ports of Gaza allowed to function normally so that the Palestinian human rights are guaranteed. Hamas ought to develop its military as the years come to deter any further aggression on the part of Israel; it will never work to allow Israel to do what it is doing now.

Palestine in its entirety is an Arab/ Muslim land just as America is America and the Jews wishing to live there may do so just as they live in New York under American law; no pure racist Jewish state that treats non-Jews as tenth class citizens and forbid the Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes. Those who think that the Palestinians will forget their rights are so deluded.

You may support Israel as much as you want, but the truth is no longer hidden in this age and the lies upon lies that the Zionists were able to circulate in the US before are not working anymore; the American and European people are learning the truth now. But what matters the most, is that the Arabs and Muslims of today are not those that the imperial colonial powers left in 1948; they are growing strong, confident, and determined.

You wrote:
“further deprive the Palestinians from their basic human rights to exist and defend themselves.”

What utter nonsense. None of us who support Israel are trying to deny Palestinians any basic human rights. Just deny Islamic terrorists the right to blow up Israeli citizens.

And if anyone is denying anyone the right to defend themselves, it’s you. You accuse Israel of being “ruthless” because it had finally had enough of its civilian population being murdered in the marketplace by suicide bombers? Of their residential apartment buildings being struck by Hamas missiles? Well, yes, how intolerant of them!

You also refer to Israel as being “Arab/Muslim” lands and completely disregard Maggie when she points out that the Israel has always been the homeland of the Jews, whether they were allowed to live there or not.

What is that book all about? Who is the author and how is it relevant to the discussion at hand? I am not impressed with a book that you just name; do mention to the other readers how it would support your point of view and the credibility of the author if any.

And who is the League of Nations to give away Arab/ Muslim lands? were they not but a collection of imperial colonial powers who had absolute control over the world and wanted to create an aggressive puppy called Israel to create continuous war in the heart of the Muslim world? Their giving the Jews anything that did not belong to them was illegal and unbinding unless the Palestinians agreed which they did not.

I am amazed that you think that the IDF defeat in 2006 was the result of its restrain! So you think that all the collateral damage Israel caused in Lebanon was not sufficient? Don’t you know that Israel ran out of its arsenal of guided missiles and bombs and was forced to ask the US to get replenishment from the US’s strategic deposit. You do not seem to know sufficiently about that war and what had ensued.

Are u suggesting Israel should have used its nuclear weapons? If so, don’t you know that those are useless weapons that Israel can only use for propaganda? The fallout of any such weapons would simultaneously destroy at least northern Israel with atomic fallout.

The IDF could not have won that war no matter what it did and this is exactly why it cried wolf and sued for stopping the fight. This seems that it will also be the case in Gaza now; just wait and watch.

By the way, your definition of defeat is only in your own mind! Military defeat, in reasonable minds, is the failure of the military to force the leadership’s political will on the opponent. Israel was unable to force anything on Hezbollah who only returned the bodies of the 2 slained Israeli soldiers on its own terms (Forced its political will on Israel) and with the release of their prisoners as named before the battle.

If you are referring to an end game whereby the defeat is in a full and final war, then I agree. I assure you however that Israel’s defeat in the final showdown between Arabs/ Muslims and Israel is not too far off. It starts with losing battles like the 2006 campaign and the current Gaza, then the end will surely come much faster than you think.
Countries on the path of complete defeat usually resort to extreme measures and atrocities; Israel is excelling at ruthlessness but without any true military benifits.

What I suggested, Solomon, that you are negating is that the League of Nations gave Israel this small parcel of land. Portions of that land was then taken from Israel to appease Arab Sheiks and Kings.

The IDF could have fought the battle differently in Lebanon but world opinion battled them: collateral damage was not an option after a certain point. It’s ridiculous to think that Israel could not have won the war had they had the mind to do. Israeli’s see it as a loss because, in the end, their leaders quite before it was finished. It is one thing to be beaten, another thing to quite before the finish. Israel was not beaten.

I missed giving you the name of Benny Morris,s book, here it is:

The Birth of Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, published in 1987

It is refreshing to see enlightened people like yourself on this discussion board.