Gaza:
The Quality Of Mercy Revisited
By Sonja Karkar
29 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org
In
these days of warmongering, peace and justice are tossed about like
hot potatoes with no end to the suffering in sight. But, where is the
compassion for the children, women and men who are being subjected to
the excesses of power in all its guises?
Right now, some mercy for
the Palestinians in Gaza is desperately needed before it is too late.
Shakespeare saw mercy as
“an attribute to God himself” and above “the force
of temporal power”[1], but it seems that for all the Christian
rhetoric today, and particularly amongst our Western leaders, mercy
towards other human beings has been well and truly forgotten. Perhaps
the Palestinians do not qualify — most are Muslim and the rest
who are Christian, are still Arabs. To some, that means they are not
like us because we have been told as much. An Israeli prime minister
referred to them as “beasts walking on two legs”, [2] and
although the context has been disputed, the analogy with animals has
been used often enough to give credence to the Zionist mindset. It is
no wonder there are those who think that is good enough reason to herd
them behind concrete walls, check and search them whenever they want
to move about inside their prison, and drop bombs on them when they
get out of line. Yet still not satisfied with these measures, Israel
has resorted now to starving them.
On 19 September 2007, the
Israeli government designated Gaza “a hostile entity” [3]
and decided to impose “additional sanctions” which will
reduce even more drastically the basic necessities of living for the
entire population. This unrelenting aggression against every man, woman
and child for having elected a government that Israel and the US do
not want, is known as collective punishment and is prohibited by international
law. But, rather than castigate Israel, the international community,
as is its wont, may well decide to sever all ties with Gaza in case
it is seen to be aiding this “hostile entity”. If this happens,
the Palestinians will find themselves totally isolated and at Israel’s
mercy and whim.
Gaza’s population has
already been severely punished since Israel completely cut it off from
the outside world and forced it into extreme poverty, making it humiliatingly
dependent on international aid. Almost no one and nothing is allowed
to enter or leave this godforsaken hellhole without approval from Israel.
Further restrictions would be unsustainable. Without the basic necessities
like electricity, fuel, water, food and medicines, the lives of ordinary
people would be held to ransom. It does not take much imagination to
know what happens to a population when there is no clean drinking water,
inadequate sewage and waste disposal and no refrigeration for food and
medicines.
Do we really want to see
1.5 million people scrabbling for food in the garbage dumps, people
withering away as diseases begin to spread into an epidemic and the
descent into chaos as absolute desperation forces the people to grab
at anything for survival? Just in case anyone thinks that this is an
exaggeration, the beginnings of that scenario are already in play. Israel
is setting up a demonic experiment in human behaviour reduced to the
extremes of existence. By demonising the Palestinians over the years
and rendering them unfit for human compassion, these now “sub-human”
people are to be kept in Dov Weisglass’ formaldehyde with the
peace process. [4] Give it any name you want, this is genocide.
The situation in Gaza is
so dire now that mercy is just about all they can hope for if they want
to survive. Neither justice nor peace have been offered in any measure
nor are likely to be if Israel has its way. The Palestinians know only
too well the futility of the peace processes and the barriers to justice.
The powers that be have already thrown their weight
behind Israel enough times for the Palestinians to be sure that their
next generation will be suffering even worse humiliations than they
have experienced themselves. But for many, the choice of being killed
or living as slaves is not a choice at all. No wonder some of them are
fighting back, even if their crude attempts at resistance are met with
formidable and unmatchable retaliation. Only last November, the Israeli
military attacked Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip with a vengeance that
left 82 Palestinian civilians dead and 260 injured. [5] This was the
culmination of five months of killing by Israeli soldiers which saw
the number of dead soar to 382 Palestinians with 1,229 injured. In the
same period, Palestinian rocket fire had killed one Israeli and injured
26 others. [6]
It is impossible to make
sense of this brutality unless we understand that Israel, since its
creation, has been willing the Palestinians to vanish — not only
those living in Gaza, but also in the West Bank and even inside Israel
itself; that what is happening in Gaza is just part of the long and
unforgiving litany of crimes that is still continuing.
Over sixty years, Israel
has razed Palestinian homes and villages; destroyed their historical
records of existence; denied their culture and identity and even promoted
elements of it as their own; terrorised the Palestinians into leaving
through campaigns of massacres and military brutality; divided families
and communities with a prison wall and razor wire; prevented family
unification; bulldozed their cultivated lands which provided the farmers
with sustainable living for centuries; obstructed education to a people
long known for their academic achievements; intensified the closure
on their society despite agreeing to ease the restrictions; taken their
water leaving the Palestinians no choice but to buy it back at exorbitant
prices; ruined their economy; demolished thousands of their homes; transferred
thousands of others by force; refused them building permits while they
allow Jewish citizens and settlers to build; created some 2000 occupier
laws and regulations to prevent their natural growth even as they encourage
the development of illegal Jewish settlements deep inside the occupied
Palestinian territories; herded them into Bantustans while Israel maintains
absolute control of all their movements; withheld their taxes so their
civil servants could not be paid; put pressure on Western governments
to impose sanctions; allowed US armaments in to stoke a civil war between
the Palestinians; isolated Gaza from the West Bank and ostracised its
leadership; and now, in a particularly venomous act is reducing Gaza
to absolute penury while offering the interim Palestinian leadership
in the West Bank “legitimacy” and another round of peace
talks. And in the neighbouring Arab countries, some 6 million Palestinians
are refused their right to return home - a situation going back to 1948
when Israel’s first prime minister Ben Gurion set up a “Transfer
Committee” which prohibited the return of the then 750,000 refugees
who had fled Israel’s campaign of terror. [7]
On the long and painful road
towards resolving the injustices that are mounting with each Israeli
act of aggression, mercy is very much needed. If Israel is loathe to
give it, we must demand it of our governments to pressure Israel into
stopping this collective punishment. Otherwise, we will be complicit
in acts of calculated misery and ultimately the death of a whole people.
However, mercy must extend beyond agreeing to feed the Palestinians
properly, letting them have their electricity back and promising not
to deprive them of water. This mercy must free the Palestinians from
Israel’s occupation and allow them the justice that has long been
their due. And that, according to Dr Ghada Karmi, is the dilemma
that Israel has with Palestine. [8] It would mean the end of the grand
Zionist plan to establish a Jewish-only state in a land belonging to
another people and the beginning of an arduous journey towards reconciliation
with the long-suffering victims of its colonial project. In the process,
both peoples have yet to find out that mercy “blesseth him that
gives and him that takes” [9]: without it, peace will remain as
elusive as ever.
Footnotes
[1] William Shakespeare,
The Merchant of Venice, Act 4 scene 1
[2] The Palestinians are
“… beasts walking on two legs.” Menahim Begin, speech
to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts,”
New Statesman, 25 June 1982.(Zionists claim that Begin was just talking
about Palestinian terrorists.)
[3]
www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2172691,00.html
[4] Dov Weisglass: “The
significance of our disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace
process. It supplies the formaldehyde necessary so there is no political
process with the Palestinians.” Ha’aretz, Oct. 6, 2004.
[5] As of 15 November. UNRWA
Gaza Field Office data.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Benny Morris, “Remarques
sur l’historiographie sioniste de l’idée d’un
transfert de populations en Palestine dans les années 1937-1944?,
in “Les nouveaux enjeux de l’historiographie israélienne,”
ed. Florence Heymann, Information paper, Centre de recherche français
de Jérusalem, no. 12, December 1995. On the contradictions of
Mapam’s position, see the first chapter of 1948 and After.
[8] Ghada Karmi, Married
to Another Man: Israel’s dilemma in Palestine, Pluto Press, London,
2007.
[9] William Shakespeare,
ibid.
Sonja Karkar is
the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia.
Visit Sonja's website.
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