GAZA STRIP 2009 = WARSAW GHETTO 1942…as Zionist tanks bear down on refugee camps, the world demands that Israel and America stop the slaughter of the innocents

from the WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE:

Ground assault sparks worldwide protests

Civilian casualties mount as Israeli army slices through Gaza

By Chris Marsden
5 January 2009

Israel is engaged in direct conflict with Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip, after its long-expected ground invasion began Saturday. Verifiable accounts of the fighting are scarce, because Israel continues to refuse access to foreign journalists even after its Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed a “limited number” into Gaza.

The attack began on Saturday night when Israeli military convoys supported by attack helicopters crossed into northern Gaza at four points. Thousands of soldiers in three brigade-size formations then pushed into Gaza. Since then, Israeli tanks have been reported around Gaza City and the northern towns of Beit Lahiya and the Jabaliya refugee camp.

The territory has been cut in three, with the northern town of Beit Hanoun surrounded and clashes also reported in Rafah, on the southern border with Egypt. Gaza city, with a population of 400,000, is surrounded after an armoured force took over the abandoned Jewish settlement of Netzarim. This gives Israel control of the main north-south road.

At least 63 Palestinians have been reported killed by Israeli tank shells or missiles since the start of the ground offensive Saturday. The real death toll, however, may be far higher, as emergency medical personnel are not able to reach the areas where fighting is taking place.

The total official death toll since Israeli began bombarding Gaza and its 1.5 million people has risen to at least 512, with 87 of those killed children.

An Israeli bombardment of Gaza overnight targeted 40 sites and resulted in more than 20 deaths and many more injuries. Palestinian medics reported that just 3 of the 23 Palestinians killed were Hamas fighters and the rest civilians. Earlier on Saturday, at least 13 people were killed when a missile struck a crowded mosque in Beit Lahiya. Israeli forces also attacked the American school in Gaza, killing a guard. An Israeli spokeswoman declared blithely, “The school…was a site for launching rockets.”

A tank shell fired in northern Gaza Sunday reportedly killed 12 people, mostly civilians. And a school in Beit Lahiya and a shopping centre in Gaza City were shelled, killing 5 people and seriously injuring dozens more.

Among those killed in the Israeli ground assault Sunday was a mother and her four children, whose home in the At-Toufah neighborhood of Gaza City was targeted by tank fire, Palestinian medical personnel in Gaza reported. One of the children was only a year old, while another was two.

Also killed in the Israeli attack were three ambulance workers who were struck by a missile as they were aiding wounded civilians.

The ground assault has dramatically intensified the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, cutting off electricity, while food stocks are dwindling fast. Meanwhile, the Egyptian government has closed off its Rafah border crossing to Gaza, preventing aid columns from getting in and the wounded from getting out. The crossing was a lifeline for those seeking medical treatment for wounds suffered in the attacks, as Gaza’s own hospitals have become so overwhelmed that they are near breakdown. Medical personnel report running short of critical medicine, while power is maintained only by means of aging generators.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Sunday rebutted the cynical claims by Israeli officials that they are determined to prevent a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

“Bread and wheat are going to run out extremely rapidly, and people are going to start getting extremely hungry,” said UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness. “Medical supplies are in critically short supply. When you have a situation where houses are being blown up and women and children are being maimed, I would say that’s a humanitarian crisis.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli army has given its forces carte-blanche for killing civilians, declaring Saturday, “Anyone who hides a terrorist or weapons in his house is considered a terrorist.”

This is only the beginning. There are still around 10,000 Israeli troops and hundreds of tanks massed on the Gaza border, and the government made an urgent call-up of “tens of thousands” more military reservists. Defence officials said this could enable a broader ground offensive in the operation’s third phase.

This is likely to target Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. Israeli warplanes have engaged in continuous incursions into Lebanese airspace over the past week. Two weeks after the last major Israeli offensive against Gaza, in June 2006, a cross border raid by Hezbollah became a casus belli for a brutal month-long assault that killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians. Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Saturday, “While we are fighting in Gaza, we will keep an open eye on the sensitive situation on our northern border…we are ready and alert to face any unwarranted development in that area.”

In contrast to the Palestinian death toll, the Israeli army said one of its soldiers had been killed by a mortar shell and 30 soldiers have been wounded in the ground offensive, two of them seriously. Rockets fired at southern Israel have left four dead in total.

The ground invasion was green-lighted by US President Bush, who on Friday took the extraordinary decision to release the transcript of his Saturday radio broadcast in which he declared that a ceasefire was only possible if it prevented Hamas from re-arming. “Another one-way ceasefire that leads to rocket attacks on Israel is not acceptable,” he said.

The US blocked a cease-fire motion at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council Saturday night.

Global wave of protest

Demonstration in London against the Israeli assault on Gaza.

Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza have unleashed a global wave of protest.

The most important and sizeable protest took place in Sakhnin, a Palestinian town within Israeli boundaries. The 1.4-million-strong Arab community makes up about 20 percent of Israel’s population and has organised several protests in recent days. But the protest organised by the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee was one of the largest held by Israeli Arabs since October 2000. Organisers estimated that at least 100,000 people took part in protest, which stretched throughout the Sakhnin.

Crowds waving Palestinian flags and brandishing pro-Palestinian placards chanted, “Gaza will not surrender to the tanks and bulldozers!” and “Don’t fear, Gaza, we are with you!” Some protesters called Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a “coward” and accused him of “collaborating with the Americans.”

Thousands of police were deployed on the outskirts of the town and across northern Israel.

Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset were present from several parties. Hadash Chairman Mohammad Barakeh MK said, “There are three clear objectives: the first is solidarity with the people in the Strip who are suffering from seven days of major Israeli attacks.

“The second objective is to the Israeli government urging it to stop the unjust aggression…. We are also saying to the Palestinian people, to all of us, it is time for reconciliation. There is no place for division when facing this level of attack.”

Following a minute’s silence, Sakhnin Mayor Mazem Ghanaim called for an immediate halt to the Gaza offensive. “The Israeli occupation force is conducting crimes in Gaza before the eyes of the international community,” he said. “This is the biggest procession in the history of the Palestinian people in Israel. The level of crowdedness in Gaza is one of the highest in the world, and yet the Israel Air Force jets are bombing and murdering innocent people. I call on Israel to end the war immediately and lift the siege.”

Wassil Taha MK (Balad) said, “This is one of the greatest demonstrations we have seen because it affects each and every family. People seek to express their pain by showing solidarity with the members of our nation.”

Ibrahim Zabidat, who led the rally, said, “The Israeli killing machine must stop. I call from here to the people in Gaza and say: Don’t be afraid, don’t give up, block them with your blood in order to build the state of Palestine, whose capital is Jerusalem.”

The chairman of the Balad Party, MK Jamal Zahalka, said there is a need to “try Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi in an international war crimes tribunal for their role in the killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip.”

There was also a large protest by Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Thousands demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Saturday, with police forces struggling to separate anti-war protesters from right-wing counter demonstrations.

Peace protesters in Rabin Square waved Palestinian flags and shouted, “Barak, Barak, Defence Minister, how many children have you murdered today?” “Stop the bombing, stop the killing.”

Hundreds of thousands also protested across Europe.

In Paris, police admit to 21,000 demonstrators marching through the city’s luxury shopping district shouting, “We are all Palestinians” and “Israel assassin.” The protest was prevented from reaching the Israeli embassy.

CRS riot police clashed with 400-500 youths wearing Palestinian flags and kaffiyehs in the evening. Protesters reportedly set cars on fire, and several luxury store windows, such as the Louis Pion watch store, were smashed and looted.

A section of the London protest

Massive pro-Palestinian protests took place simultaneously in other major French cities.

In London, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched. (See “Video: London demonstrators protest Israeli assault on Gaza“) Many of them threw shoes in front of the Downing Street residence of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown as they made their way along Whitehall in homage to the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoe at President George W. Bush during a press conference last month.

Several people were injured when riot police began hitting and kicking protesters in an underpass in Piccadilly. In the evening, police officers penned in several thousand demonstrators who were protesting outside the Israeli embassy and began hitting them with shields and batons, leaving even more wounded. (YouTube video)

Protesters on the London demonstration

Organisers made an official complaint to the Metropolitan Police, saying officers provoked the crowd by charging at them.

In the afternoon, speakers at Trafalgar Square drew attention to the terrible plight of the Palestinian people, but the perspective promoted by the march organisers—the Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Muslim organisations—was largely one of putting pressure on governments or the United Nations to intervene.

Former Labour MP Tony Benn condemned the Bush government for its full support of Israeli aggression and the way the US uses Israel to control the Middle East. He said it was necessary to “mobilise world opinion” for a free Palestine and an end to Western domination.

Respect MP George Galloway likened the Palestinian people to those in the Nazi ghettos saying, “those who are murdering them are the equivalent of those who murdered the Jews in Warsaw in 1942.” He singled out the Egyptian regime for special mention as jointly responsible for the situation in Gaza and declared its President Hosni Mubarak an international criminal. He called on the “great people of Egypt, the heroic armed forces of Egypt…to rise up and sweep away this tyrant.”

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone criticised the Israeli government for using the invasion as a means of gaining votes in the upcoming elections. He appealed to the British government to intervene, saying, “I heard Gordon Brown denounce apartheid [in South Africa] year after year, I want him to denounce the attacks on the Palestinian people.”

The singer Annie Lennox, warned of an Israeli ground invasion within hours, adding, “We call on ministers of all nations to take responsibility, speak out and demand an immediate ceasefire now”

Comedian Alexei Sayle said that “Israel purports to speak in our name, purports to somehow give us a home or provide protection” but said that the Israeli government “does not act in my name.” He criticised the way the way the government condemns any criticism of Israel as anti-semitism. “I want to be proud of my people. If only Jewish people could turn away from violence, what an amazing thing that would be.”

Human rights activist Bianca Jagger called on Barack Obama to “express an opinion on what is happening and demand an immediate halt to the shelling against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.” She called on the international community to “ensure the immediate cessation by Israel of the use of excessive and unlawful and disproportionate force.”

Smaller rallies were held in other British cities, including Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow

In Germany, 7,000 people gathered in freezing temperatures in Berlin for a march along Unter den Linden boulevard. More than 4,000 people demonstrated in Duesseldorf, and some 5,000 in Frankfurt. Protesters carried banners declaring, “Germany, look! Where is your sense of justice?”

In Austria, 2,500 people demonstrated in Salzburg. In Spain, there was a protest outside the Foreign Ministry in Madrid.

In the Turkish capital of Ankara, 5,000 demonstrators shouted “Killer Israel!” at a rally in the city centre. Demonstrations were also held Sunday.

In Athens, Greece, 5,000 protested, and there were clashes with police outside the Israeli embassy. In Cyprus, about 2,000 people demonstrated, and some pelted riot police with rocks, sticks, shoes and oranges near the Israeli embassy in Nicosia.

In the Netherlands, thousands marched through Amsterdam. One banner read, “Anne Frank is turning in her grave.”

Hundreds more marched in the Swedish cities of Malmo and Uppsala, while in Oslo, Norway, demonstrators marched from the parliament to the Israeli Embassy.

Thousands march through New York City as Israel invades Gaza

By a reporting team
5 January 2009

Thousands of people demonstrated in New York City Saturday, just as Israeli forces launched their ground assault on Gaza after a week of aerial bombardment that claimed the lives of nearly 500 and left more than 2,000 wounded.

The demonstration in New York City against the Israeli assault
on Gaza

The protest was the largest of a number of demonstrations that have taken place across the US in recent days. These have included a march of thousands outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., as well as a vigil held by dozens at the entrance to President-elect Barack Obama’s vacation home in Hawaii. Thousands also took to the streets in Los Angeles, and protests and rallies were organized in many other American cities.

Saturday’s protest, held in bitterly cold weather, saw several thousand gather in New York’s busy Times Square, filling up several blocks, before marching to the Israeli consulate on Manhattan’s East Side.

Demonstrators in New York

Groups of Arab and Muslim families with young children, working people and students were joined by New Yorkers of all ages and nationalities, many of whom wore keffiyeh scarves in solidarity with besieged Gaza. Chanting “Free, free Palestine” and carrying signs that called for an end to the siege and to the killing of innocent civilians, the demonstrators attracted widespread support from passersby.

Many carried homemade signs opposing the Israeli attack. One read, “Give Israel the shoe”—referring to the shoes thrown by an Iraqi journalist at President Bush last month—another, “Genocide is not self-defense.”

Others denounced Arab regimes, particularly Egypt, for their direct or tacit complicity in the bloodshed. “Axis of Dirt” read one sign showing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

Sign at Times Square rally protests Arab regimes’ complicity
in Israeli attacks on Gaza.

The demonstration reflected the growth and diversity in the Middle Eastern population in New York’s greater metropolitan area. According to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, California has the highest Middle Eastern population of any state, with more than 400,000. However, of states with the most Middle Eastern immigrants, New York has one of the fastest growing populations, after Virginia and Michigan (WorldNet Daily, January 4, 2009).

A report released by the Department of City Planning used the 2000 Census number to track languages spoken at home, illustrating the distribution of Arab-speaking New Yorkers by neighborhood. Brooklyn has by far the largest number of the five boroughs: approximately 24,000 of its 2 million residents are Arab speakers. They are overwhelmingly concentrated in the Bay Ridge area but reside in neighborhoods across the greater metropolitan area.

A small counter-demonstration assembled across Seventh Avenue at the start of Saturday’s rally, with fewer than 50 people waving Israeli and US flags and carrying placards denouncing Hamas and supporting the Israeli assault on Gaza. Those participating in this Zionist rally were far outnumbered by Jewish demonstrators protesting against Israel’s actions, some of whom carried signs with slogans such as “Another New York Jew against Israeli apartheid.”

A WSWS reporting team distributed 700 leaflets of “The Gaza crisis and the perspective of permanent revolution” and spoke to demonstrators.

A group of students from Al-Ghazaly high school had traveled from Teaneck, New Jersey, to the rally with their teacher, Huweda.

Students from Al-Ghazaly High School at Times Square protest

With close family in the Gaza Strip, Huweda said she was not a supporter of Hamas, but that the recent Israeli onslaught has outraged her. Asked who bore responsibility for the outbreak, she included the US as well as other Arab regimes.

“The people of all countries, in their hearts, are with the Palestinians, but their governments have other priorities. Even Jews are against this killing.”

One of her students, a high school senior born in the US, felt there was no sign President-elect Barack Obama would be better than Bush. Whether or not Obama had been notified in advance by the Israeli government of the preparations to attack Gaza, “he doesn’t need anyone to tell him what he could see on TV like anyone else,” she said. “No matter what, he should say to stop killing children. But he hasn’t said this.”

Yussuf, a Muslim of African descent, came with his wife to the rally from Brooklyn. Carrying a hand-made sign that said, “This is not warfare, it is genocide,” he expressed some hope that Obama would be more fair-minded, but added that “the US is pro-Israel no matter what, and Obama will need to keep the status quo.”

Chris, a young man who works at the United Nations, said he was born in the US, but he maintained close ties to the Middle East and his family in Syria.

“I am not a nationalist. Pan-Arabism is dead, and religion is used as a tool politically. People are really just one heterogeneous group, but it is the people with power that bear responsibility for these conflicts, which go back to the legacy of World War I and the nation-states created by the British.”

Asked how he thought the attacks on Gaza could be stopped, he said they could be ended quite simply.

“Give the Palestinian people land, food, decent homes, free access to jobs and infrastructure, and you’ll have peace,” he said. “The Middle East is actually a very wealthy area that could be stable and prosperous for all.” He agreed that the same could be said about the US, where it is social inequality under capitalism that is at the root of the problem.

The demonstrators began to move toward the Israeli Consulate, just as news of the Israeli ground assault was announced and appeared over the Times Square news monitor.

A woman who had come with her husband and another couple in their twenties said, “My husband’s family live in the Gaza. We were able to speak to them. In the daytime, a bombing happened in their area. They are scared. Their kids are terrified. The food and electricity is day-to-day. They are afraid there may not be food or electricity. Two days ago, there was some food in the market but not now. It will be more killing, heartache, people losing their kids. But it has been like this for years now. I do not think this demonstration will change it.”

Australian demonstrations show solidarity with Palestinian people

By our correspondents
5 January 2009

Just hours after the first media reports of the launch of the Israeli ground assault on the Gaza Strip, protests in Australia’s major cities of Melbourne and Sydney drew thousands into the streets to condemn the Zionist state and show solidarity with the besieged Palestinian people.

A section of the demonstration in Melbourne

The demonstration in central Melbourne was at least 6,000-strong, twice as large as an earlier demonstration held last week. In addition to large contingents of Palestinian and Middle Eastern people, a wide range of people of different backgrounds were at the protest, including workers, retirees, and students.

About 1,000 also attended a peace vigil on Saturday evening which had been called by several imams. The vigil was staged in the northern suburb of Broadmeadows, which is home to many Arab and Muslim Australians.

At the main protest yesterday, many people carried banners and placards they had made themselves, including, “Stop mass killing in Palestine now”, “Palestine you are not forgotten”, “Dispossession, bombings, a planned genocide?”, “Gaza: the world’s biggest concentration camp”, “As world sleeps, Gaza bleeds”, “Rudd and Gillard, nothing new, US lackeys through and through”.

Many protestors expressed their anger towards the Labor government’s support for Israel’s offensive and the media for their biased coverage. But protest organisers from the Justice for Palestine group offered no viable political perspective. They told the rally that by writing letters to both Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Murdoch press they could make their voices heard and force policy changes. One person, undoubtedly reflecting the mood of the protestors, responded by shouting at the platform: “They’d just shred the letters!”

Young woman marching in Sydney

In Sydney, over 6,000 demonstrators wove their way through the city from the Town Hall, past the Egyptian consulate and to Belmore Park near the Central railway station. The majority were from the city’s large Arab community, many of whom still have family in Gaza, the West Bank, or in the south of Lebanon, which was attacked by Israel in 2006. They were joined by hundreds of workers and students from other backgrounds.

Many carried the Palestinian flag or wore the traditional keffiyeh Palestinian scarf. Some wore green, white and black-banded bandanas—the colours of the Palestinian national movement. Groups of men and teenagers marched carrying mock coffins, some under the green flag of Hamas, others under the black flag of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group. Some groups marched under the banner of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.

Boy holding montage of Gaza victims

Several families carried moving hand-made montages made up of images of the death and destruction that has been inflicted over the past week. Others carried impassioned hand-written placards denouncing the US Bush administration, the silence of world governments, and comparing the Zionist actions with the Nazi holocaust against the Jewish people.

The demonstration was highly emotional. Chants of “Free Palestine” and “Down, down Israel” echoed through the city. The concluding rally in Belmore Park began with young boys speaking of their sorrow over the suffering being endured by the children of Gaza. Speakers highlighted the number of deaths and injuries that had already been inflicted. A protestor managed to phone his relative in Gaza and the man’s words of defiance were broadcast over the sound system.

One of many Free Gaza placards

As in Melbourne, however, the protest organisers advanced no alternative perspective for the Palestinian people. Their political demands consisted only of appeals for governments around the world, and the Labor government in Australia, to pressure Israel to withdraw from Gaza.

Sentiments of protestors

In interviews with World Socialist Web Site correspondents, participants in the demonstration openly expressed their view that appeals to the Labor government would have no impact on the Zionist aggression. They also voiced hostility toward the Arab governments and skepticism that a new Obama administration would bring about any change in US policy toward Israel.

Siham and Nadia Haman

Nadia Haman attended the Melbourne protest with her mother Siham, who was born in Lebanon and migrated to Australia in 1967. Nadia has just completed Year 12 at Pascoe Vale Girls Secondary College in Melbourne.

“We are from Lebanon, near Beirut, and we have been through the same thing as the Palestinians,” Nadia said. “What is happening in Gaza is exactly what has happened in Lebanon. That is why we have come today. The Palestinians should be free just like anyone else. I think that the Israelis want to take over the Palestinians’ land and do whatever they want.

“It is not right what the Australian government here is saying—killing innocent people is not right. Little children are dying. This is really wrong. The media is not showing what is going on. They only show something for about two seconds and then go on to something else. We are not getting the real story.”

Alaa Al-Boarab, a Year 11 student who attends Pascoe Vale Girls Secondary College, also spoke with the WSWS in Melbourne. Her family left Iraq in 1996. She attended the demonstration with her two sisters, Duaa and Zara, and her cousin Zainab.

“I came today to express my anger and to stand with my Palestinian brothers and sisters especially those in Gaza,” Alaa said. “We can’t just sit back. We need to show our opposition and support.

“I think that it is unjust that the Labor government here is supporting the attack on Gaza. Anyone in their right mind cannot support such a thing. Anyone can see that this is wrong. If this happened here in Australia, we would want other countries to support us and not be against us.

“I don’t understand why Israel is doing this. I was hoping this would all come to an end with the election of Obama. I hoped he would make a difference. I find it really surprising that Obama is supportive of Israel. I read about it and I thought ‘what the hell’. I thought that Obama was going to be a good guy, but it does not seem that he has any sense of justice. I thought that different presidents or different prime ministers would be different from each other, but they are all alike.”

Alaa and Duaa Al-Boarab

Alaa’s sister Duaa is in her second year at LaTrobe University, studying to be a medical scientist.

“It has been nine days and no-one has done anything about this,” she said. “No-one does anything about Israel and America. Why isn’t the UN doing anything about this? They are just sitting back and letting this happen. You have the strongest powers in the world, the US and Israel, that have the support of most of the western countries, and poor little Palestine that has nothing but homemade rockets. It is like a giant bullying a little kid, like stealing candy from a baby. The Arab regimes are becoming more pro-America and pro-Israel day by day because they are pro-capitalist. I don’t think capitalism is any good for any of us. The rich are always benefiting.”

Basil Kaser

Basil Kaser, who migrated from southern Lebanon and remembers living as a young boy under the threat of Israeli air strikes and incursions, spoke with the WSWS in Sydney. He carried a placard accusing the political leaders of Israel, the US and Egypt of being terrorists.

“Innocent people are being killed without any justification. They use the excuses of rockets, but at the end of the day it is genocide. They [the Israeli government] have sanctions on Gaza and the whole world knows about it. Shame on every leader around the world that medicines and food can’t get in to these people and shame on everybody for letting this happen. If you back someone into a corner, they’re going to fight back. If that is all the Gaza people are guilty of, then I don’t think they’re guilty of anything at all.

Basil rejected the “self-defence” claims made by Israel: “They are destroying homes, facilities, police stations, infrastructure and thousands have been killed and wounded. Gaza is a poor, densely-populated area. This isn’t self-defence, it is genocide. What the Jewish people were running away from Hitler they are now doing against other people.”

Asked about his placard, Basil said: “Everyone who is in a position of power and does nothing about this is a terrorist. The most I can do is raise my voice in protest. But these people—Mubarak, Bush—they have the power to stop this and they’re not doing it.”

Basil agreed when asked whether he thought there was a relationship between Israel’s aggression and the US occupation of Iraq.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Those in power have plans that we don’t know about. It is not the people in America who are to blame. It’s the government. If the people knew what was going on they wouldn’t support it. The same goes for a lot of the people in Israel. It is the governments that are doing this. They are blinding the people and not letting them see the truth, because if they could, they would end this immediately.”

Mohammed Selah, a student at University of Technology Sydney, said he was protesting against “the massacre of the Palestinian people, my people, in Gaza”.

He condemned the position of the governments in the Middle East: “The Arab League is talking about a proposed summit taking place after one or two weeks of killing has gone on. That is not a solution. They must get together and do something. Are they going to wait for 1,000 or 2,000 people to die? Are those being killed not human beings?

“Obama is talking about the centrality of the Israeli state for him so I don’t think he will change things. But maybe I am wrong? He is the president-elect and might have something to say later, but at the moment, he is washing his hands of it.”

Ali

Ali, who migrated to Australia 40 years ago from Lebanon, also spoke with WSWS in Sydney.

“For sixty years, Israel has been killing in the name of self-defence. This has been happening since the 1940s. How can you compare some home-made rockets with jets and tanks and so-called ‘smart-bombs’? We know what happened in 2006 in Lebanon and the things we saw then we are seeing now. Israel’s history is massacres and more massacres.

“The Arab regimes are connected to Israel. Where Israel goes, they go. There is no difference between Arial Sharon [former Israeli prime minister] and Hosni Mubarak, no difference between Ehud Barak [Israeli foreign minister] and Egypt’s foreign minister. They all discuss what they are going to do together. It’s a pact with America.”

The American establishment, he said, “has had the same policy for the Middle East for the last 50 to 100 years. They want the resources. They want the people to live like dogs with no trade, no freedom and no independence.”

Asked about the position of the Labor government, Ali said: “All governments have no feeling toward the people. I am disappointed though that Labor, who I have kept voting for, is what it is. I’ll never vote Labor again.”

Hands off Gaza!

5 January 2009

The International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site denounce the Israeli military’s murderous assault on the Palestinian population of Gaza. The combined air and ground attack on the densely populated and virtually defenseless enclave is a war crime.

The incursion of Israeli troops, tanks and artillery, on top of the ongoing bombardment from air and sea of civilian targets, sets the stage for a sharp increase in the bloodletting, which in the first eight days of the aggression has already claimed the lives of over 500 Palestinians and wounded more than 2,400, including scores of women and children.

As always, the Israeli regime’s use of military violence is accompanied by a staggering level of cynicism, hypocrisy and deceit. A state that possesses one of the most modern and sophisticated military machines in the world is once again casting itself as the victim.

The claim that this latest aggression is a legitimate reaction to Hamas rockets falsifies the events that preceded the assault on Gaza. Prior to Israel’s launching of its air war on December 27, not a single Israeli was killed by the recent spate of home-made and largely ineffectual Qassam rockets fired from Gaza. The increase of such rocket firings was provoked by Israel’s shattering of a cease-fire with a cross-border raid in November that killed six members of the Hamas security force. Israel defied the terms of the cease-fire, refusing to lift its deadly blockade of Gaza, which for 18 months has deprived the impoverished population of food, medicine, potable water and electricity. It agreed to the cease-fire in the first place in order, by its own admission, to undertake intense preparations for the present war.

Since Israel launched this latest round of aggression, four people in southern Israel have been killed by Palestinian rockets. The loss of all life is regrettable, but it is an ugly fact that the media applies very different standards in its valorization of Israeli and Palestinian lives. The latter, judging from the coverage of events by CNN and other western media outlets, count for very little. The ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths in the current war is more than 100 to one. Over the past eight years, approximately 20 Israelis have died in rocket attacks from Gaza, while Israeli forces have killed nearly 5,000 Palestinians.

The rocket attacks from Gaza reflect the desperation of Hamas and the Palestinian population. Israel deliberately provokes such actions in order to create a pretext for pursuing its aggressive and expansionist aims.

What is the situation in Gaza, created by Israel and backed by the United States, the European powers and their allied Arab bourgeois regimes, including the US-Israeli Quisling, Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas? A million-and-a-half people are imprisoned in an area the size of metropolitan Detroit—a sliver of land wedged between the desert and the Mediterranean Sea. They are prevented from leaving by Israeli troops to the north and east and troops of Egyptian dictator Mubarak to the south.

As unpleasant to the Israeli regime as the comparison may be, the plight of Gaza resembles nothing so much as the tragic fate of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland.

There are, without question, Israeli intellectuals, youth and class-conscious workers who are opposed to the invasion of Gaza and deeply ashamed of the crimes being committed by the regime in their name. They are, we are sure, horrified by the implication of the Jewish people in crimes that recall the atrocities of the Nazis. But if, as is claimed by opinion polls, some 80 percent of Israelis support the military onslaught on this tortured territory, this can only attest to the deep level of disorientation and demoralization among broad sections of the population. Not the least of Israel’s crimes is its cynical exploitation of the horrors of the Holocaust to justify its own criminal actions.

It is not possible to discuss the assault on Gaza without placing central emphasis on the role of the United States. The American ruling elite has served as Israel’s chief enabler and co-conspirator for the past four decades—ever since Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank in the 1967 war.

The Bush administration is reprising the criminal role it played in the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon—running interference for Israel to block all diplomatic initiatives for a cease-fire so as to give the Israelis maximum time and scope to murder Palestinians and smash a hostile Arab movement. The time-line of the past few days indicates that the Bush administration urged the Israelis to launch their ground invasion now in part to scuttle efforts by the European Union to broker a truce.

On Friday, after the EU and French President Sarkozy had announced a mission to Israel slated for Monday to pressure the Israelis to agree to a cease-fire, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addressed the press outside the White House to once again place the blame for the fighting on Hamas and back Israeli opposition to a cease-fire. On Saturday, President Bush devoted his weekly radio address to restating Washington’s carte blanche to Israel, setting the stage for the invasion that began later that day.

In the course of his brief remarks, Bush managed to cram in one lie after another—charging Hamas, which won a popular election in 2006 and put down an attempted coup by the Fatah-led and US-Israeli-backed Palestinian Authority in June of 2007—with “taking over the Gaza Strip in a coup,” and going so far as to blame Hamas for the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the Israeli blockade imposed eighteen months ago. Bush essentially demanded that Hamas agree to its removal at the hands of the US-Israeli puppet Abbas as a condition for an end to the Israeli aggression.

Late on Saturday, after the Israelis had launched their ground attack, the US intervened in the United Nations Security Council to block a statement urging an immediate truce.

Predictably, President-elect Barak Obama is playing an equally despicable role, maintaining a public silence on the grounds that the US has “only one president at a time.” Here the legal principle—silence denotes consent—applies in full. It should be noted that Obama had no similar compunctions only a few months ago when it came to promoting the handout of hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds to his supporters and friends on Wall Street.

While Obama maintains a damning silence, top congressional Democrats, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, have gone out of their way to declare their support for Israel’s actions.

No less revealing is the response of the United Nations. Its combination of impotence and duplicity recalls the response of the League of Nations in the 1930s to Fascist Italy’s rape of Ethiopia. We are once again living through a period when supposed “peace” organizations established by the international bourgeoisie reveal themselves to be instruments of imperialist power politics. The hypocrisy of the UN and the imperialist governments that dominate it is exposed most graphically by their entirely opportunist use of the term “war crime.” What is defined as a war crime and who is sent to the Hague tribunal depends entirely on the geo-political and economic interests of the various imperialist powers.

Finally, there is the perfidious role of the bourgeois regimes in the Middle East. This includes not only the outright accomplices of the US and Israel—especially Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia—but also the supposed opponents of Zionism and imperialism, Iran and Syria. While one of the objectives of Israeli and American policy is no doubt to weaken Tehran and Damascus, and prepare the way for military action to effect “regime change” in those countries, it can be reasonably assumed that elements in the US State Department and the Israeli Foreign Ministry are maintaining back-channel communications with these regimes. It would not be the first time that bourgeois governments shed crocodile tears over the fate of a lesser client in the hope that they could be parlayed into an agreement with the major powers.

The Israelis say more than they intend when they declare that their mass killing in Gaza is necessary to create the conditions for a so-called “two state” solution to the Palestinian question. This only reveals the reactionary character of this policy, which envisions the creation of an Israeli-dominated mini-state, divided by security roads, Israeli settlements and barriers, which will serve as a prison for the Palestinian people, guarded and policed by a puppet Palestinian bourgeois regime. Such an outcome will do nothing to address the conditions of poverty and repression that dominate daily life for the Palestinian workers and youth, while offering the Zionist state an opportunity to ethnically cleanse Israel by expelling its Arab population to the Palestinian Bantustan.

The only real ally of the Palestinian masses is the international working class. The wave of international protests against the Israeli aggression, in Europe, Asia and North America as well as the Middle East, is a clear sign of a shift in mass sentiment. The outrage and revulsion at Israel’s war crimes are indicative of a growing response of the working class not only to imperialist militarism but also to the deepest economic crisis of the world capitalist system since the Great Depression.

It is the united mobilization of the working class of all countries, including Arab and Jewish workers, that holds the key to a genuinely democratic and progressive solution to the crisis in the Middle East. This must take the conscious form of a struggle against Zionism, imperialism and the Middle Eastern bourgeoisie for a socialist federation of the Middle East, as part of the world socialist revolution.

This is the international socialist perspective fought for by the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International. We demand the immediate withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza, the lifting of the blockade and full restoration of normal trade and economic conditions, and the provision of massive aid to the Palestinian people.

Barry Grey and David North