Israel, Gaza and Unhealthy Violence
From the very beginning, if one tribe wanted the resources of another tribe, be that access to water or hunting grounds, if a peaceful settlement was out of reach, violence was the means of deciding who got what.
The best warrior in such conflict would lead fighters into battle and invariably became the 'Head of the Clan' or the 'Chief'.
It wasn't long before the religious leadership negotiated an unholy alliance with the 'Chief'.
Observing how money and wealth could be made by threatening someone with violence, the religious leader offered a deal to the Chief.
It went like this:
“You're doing pretty well for yourself Chief, making money out of scaring anyone that doesn't obey you with the sword and violence”, but I'm making even better money than you out of scaring people with the afterlife and going to Hell”.
“If we team up, we'll have the market cornered and we'll both make vastly more 'scare wealth'”.
“You'll acknowledge me as the ultimate religious leader, the`Pope', and you, instead of being some lousy Chief, I'll proclaim you King as chosen by God. Now how does that sound?”.
It was the start of an Axis of Evil that has existed for thousands of years and continues today.
The dark insatiable appetite for power of this Axis led to the creation of 'empires', 'foreign policy', 'homeland security' and 'national interest'.
To the Axis, the peaceable 'uncivilised' (close to nature) people of this world and their homelands are easy pickings to be exploited using violence. Woe betide anyone who dares to challenge them.
The Axis gets to decide who is the 'terrorist' and who is the 'freedom fighter' based on their agenda. The media they control does the marketing accordingly for the masses to swallow.
Their ambitions are only thwarted when their prey exhibits a capacity for violence that challenges their own – as in the USA not being in a hurry to go to war with China.
So what has this got to do with the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and in particular Gaza?
Like many others, the conflict in Gaza is about rights to occupy and live on a homeland.
It shares a heritage with other conflicts, the histories of which can perhaps help us put the Gaza conflict in a broader and clearer perspective.
SOUTH AFRICA APARTHEID
1952: Black people have had enough of the theft of their lands and basic human rights by the white settlers. Nelson Mandela is one of those encouraging them to peacefully but actively not comply with laws requiring them to carry Identification Cards and not to obey the curfews and lockdowns (yes, they existed back then) restricting when and for how long they can leave their homes.
Aftermath of the Sharpville Massacre
1960: The Sharpville Massacre. Some 3,000 black South Africans gather to protest the Passbooks, which control their every movement including when they can leave their homes and for how long.
The residents gather peacefully in front of the police station, some simply without their Passbooks and some symbolically burning them. They challenge the police to arrest all 3,000 of them.
Instead the police opened fire with a hail of 1,300 bullets. When it stops 69 people lay dead in the streets, the majority shot in the back as they tried to run away. Hundreds more are injured, some fatally.
1962: In despair, Mandela makes the painful decision that armed resistance is necessary to combat apartheid. He goes about preparing the ANC (African National Congress) for a military campaign.
1964: The military preparations of the ANC have been discovered, Mandela and the other defendants are trialled fully expecting to be convicted and executed for treason. They decide to use the trial as a platform to make public their last anti-apartheid speeches. Mandela delivers a speech that lasts 4 hours. Part of his concluding statement can be summarised as follows:
“The human indignity suffered by my black African brothers and sisters is the direct result of a racial supremacy policy created by an undemocratic oligarchy whose goal is to exploit our country's people, our natural resources. But our land, our freedom cannot be stolen”.
“We will never give up our struggle for the African people. It is a struggle for the right to live.
We hope our actions will inspire all the oppressed peoples of the world who are trying to defend their homelands, their human rights, their basic freedoms from aggressors”.
Mandela finished with: “I am committed to the ideal of a peaceful, free society where human rights are respected”, he said “and if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
Mandela's words deeply resonated with and inspired his 'comrades in arms' in Palestine where a statue was erected in his honour.
Fearing international outcry Mandela's execution is stayed, instead, he is sentenced to life in prison. He is given chances to leave prison in exchange for ensuring that the ANC gives up its armed resistance but he refuses. He is in prison for 27 years.
1976: thousands of black children and their families in the Soweto township protest a government policy mandating that all classes be taught in Afrikaans, the language of the whites. Police responded to the peaceful protests with violence, killing at least 176 people and injuring over 1,000 more. The massacre intensifies the ANC's commitment to armed resistance.
1978: I am a university student who along with other National Union of Students members is trying to build support for both the ANC's fight against Apartheid and The Camp David Accords, an attempt to establish a framework whereby Palestine and Israel would accept a 2-State Solution enabling peaceful co-existence.
Meanwhile, Margret Thatcher (UK Prime Minister) and Ronald Reagan (American President) are heaping praise on their economic Apartheid partner and calling for no reprieve of the lifetime sentence handed out to “Mandela the terrorist who should rot in prison”.
The US and UK are channelling $$$ billions into bolstering the Apartheid regime.
In another gesture of racist solidarity, The Federation of Conservative Students are handing out stickers saying 'HANG NELSON MANDELA!'
Later that year I stopped being a student so my punk band The Molesters can tour to raise awareness of the struggles of Black South Africa and Palestine. We extend our fundraising gigs to support the Northern Ireland Troops Out Movement (see The Bloody Sundays below).
1990: In response to the threat of full-scale civil war and growing international pressure, White South Africa’s newly elected president F.W. de Klerk, pledges to end apartheid and releases Mandela from prison where he has served 27 years.
After his release from prison, under the new majority rule constitution he had tirelessly fought for, Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa.
The World leaders who condemned him are now queuing up to get the handshake photo.
Jointly with de Klerk, Nelson Mandela was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
His accomplishments are celebrated each year on July 18, Nelson Mandela International Day.
Not bad for a 'terrorist', right?
Mandela is the classic example of the Axis rebranding 'the terrorist' as 'the freedom fighter' to suit their reluctantly modified agenda.
THE PLIGHT OF BLACK AMERICANS
1964: The Civil Rights Act passed to pay lip service to black Americans does nothing to ensure their basic right to vote. In some constituencies, more than 50% of the population is black American but only 2% are recognised as registered voters.
1965: Selma, Alabama. 600 marchers led by activist John Lewis protesting for voting rights are brutally attacked by state troopers. Images of the unwarranted police violence shocked the nation galvanising support for racial justice.
That same year, in a show of support by the Southern Christian Leadership Council, Rev. Martin Luther King participates in peaceful demonstrations, along with thousands of others he is arrested.
He famously wrote to the The New York Times “This is Selma Alabama. There are more Negros in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls”.
Luther King and Malcolm X, an increasingly popular young black activist, form solidarity links with both Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Yassar Arafat in Palestine.
"Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot" film trailer
1965 (contd 1): In America Martin Luther King and Malcolm X are the two biggest human rights activists of their time but with different views on how change could be accomplished.
Malcolm X had come to the opinion that peaceful protest was costing lives and achieving nothing.
He said “We want freedom now, but we’re not going to get it saying ‘We Shall Overcome'. We've got to fight to overcome!”.
Luther King on the other hand remained a committed advocate of peaceful protest. However the authorities read it as a veiled threat when he said “if tangible gains are not made soon we must face the prospect that some Negroes might be tempted to follow the path of Malcolm X”.
The scale of the threat posed by Luther King and Malcolm X uniting and mobilising their followers for an armed struggle was too much for the Axis.
1965 (contd 2): Malcolm X is ASSASSINATED.
A distraught Luther King said, “Malcolm’s murder deprived the world of a potentially great leader”.
1967: While continuing to champion human rights, Martin Luther King becomes a more vocal critic of the war with Vietnam which he sees as an aggressive act of U.S. militarism and imperialism. King also outspokenly takes capitalism to task for its inequality in economic as well as racial terms.
The Axis-owned mainstream media publications accuse him of being a 'communist sympathiser'.
1968: Luther King’s concern with economic inequality for the poor of all races leads him to mount a Poor People's Campaign culminating in a massive march on Washington DC.
The Axis has reached its tolerance limit of this 'multi-facetted troublemaker'.
Martin Luther King is ASSASSINATED while addressing a strike by sanitation workers in Memphis. The oppression of Black Americans continues.
FAST FORWARD: Black Lives Still Don't Matter
2013: Black Lives Matter (BLM) is formed in July 2013 after a Florida court acquits George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer on patrol with the support of the police, for shooting dead an unarmed 17-year-old black teen Trayvon Martin.
2020: Kentucky, March 2020. Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black American woman, is fatally shot 6 times when seven police officers force entry into her apartment as part of an investigation into drug dealing operations. Her shooting sparked widespread protests and generated significant media coverage. In the spotlight, the police are told to up their PR game.
But old habits die hard and in May 2020 George Floyd is murdered by Minnesota police, bringing to boiling point anger against the unlawful killings of Black Americans. Overnight the BLM movement gains international press coverage.
2021: An independent enquiry commissioned by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights finds the U.S. Police killings of Blacks are 'Crimes Against Humanity' but because it lacks enforcement authority nothing can be done. Unsurprisingly, no change there then.
2024: 58 years after his assassination Luther King's dream for black Americans remains elusive, many see no advancement in equality in terms of economic wellbeing or justice.
Racial disparities persist as ever. Today in Minneapolis and Chicago for example, Black residents are still killed by police at a rate 25 times higher than white residents and each year across America new records are set for the number of Blacks killed by police.
Seemingly unaccountable, they continue to get away with a 'slap on the wrist' after sham investigations into their unlawful aggressions.
“It just never stops” said Bianca Austin, aunt of Breonna Taylor “There was a movement and uproar across the globe, but we’re still having more killings? What are we doing wrong? It’s so disheartening.” Still, none of the 7 police involved in the killing of Breonna have been brought to justice.
I can envisage a Nelson Mandela reply to Bianca: “You are not doing anything 'wrong'. You are experiencing the sad inevitability that those who stole your rights using violence will only return them under threat of violence, not peaceful protest which gets us nowhere”.
The 'media spotlight' the BLM briefly enjoyed soon wandered off to 'more newsworthy pastures' and, away from public scrutiny, the police are now disproportionately targetting BLM protests using violent interventions.
There is also mounting evidence of organized and vigilante right-wing violence against BLM protestors to which the Police are accused of turning a blind eye.
Unsurprisingly, like their forefathers Malcolm X and Luther King, the BLM movement sees the Palestinian struggle as a reflection of their own fight for racial equality and civil rights.
BLM and Palestinian activists feel united under a common cause.
BLOODY SUNDAY NORTHERN IRELAND – A SUMMARY
For years Britain furthered its Colonial interests in Eireland by fuelling a division of its people based on wealth and religion; the classic Axis divide-and-conquer formula.
Dividing the country in half in 1920s Britain allowed 'home rule' in the relatively impoverished mainly Catholic South whilst retaining control of the vastly more economically valuable (including the important Belfast shipyards) and mainly Protestant North.
But that wasn't enough.
When the minority Catholic peoples in the North protested against the 3rd class citizenship dealt out to them, the British built urban barricades, walls, imposed curfews and created 'no-go areas' to confine them.
Starting to sound like Nazi Germany or Palestine...?
1972: Bloody Sunday Northern Eireland. A peaceful protest by children, women and men against discrimination and internment without trial ends when 14 unarmed men and teenage boys are shot dead by the occupying British Army.
Marchers carry signs for deceased on the one-year anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
The Queen decorated, awarded medals and citations, to the officers in charge of the 'successful control operation'.
Within a few weeks,the world started to hear that the 'successful control operation' was in fact a totally unjustified act of mass murder, admitted some 25 years later by the British government.
A group of 'just following orders' soldiers was arrested for carrying out the slaughter but only one of them was charged; the case was dropped because of 'lack of evidence'.
In the same way the Black people of South Africa felt peaceful protest was getting them nowhere, so it was in Northern Eireland. The choice was armed resistance or capitulation.
The path to peace only made progress when the IRA took their armed struggle to the streets of London, moving their freedom struggle firmly up the public agenda. Without this action, nothing would have changed.
INDIA and GANDHI
“But what about what Gandhi achieved through non-violence?” I hear the pacifists shout.
Remember: British colonial rule in India was only established in India after a series of wars had been fought from the mid-18th century onwards. It was bloody and gradual, and rested on a thin foundation of coercion and military dominance.
This was made painfully clear in the First War of Indian Independence in 1857 in which a series of rebellions erupted across northern India, seriously undermining imperial confidence. Although the mutiny was crushed, the memory of it continued to inspire generations of Indian anti-colonialists.
In April 1919 imperial troops opened fire on unarmed rights protestors killing 379 people and sparking nationwide anger and feeding anti-colonial sentiment.
Following the end of WW2, the strength of the Indian National Army (INA) was vastly increased by an influx of armed and battle-experienced Indian soldiers who had fought serving the British Army.
By 1946 such was the capacity for armed struggle of the INA, together with a broad cross section of other anti-British groups, it was a force to be reckoned with.
The British realised that the peaceful protests against their occupation that had previously so easily been put down were about to be replaced with serious armed rebellion.
In order not to risk another costly full-scale war that their WW2-depleted armies would probably lose, the British pulled a face-saving PR masterstroke using Gandhi.
In recognition of Gandhi's non-violent protest movement, as a champion of democracy, the British would 'respect the will' of the Indian people they had been terrorising for 100 years and in 1947 withdrew as the 'noble peacemaker', granting Indian independence. Clever..
But while it is the memory of Gandhi and non-violence that politicians like to hype up, the backdrop of violence that preceded it was critical and should never be forgotten.
Now back to Gaza
PALESTINE - THE FIRST WORLD WAR & BRITISH TREACHERY
1900's: Europe is dividing into two rival alliance systems, both seeking colonial expansion. Led by heavyweights Germany on one side and Britain on the other, each seeking to exploit the demise of the Ottoman Empire. The oil fields of Iraq and the strategic Suez Canal being of particular interest.
1914: War breaks out. The Central Powers comprising Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) pitted against Great Britain, France and Russia, the Allied Powers.
The British expectation that it would be “over by Christmas”, 5 months after it started, was soon to prove to be ridiculously optimistic.
1916: To continue the war Britain was in desperate need of both a morale-boosting victory and substantial finance.
It saw the defeat of the relatively weak Turkish Army as the victory it needed to break the stalemate, but it would need the support of the Arabs forces.
In exchange for a British promise of an independent homeland in Palestine, the Arabs, who had been under Ottoman rule for 400 years agreed to raise an army to help fight the Turks.
To get the finance it needed Britain secretly promised the Zionist Rothschild banking cartel a Jewish homeland in the same Palestinian territory it had promised to the Arabs.
1917: The tie with the Zionists deepens in 1917 when, as a result of the Bolshevik revolution, Russia retired from the war.
To avoid defeat by Germany it was imperative that previously neutral America be brought into the war. In America, on behalf of Britain, the powerful Rothschilds banking cartel politicked that billions of $$$ loaned to Britain in the form of Bonds would be worthless were Britain to lose the war and this would lead to the total collapse of the American economy. Thus, in fear, America was coerced into entering the war.
Britain, who now occupied Jerusalem, honoured its promise to the Rothschilds in the form of the Balfour Declaration handing Palestine to the Zionists.
The Palestinian Arabs had been betrayed but Britain had achieved its objectives: Turkey was defeated, America joined the war and British war chest replenished.
1918: The war is over with Britain and her allies the victors. Overseen by the British military Palestine was opened to Jewish immigrants who built settlements, sowing the seeds of a Jewish national home. The Palestinian Arabs were incensed at the theft of their lands but their protests were crushed and the next 10 years saw a slow but steady increase in Jewish immigration.
1930s and 1940s: Jewish immigration goes into 5th gear as a result of Nazi persecution, 100s of thousands of Arabs are forced to leave their homes to make way for the new Jewish immigrants creating a deep divide between Arabs and Jews leading to violence from both sides.
1947: The starting point of the current conflict is for many people is the United Nations’ vote to partition land in the British mandate of Palestine into two states – one Jewish, one Arab. This was done with zero consultation of the non-Jewish people who had been living there for thousands of years.
1948: Britain, feeling it has sufficiently armed and financed Israel as the dominant regional force, quietly extricates its military base from the political hotbed it has so treacherously created and hands over rule of Palestine to the Jews. Israel declares independence in May 1948.
Neither the Palestinians nor its neighbouring Arab countries accept this division. Fighting erupts between Jews and Palestinians, culminating in a joint Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria invasion of the Israeli occupied territories.
1949: Israel’s new Western armed and financed army defeats the Arabs and an armistice agreement sees the creation of new de facto borders that give the fledgling Jewish state considerably more territory than it was awarded under the UN partition plan.
Some 700,000 Palestinians are victims of ethnic cleansing, fleeing the territory captured by Israel, they are never allowed to return. Israel has now seized 80% of the former Palestinian territory. Palestinians called the eradication of their communities, now inside territory controlled by Israel, the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, and it remains the traumatic event at the heart of their modern history.
Fast Forward - 1992: Under the USA and Egyptian brokered Oslo Accords, Israel and the Palestinians sign a historic peace accord that leads to the creation of the Palestinian Authority. Under an interim deal, Palestinians are given limited control in Gaza, and Jericho in the West Bank.
1993: The Oslo Peace Process starts with talks between Israel's prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the Palestinian PLO leader Yasser Arafat. An agreement is signed acknowledging the right of the Palestinian people to land, Gaza and the West Bank, and self-determination.
Although the principle of a two-state solution is still very distant, it is on the radar. Here was a tangible ray of hope that a peaceful solution was not impossible.
Hang on. Did someone mention the 'P' word?
Before even a date for the first Oslo Accord implementation meeting had been set, alarm bells were ringing in the Money/Power Axis corridors. Peace? Peace?!.
Within months the 'Peace Plotters' had been taken care of.
The Israeli government sponsored the extremist Hamas group in elections, deposing Yasser Arafat's peace-seeking PLO party.
The PLO had been humiliated and Marwan Barghouti, described as 'the Mandela of Palestine', the biggest hope for architecting a peaceful Jewish/Arab resolution, to the relief of the Axis, remains firmly behind bars in Israel.
With Hamas characteristically refusing point blank to peace talks, that was the Arabs sorted as far as the peace nonsense was concerned. That left Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin to deal with.
1995: Rabin stands firm against threats from future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to drop the peace talks. Extremist rallies are organised and fronted by Netanyahu where Rabin is portrayed and vilified as a treasonous Nazi for considering making peace with the Arabs.
Rabin shares the same fate as Luther King and Malcolm X. He is assassinated by an ultranationalist Israeli. (Rabin’s widow blamed Netanyahu personally for her husband’s assassination.)
That was the peace nonsense now sorted out on the Jewish side. A ray of hope for a non-violent solution was brutally extinguished. The conflict continues.
IN CONCLUSION:
The Jews left the Palestinian lands around 50 CE, seeking new homes and opportunities, settling throughout the East and Europe.
For the Jews to claim, because of their distant ancestral heritage, they have the right to reoccupy and displace the millions of people who have been living there for the past 2000 years is simply unjustifiable.
It would be like the Romans who lived in Britain for 400 years until 450 CE deciding, with the support of the EU, they have a right to move back and displace the British.
This baseless rationale was perhaps best challenged by black American activist Malcolm X on his return from the Middle East in 1964.
“There are over 100 million of our people in the western hemisphere who are of African origin. Just because our forefathers once lived here in Africa, would this give Afro-Americans the right to come back here to the mother continent to drive out the rightful citizens? To occupy their cities, confiscate their lands and set up a new 'Afro-American nation as the European Zionists have in Palestine?”
The Palestinians have every right to have their own State in their own Country.
Where is world consciousness surrounding the suffering of the Palestinian peoples?
Why is mainstream media choosing to ignore their horrendous suffering, preferring to headline femininity issues around a Barbie Doll Oscar nomination when mothers in Gaza cannot find sufficient food and water to produce milk for their babies?
When women losing blood during birth or miscarriages, that some 1:5 pregnancies now end in in Gaza, are forced along with those menstruating, to scavenge for filthy pieces of cloth risking infection.
When, for fear of attracting Israeli soldiers, a mother has to stifle the screams of her 15-month-old daughter having her bomb-damaged legs amputated using a plumber's hack saw with no anaesthetic in filthy conditions under candlelight, what has humanity come to?
How does a reader of 'the morning news' (if the story gets any cover) over coffee come to the view “Well she deserves it doesn't she” before moving briskly on to the daily crossword puzzle?
How can the so-called International Court of Justice recognise the Palestinians’ right to protection from acts of genocide but then give Israel the nod to carry on exterminating them?
When will it stop? When every Arab man, woman and child in Gaza is dead?
How has it come to this? How did we get conditioned to accept this inhumanity?
Take a minute to consider the Hamas decision to attack Israel and the annihilation that would invite.
Imagine being a fly on the wall as the people of Gaza were being addressed by their Hamas leaders just prior to October 2023.
“People of Gaza, we your representative leaders are planning to attack Israel – to kill hundreds of Israelis and take dozens of hostages. If we are able to cross the wall and carry out the attack, Israel will carry out a devastating retaliation. Your homes, schools, hospitals, places of work, markets and holy places will be totally destroyed. Most of you and your families will be erased from the surface of the earth. Any of you still living after this armageddon will be forced into refugee camps where you will starve or die of disease. We ask you, people of Gaza, to give our attack on Israel your blessings”.
Maybe there was no consultation. Maybe their leaders did like Rushi Sunak who went ahead and bombed The Yemen with no consultation of the people he is meant to represent.
Regardless of what unimaginable suffering, what total loss of any hope of living as free people have the people of Gaza experienced that so anaesthetises them to the prospect of a terrible death?
Do they reason “We are dying slowly, painfully in this prison called Gaza. Perhaps an attack on Israel will serve as a desperate last message of our suffering to the world, then Israel will end our suffering and kill us all”.
I refuse to believe that, without the interference of their so called 'elected leaders', if 50 working Israeli families were to meet with 50 working Gaza families, they would not find a way to live together in respect and peace.
But for the Axis peace is a dirty word: it doesn't make money, it doesn't make for fear and control.
When the 'war' with Gaza and the West Bank is over there will 'peace' as there will be no Arabs for the Israelis to make war against. This is going to create a $$$ turnover issue for Israel and the Axis, which explains why they are stoking up tensions of other areas in the Middle East.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east
But they deserve it too. Now what's happening about Barbie's Oscar nomination?
Research by Paul Hayward
