For background to the Israeli attacks on ships carrying
aid to the blockaded people of Gaza, we publish Chapter 15 of the book
“Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire,” PSL Publications, 2009. For more
information and to order the book, go to www.palestinebook.com.
From the start in 2001, the Bush
administration was determined to create a “New Middle East” through war and
threats of war. Israel played a central role in its calculations. Bush and his
top “national security” advisers, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and others, saw
Israel as an invaluable ally. This view of Israel was not dissimilar to that of
prior administrations.
 Massive worldwide protests leading up to the Iraq war also called for Palestinian liberation. Photo: Bill Hackwell |
Also central to the Bush
administration’s goals was toppling independent regimes and defeating
resistance movements in the region. This put Iraq in the crosshairs
immediately. The unprovoked U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 followed nearly 13
years of Democratic and Republican Party support for genocidal sanctions and
bombing campaigns. Attacking Iraq was on the agenda at the first meeting of the
Bush cabinet, Jan. 29, 2001—more than seven months prior to the Sept. 11
attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. The U.S. government wanted to
overthrow the Saddam Hussein-led government and replace it with a puppet
regime. Washington wanted to dominate this strategically located country with
its massive oil reserves. But the Hussein government refused the role of
neocolonial subservience.
Knowing full well that Iraq posed
no threat to the United States, the Bush administration—with key support from
leading Democrats in Congress—carried out its “Shock and Awe” invasion in
March-April 2003. Much of Iraq’s infrastructure was destroyed, along with its
sovereignty.
For the neoconservatives who
dominated Bush’s foreign policy, Iraq was meant to be a crucial first step in
extending U.S. hegemony over the entire Middle East.
Baghdad fell to the invaders April
9, 2003. The same day, Rumsfeld triumphantly warned Iran, Syria and North Korea
to draw the “appropriate lesson” from Iraq. (1) Based on what the United States
had done in Iraq over the previous 13 years—criminal sanctions and bombings
that killed over 1.5 million Iraqis—Rumsfeld’s words could only be understood
as a terrorist threat, which translated: “Obey the dictates of Washington or we
will bomb your cities, starve your people and reduce you to the status of colony,
as we have done to Iraq.”
Rumsfeld was not speaking
off-handedly. Over the next four years, the U.S. government carried out
sustained efforts to bring about regime change in Iran, Syria, Sudan and
Lebanon. In Lebanon, they used the guise of the pro-imperialist “Cedar
Revolution.” At the same time, Washington sought to marginalize all Palestinian
forces except its preferred leader, Mahmoud Abbas.
The brutal invasion and occupation
of Iraq was meant not only to subjugate that country and seize its oil—previous
to 1990, Iraq was the most developed of the Arab states—but also to have a
“demonstration effect.” The invasion and occupation, the idea went, would
“demonstrate” the supposed invincibility of U.S. power and, conversely, the
futility of any attempt to resist. So confident was the Bush administration
that on May 1, 2003, three weeks after the fall of Baghdad, they arranged to
have the president land on an aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego under
a banner reading, “Mission Accomplished.”
Their triumph was short-lived.
Instead of bowing before the new empire, the fierce resistance that had
characterized Iraq’s fight against British colonialism from 1920 to 1958
reignited. What was demonstrated in Iraq was the exact opposite of what the
Washington war planners anticipated. Despite its vast superiority in weaponry
and ability to inflict massive casualties, the occupation army was shown to be
vulnerable to a determined, popular resistance. Far from being a demonstration
of invincibility, Iraq came very close to being a catastrophic defeat for the
United States. Although the armed resistance is not at the levels of 2005-2006
for a number of reasons, Iraq is very far from being “pacified.”
The extreme aggressiveness of the
Bush regime did not succeed in gaining its objectives in Iran, Syria, Sudan or
Lebanon. In Lebanon, despite the U.S.-backed 2005 “Cedar Revolution,” which
forced Syrian troops to leave the country, the alliance of popular forces led
by Hezbollah gained strength.
A hole in the ‘Iron Wall’
 Israel’s colonial reality breeds widespread anti-Arab chauvinism. Here, Israeli girls write messages on artillery shells used to kill Lebanese, July 2006. Photo: Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Gerry Images |
The failure of Washington’s
attempt to control Lebanon led directly to Israel’s attack in summer 2006. This
war should really be called a U.S.-Israeli war. That’s what it was. While the
Israeli army, air force and navy carried out the assault, the U.S. government
supplied arms, money, and political and diplomatic cover. Using the capture of
two Israeli soldiers as the pretext, Israel launched six weeks of air attacks
on Lebanese apartment buildings, hospitals, bridges, roads, power, water and
sewage treatment plants, and more. It waged war on Gaza at the same time, using
the same pretext of a “kidnapped” Israeli occupation soldier.
Over 1,200 Lebanese were killed
and thousands more wounded. Much of what had been rebuilt after decades of a
destructive civil war was destroyed again. In the midst of the war, it was
revealed that U.S. and Israeli leaders had met months earlier to discuss a new
war, and that Israeli war plans had been in the works for over a year.
In the early stages of the war,
with its many Lebanese civilian casualties, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice rejected a ceasefire proposal by the U.N. Security Council. Rice
arrogantly dismissed the Israeli assault and its casualties as “the birth pangs
of a new Middle East.” It seemed then that Israel was bound to prevail because
of its overwhelming military advantage, as it had in earlier wars.
But that did not happen. The death
and destruction inflicted on Lebanon was horrendous, but the war was not the
one-sided affair anticipated by Israel, the United States and much of the
world. The Israeli military was never able to suppress rocket and missile fire
into northern Israel that was a response to Israel’s bombing campaign. When the
Israeli infantry and armored forces invaded Lebanon, they were repelled,
suffering relatively heavy casualties of 119 soldiers killed and 450 wounded.
(2) Israeli civilian casualties were reported at 43 killed, around 100
seriously wounded and 1,400 lightly wounded. On the Lebanese side, about 320
fighters and 900 civilians were killed, and more that 4,400 wounded. (3)
After a ceasefire
agreement—vigorously sought by Israel and Washington—was reached on Aug. 12,
2006, the Israeli military scattered more than a million cluster bomblets
across southern Lebanon. This calculated act of terrorism continues to take the
lives and limbs of Lebanese children and adults today. But even that could not
alter the outcome: Hezbollah and its allied popular resistance forces had
unmistakably punched a hole in Israel’s much-vaunted “Iron Wall.”
The Gaza massacre
Two years later, in the Bush
administration’s closing days, Israel launched another U.S.-backed assault,
this time solely on besieged and densely populated Gaza. Israel pulled out its
forces and settlements from inside Gaza in September 2005, but since that time
it has maintained the occupation by surrounding and blockading the 1.5 million
people inside.
In time-honored fashion, U.S.
politicians and media assigned all blame for Israel’s war on Gaza to the
Palestinian side. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) authored House Resolution 34.
Pushed through Congress by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Jan. 8, 2009, it
read in part:
“(5) Calls on all nations—
“(A) to condemn Hamas for
deliberately embedding its fighters, leaders, and weapons in private homes,
schools, mosques, hospitals, and otherwise using Palestinian civilians as human
shields, while simultaneously targeting Israeli civilians; and
“(B) to lay blame both for the
breaking of the “calm” and for subsequent civilian casualties in Gaza precisely
where blame belongs, that is, on Hamas.”
The resolution passed by a vote of
390-5, with 16 abstentions. It contained not one word of criticism of Israel,
which by then had been heavily bombing and shelling civilian areas for more than
10 days.
The congressional resolution was a
complete falsification of history. After Hamas won the Palestinian
parliamentary election in January 2006, Israel resolved to starve the people in
Gaza as a form of collective punishment. Collective punishment—like West Bank
and Golan Heights settlements, the imprisonment of Palestinians inside Israeli
jails, the systematic torture of prisoners, house demolitions and many other
routine Israeli practices—violates international humanitarian law. But because
of U.S. protection, Israel has been immune from suffering consequences for its
wanton criminality.
Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz
reported in February 2006 on a meeting of top Israeli officials shortly after
the Palestinian elections. Dov Weisglass, a top advisor to Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert told those assembled: “It’s like an appointment with a
dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner but won’t die.” Among those
who reportedly “rolled with laughter” at this grotesque “joke” were Israeli
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the army chief of staff and the head of the
secret police. (4)
For the next nearly three years,
Israel severely restricted and often completely blocked supplies and people
from coming into Gaza, while also blocking commodities and people from going
out. Because it is a tiny area with a large refugee population, food, medical
supplies and other necessities must be brought into Gaza continually. The
United Nations Relief and Works Agency trucks in food, medicine and educational
materials.
Since it supposedly ended the
occupation of Gaza, the Israeli military has regularly carried out targeted
assassinations and other attacks inside Gaza by means of F-16 fighter-bombers,
“Apache” attack helicopters and special operations forces.
Responding to the blockade,
bombings and killings, Palestinian fighters fired homemade rockets from Gaza
into Israel. Again, only the Palestinians actions were labeled as “terrorism”
in the U.S. and European corporate media. Not once were Israel’s grave crimes
called acts of state terrorism.
A six-month ceasefire agreement
was negotiated in Cairo on June 19, 2008, between the Hamas-led government in
Gaza and the Israeli government. Israel regularly violated the agreement by
continuing the blockade, and on Nov. 4, Israel killed six people inside Gaza.
It followed this attack by sealing off Gaza altogether. The resistance forces
inside Gaza resumed rocket fire. The Bush administration and Democratic Party
leaders, including Senate leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
condemned the Palestinians and proclaimed their full support for Israel.
This sequence of events should be
understood for what it was: a worked-out war plan again using Israel’s favorite
pretext of “retaliation”—the word that magically transforms the aggressor into
victim and vice-versa.
One month later, on Dec. 27,
Israel launched massive air strikes all over Gaza, which intensified over the
next three weeks. Israel also initiated a massive land invasion of Gaza. In the
assault, 1,417 Palestinians were killed and over 5,500 wounded. (5) The
casualties were overwhelmingly civilian.
The Israeli military used some of
the most horrific anti-personnel weapons—such as white phosphorous and the new
Dense Inert Metal Explosive—in one of the most crowded areas of the planet.
These weapons cause death and severe disfigurement in exceedingly cruel ways.
Physicians noted the pattern of wounds they were treating during the assault on
Gaza often were unusual. Patients came to them with severed limbs that showed
signs of extreme heat at the point of amputation, but no metal shrapnel. (6)
Destitute before the Israeli
assault, Gaza suffered over $2 billion in damage. Tens of thousands of homes,
along with hospitals, schools and food warehouses, including U.N. facilities,
were targeted for destruction. The sheer scale of destruction forced the mass
media, spearheaded by Arab-language and European outlets, to document some of
the atrocities being committed by the Zionists and endorsed by their U.S.
backers. But Israel refused to allow reporters into Gaza; thus, most of the
damning footage came out after the assault ended. Still, the reports coming out
of Gaza helped reveal to the world the war crimes and crimes against humanity
committed by the Israeli state.
On the Israeli side, there were 13
people reported killed, and 120 wounded. But while Israel suffered far fewer
casualties than it had in Lebanon in 2006, the Gaza war also failed to achieve
its real objective—the destruction of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance
forces. All throughout the Gaza assault, resistance fighters continued to fire
rockets into Israel and defend the civilian population as best they could. It
was a lesson of courage to the world. The resolve of the Palestinian people did
not waver in the face of a most powerful and brutal enemy.
______
1. “Rumsfeld Accuses Syria of Sheltering Baathists,”
Guardian UK, April 10, 2003.
2. “Israel-Hezbollah conflict: Victims of rocket attacks and
IDF casualties,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Retrieved June 15, 2009.
3. “Lebanon Under Siege,” Presidency of the Council of
Ministers—Higher Relief Council (Lebanon), Nov. 9, 2006.
5. Palestine Committee for Human Rights, Press Release,
March 12, 2009.
6. “Dense Inert Metal Explosive,” GlobalSecurity.org.
Retrieved June 15, 2009.
