Gaza

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Juan Cole is one of the most knowledgable scholars on the subjects of the Middle East and the Islamic World, including their histories, their political alignments, and their cultural and linguistic traditions. In his blog, http://www.juancole.com/, he has laid out the circumstances prevailing in Gaza which I am only summarizing here.

As of this morning, the Israelis have now killed 1038 and wounded 4850 residents of Gaza, including, according to the BBC, more than 300 slain children, 76 slain women, and more than 4,500 injured individuals, including about 1,600 children and 678 women. Many of the dead are policemen and women, who are not part of any terrorist organization.

The damages to Gazan property resulting for the all out war against them is estimated at $1.4 bn, resulting from the failure Israeli army to even try to avoid hitting civilian targets. Many of these desperately poor people are now homeless, shelterless, and nutritionless in very cold weather for the region. Here is what Professor Cole quotes from the European medical journal Lancet:

"We find it hard to believe that an otherwise internationally respected, democratic nation can sanction such large and indiscriminate human atrocities in a territory already under land and sea blockade. . . .The collective punishment of Gazans is placing horrific and immediate burdens of injury and trauma on innocent civilians. These actions contravene the fourth Geneva convention."

The editorial in Lancet also took aim at "national medical associations and professional bodies worldwide."

"Their leaders, through their inaction, are complicit in a preventable tragedy that may have long-lasting public-health consequences not only for Gaza [but] also for the entire region"

Britain's Channel 4 reported that Hamas never broke the cease fire by sending rockets into Israel during the period of the cease fire. The 20 home made Gazan projectiles landing in Israel from June to December of 2008, came from non-Hamas organizations, killing no Israelis.

Professor Cole argues that “Israel is keeping the Gazans in a state akin to slavery": they have been “deprived of their basic rights as a result of a military conquest;” they remain “stateless,” like slaves not being counted “citizens at all by any existing state"; European Jewish settlers forcibly confiscated the property of the majority of them, suffering a kind of “social death;” like slaves, the Gazans are trapped in the Gaza Strip lacking any normal mobility, their borders controlled by Israel which also controls their air space and coastlines—in other words Gazans like slaves “are deprived of the liberty of movement”; they can never be sure what little property they own will not be destroyed nor that any medical facility to which the have access will survive Israeli bombs; they themselves are subject of being killed or injured in their own houses; and their very nutrition is also subject to the hostility of their “masters.”

Indeed one respondent to Coles blog made the following comparison to the Israel’s siege of Gaza:

“Fighters of the Jewish Combat Organization, under the command of Mordechaj Anielewicz, together with those of the Jewish Military Union, had a well developed network of bunkers and fortifications. Over 2,000 heavily armed soldiers of the Wehrmacht and SS assailed the fighters. The Polish Underground actively supported the Ghetto Uprising; it supplied arms and organized military actions. On May 8th, after an admirable defense, the bunker at Mila 18 Street fell, and the staff of the Jewish Combat Organization, together with their commander all gave up their lives” (http://www.cyberroad.com/poland/jews_ww2.html).

“Just change the flags and insignia,” Cole's respondent concluded, “and this is what is unfolding in Gaza today, except that for the people of Gaza, there is no escape.