In
recent months, said the June 3 story on the front page of
the New York Times, Israel “has permitted increased
— although still quite limited — movement of goods and people
into and out of Gaza. One Israeli official said that under
Mr. Netanyahu there had been a 20 percent increase in goods,
including some limited building materials under third-party
supervision so that Hamas would not get hold of them.
“But
Israel remains adamant, saying that if cement and steel
were allowed to pass in any serious amount, they would end
up in Hamas missiles and other weapons that would be aimed
at Israel.”
Unable
to get the image out of my mind and being totally ignorant
on such matters, I called a couple of people who know about
this stuff, inquiring as to how one makes a missile out
of cement. Not easy was the response, and one person suggested
that the kind of structural steel needed to repair the bridges
Israel destroyed in the terrible 2006 onslaught wouldn’t
be much help either. A couple of days later the Israeli
government sought to clear up the confusion by saying the
Palestinian government in Gaza uses cement as ballast for
its crude rockets. Could be. But one has only to picture
again the tremendous devastation in Gaza to realize that
unless the residents have access to more than a “serious
amount” of concrete and steel they are never going to rebuild
their cities and villages.
But
then the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
and its far-flung propaganda operation, can be counted on
to have an answer – or excuse -- for everything.
The
purpose in this case is to underscore the contention that
the cruel blockade of Gaza is to prevent the smuggling of
arms and weapons-making material into the enclave. It is
not and never has been. The aim of the blockade is to make
life miserable for the 1.4 million Palestinians there in
the hope of undermining the Hamas government, which was
duly elected four years ago. Gaza is being held for ransom.
That's collective punishment and it’s against international
law.
The
assertion that the only reason for the blockade is to prevent
arms or munitions building materials from entering Gaza
is a bold face lie. That is unless you consider food and
medicine to be weapons because they might be fed to military
personnel.
"Preventing
the importing of arms is an element in the blockade,"
writes Esther Kaplan in The Nation, “but the
blockade also bars the importation of many basics of life,
such as fuel to power hospital generators and building materials,
including iron and cement, necessary for rebuilding after
the devastation of Operation Cast Lead. It bans pesticides
and spare parts for farming equipment, which has debilitated
the agricultural sector. According to the Israeli human
rights group B’tselem, some 4,000 goods were allowed into
Gaza before the siege, and only 150 are allowed in now.
(And the guidelines for what may join the list of acceptable
items is a tightly guarded secret.) The blockade has severely
limited access to electricity, leaving the vast majority
of Gazans facing blackouts for eight to ten hours a day.
It has cut off students from their university educations
and severed family ties. It has left a stunning 70 percent
of the population dependent on international food aid just
to survive.”
Reflecting
Netanyahu’s original line of propaganda attack, Gal Beckerman
writing in The Forward, says that on June 2 the Jewish
Federations of North America distributed talking points,
which read: “When Israeli commandos boarded the ships, they
were met with violence from a supposedly nonviolent group,
including gunfire from automatic weapons and attacks with
knives and axes. Several Israelis were wounded. As a result
of the clash triggered by the pro-Hamas group, a number
of them were killed or wounded in the confrontation.”
However,
on June 1 Caroline Glick, rightwing deputy managing editor
of the Jerusalem Post and one-time advisor to Netanyahu,
sharply took the Israeli government to task for deficiencies
in waging the propaganda surrounding the flotilla. The “information
strategy” she wrote in her paper “was ill-conceived.” It
should have attacked Turkey for “facilitation of terrorism,”
she wrote, it should have prepared “charge sheets against
the flotilla’s organizers, crew and passengers for their
facilitation of terrorism.” Israeli leaders “stammer,” she
wrote, and engage in arguments that are “worse than worthless.”
The following day, the Reut Institute, a Tel Aviv-based
think tank that - in the words of the Wall Street Journal
- “provides strategic-thinking support to the Israeli
government,” and with which Glick is associated, criticized
the government for having "no coherent conceptual response"
to push back against global critics. Then, on June 3, Netanyahu
went before the media to say there was a danger of arms
smuggling involved. By that afternoon--U.S. time--U.S. Vice-President
Joseph Biden was making the same claim.
As
the days have worn on since the bloody events aboard the
Mavi Marmara, the arms smuggling message has sharpened.
On Saturday Netanyahu said Israel would "not
allow the establishment of an Iranian port in Gaza."
Then rightwing columnist Charles Krauthammer got in
on the act, claiming that the purpose of the blockade of
Gaza is to "prevent Hamas from arming itself with still
more rockets.” One of CNN's resident foreign policy experts,
Jill Dougherty, went on the air to explain the purpose of
Israel’s Gaza blockade as: “Essentially to stop weapons
from being taken into Gaza, and to be used against Israel.”
Of
course, there were no weapons making their way to Gaza aboard
the Mavi Marmara, hence the steel and cement tale passed
on to us by the Times’ Ethan Bronner. And the idea
that if the ship reached port in Gaza it would open up a
sea smuggling route is sheer fantasy.
Another
taking point that has gotten a lot of play over the past
two weeks is the notion that the aid ships were not really
on a humanitarian mission but rather were aiming for a conflict
or “provocation.” This is a smokescreen designed to cover
what really happened. The African American students
that sat in at lunch counters in North Carolina in 1960
expected a confrontation (little likelihood the owners were
going to do the decent thing and make them hamburgers).
But they didn’t expect the Tactical Squad to suddenly arrive
en mass and start shooting them in the head with assault
rifles.
One
thing that has emerged from Israel’s piracy on the high
seas, and the resulting tragic deaths and injuries, is that
a bright light is being shown on something that has usually
been ignored by the Western media: the reality and effect
of the blockade. Herein lies the test for the international
community, and the Obama Administration in particular. Only
the Netanyahu government and its supporters at home and
abroad would argue that the crippling siege of Gaza is justified
and should continue. Peace loving and progressive people
should demand that it be lifted. It would mean a lot for
the suffering Palestinian community to have access to steel
and cement.
This,
of course, must be a prelude to the urgent task of ending
the occupation and the birth of a new Palestine.
Following
the May31 Israeli military assault on an international flotilla
trying to bring humanitarian supplies to besieged Gaza,
the Israeli propaganda machine went into overdrive. It wasn’t
always well-coordinated but it was unrelenting and it had
one big advantage: the reluctance or refusal of the Western
media – particularly in the U.S., to ask hard questions
and its willingness go along with the Netanyahu government’s
framing of the issues. Robert Fisk wrote in The Independent
(UK) last Saturday, “The amazing thing in all this is that
so many Western journalists – and I'm including the BBC's
pusillanimous coverage of the Gaza aid ships – are writing
like Israeli journalists, while many Israeli journalists
are writing about the killings with the courage that Western
journalists should demonstrate.”
BlackCommentator.com Editorial
Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco,
a member of the National Coordinating Committee
of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare
union. Click here to
contact Mr. Bloice. |
Jun 10, 2010 - Issue 379
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