A little late, but well-meaning, Christopher Hitchens has finally weighed in on the Gaza issue. And folks, what he's saying ain't pretty. First off, he says this massacre was inevitable:
So, that is why this nasty confrontation is taking place this time instead of at another time. But each miniature of the picture also implies its own enlargement, which in turn suggests that if the latest Gaza war hadn't come at this time, it would certainly have come at another.
Apparently it's got something to do with Israeli perceptions, surrounded as they are by hostile neighbors and by all those ethnically cleansed native Palestinians who have refused to fade away. So who can blame them for lashing out occasionally? But most of all it's the fault of Hamas, a bunch of fanatics who just don't know how to play fair. If only Yasser Arafat was still in charge:
It is only when one begins to grasp all the foregoing that one understands exactly how disgusting and squalid is the behavior of the Hamas gang. It knows very well that sanctions are injuring every Palestinian citizen, but—just like Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq—it declines to cease the indiscriminate violence and the racist and religious demagogy that led to the sanctions in the first place.
What Hitch doesn't note, is that just like Saddam's regime in Iraq, the Hamas gang and any "citizens" in the general vicinity are damned whatever they do. Cease fire or no cease fire, WMD or no WMD—it makes not a blind bit of difference to the aspiring global hegemons in the District of Colonia and the Town of Tel-a-Fib. The nonpersons of Iraq and their fellow unpeople in Gaza have been pencilled in for rubbing out — collective cultural genocide — and a fighting chance of individual euthanasia by lottery draw, with winning tickets to be delivered by one or other of the Four Horsemen. Like the tenants of the Town of Harlow in the old Genesis song, in the interests of humanity they've been told they must go. Hitch told us before that the Gazans were committing suicide by voting for Hamas. What he didn't say was that it was going to be an assisted suicide without the patients' consent.
After taking his readers' attention away from the fact that the Israelis are out-Clintoning Bill Clinton by committing genocide as part of an election campaign—in a sort of vastly magnified Ricky Ray Rector execution with added chutzpah and no lemonade, Hitch then goes on at considerable length to paint the very possibly true but totally unrelated evils of various Muslim regimes and movements in vivid colors, spending so much effort on drawing our attention to how corrupt and mendacious they are that despite an extended column, he finds himself with no space left to mention the most essential basic fact in this case — that it is evil for the State of Israel to be indiscriminately killing and wounding Palestinian civilians, carrying out air strikes on schools, police stations and hospitals in built-up areas, destroying ambulances, using white phosphorus to shake 'n' bake their victims, denying entry to the Red Cross and Red Crescent, as well as to media reporters, and generally acting like imperial stormtroopers overdosing on testosterone, fantasies of race supremacy, and speed.
So this is how far the termites (very educational vid!) have spread! Not only have they eaten away at his brain to the point where his head resembles a a coconut drained of milk, they've chewed through so much grey matter that they are obviously affecting the old boy's optic nerves. Talk about eyeless in Gaza. He knows very well that the current slaughter is indefensible and unconscionable, regardless of who provoked whom, but he is quite unable to acknowledge the plain fact that Israel is committing crimes against humanity. Nevertheless, knowing that he can't get away with total silence on what has become the world's most high profile issue of the new year, he has opted for a protracted performance of to-ing and thro-ing and humming and aarh-ing and harping on about matters of questionable relevance, while minimizing the culpability of those who planned and ordered first the siege and now the invasion of Gaza, and he has willfully blinded himself to the historical framework that underlies the entire Zioinist enterprise in Israel. (And a good place to start might be this 1921 article on Political Zionism from the archives of the Atlantic.) This stance of looking the other way and blaming the victims as their mass murder is perpetrated makes him barely less than an apologist for the murderers, a role he must feel quite comfortable in after all the practice he's had with Afghanistan and Iraq.
I say "barely less" because some of his fellow scribes who work from the same set of talking points are much more positive about applauding the blood sport. For example, Charles "Hammer of the Krauts" Krauthammer, has the temerity to speak of Israel's moral clarity in Gaza:
Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.
Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis - 6,464 launched from Gaza in the last three years - deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.
This has two purposes. First, counting on the moral scrupulousness of Israel, Hamas figures civilian proximity might help protect at least part of its arsenal. Second, knowing Israelis have new precision weapons that may allow them to attack nonetheless, Hamas hopes that inevitable collateral damage - or, if it is really fortunate, an errant bomb - will kill large numbers of its own people, for which the world will blame Israel....
You can always tell when Charlie is bullshitting. You can see his lips moving! But seriously folks, I know there are some quantum physicists who subscribe to the many worlds theory, but it must be a really weird alternative universe in which anybody, let alone Hamas people, can afford the audacity of counting on the moral scrupulousness of Israel. Back in my version of reality, I'm not going to try to stretch this particular episode of barbarism into a rough fit with any others in history, as every genocide is unique. But I will note that last February the Israeli deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai warned that the Palestinians "will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves" — a comment that suggests, far more clearly than anything the Iranian President has ever uttered, a willingness on the part of the Israeli regime to commit genocide. The economic strangulation of Gaza by the Israelis since the election of Hamas two years ago also shows clear evidence of premeditation to commit genocide. And they may very well get away with it too. After all, who remembers now the destruction of the Armenians?
For commentary on the Israeli use of white phosphorus in Gaza, see Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque (and please read it right to the end).
And for a musician's take, check out Brian's Eno's short and succinct account Stealing Gaza in Counterpunch. Then come back and read Hitch's piece again and if you don't weep or puke, you are badly in need an enema. Take it away, Brian.
Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly...and, surprise, surprise - they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment?
Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now 'under attack' you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an accommodation.
And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland.
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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