Anas’s Blog

I found this article written by Jennifer Loewenstein on Counterpunch yesterday. I think it gets right to the heart of the events that have occurred in Gaza in the past few weeks.

Hamas will never be allowed to remain in power in Gaza so we must fear for the future of that tiny, desperately overcrowded strip of land and its 1.4 million inhabitants; additionally, Abbas ­in order to maintain his role as “Good Guy”- will have to accede to the dictates of Israel and the United States or suffer the same fate as his predecessor, Yassir Arafat.

Western nations are standing by in silence as the deadly siege of Gaza and the dismemberment of the West Bank continue unabated. What we are witnessing in full view each day are unprecedented steps taken by the world’s only superpower and its favorite client state, Israel, to ensure the death of a nation. While friction between the two key political factions in the occupied Palestinian territories has long undermined the smooth functioning of internal affairs, it was the direct, cynical involvement of US and Israeli policy-makers in these affairs that guaranteed the breakdown of internal stability and paved the way for the Hamas “coup” in Gaza.

Media reports have been careful to leave out important facts leading up to the coup such as that Hamas was the legitimate, democratically elected ruling party in the Palestinian territories following the January 2006 Palestine Legislative Council elections; that it was the US-Israeli dismissal of those election results that fueled the civil infighting between Hamas and Fatah; that obvious US backing of Fatah against Hamas helped create popular mistrust of Fatah increasing Hamas’ popularity in Gaza and leading directly to Hamas’ takeover of the Fatah military apparatus in the Gaza Strip. In other words, there were real and understandable reasons for the coup. But in the end, Hamas’ seizure of the power it should have had in the first place ends up serving the interests not only of Mahmoud Abbas and the warlord Muhammad Dahlan. It also provides the perfect opportunity for US-Israeli policy in the region to move forward with even fewer objections, if that is possible to imagine, than have heretofore been made. Who will stand up for a “terrorist organization that seeks the destruction of Israel”? The line has been beaten into our heads with every mention of the word “Hamas” for years. We should not expect a change in the behavior of the American public or of other western audiences until, when Israel is mentioned, we immediately say to ourselves, “a terrorist state that seeks the destruction of Palestine.” Seeks and is succeeding in it.

The thing is the media coverage of the Hamas takeover of Gaza *has* been absolutely shocking, especially on ITV and the BBC. The situation is invariably shorn of most of its context, and we get some of the most ignorant statements from these supposedly objective “news” outlets. For example, on the ITV news they were showing footage of Hamas gunmen clambering into a Fatah compound praying and shouting “Allahu Akhbar” (God is the Greatest), the commentator then informed us that these men were giving “Islamist cries of Allahu Akhbar”. So that’s an Islamist phrase now? We’re also told that Hamas is hell bent on the destruction of Israel, and is a terrorist organisation — whereas Israel’s attempt to destroy any possibilty of there being a viable Palestinian state (since thanks to decades of Israel and US rejectionism there isn’t one to destroy, just the possibility of one) and its brutal terrorist actions and daily collective punishment of the Palestinians is glossed over. It seems to me that going by the news coverage it’s as if the Gazans (and indeed all the Palestinians) aren’t quite human, unlike the Israelis. Of course dehumanising a people makes carrying out inhuman actions against them all the easier and if a few hundred years of Western Imperialism has taught us anything it’s taught us that. It goes without saying that there are other forms of Imperialism too, other bad people in this world – it’s just given our professed higher, more humane standards, you’d be forgiven for assuming it would be more difficult to present such a bigoted, racist account of a situation and to have it become the standard account.

Norman Finkelstein, one of the most important academics currently working on the study of the I/P conflict and its perceptions in the West, has been denied tenure at Chicago’s De Paul University this week. Essentially the denial was on the grounds that his views on Israel and America’s role in the conflict (incidently views heavily supported by documentary material especially that emanating from Human Rights Organisations) happened to be directly at odds with those of the US establishment, and because he managed to pretty much nail that vile sleazy piece of shit Zionist dick Alan Dershowitz and his obscene views on I/P in his last book. Dershowitz then went on a “jihad” (Noam Chomsky’s words, but unfortunate because it contributes to the ongoing distortion of the Islamic concept of Jihad) to stop Finkelstein getting tenure and this included spreading hateful lies about Finkelstein’s late mother, a holocaust survivor. Mostly, as has been the case with his targetings of British Academic establishment after the recent discussion about the boycott of Israeli Universities here in the UK, Dershowitz operated through implied threats.

Norman Finkelstein lest anyone forgets was the first to prove Joan Peters From Immemorial,  a book which claimed that most of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine were very recent arrivals, was a hoax  while he was still a graduate student. And he’s been constantly willing to play the role of the insolent child to the bollock naked emperor ever since — especially through exposing the vile distortions that undergird the (relative) support for Israel in America — although this has meant a not insubstantial personal cost on his part. Gaining accolades from great scholars such as Raul Hilberg, Avi Shlaim,  and Noam Chomsky for his work, Finkelstein’s academic career has from the start undoubtedly suffered because of his views. And now he’s been effectively blacklisted from teaching.

You can read more at Norman Finkelstein’s own site. And there are several solidarity sites too:

http://www.finkelgate.com/

http://normanfinkelstein.wordpress.com/

This map really does give an insight into Israel’s rejectionist strategy of the past few decades, right until now — although obviously you’d need to read the reports of Human Rights Organisations to gauge the measure in terms of human suffering and to flesh it out a bit. But still, this is the reality that most of those who are pro-Israel successfully manage to gloss over.