Turkish PM: Israeli Attacks on Gaza are ‘State Terror’

Source: End The Lie
Madison Ruppert

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan made some quite heated statements in condemnation of the most recent Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in a speech Tuesday, calling the attacks a “massacre.”

A cease fire between Gaza militants and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) went into effect Tuesday but there have been reports of rocket attacks despite this agreement.

Thus far, according to Israeli news outlet Haaretz, almost 200 rockets have hit Israeli territory since the most recent outbreak of violence began on Friday.

The Israeli Air Force has conducted some 37 airstrikes on targets in the Gaza Strip, 19 of which supposedly targeted rocket launchers while 18 allegedly targeted weapons warehouses.

These attacks have resulted in 26 Palestinian deaths, 22 of which were allegedly militants while four were civilians who had no hand in the rocket fire.

In a speech to the Turkish parliament, Erdogan called on Israel to “stop the brutal attack against Palestinians and stop the massacre and bloodshed.”

He also called the Israeli airstrikes on Palestinians “state terror,” adding that the Turkish people have an obligation to “remember that Gazans are our brothers, and will always remain so.”

Eleven Killed as Israel Strikes Gaza Overnight

Source: RT

At least 11 Palestinians, including two militant leaders, have been killed and a dozen wounded in a series of air strikes by the Israeli Air Force on the Gaza Strip. The attacks were launched in response to the shelling of Israeli territory from Gaza.

­A senior Palestinian militant Zuhair al-Qaisi, the secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees, was killed in the first strikes by Israeli warplanes, along with another senior member of the PRC, Mahmoud Hannani. The PRC, which has strong ties with Hamas, is known to have carried out rocket attacks against Israel, and the Israelis say al-Qaisi was targeted because he was planning an attack.

In response to the attack that killed al-Qaisi Palestinian militants fired approximately 40 rockets from Gaza into southern Israel on Friday night. Israeli sources say at least eight people suffered injuries in the shelling, one of whom was seriously wounded.

The IAF then performed another series of airstrikes on various targets in the Gaza strip on Friday night in response to these latest attacks. The latest airstrike killed three Palestinians after an Apache-fired rocket hit a house and a car, Al Jazeera reports, citing medical sources.

Three of those killed in the air raids reportedly belonged to a military wing of the Islamic Jihad, the Al-Quds Brigades.

Some of the targets of Israeli war jets included empty military training camps in different parts of Gaza Strip.

'Israeli Claims of Democracy Absurd'

Source: PressTV

Contrary to its claims, the Zionist regime of Israel, which dispossesses the vast majority of Palestine's original inhabitants, is the anti-thesis of a democratic society, an analyst tells Press TV.

Interview with Ralph Schoenman, author of The Hidden History of Zionism

The Origins of Imperial Israel - Part II

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Andrew Gavin Marshall

Organized Terror & Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine

 

The official Israeli government explanation for the ‘disappearance’ of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from the land (roughly half the Arab population in Palestine in 1948) was that they left “voluntarily.” The “new history” of Israel emerged within the past couple decades due to declassified documents relating to the 1948 war and its origins, and with a number of Israeli historians recreating the history of Israel and challenging the official story. David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel’s first Prime Minister, was a leading Zionist at the time. He and other Zionists “accepted” the UN partition plan, wrote Jerome Slater, “only as a necessary tactical step that would later be reversed.” In a 1937 letter to his son, Ben-Gurion wrote:

A partial Jewish state is not the end, but only the beginning. The establishment of such a Jewish state will serve as a means in our historical efforts to redeem the country in its entirety… We shall organize a modern defense force… and then I am certain that we will not be prevented from settling in other parts of the country, either by mutual agreement with our Arab neighbors or by some other means… We will expel the Arabs and take their places… with the forces at our disposal. [1]

In the same year, Ben-Gurion also wrote that, “The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.”[2] A year later, in 1938, Ben-Gurion told a Zionist meeting that, “I favor partition of the country because when we become a strong power after the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and spread throughout all of Palestine.” Palestine, as defined by the Zionists, had included the West Bank, Golan Heights in Syria, Jerusalem, southern Lebanon, and a significant degree of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.[3]

For any settler colonies, as the Zionists were, there are roughly four conditions which have to be met if they are to survive. Graham Usher, an Israeli journalist, wrote that:

They must obtain a measure of political, military, and economic independence from their metropolitan sponsors. They must achieve military hegemony over, or at least normal relations with, their neighboring states. They must acquire international legitimacy. And they must solve their “native problem.”[4]

The Jewish state, as defined by leading Zionists such as David Ben-Gurion, was not to simply be Jewish in its sociopolitical structure, explained Ilan Pappé, “but also in its ethnic composition.” Further, this would be made possible “only by force.” To accomplish this task, an efficient military organization was built over several years, with extensive financial resources. The main Jewish paramilitary organization in Palestine was founded in 1920 in order to protect the Jewish colonies, assisted by “sympathetic” British officers. Orde Wingate, a British officer, was central to convincing Zionist leaders of the need for such a military organization, associating the idea of a Jewish state with militarism and an army. Wingate was assigned to Palestine in 1936, and had established close connections between the Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah and the British forces during the 1936-39 Arab Revolt.[5]

The Origins of Imperial Israel - Part I

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Andrew Gavin Marshall

Israel: A Buffer against Arab Nationalism

 

Israel emerged in the post-War period due to a great many complex domestic and international political reasons: to provide a place to direct the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, to allow the British to formally end the Mandate over Palestine which they held as their empire was crumbling, and to serve as a ‘buffer state’ for Western nations in the Middle East, a region of the world which was identified as a necessity to control in order to secure its vast oil resources and strategic position in relation to the East. America in the post-War period, however, was deeply divided in its strategic-imperial circles on whether or not to support the State of Israel, which did not become a stated and strong policy until the later 1950s. The State Department, in particular, full of individuals who were familiar with the politics and changes in the Middle East, were worried that support for Israel would threaten America’s interests in the region by antagonizing the Arab states and ruining America’s good reputation following the War. Others, however, won out in the end, largely by arguing that such a state in the Middle East would be a significant support to American interests, acting as a powerful ‘buffer’ against the spread of Arab nationalism and Pan-Arabism. In its first years, Israel walked a balance of receiving support from both the United States and the Soviet Union. With the rise of Nasser in Egypt, however, America saw its imperial interest in supporting Israel.

 

The notion of a “Jewish State” as a ‘buffer’ for the West had been a long-held desire among imperial strategists and was even a popular means of promoting the Zionist cause from leaders within the Zionist movement. In the early 20^th century, the Zionists, keenly aware of the British and French imperial rivalry in the Arab East, “knew how to convince London of the value of a British-controlled Jewish buffer-state in Palestine for the protection of the Suez Canal and imperial communications to India.”[1] In 1907, the London Colonial Conference emphasized the increasing interest in establishing a ‘buffer state’ for British imperial interests in the Near East. The Conference agreed “to establish a strong but alien human bridge in the land that links Europe with the Old World which would constitute, near the Suez Canal, a hostile power to the people of the area and a friendly power to Europe and its interests.”[2]

British imperial strategists were increasingly alarmed with the growing “Arab Awakening” emerging in the context of Arab indigenous nationalism. These fears of a growing and developing Arab nationalism informed British Prime Minister Campbell Bannerman when he stated at the 1907 Colonial Conference:

Empires are formed, enlarged and stabilized so very little before they disintegrate and disappear… Do we have the means of preventing this fall, this crumbling, is it possible for us to put a halt to the destiny of European colonialism which at present is at a critical stage?[3]

Twisted Logic Of Using Violence To Achieve Peace

Source: Eurasia Review
Ramzy Baroud

‘Sooner or later, there will be no escape from conducting a significant operation [in Gaza],’ said Israeli army Chief of Staff Lieutenent General Benny Gantz on December 27, the third anniversary of Operation Cast Lead.

Gantz’s chillingly casual remarks were cited as just another nonchalant declaration of war against a besieged, impoverished, overcrowded and routinely bombarded stretch of land. From the Israeli military and political point of view, Gaza merely exists as an opportunity for the Israeli army to test its latest weapon technology and send political messages to Israel’s foes in the region.

As if to validate Gantz’s logic, the ardently rightwing Israeli Jerusalem Post elaborated on December 28: “The Israel Air Force, working with the Shin Bet [Israel Security Agency], fired a missile at Gaza terrorists [fighters] involved in recent attacks on Israel, killing one and injuring two others.” They were ‘terrorists’ because Israel has designated them so. There was no due process and none was expected. When it comes to reporting on Israel/Palestine, corporate media largely relies on Israeli lies and propaganda. And one moral crisis begets another. The Israeli propaganda is predicated mostly on racism, not just in its view of Palestinians in Gaza, but of all Arabs.

Let’s examine the curious logic of Yuli Edelstein, Israel’s Propaganda and Diaspora Minister. In a recent talk in Or Yehuda, the man laid out his understanding of how peace can be achieved. “As long as the Arab nation continues to be a deplorable nation, which continues investing in infrastructure for terrorism, education to hate, and welfare for the families of shaheeds [martyrs], there will be no peace,” he said, according to Yossi Gurvitz in +972 online magazine.

Gurvitz further wrote: “I phoned the minister’s office for comment, and asked his spokesman: ‘Are you aware of the fact there are some 80 million Arabs in the world, from Sudan to Syria?’ He replied: ‘Yes, there are — and the minister meant them all.’”

I must admit that cogent political analysis becomes difficult when a country’s foreign policy and military strategy are constructed on unabashed racism, ignorance and a reproduction of 19th century Orientalism. How is one to forecast the possibilities of a just peace in Palestine when a well-regarded Israeli minister places a condition on the ‘Arab nation’ to become less deplorable? How can Gaza avoid another ‘Operation Cast Lead’ if its fate has already been sealed, with the ambiguous timeframe of ‘sooner or later’?

Israel Threatens Gaza After Panetta Signals Green Light for Attack on Iran; More Imperialist Moves Against Syria; Wall Street Faction Seeks Closure of Hormuz to Stave Off Dollar Collapse

Source: PressTV
Dr. Webster Tarpley

In this edition of News Analysis we will examine the possibility of another war on the Gaza strip by Israel and whether this latest threat underlies deeper worries by Israel due to changes in the regional landscape from the Arab Spring in which parliamentary results from different Arab countries show a break from the past with Israel.

Bombed For Nothing: Everyday Life on Israeli-Gaza Border

Source: RT
Nadezhda Kevorkova

Despite all calls for peaceful negotiations, rockets and violence are part of life on the Israeli-Gaza border. As civilians bear the brunt of the conflict, Faisal Malaka from Gaza told RT’s Nadezhda Kevorkova how it feels to live there.

“Why do you always come after the war and destruction? Why don’t you want to stop them, before they start?” says local farmer Faisal Malaka, aged 22. He is reluctant to talk because he doesn’t think “they” do much good.

By ‘them’ he means the Israeli army officers, who are just a few hundred meters away. The border is demarcated with an electric fence and towers. Faisal says the fence is lethal. His house is closest to the border.

“Europeans have been writing about us in their newspapers since 1948. But nothing is changing. You are the fourth or the seventh to have come here since the war of 2008. Journalists can’t stop them,” Faisal tells the children to go inside the house and not to look out of the windows. He allows me, though, to take some pictures of the dents on the house walls and the steel shutters on the windows that are meant to protect his family. We had seen the dents and shutters from a distance. 

But children will be children: they sit in a corner for a while, then come and hang around the adults again. 

Faisal is a manager. A graduate of Gaza’s Islamic University, he has a Master’s degree with honors.

“The Israelis say, you are illiterate and ignorant peasants and you don’t know how to read or write.”

“We are the most educated people in the Middle East. The more they take from us, the more we learn. Before, I could work in the garden. The only thing I can do now is to learn. There’s nothing funny about it,” Faisal says in response to my forced smile.

His family used to have orchards, but not anymore.

“Since 2000, Israeli bulldozers have destroyed all the trees here. They’ve cut down all the orange, lemon, almond and olive trees. They’ve destroyed our hen-house. They buried our house in sand twice – in 2000 and 2009. On the 22nd of January, they came and buried our house in snow up to the roof?” Faisal tells me twice about the bulldozer as my mind refuses to take it all in.