email exchange and statement re: Palestine

There are 3 separate articles in this post, taken from some emails exchanged with a friend of mine. They follow below in chronological order.

This is from a group email I sent on January 4, 2009:

Dear Friends,

We are told that the latest attacks on Gaza are perhaps "disproportionate" (Toronto Star), but that Israel has a right to defend itself, provoked as it was by Palestinian (Hamas) rocket attacks which broke a year-long ceasefire, that the attacks were directed at military targets and supply tunnels. This is part of the mainstream media´s ongoing effort to normalize the Palestinian-Israel situation: we are supposed to accept that living under occupation, effectively stateless, with access to food, fuel and other supplies radically reduced, when they are not cut off entirely, their elected government handicapped by sanctions, a creeping wall eating away at their land and freedom, that the Palestinians will only engage in "appropriate" levels of violence, that, instead, the Palestinians just can´t get this peace thing, stop acting like thugs and terrorists, and organize a peace treaty, they can´t even observe the terms of a ceasefire. This is supposed to be normal. Here are links to 2 websites with a different perspective:

http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/
http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml

"And it will all seem, in the end of the day, that they are somehow a response to something. As though the situation were not only acceptable- but normal, stable, in the period prior to whatever this is a response to. As though settlements did not continue to expand; walls did not continue to extend and choke lands and lives; families and friends were not dislocated; life was not paralyzed; people were not exterminated; borders were not sealed and food and light and fuel were in fair supply.But it is the prisoners' burden to bear: they broke the conditions of their incarceration. They deviated. But nevertheless, there are concerns for the "humanitarian situation": as long as they do not starve, everything is ok. Replenish the wheat stocks immediately.The warden improves the living conditions now and then, in varying degrees of relatively, but the prison doors remain sealed. And so when there are 20 hours of power outages in a row, the prisoners wish that they were only 8; or 10; and dream of the days of 4."

from: Raising Yousuf and Noor: diary of a Palestinian mother
http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/

Owen .

This is a response I received from a friend of mine:

I'm just wondering (out of pure curiousity - not trying to be sarcastic here) what exactly you are trying to communicate to us in this message and what you are trying to accomplish by it. What exactly is the problem, who is mainly responsible for the problem (if this can be identified), where do you stand, and how do Israelis and Palestinians move forward? We are all aware that war sucks and that the media misrepresents people, places, and things. So, what next? An online petition?...I'm a little skeptical that mere awareness and consciousness-raising stands a chance against conflicts that have ancient origins...or maybe I'm just hungover and bitter, lol.

And this is my response:

I´m not sure exactly how to respond to your questions, or where to begin. I sent you, and many others on my contact list, this email because I was angry and sad at what has been happening this week in Gaza, and I was frustrated at the gross misrepresentation of these events and others in the media. After hours reading various independent media sites, I wanted to share some of these alternate stories of events with my friends in the hopes that they might find these links helpful and interesting, possibly even changing their opinions, while for others they will only confirm what they already know or refuse to acknowledge.

I agree with you that mere awareness won’t change the situation in Palestine & Israel, but awareness is the first step in taking action, and it is a good starting point in the face of our feelings of complete powerlessness. By informing ourselves carefully we can refuse to be on the side of the executioners. I think that if more people, I mean massive amounts of people, really understood what was happening in Palestine, then we could stand a chance against this inhumanity. The ancient origins of this conflict are largely irrelevant; what is preventing a solution is human actions (support of, or participation in, the occupation of Palestine, continuing propaganda in the media, U.S. funding of Israeli violence, etc.), and human actions can build a solution as well. This is encouraging because it means we—not history—can make change. We need to put pressure on our governments to change their actions. This is how civil rights were won (not granted) in the 20th century, how we won a minimum wage, and how the war in Vietnam was eventually stopped. It’s important to remember that we can intimidate our leaders; police beat up protestors for a reason: large numbers of people taking to the streets scare them, it means the masses are getting angry. At the moment I feel powerless, like sending you an email about Palestine is a meaningless gesture by a frustrated white kid whose friends are sick of his disenchantment with the world. But, maybe I won’t be so out of touch some months or some years from now. The politicians and bankers (usually the same people) should have reason to be scared. There’s an economic crisis of an unprecedented scale and extension, huge numbers of Americans have lost their homes, even as our governments spend billions destroying Iraq and Afghanistan. What happens if they take to the streets? Will they turn violent like protestors in Paris 2 years ago, like protestors last month in Greece? Will people begin to connect the dots?

What is the problem? Where do I stand?

The most immediate problem is that as Israel continues its land invasion of Gaza, more than 540 people have been killed and more than 2,450 have been injured. There is, of course, also the ongoing problem of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and all the barbarity, violence, and injustice that it implies. In the face of these facts, I stand on the side of the victims, who I take to be the Palestinians subjected to this terrible bombardment, living under Israeli occupation. This invasion is a massacre of a captive civilian population. It is not a war, or a conflict as it is sometimes called, between two legitimate aggressors. If that were the case, Hamas would be justified in launching rockets at Israel; we would call these attacks self defense and not “terrorism”. Nor is it the selective assassination of Hamas political and military targets, as if murdering soldiers and politicians in another country could ever be justifiable, less still when their children and neighbours die in those attacks. The Israeli invasion of Gaza is state terrorism; it should be unequivocally condemned. The occupation of Palestine is genocide in process.

Who is responsible?

Israel is directly responsible for this invasion; it is the Israeli military dropping bombs on Gaza. Israel is also responsible for the reprehensible treatment of Palestinians under “normal” (no bombs dropping on them) conditions, in which Palestinians are confined to shrinking portions of land, denied access to food, drinking water, electricity, medicine; prevented from participating in their elected governments, from carrying out their lives as they might like to, free from the constant threat of violence and abuse, etc. Other states, to varying degrees, are also responsible for the invasion of Gaza, principally the U.S.A. After Hamas defeated Fatah in the 2006 elections, the UN—under pressure from the U.S. and the EU—imposed sanctions on the Palestinians (always a good way to radicalize a population), withholding funds from Hamas—and effectively preventing them from governing the Palestinian territories—and refusing to recognize the Palestinian government (presumably because they didn’t like the results of the elections). Meanwhile, Israel incarcerated enough elected Palestinian representatives that the Palestinian parliament couldn’t achieve a quorum, and the U.S. began to fund Palestinian “contras” (Fatah dissidents), resulting in the brief civil war in June 2007 between supporters of Fatah and Hamas. These interventions in Palestine are inexcusable, however they are not unprecedented. One need merely take a brief look at the history of CIA interventions in Latin America to grasp the extent of US responsibility for the escalating violence in Gaza.

I’m not sure how there can be a way forward after this nearly unprecedented violence, however, asked before the most recent invasion I would have responded that the only possible solution would begin with the lifting of sanctions and the recognition of the Palestinian parliament, the recognition of the 1967 borders and the end of Israeli aggression. The continued occupation of Palestine is only possible because of the implicit support of the U.S. and the E.U., and therefore change must begin in Europe and America if there is to be a lasting peace in Palestine.