By Steven Halpern
This past week, the South African government charged Israel with genocide before the International Court of Justice. The facts presented by the lawyers representing South Africa made a meticulous case that underscore the charge of Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people. Several nations voiced their support of this action by South Africa.
These facts include the murder of over 23,000 Palestinians. The Israeli so-called Defense Force has denied 2.3 million Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip food, clean water, fuel, and health care. The IDF destroyed about 85 % of the buildings in the Gaza Strip. The South African lawyers also presented numerous recordings of Israeli government and military officials who argued for the mass murder of Palestinians.
Johnathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. This is what he has to say about the charge of genocide against the Israeli government in a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer (1-12-2023). “No. A thousand times no. Saying that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is like saying the Allies committed it in Dresden” (Germany in the Second World War).
Zimmerman defends his argument saying that there were about 25,000 deaths in the Allied firebombing of Dresden. Zimmerman accepts the fact that Israeli government officials have made hurtful statements, as well as falsely charging all Palestinians with the October 7 attack. However, he argues that the destruction in Dresden and Gaza were “strategic” and should not be viewed as genocide.
My dictionary definition of the word strategy is: “A plan of action designed to achieve a major or overall aim.”
So, the question that I ask about Zimmerman’s argument is: What were the overall aims of the military destruction of both Dresden and Gaza?
The Israeli goal is occupation and not defense
Many critics of the movement demanding “Ceasefire Now” object to the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Today the Likud Party that rules Israel stated in its founding document that it supports the idea of Israeli control of all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
As a result of the 1967 war, Israel took control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. So, for about 57 years the residents of these occupied territories do not have their own government, and Israel denies them Israeli citizenship.
As a result, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRA) sent aid to the occupied territories. In the recent genocide, the IDF has murdered UNRA workers. Since the United States government dominates UNRA and is an ardent supporter of Israel, President Biden has refused to use his power to stop this genocide.
If the occupied territories were an independent nation, that nation would be in control of its economy, land, access to the sea, and trade with the world. Israel denies residents of the occupied territories these basic rights but insists that they have democratic values.
These were some of the conditions experienced by Palestinians living in Gaza before October 7. About 90% of the population did not have jobs or access to clean water. Food scarcity was a routine problem for about 60% of the population. Every few years, the Israeli Air Force carried out bombing campaigns that murdered or injured thousands of Palestinians. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians served time in Israeli jails.
We can put this reality in the context of the actions of the Israeli government since 1948 when they organized to remove about 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland. When we look at this reality, the following conclusion becomes crystal clear. The strategic goal of Israel in the current genocide isn’t about the defense of Israel. This genocide is part of a 76-year campaign to deny Palestinians of basic human rights, or to remove them from their homeland altogether.
What were the First and Second World Wars about?
Before the First World War, Britain was the world’s superpower, but was in a period of decline. The United States and Germany both were emerging as new rivals to British power. Turkey supported Germany and after the First World War Palestine became a British colony.
In the year 1944 the United States government organized a meeting in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. Representatives of forty-four nations attended.
At that meeting, the United States informed those gathered that the power brokers of this country would dominate the politics and economics of the world. The dollar would replace the pound sterling as the new international currency. British domination of the world was over, and the United States would be the new superpower.
Then the United States military demonstrated to the world what would happen to any nation that challenged its rule. The United States Air Force firebombed Dresden and large sections of 67 Japanese cities. Then, the Air Force dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The people of Korea and Vietnam resisted puppet regimes the United States government installed in their countries. The U.S. military responded by murdering millions of people in those nations. In the process, the Air Force carried out bombing campaigns that destroyed much of those nations. The U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay argued that he was prepared to “bomb Vietnam back into the stone age.”
When we look at this history, I believe that Zimmerman’s argument begins to come apart. The Allied firebombing of Dresden was not about freeing the world from German fascism. That firebombing as well as the massive bombing campaigns against Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were about making and maintaining the United States as the world’s superpower.
Yes, but wasn’t the United States better than Nazi Germany?
My father wanted to serve in the United States military during the Second World War. He couldn’t serve because of a medical condition. However, my father was an ardent defender of the U.S. military because he was Jewish, and he was understandably enraged by the Nazi holocaust. The six million Jews murdered by the Nazis reflected about one-third of the international Jewish population.
For Israel to commit that level of horror, they would need to murder about two million Palestinians. Hopefully, this will not happen, but we do not know of the eventual outcome of the current genocide. So, an argument can be made that the current genocide isn’t as horrendous as the holocaust organized by the Nazis.
My question is: Does that really matter?
In order to answer that question, we need to ask: Why are these genocides happening over and over again?
For me, the answers to these questions begin with a basic understanding of the political economic system known as capitalism. For various reasons the capitalist system needs to continually grow. As a result, we see an ever-increasing ocean of commodities. Corporations pay about $200 billion every year in advertising so no opportunity will be missed in their drive to increase sales. This drive to routinely increase production demands that capitalists and their government representatives dominate the economies of the entire world.
However, this growth is paid for with the corporate drive to routinely cut costs. So, corporations cut costs with automation and by opening factories where workers have salaries of about two dollars per day. So, if this is the case, then how do capitalists maintain their power? Why haven’t there been more revolutions all over the world?
Because capitalism dominates the world, there is a tremendous amount of surplus. So, in the United States there are about 34 million people who have about $1.2 million in assets. At the same time, there are about 44 million people who don’t have enough food to eat. Saying that, about 85% of the population has enough food.
The population of Israel is just over nine million, with about two million Palestinians and immigrants. Then there are about five or six million Palestinians living in the occupied territories. So, the standard of living for Palestinians living in the occupied territories is vastly different from the standard of living of citizens of Israel. While all discrimination is reprehensible, the discrimination against Palestinians is significantly worse than the most horrendous forms of discrimination in the United States or the former apartheid state of South Africa.
So, the driving force of discrimination in Israel and the rest of the world comes from the natural functioning of the capitalist system. As capitalism goes into its current state of decline, discrimination becomes more and more vicious.
This not only explains why Israel is carrying out this genocide, it also explain why so many people from all over the world see the struggle of the Palestinians as a part of an international struggle for human rights and human dignity.
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