Why is the genocide unfolding against the Palestinian people?

 

By Steve Halpern

The scale of the atrocities committed by the Israeli so-called Defense Force since October 7 took me by surprise. Even people who have studied the Middle East for many years were taken aback by what has been happening. 

In the past the IDF launched raids murdering thousands of Palestinians and bombed entire neighborhoods. Today’s atrocities take this genocide to another unimaginably horrendous level.

First Israel informed the 2.3 million Palestinians who live in the north of the Gaza Strip to leave. Then they announced that all supplies of food, water, and fuel would end. Then there were the bombings of hospitals and the photos of babies taken off of incubators. Now the IDF is threatening to invade Rafa in the South where over one million Palestinian refugees moved to avoid the genocide. The IDF murdered 29,000 Palestinians and 70% of those are women and children. 

I live in the United States and am familiar with horrendous expressions of racism. I’m also aware of the vicious racist expressions in years of Jim Crow in this country and the racism in apartheid South Africa. 

When the Nazis held power in Germany, they worked to keep the holocaust a secret from most people in Germany. Because the Nazis controlled the press, their secretive methods were highly effective.

However, in Israel today a large majority of the population favors either a mass murder of Palestinians or a total removal of Palestinians from their homeland. This racist sentiment has been echoed by thousands in this country who argue for “No ceasefire.” The United States government has joined the chorus of genocide supporters by increasing aid to Israel to $14 billion. With all the vicious racism in the world, I haven’t seen this level of hatred in my lifetime. 

Millions of working people have been protesting these atrocities all over the world from Asia, to Africa, to Europe, to North and South America. The South African government charged Israel with genocide before the International Court of Justice. However, with all these protests, the genocide continues. The question I want to explore is, How and why was this possible?

I agree with those who label Israel as a colonial-settler state. This means Israeli politics are similar to the repressive politics of the apartheid government in South Africa and the British policies in Ireland. While this is a compelling argument, I still question what was the driving force behind the vicious racism in those countries?

What is capitalism?

Supporters of the capitalist system look at the tremendous productive capacity of the system. Then there are those who argue that little, if anything, was gained by the revolution of the thirteen colonies that freed this part of the world from British colonialism. 

Clearly those who are critical of the revolution have evidence to support their argument. After the Revolution there was chattel slavery and genocide against Native Americans. Then veterans of the Revolution protested the conditions of starvation they faced in Shay’s Rebellion. The revolutionary government of the United States ordered the military to crush that rebellion. So, we can point to many atrocities by the government of this country after the revolution.

However, the settlers in the thirteen colonies could not have imagined the world we are living in today. In the 1700s most people who lived in this part of the world were farmers who lived off the land. They had no indoor plumbing or electricity. They relied on fire for their light and warmth.

Today, the large majority of the people in this country have access to indoor running water, electricity, cell phones, washing machines, dryers, and automobiles, as well as education and health care. These advances didn’t just come about because of inventions by smart people. There were smart people in the feudal epoch, but there was very little technological innovation in those years.

An absolute requirement of capitalism is economic growth. Without growth there are no profits, and the core value of the system is the drive to maximize profits. 

However, in order to have this tremendous growth, capitalists are routinely driven to cut their costs. This is the fundamental contradiction of the system. 

Because of this growth, capitalism spread its tentacles from Britain to every corner of the globe. As the system grew, capitalists began to understand that they needed stability in a profoundly unstable world. 

So, while the capitalists need workers for their profits, they only need to pay them the bare minimum so workers will return to their jobs every day. This conflict between the needs of the working class of the world and the drive to maximize profits is the source of the problem we face. 

The Frist and Second World Wars were about which capitalist power would control the world. About eighty million people died in those wars. 

Before the Second World War was over, the United States government invited representatives of 44 nations to a meeting in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. There, representatives of the capitalists of this country informed the world that the United States would be the new super-power and the international currency would be the dollar.

Then the United States showed the world what would happen to nations that went against the dictates of the capitalist forces in this country. They firebombed Dresden, Germany as well as 67 of Japan’s largest cities. Then the U.S. Air Force dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the Second World War the United States went to war against the people of Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan. 

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was the central leader of the Russian Revolution. Lenin argued that “Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.” In other words, the political and economic dominance of the United States against the nations of the world wasn’t because of a mistake or a lack of sensitivity. No U.S. imperialist domination is the essence of what capitalism in this country is.

Lenin also argued against the idea that there is any kind of meaningful democracy where capitalism rules. He argued that the state was invented as a “special repressive force” to rob the working class of the wealth we produce. 

Reading these words, someone might ask a legitimate question. If capitalism is a repressive force, then why haven’t there been more anti-capitalist revolutions in the world?

Because capitalism continually grows, and the labor movement learned how to organize, the working class of many nations has experienced a dramatic improvement in the standard of living. Revolutions aren’t easy. For there to be a revolution, masses of people need to develop an iron will to do what is necessary to put in place a new government that has completely different priorities. 

So, now we can explore the history of the Middle East to begin to see why the unimaginable horror faced by the Palestinian people is unfolding today.

A short history of the Middle East

1979

We might consider what the Middle East looked like before the year 1979.

Israel was only one of the allies the United States had in the region. 

In 1953, the U.S. government organized to replace the elected President of Iran Mohammed Mosaddeq with the Shah of Iran. The Shah was a staunch ally of the United States and maintained his rule with vicious repression.

Then there was Saddam Hussein who was also an ally of the U.S. 

In Egypt Anwar El-Sadat was the President. Sadat signed an agreement with Israel known as the Camp David Accords. That agreement cemented Egyptian support for the state of Israel. After the assassination of Sadat, Hosni Mubarak took power and continued the Egyptian support of Israel. 

Then came the Iranian Revolution. We might consider, as I argued, that revolutions aren’t easy. Ruling powers have tremendous advantages. They control the armed forces, the courts, the news media, and the educational system. They also have enormous financial resources that can be used to compromise revolutionary movements. 

The Shah used his secret police known as the SAVAK to arrest, torture, or murder many who spoke critically of the government. One reason why religious clerics became leaders of the revolution was because the mosque was the only safe place where people could express themselves.

Faced with all those obstacles, masses of Iranian people risked their lives to do what was necessary to overthrow the rule of the Shah. People who demonstrated in the streets faced helicopters with soldiers who fired down on them with machine guns. 

After the Revolution, the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein felt threatened by the change in the political climate. He understood that the Iranian revolution could reverberate in Iraq and challenge his systematically repressive government. 

The United States government didn’t like the fact that their hand-picked ruler in Iran had been overthrown. So, the governments of Iraq and the United States joined together and went to war against Iran. Over one-million people died as a result of that war. However, the Iranian government remained in power.

Although the Iraqi war against Iran failed to overthrow the government, that war had a horrendous effect on Iran. After the Revolution there was a flowering of Iranian culture. There were several political currents that openly argued for their perspective. 

The war initiated by Iraq prompted the Iranian government to restrict all decent in an effort to defend the country. Today the religious clerics who rule Iran have carried out highly repressive measures against women and restrict all political decent. 

At this point Saddam Hussein was under tremendous pressure. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers died in the war and the nation was in deep debt because of the financial cost of the war. The war against Iran clearly was of no benefit to Iraq. Iraq had enormous loans that needed to be paid to Kuwait. Hussein responded to this crisis by invading Kuwait. 

Eventually the United States government didn’t like this change in the relationship of forces in the region. They went to war against Iraq and removed the government of Saddam Hussein from power. So, at this point the United States lost two of its allies in the region. These were the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein. 

Then there were the uprisings known as the Arab Spring that erupted throughout the Arabic world. Those uprisings forced Hosni Mubarak out of power. 

With the removal of allies from the seats of power in the Middle East, the region became much more unstable. We see this when we look at the overall economy of the Arabic and Iranian world.

Most of the oil in the world comes from the Arabic and Iranian world. We all need transportation to travel to where we work. So, no corporation can generate profits without access to a continuous flow of oil.

The world is also becoming increasingly dependent on Asia for the commodities we use. The Suez Canal connects Asia to Europe which is one of the economic centers of the world. For these reasons the Middle East is central to international capitalist interests. 

Most of the 400 million people who live in Arabic and Iranian speaking countries do not benefit from this relationship. This contradiction is at the core of the problems of the Middle East.

So, in the 1980s and 1990s three organizations emerged that are in the news today. These are Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.

These are mass-based organizations but have limited governing power. These organizations came about in war zones. The people of Gaza have experienced war since 1948. The people of Lebanon were occupied by Israel for many years. The people of Yemen had been victims of vicious Saudi Arabian military attacks. 

These three organizations are religious in character. So now we can ask the question, why don’t these mass organizations have the power of a government in a sovereign nation?

Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis provided social services in areas where the government was ineffective. Clearly, Israel and the governments of the Middle East didn’t want these organizations to have the power of a government in a sovereign nation. That would only increase the pressure of the governments of the region to make meaningful change. 

So now we can begin to understand why the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu gave support to Hamas. Clearly Netanyahu didn’t want the Israeli military to be the police force of the Gaza Strip. That kind of occupation would only demoralize soldiers in the Israeli armed forces. 

So, Netanyahu relied on Hamas to police Gaza. However, Hamas also had to deal with the legitimate Palestinian demands for genuine liberation. This is a fundamental problem for Hamas. There is no way Hamas can police Gaza and promote genuine Palestinian liberation at the same time. In my opinion, this problem caused Hamas leaders to commit horrendous crimes on October 7. So, what would genuine liberation mean for Palestinian people?

In my opinion, the place to start in answering that question is with the contrast between the rights Palestinians have in the United States versus the lack of rights Palestinians have in the occupied territories. 

In the United States Palestinians have the right to own a home anywhere in this country. Zionist militias forced about 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948. Today Israeli settlers live in homes in the West Bank. This is an occupied territory, and those settlers live in illegal housing.

Palestinians living in this country have the right to right to travel everywhere. There are many restrictions on Palestinian travel. In the past, Palestinians might need to wait hours at Israeli check points in order to go to their jobs in Israel. Today, the Palestinian people are effectively in a lock down where they risk their lives in any attempt to travel.

In this country Palestinians have the right to vote in national elections. Only the Palestinians who live in Israel have that right. Palestinians who live in the Occupied Territories aren’t allowed to vote in the Israeli elections. 

Imagine for a moment that you are a college graduate who lived in the Gaza Strip before October 7. In all probability you would not have access to a job. Without a job, supporting a family would be an impossibility. You would not have adequate access to food or clean water. You had friends, relatives, or neighbors who had been injured, or murdered by the Israeli Defense Force. Many of the people you know would have served time in Israeli prisons. Yet you have absolutely no control over the government that enforced these conditions.

Those people who support the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people routinely ignore these basic facts. Their priority is the destruction of Hamas. They ignore the routine policy of the Israeli government that denies Palestinians basic human rights. While I in no way support Hamas, the genocide carried out today by the IDF can only exacerbate the problems of the region.

Clearly today we need to demand Ceasefire Now. However, the only way for there to begin to be peace in the Middle East is when Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

The response of the United States government

Immediately after the October 7 Hamas organized raid, President Biden went to Israel. He told Netanyahu that he has his back. He also ordered warships into the region. Then he advanced legislation to increase funding to Israel to $14 billion. He did all of this while 44 million people in the United States do not have enough food to eat. Nations all over the world have demanded that Israel ceasefire now. So, why would the U.S. government support the genocidal policies of the IDF?

As I’ve mentioned, for various reasons the Middle East is critical to capitalist interests. When we look at the history, the governments of this region have become more and more unstable. Since Israel is one of the only stable governments that supports U.S. capitalist interests. These are the reasons why the government in this country makes aid to Israel their top priority.

The October 7 raid is evidence that Israel is incapable of defending capitalist interests alone. Hezbollah threatens Israel from the north. The Houthis threaten access to the Suez Canal. The United States Navy has already engaged in bombing missions against the Houthis as well as Syria. Then there is the possibility of war with Iran, a nation of close to 90 million people.

The United States capitalist domination of the world has been in decline for about 50 years. That decline is unfolding at the same time as the Middle East is becoming more and more unstable.

After the end of Jim Crow discrimination in the United States the political economy of the world stabilized. After the end of apartheid in South Africa the capitalist system stabilized. However, the current genocide that is unfolding in the Middle East signals that the instability of that region will continue indefinitely

So, Israel and the United States are advancing genocidal polices in an attempt to bring back the days of relative stability in the Middle East. That is an impossible dream.  

Benjamin Netanyahu thinks he has a plan for the Gaza Strip after there is an end to the genocide. We might consider that the Israeli response to the October 7 Hamas organized raid reflected the culmination of 76 years of the Israeli government’s policies to deny Palestinians basic human rights. 

The international protests demanding ceasefire now have been impressive. This reflects the fact that working people on every continent are thinking about international solidarity. I’m 71 years old and don’t recall a time when there has been this kind of massive response all over the world. 

As Israeli acts of genocide intensify, the demonstrations protesting the genocide are not going away. It is difficult to imagine a President of the United States having a more horrific policy with respect to the Israeli genocide than Joe Biden. 

No matter who is the next president, that president will have to deal with massive demonstrations that will protest U.S. support for genocide. 

There will be more demonstrations demanding that Black people have the right to walk the streets without being stopped and frisked or murdered, or sent to prison by the police. 

There will be more demonstrations demanding that women have the absolute right to control if and when they become mothers. 

There will be more demonstrations demanding and end to the destruction of the environment. 

There will be more demonstrations demanding that 12 million immigrants living in this country have full citizenship rights.

In my opinion, all these demonstrations are demanding that human needs and human dignity are more important than the drive to maximize corporate profits. 

A New Palestine

By Steven Halpern

This is a work of fiction as well as science fiction. I imagined a new nation of Palestine the day after the state of Israel is no more. There is a Liberation Army that came from the imaginary nation of La Lucha Continua (The struggle continues.) This army had the ability to totally disarm the Israeli Defense Force, as well as the armed forces of the United States. The Liberation Army also disarmed all the nuclear weapons of the world.

There is a new provisional government of the nation that will now be called Palestine. 100 of the leading members of the former Israeli government and military were arrested. The Provisional government released the 10,000 Palestinians who had been living in Israeli jails. 

The new government evicted all Israelis who live in the illegal settlements of the West Bank and Jerusalem. They have also evicted many residents of Israeli housing built before the year 1948. 

This story starts with a press conference that announces the establishment of the new Provisional Palestinian government. 

Mitchell Bernstein—A representative of the new Provisional Palestinian Government—"Today marks the first day in a new history of the Middle East. I want to thank all the representatives of the international news media for attending this conference. 

“The first question you might ask is: Why did the nation of La Lucha Continua organize to put in place a new provisional government in the nation that used to be called Israel?

“The Jewish people of Europe and the United States experienced a long history of vicious discrimination. The German Nazi government murdered about 40% of all Jews in the world. For the most part, that hostility towards the Jewish people was not the case in the nation called Palestine.

“So, many Jewish people gravitated to the idea of setting up a homeland in the nation that was then called Palestine. However, at that time, the large majority of land was the homeland the Palestinian people.

“This was the contradiction that started the problem we are rectifying today. The Jews who immigrated to Palestine called themselves Zionists. Instead of attempting to live with the Palestinians, they organized to remove them from their homeland.

“Terrorist organizations known as the Hagenah, the Stern Gang, and the Irgun murdered thousands of Palestinians and destroyed their homes. 700,000 Palestinians escaped this terror and the Israeli government never compensated them for their loss. Before 1948 about 80,000 Palestinians lived in the Gaza Strip. Because of the forced emigration from their homes, today about 2.3 million Palestinians live in Gaza.

“Then in 1967, Israel was not satisfied with the land they stole, so they occupied the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. They never gave the Palestinians who lived in these areas citizenship rights in Israel. To the contrary, the United Nations sent in relief agencies because the residents of the occupied territories had no nation they could call their own. 

“About 700,000 Israelis moved into the West Bank and Jerusalem. These Israelis had all kinds of rights that the government routinely denied Palestinians. Just to travel to their former homeland, Palestinians needed to wait at checkpoints while Israeli soldiers routinely humiliated them. 

“In the Gaza Strip, about 90% of the population lacked employment or clean water. The majority didn’t even have enough food to eat.

“Palestinians endured those conditions for almost twenty years. Then the inevitable explosion happened. The organization Hamas carried out a raid that murdered nearly 1,200 people. Close to 400 of those were soldiers in the Israeli military. 

“While we might see how this explosion was inevitable, those who carried out this raid committed horrendous crimes. The people of La Lucha Continua condemn those crimes in the strongest terms.

“The Israeli government responded by murdering over 24,000 people. They denied 2.3 million residents of Gaza food, water, health care, and shelter. The Israeli armed forces destroyed most of the homes in Gaza. The South African government documented all of this vicious destruction before the World Court of Justice.

“So, when we look at these facts, there is one inescapable conclusion. The state of Israel was never a legitimate homeland for the Jewish people. Israel never provided a safe haven for Jews. The routine actions of the Israeli government only made the Jewish and Palestinian people more vulnerable to violence.

“Now, you might ask another question. Why did the Liberation Army violate international law and overthrow the Israeli government?

“Over a period of 75 years Israel violated all kinds of international laws. They murdered, brutalized, and stole the homes of Palestinians. They illegally occupied the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Yet the governments of the world did nothing to enforce the international law.

“So, the government of La Lucha Continua decided to enforce the international law that no one else was enforcing. Now you might argue that two wrongs do not make one right.

“The world will see that by removing the Israeli government from power we will have an enduring peace in the Middle East. Jews and Palestinians will now have a nation where they will all be treated with dignity and not have to worry about their security. The world can then judge if our removal of the Israeli government was justified. 

“Now there is one more question that I will deal with. What will happen to the Jewish and Palestinian people?

“The Jewish citizens of the former state of Israel will need to apply to the Provisional Government in order to gain employment. We will have good jobs for anyone who accepts the new Palestinian government. 

“For those who do not choose not apply for work, they will be provided with top quality food, clothing, health care, housing, and education. We might consider that the former Israeli government routinely denied residents of Gaza all these things.

“The former Israeli residents of the occupied territories of the West Bank, and Jerusalem lived in illegally occupied territories. Those residents have been evicted from their illegal residences. The residents who lived in housing built before the year 1948 in the former nation of Israel have also been evicted from the homes they illegally occupied. 

“Since those former residents lived in illegal housing, they were only allowed to take with them the clothes they were wearing. If those former residents want their personal effects, they will need to ask, in writing, the Palestinians who are moving in for their things. So, those residents who have been evicted from their homes are making way for the Palestinians who are moving in. 

“Today the office buildings in Palestine no longer contribute to the functioning of the Palestinian economy. So those office buildings have been converted into apartments where the former residents of the occupied territories can live. 

“The Israeli armed forces destroyed about 85% of the homes in Gaza. So, the residents of Gaza will now have the right to move into the homes that had been illegally occupied.

“The Palestinians living in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip will now, for the first time, have their own government in a sovereign nation. That nation will be able to freely trade with the nations of the world. The Liberation Army’s top priority will be to rebuild the homes in Gaza that the Israeli armed forces destroyed. 

“We expect that these measures will create an environment where the Israeli hostages held by Hamas will be immediately released. Clearly those hostages could have been released long ago had the Israeli government been serious in their negotiations with Palestinians.

“Approximately 10,000 Palestinians who were held in the horrendous Israeli jails have all been released. The 100 top Israeli government and military officials were arrested. In the next few weeks, they will go on trial. Palestinians from Gaza will serve as their jurors. The former Israeli government and military officials will need to beg Palestinians for mercy, and I don’t envy them in that endeavor. 

“If those officials are convicted, they might serve time in prison for the rest of their lives. No one will receive the death sentence.”   

      

One year later

As time went on, the Liberation Army maintained control of the Provisional Government. Although there was growing acceptance of the transformation, the reality continued to be too volatile for them to leave. 

On the one hand, Palestinians needed to grieve for the thousands the Israeli armed forces murdered. They also needed to recover from the seventy-five years of Israeli organized genocide. This was a long and painful process. 

But there was another side to this story. The Palestinian people all over the world experienced a new sense of rebirth. Now they had their own nation where they are being treated with the human dignity they deserve. This new reality has made it a bit easier to deal with the horrendous loss and brutalization of their people.

Part of this process were the trials of the 100 government and military officials in the former state of Israel. Those former officials needed to face the genocidal practices they diligently organized. Their attempts to defend that horror by saying they were only fighting terrorism appeared to be criminally insane. The public opinion of the world began to see that these officials were some of the worst criminals humanity has ever seen. 

For the citizens of the former state of Israel, they had a different experience. In the past, they lived in an environment where the press, the government, and the military rationalized the genocide and mass murder of Palestinians. For the past year, they have experienced a completely different reality.

The current news media and educational system has presented the reality of the horrors Palestinians experienced over the past 75 years. Most of the former citizens of Israel dealt with this new reality with the five stages of grief. These are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.

At first the former Israelis could not believe what happened. Then they began to realize that the only way to escape the new reality would be to leave the country. Most former Israelis elected to stay.

Then, when they realized that the new state of affairs would not change, they became angry and enraged. In the past, the Israeli government used the anger of the people as a justification to murder and brutalize Palestinians. Those days are now over. Eventually the former Israelis began to understand that the new Provisional Government would remain until there was an environment that would accept full equality of Jews and Palestinians.

Then the former Israelis attempted to bargain with the government in order to reestablish some of the apartheid-like measures they enforced in the past. They wanted to return to homes they occupied in the illegal settlements. 

While the new government supported their human rights, they did not allow the former residents of the illegally occupied territories to return to homes where they once lived. Palestinians now lived in those homes.

Then the former Israeli citizens experienced depression knowing that their former way of life was over. The government no longer viewed Palestinians as “animals” or less than human. Now the government viewed Palestinians with the human dignity they deserve.

After millions of the former Israelis experienced these emotions, they finally accepted the new government and applied for employment in the new nation. The former Israelis who began working at those jobs discovered that their worst nightmare of the past, became a pleasant experience.

The former Israelis began to see how a rational economy worked. They participated in the sustained effort of working to end poverty throughout the Middle East. The people of the region began to appreciate those efforts in spite of the horrors of the past.

Ava Cohen asks for her personal things

Ava Cohen was one of the Israeli residents who was evicted from the home she illegally occupied in the West Bank. Dalia Elamin is the Palestinian who lives in that home today.

Ava went through the five stages of grief that most of the former Israelis experienced. She now works as a nurse in a hospital and has made friends with her Palestinian coworkers, but she has a problem. 

Because she once occupied illegal housing, all her personal belongings now are the property of Dalia Elamin. In order to recover those things, that include photos of her family, she now needs to ask Elamin for permission to have those items returned.

So, Ava sent Dalia a letter where she apologized for the horrors the former Israeli government carried out against Palestinians. She asked that Dalia return her personal belongings.

Dalia Elamin read that letter and was touched by this initiative. However, Elamin didn’t feel that this letter was a sufficient apology for the horrors Palestinians experienced over a period of 75 years. So, she contacted the provisional government and said that if Ava Cohen wants her personal effects, she could meet with Elamin and ask for them in person.

The Provisional Government representative was impressed by this note and felt that the kind of meeting Dalia asked for might work to ease the tensions between Palestinians and the former Israelis. So, the government arranged a meeting and asked if Ava and Dalia would allow that meeting to be televised. They both agreed to this.

Ava Cohen and Dalia Elamin meet

Pepita Lopez was the Provisional Government representative who moderated this meeting. 

“My name is Pepita Lopez and I will be moderating this meeting. I want to thank both Ava Cohen and Dalia Elamin for agreeing to have this meeting and allowing it to be televised. As you both know, the Provisional Government has been working to establish a genuinely democratic Palestine that respects the human dignity of everyone who lives here. In doing this, we need to work out the feelings of hostility that people have had for one another in the past. Perhaps this meeting will help in advancing that process.

“So, Ava Cohen you sent a letter to Dalia asking for your personal effects. In that letter you apologized for the horrors Israel inflicted on Palestinians in the past. 

“Dalia Elamin you were touched by that letter but felt it was an inadequate letter of apology. Perhaps now you can explain why you feel that way.”

Elamin—"Thank you Pepita. In truth it is difficult for me to imagine the horrors my people experienced. However, in order to deal with those horrors, I believe they need to be faced.

“Back in 1948, Israeli terrorist gangs murdered, raped, and stole the land of the Palestinian people. The Israelis manufactured flame-throwers that burned Palestinian homes to the ground. Oftentimes Palestinians were living in the homes the terrorist burned down.

“Then, in 2023 the Zionists used phosphorous bombs that burned Palestinians to death. In all, they massacred over 24,000 human beings. The large majority were women and children.  They denied our people food, water, fuel, and health care. They held 10,000 Palestinians under horrendous conditions in prisons. They even tortured Palestinian children who were prisoners.

“I can appreciate why Ava Cohen wants her personal belongings. The mementos of our past are important. However, before the Liberation Army removed the Israeli government from power, my history was an unimaginable horror story. However, in order to apologize for what happened, I think we need to have an unvarnished view of what happened.”

Ava Cohen—“Dalia, thank you for meeting with me. Clearly, I would like to have my personal effects returned. Over the past year, I’ve discovered things about the Israeli government I once supported that I now find reprehensible. 

“In the past, everyone I knew thought about how Jewish people needed a homeland. This was because of the unimaginable horrors Jews experienced in the world. The German Nazis murdered about 40% of the Jews in the world. In Eastern Europe racist gangs raided Jewish communities and murdered thousands. That history convinced many Jewish people that we needed a homeland.

“I didn’t know of anyone in the Jewish community who argued for equal rights for Palestinians in the past. So, we felt that people like yourself Dalia were our enemies. Now we are both sitting here, and I see that you are not my enemy. You are someone who is considering returning my things that I value very much.” 

Elamin—"Ava, I see that you are making an effort to apologize for what happened in the past. My problem is that I don’t see that you fully understand the full extent of the destruction carried out by the government you supported.

“You talk about how the Jewish people needed a homeland because of the anti-Semitism and the holocaust. Don’t all people need a homeland? How did the desire for a homeland rationalize the genocide Israel carried out against Palestinians for 75 years? I think these are questions you need to consider.”

Cohen—"Dalia, as you might imagine this is difficult for me. Now I have a good job as a nurse. Every day there is fresh food and I have a nice place to live. I’ve also made friends with Palestinians. This reality, for me was unthinkable before the Provisional Government took power. This reality gradually has convinced me that the beliefs I once had that supported the Israeli government were nothing more than a collection of lies.

“Clearly, I would like my personal effects returned. However, I now see that what is more important is the future of the Palestinian nation we now live in. I also see how the place that I once called my home was nothing more than an illegal settlement. So, given the horrors that Palestinians endured for many years in the past, I understand why you might want to prevent me from having my personal things.”

Elamin—"Thank you Ava. Now I see how you are making a genuine attempt to apologize for the past. Clearly no apology can make up for the horrors Palestinians experienced for 75 years. But there is no way anyone can change the past. 

“So, these are your things. I hope they bring some joy to your life. I only ask that when you look at these things that you understand that it was a Palestinian woman who allowed you access to what you once considered to be your own.”  

There are no legitimate strategic goals in the genocide against Palestinians

 

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.