Israel's rank and rotten fruit is being called fascism
Mike Carlton Date July 26, 2014
The images from Gaza are searing, a gallery of death and horror. A dishevelled Palestinian man cries out in agony, his blood-soaked little brother dead in his arms. On a filthy hospital bed a boy of perhaps five or six screams for his father, his head and body lacerated by shrapnel. A teenage girl lies on a torn stretcher, her limbs awry, her face and torso blackened like a burnt steak. Mourners weep over a family of 18 men, women and children laid side by side in bloodied shrouds. Four boys of a fishing family named Bakr, all less than 12 years old, are killed on a beach by rockets from Israeli aircraft.
As I write, after just over a week of this invasion, the death toll of Palestinians is climbing towards 1000. Most are civilians, many are children. Assaulting Gaza by land, air and sea, Israel has destroyed homes and reduced entire city blocks to rubble. It has attacked schools, mosques and hospitals. Tens of thousands of people have fled, although there is nowhere safe for them to go in this wretched strip of land just 40 kilometres long and about 10 kilometres wide. There are desperate shortages of food and water, of medical and surgical supplies.
In an open letter to US President Barack Obama, Dr Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian surgeon working at Gaza's al-Shifa hospital, writes of "the incomprehensible chaos of bodies, sizes, limbs, walking, not walking, breathing, not breathing, bleeding, not bleeding humans. Humans!
"Ashy grey faces – Oh no! Not one more load of tens of maimed and bleeding. We still have lakes of blood on the floor in the emergency room, piles of dripping, blood-soaked bandages to clear out ... the cleaners, everywhere, swiftly shovelling the blood and discarded tissues, hair, clothes, cannulas – the leftovers from death – all taken away... to be prepared again, to be repeated all over."
The onslaught is indiscriminate and unrelenting, with but one possible conclusion: Israel is not fighting the terrorists of Hamas. In defiance of the laws of war and the norms of civilised behaviour, it is waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population of about 1.7 million people. Call it genocide, call it ethnic cleansing: the aim is to kill Arabs.
As none other than Malcolm Fraser tweeted this week: "If any other country went to war killing as many civilians, women and children, it would be named a war crime." But it is not, although the UN is asking the question of both sides.
Yes, Hamas is also trying to kill Israeli civilians, with a barrage of rockets and guerilla border attacks. It, too, is guilty of terror and grave war crimes. But Israeli citizens and their homes and towns have been effectively shielded by the nation's Iron Dome defence system, and so far only three of its civilians have died in this latest conflict. The Israeli response has been out of all proportion, a monstrous distortion of the much-vaunted right of self defence.
It is a breathtaking irony that these atrocities can be committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory. But this is a new and brutal Israel dominated by the hardline, right-wing Likud Party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition. As one observer puts it: "All the seeds of the incitement of the past few years, all the nationalistic, racist legislation and the incendiary propaganda, the scare campaigns and the subversion of democracy by the right-wing camp – all these have borne fruit, and that fruit is rank and rotten. The nationalist right has now sunk to a new level, with almost the whole country following in its wake. The word 'fascism', which I try to use as little as possible, finally has its deserved place in the Israeli political discourse."
Fascism in Israel? At this point the Australian Likudniks, as Bob Carr calls them, will be lunging for their keyboards. There will be the customary torrent of abusive emails calling me a Nazi, an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, an ignoramus. As usual they will demand my resignation, my sacking. As it's been before, some of this will be pornographic or threatening violence.
In fact, that paragraph within the quotation marks was written by an Israeli. Gideon Levy is a columnist and editorial board member of the daily newspaper Ha’aretz. Born in Tel Aviv to parents who fled the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, he despairs of what his country has become and the catastrophe its armed forces are visiting upon Gaza. After a recent column calling on Israeli pilots to stop bombing and rocketing civilians, his life was threatened and he now has a bodyguard day and night. It has come to that. In the worst insult of all, Levy is branded "a self-hating Jew".
Israeli propaganda is subtle and skillfully put. "If Israel were to lay down its arms tomorrow, she would be destroyed; but if Hamas were to lay down their arms, there would be peace," goes the line, parroted endlessly.
But in all these long and agonising decades, Israel has never offered the Palestinians a just and equitable peace. They would have only a splintered, vassal state, their polity and economy and even their borders and freedom of travel and trade managed and determined by Israel. The occupation of Palestinian lands would remain with the relentless expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan and the Dead Sea.
As the Palestine Liberation Organisation official Hanan Ashrawi put it this week in a television interview with the Australian journalist Hamish Macdonald: "No nation can accept being imprisoned, being besieged by land, by air, by sea and deprived of the most basic requirements of a decent life: freedom of movement, clean water. For seven years they have been under a brutal and lethal Israeli siege ... You shell them and you bomb them; you destroy homes, you destroy whole neighbourhoods. You obliterate, annihilate, whole families, and then you come and say that this is self defence?"
That is why the killing and the dying goes on. Ad nauseam, ad infinitum. And the rest of the world, not caring, looks away.
Sydney Morning Herald's Mike Carlton resigns over Gaza column reaction
Columnist leaves after being told he would be suspended for abusing readers criticising his article on the Israel-Hamas conflict
Amanda Meade theguardian.com, Tuesday 5 August 2014 20.00 EDT
Mike Carlton Mike Carlton was to be suspended for his reaction to reader criticism.
Longstanding Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton has resigned after being admonished by his editors for the way he responded to readers on the heated topic of the Gaza conflict.
“I have become aware that Mike Carlton has corresponded with some Herald readers and letter writers using inappropriate and offensive language,” Goodsir wrote.
“This behaviour is completely unacceptable.
“I have asked Mike to apologise for these actions. Mike regrets his behaviour and will be contacting affected readers to apologise.
“On behalf of the Herald, I too apologise for any offence caused.
“In dealing with our readers, it is a basic principle that our staff, columnists and contributors should always behave with respect and courtesy.”
However, the Herald later took a harder line and informed Carlton he was suspended from writing his weekly column for four to six weeks. Carlton resigned immediately.
Another Fairfax editor, Sean Aylmer, told Sydney radio station 2UE the paper stood by the Carlton column of 26 July despite the strong reaction it evoked.
“The column was fine,” Aylmer said. “The issue wasn’t the printing of the column. What sort of got him into trouble was the way he responded to those readers, and it was totally inappropriate, using very inappropriate language.”
“As more emails emerged we kind of figured we needed to suspend him because we certainly want to put the readers first and no one has the right to treat people that way.”
Carlton told Guardian Australia he had no choice but to resign because editor-in-chief Goodsir told him one thing and then Aylmer called and said something else.
“Goodsir and I agreed I would apologise to six of seven readers and that would be it and I could continue writing,” Carlton said. “But he was overruled higher up the food chain and I got another call.”
Carlton said he was saddened that a once great paper had “buckled to the bullies”. “The immense pressure from News Limited has got to them, and that is the worst part of it.”
---[tweet]--- Mike Carlton @MikeCarlton01 Follow
Confirming I have quit the SMH, sad that a once great newspaper has buckled to the bullies. Thanks for your support...maintain the rage. 9:58 AM - 6 Aug 2014
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He said he believed he had been suspended because of the language he used with readers but also because of a vigorous campaign to undermine him by News Corp, who reported that some readers who wrote to complain about his views on the conflict in Gaza received emails telling them to “fuck off”.
Carlton has been on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse from people who are angered by his support for the Palestinian people.
“I was subjected to a fortnight of abuse from people calling me a Nazi sympathiser to a slimy Jew hater, some with threats of violence. I got hundreds of emails from as far away as the United States. They called me a Nazi douchebag and occasionally I blew my top. That’s what we do in Australia.”
The author, former radio broadcaster and foreign correspondent is known for his robust, intemperate exchanges on Twitter.
His most recent comments on Twitter .. https://twitter.com/MikeCarlton01 .. on Wednesday referred to coverage of his resignation in News Corp newspapers: “I see the Murdoch rags outdo themselves for vindictive sleaze and bullying this morning. Scum.”
Investigative journalist Kate McClymont has expressed her support for Carlton on Twitter .. https://twitter.com/Kate_McClymont : “I am so upset by @MikeCarlton01 resigning from @smh. This is a grim day for our profession.”
It is the second time Carlton has parted ways with the Sydney Morning Herald. When he refused to file his Saturday column in solidarity with Fairfax journalists who were on strike, he was sacked. He returned a year later.
Gaza War Rages On As Israeli Airstrikes Kill 11 Palestinians, Including Hamas Leader's Wife And Son
A Palestinian man reacts in front of the destroyed building after it was hit by an Israeli strike at the Jabalia region north of Gaza Strip on August 20, 2014. An extended ceasefire between the Palestinians and Israel expired at Tuesday midnight with violence flares up again after its ending. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
* Air strike targeted Hamas's military chief
* Netanyahu and his defense chief see extended campaign ahead
* More than 180 rockets fired at Israel
By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell Posted: 08/20/2014 4:37 am EDT Updated: 08/21/2014 2:59 am EDT
GAZA/JERUSALEM, Aug 20 (Reuters) - An Israeli air strike in Gaza killed the wife and infant son of Hamas's military leader, Mohammed Deif, the group said, calling it an attempt to assassinate him after a ceasefire collapsed.
Palestinians launched more than 180 rockets on Tuesday and Wednesday, mainly at southern Israel, with some intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system, the military said. No casualties were reported on the Israeli side.
Egypt, which has been trying to broker a long-term ceasefire in indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks, said it would continue contacts with both sides, whose delegates left Cairo after the hostilities resumed on Tuesday.
But there appeared to be no end in sight to violence that shattered a 10-day period of calm, the longest break from fighting since Israel launched its Gaza offensive on July 8 with the declared aim of ending rocket fire into its territory.
Israeli aircraft have carried out more than 100 strikes in the Gaza Strip since Tuesday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said, the military adding it was "targeting terror sites".
Hamas and medical officials said 23 people had died in the latest Israeli raids, including Deif's wife and seven-month-old son. Deif is widely believed to be masterminding the Islamist group's military campaign from underground bunkers.
A Hamas official said Deif, head of Hamas's Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, had not used the targeted house, from whose rubble the bodies of three members of the family that lived there were also pulled out.
Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas's armed wing, said in a televised statement addressing Israel "you have failed and you have missed" Deif in the attack.
Chanting "Qassam, bomb Tel Aviv!", thousands of Palestinians later attended the funeral of Deif's wife and son in Jabalya refugee camp. The woman's mother told reporters she wished she had "another 100 daughters" to offer Deif in marriage.
Accusing Israel of opening a "gateway to hell", Hamas fired rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem late on Tuesday, demonstrating the Islamist movement could still reach Israel's heartland despite heavy Israeli bombardments in the five-week conflict.
There was no confirmation from Israel that it had tried to kill Deif, who has been targeted in air strikes at least four times since the mid-1990s. Israel holds him responsible for the deaths of dozens of its citizens in suicide bombings.
"ALL OPTIONS OPEN"
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to say whether Deif had been targeted, but he reaffirmed Israel's longstanding policy of considering militant leaders as legitimate targets, adding that "none are immune" from attack.
Netanyahu said Israel's Gaza campaign could last for a while. "This will be a continuous campaign," he told a news conference in Tel Aviv, giving a vague description of Israel's goals as seeking "calm and safety" for Israeli citizens.
Ya'alon, his defense chief, added that "all options are open, including renewed ground operations" in Gaza.
Netanyahu compared Hamas Islamists to Islamic State militants operating in Iraq and Syria, calling them "branches of the same tree" and accusing both groups of acting with "savagery" by killing and targeting attacks against civilians.
Abu Ubaida, the Hamas military spokesman, said the group would target Israeli public sites such as soccer stadiums and Israel's Ben-Gurion International Airport. He warned airlines to stay away from Thursday morning and cautioned Israelis living near to Gaza against returning to their homes.
An Israeli airport spokesman said there were no disruptions reported in Thursday's flight schedules.
Five children were killed in separate air strikes, according to Gaza health officials, and the Israeli military said it had targeted four gunmen in northern Gaza.
Hamas said it had fired two rockets at an Israeli gas installation about 30 km (19 miles) off the coast of Gaza in the first apparent attack of its kind. The Israeli military said no missiles had struck any gas platforms at sea.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says 2,040 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in Gaza. Israel says it has killed hundreds of Palestinian militants in fighting that the United Nations says has displaced about 425,000 people.
Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel have been killed in the most deadly and destructive war Hamas and Israel have fought since Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in 2005, before Hamas seized the territory in 2007.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah party took part in the Cairo talks, was due to meet the emir of Qatar, Sheik Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, and exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Doha on Wednesday, diplomatic sources said.
Israel instructed its civilians to open bomb shelters as far as 80 km (50 miles) from Gaza, or beyond the Tel Aviv area, and the military called up 2,000 reservists.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement he was "gravely disappointed by the return to hostilities" and urged the sides not to allow matters to escalate.
Egyptian mediators have been struggling to end the Gaza conflict and seal a deal that would open the way for reconstruction aid to flow into the territory of 1.8 million people, where thousands of homes have been destroyed.
The Palestinians want Egypt and Israel to lift their blockades of the economically crippled Gaza Strip that predated the Israeli offensive.
(Additional reporting by Maggie Fick and Stephen Kalin in Cairo; Writing by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Gareth Jones)
3 Top Hamas Commanders Killed By Israeli Airstrike In Gaza
By KARIN LAUB and IAN DEITCH Posted: 08/21/2014 1:57 am EDT Updated: 3 hours ago
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel stepped up its campaign against Gaza's ruling Hamas on Thursday, killing three of the group's senior military commanders in an airstrike that pulverized a four-story home, the second such attack targeting top leaders in two days.
The pinpoint pre-dawn attack on Hamas' inner sanctum was launched minutes after the men emerged from tunnel hideouts, a security official said — displaying the long reach of Israel's intelligence services.
The killing of the commanders, who played a key role in expanding Hamas' military capabilities in recent years, was bound to lower morale in the secretive group, but might not necessarily diminish its ability to fire rockets at Israel.
Thursday's strike in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, coupled with a Cabinet decision to call up 10,000 more reserve soldiers, signaled an escalation in the Israel-Hamas war after Egyptian cease-fire efforts collapsed this week.
Since July 8, fighting has claimed more than 2,000 Palestinian lives, most of them civilians, according to Palestinian officials and the U.N., and entire neighborhoods of Gaza have been destroyed. Sixty-four Israeli soldiers, two Israeli civilians and a guest worker also have been killed.
Meanwhile, a senior Hamas leader in exile admitted that Hamas was behind the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teens in the West Bank — the group's first claim of responsibility for the June attack that triggered an Israeli crackdown and eventually led to the Gaza war.
Saleh Arouri told an international conference of Islamic scholars in Turkey on Wednesday that Hamas grabbed the teens in hopes of sparking a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank.
This week's resumption of Gaza fighting came after several failed rounds of indirect talks of Israel and Hamas in Cairo.
Egyptian mediators had proposed that in exchange for quiet on the Israel-Gaza border, Israel gradually ease a border blockade it had imposed on Gaza, alongside Egypt, after Hamas seized the territory in 2007. Hamas rejected the proposal, saying Israel didn't offer anything specific.
In an apparent attempt to revive diplomacy, Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held talks in Qatar on Thursday with his main Palestinian rival Khaled Mashaal, the top Hamas leader in exile.
Abbas lost control of Gaza in the Hamas takeover seven years ago, but several months ago signed a reconciliation deal with Hamas that was to give him a new foothold in the territory.
During the Cairo talks, Abbas confidants in a joint delegation with Hamas had urged the Islamic militants to accept the Egyptian offer, without success. Some in the Abbas camp had pointed fingers at Mashaal and his host and backer, Qatar.
Abbas was to head to Cairo for top-level meetings Friday.
At the United Nations, three European countries — Britain, Germany and France — were working on a Security Council resolution calling for a Gaza cease-fire and international monitoring to ensure implantation, said a U.N. diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss sensitive deliberations.
The European resolution would also include a European offer to take charge of Gaza's border crossings, along with a deployment there of security forces loyal to Abbas.
Since the breakdown of the Cairo talks late Tuesday, accompanied by the violation of a temporary cease-fire by Gaza militants, cross-border violence has continued at a steady pace.
On Thursday, more than 100 rockets were fired from Gaza, while Israel carried out some 50 airstrikes, the Israeli military said.
In all, at least 26 Palestinians were killed Thursday, among them six children, bringing the death toll since July 8 to 2,086, according to Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra.
Nearly a quarter of the dead — 469— are children, according to the top UNICEF field officer in Gaza, Pernilla Ironside. Of the more than 10,400 Palestinians wounded, nearly a third were children, according to UNICEF figures, while some 100,000 Gazans have been left homeless.
In southern Israel, a man was seriously hurt Thursday, when a mortar shell fired from Gaza exploded outside a kindergarten and shrapnel flew through a window as he celebrated his son's third birthday.
In Gaza, one of those pulled from the rubble Thursday was Sara Deif, the 5-year-old daughter of Mohammed Deif, the top Hamas military leader who was apparently the target of an airstrike on a three-story home in Gaza City late Tuesday.
Deif's wife and infant son were also killed in the attack. Hamas said Deif, who has survived four previous attempts on his life, some with serious injuries, was not in the area at the time of the strike. Israel has declined comment on Deif's possible fate.
After Thursday's airstrike in Rafah, the Hamas military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, announced that three senior commanders, Mohammed Abu Shamaleh, Raed Attar and Mohammed Barhoum had been killed.
Several hours later, thousands marched through Rafah in a funeral procession, firing guns, waving flags of different militant groups and chanting religious slogans. Those killed were carried aloft through the crowd on stretchers, wrapped in green Hamas flags.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said Israel "will not succeed in breaking the will of our people or weaken the resistance," and that Israel "will pay the price."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the Shin Bet security service and its "superior intelligence" for the strike. The killing of the Hamas leaders was bound to buy him some time as Israel's public grows impatient with the government's inability to halt rocket fire from Gaza.
Israeli media said Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon authorized the strike on the Hamas commanders in the four-story building in the Tel Sultan neighborhood of Rafah. A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said the trio had entered the home just minutes earlier, emerging from underground hideouts.
"We will continue to pursue and strike the heads of Hamas at any time and any place they may be. Whoever tries to harm Israel's citizens — they are marked for death," Yaalon said.
Israel's military and the Shin Bet emphasized the importance of the three Hamas commanders.
Abu Shamaleh, 41, had been the top Hamas commander in southern Gaza, while Attar, 40, was in charge of weapons smuggling and the construction of attack tunnels, and had played a role in the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit in 2006. Barhoum, 45, was a senior Hamas operative in Rafah, a joint statement said.
In pinpointing the whereabouts of the Hamas commanders, Israel likely relied to some extent on local informers. Israel has maintained a network of informers despite its withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, at times using blackmail or the lure of exit permits to win cooperation.
Al Majd, a website linked to the Hamas security services, said Thursday that seven suspected informers were arrested in recent days and that three were killed "after the completion of the revolutionary procedures against them."
It was the second time during the Gaza war that the website announced suspected informers had been killed by Hamas.
Deitch reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Josef Federman and Yousur Alhlou in Jerusalem and Alexandra Olson at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Senior Hamas Official Says Members Of Qassam Brigade Were Responsible For Abducting Israeli Teens
By Noah Browning Posted: 08/21/2014 8:34 am EDT Updated: 2 hours ago
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Aug 21 (Reuters) - A top Hamas official said members of his militant group kidnapped three Israeli teenagers whose deaths in June provoked a spiral of violence that led to the war in Gaza, the first acknowledgement of the movement's involvement.
Hamas, which controls Gaza, has up to now refused to confirm or deny Israeli accusations that it masterminded the abduction and killing of the three young men, one of them a joint U.S.-Israeli citizen, in Hebron.
"There was much speculation about this operation, some said it was a conspiracy," Saleh al-Arouri told delegates at the International Union of Islamic Scholars in Istanbul on Wednesday, according to a recording of the meeting posted online by organizers.
"The popular will was exercised throughout our occupied land, and culminated in the heroic operation by the Qassam Brigades in imprisoning the three settlers in Hebron," he said, referring to Hamas's armed wing.
"This was an operation from your brothers in Qassam undertaken to aid their brothers on hunger strike in (Israeli) prisons," he added.
Jewish seminary students Eyal Yifrach, 19, and Gilad Shaer and Naftali Fraenkel, both 16, were abducted while hitchiking in the Israeli occupied West Bank on June 12 and killed.
Israel promptly accused Hamas, which is based in Gaza but has a presence in the West Bank, of masterminding the attack and began a crackdown on the group in which over a thousand Palestinians were arrested.
Tensions already ran deep in the West Bank after weeks of a mass hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who is in exile in Qatar, denied knowledge of the abduction but praised its perpetrators.
Nearly three weeks after the kidnappings, 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khudair, a Palestinian living in East Jerusalem, was abducted, beaten and burned to death by, prosecutors said, a group of Jewish extremists.
Protests broke out in Abu Khudair's neighborhood and Hamas responded by firing rockets at Israel from Gaza.
That escalated into a full-scale war with Israel in which more than 2,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed, as well as 64 Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel.
Two Palestinian suspects Israel has named as the kidnappers of the three seminary students remain at large. Israel said a third suspect arrested by its security forces admitted under interrogation to organizing the kidnapping with funds from Hamas in Gaza.
(Writing by Noah Browning; Editing by Luke Baker and Andrew Heavens)
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