Genocide In Gaza, 6/6/24
GENOCIDE IN
GAZA
Murray Horton
Let’s Talk
About Hamas
The general consensus is that Gaza is this generation’s Vietnam. There
are some similarities between the two wars - and a whole lot more
differences. But it is true as far as the global protest movement is
concerned. Even some of the chants are the same – substitute Biden or
Netanyahu for Johnson in “hey, hey, LBJ. How many kids did you kill
today?” (the answer in both cases is an awful lot). And the putdowns
are much the same. If you were a critic of the Vietnam War, you were
labelled “anti-American”. Today, if you’re a critic of the Gaza War or
Zionism in general, you’re labelled “anti-Semitic”, which is just
ludicrous.
I’m old enough to have actively participated in both Vietnam and Gaza
demos. There is one conspicuous absence from the latter. In the
Vietnam demos it was common for people to chant “Victory to the NLF”
(National Liberation Front or the “Viet Cong” to the Western world)
and to carry their flag – I have old photos of me as a callow youth
with that flag. But nobody is chanting “victory to Hamas” or carrying
its flag. I can only speak from my personal experience of months of
Christchurch demos but I have no doubt that if anyone was supporting
Hamas at any NZ demo the media would be shouting it from the rooftops.
Why is this? Simply that people want to keep separate their outrage at
Israel’s genocide in Gaza from any perception of support for Hamas.
There are big differences between Vietnam’s NLF of half a century ago
and Hamas today. One was communist and nationalist; the other is
Islamist. I distrust all religious fundamentalists, regardless of
which religion they are imposing on people. The same goes for
ideological fundamentalists, so I put the Khmer Rouge in the same
bracket as the Taliban (this country has been afflicted by capitalist
fundamentalists in Government at various times in recent decades,
including among the present coalition).
Israel has only got itself to blame for the existence of Hamas. Israel
defeated and ruthlessly repressed the previous secular Palestinian
armed resistance, the one led by Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation
Organisation (PLO), which fitted into the pantheon of global
liberation movements of the day. That old guard ended up as Israel’s
collaborators, the corrupt and powerless administrators (not rulers)
of the Occupied West Bank. It is no coincidence that the US wants to
install them as administrators of a post-war Gaza, as sort of the
reservation cops for what is already the world’s biggest outdoor
prison and permanent free fire zone for the Israeli military. The
Palestinian people have made clear that they do not want this.
Israel laughably conflates Hamas with ISIS, which everyone agrees is a
terrorist organisation and ideology, with no redeeming features. I
guarantee that if Israel does succeed in its murderous mission to
exterminate Hamas, it will be replaced by something more extreme,
maybe something actually like the ISIS fascists. That would be a very
sad day but the Palestinian people are not going to lie down and lick
the boots of their oppressors. They will continue to fight back.
The Hamas surprise attack into Israel in October 2023 was an
impressive military feat, catching the arrogant and complacent Israeli
military and intelligence machine completely off guard. But Hamas
definitely committed war crimes by terrorising, murdering and
kidnapping Israeli civilians. As for killing and capturing enemy
soldiers, that is normal in a war (which Israel and Hamas have been
fighting for decades). Nor are the Israeli settlers innocent
bystanders. Throughout history, and up until today, settlers are a
common denominator in wars, land theft and dispossession. This applies
across the world, including in New Zealand.
Terrorism
Hamas is routinely presented in the West as a terrorist organisation –
in 2024 New Zealand has designated it, in its entirety, as one
(previously NZ only designated Hamas’ military wing as a terrorist
organisation). “Terrorist” is a very subjective term and it depends on
who’s telling the story. In wartime it is usual to brand one’s enemy
as terrorists. Thus, the Nazis branded the French Resistance as such.
“Our boys” who incinerated huge numbers of German and Japanese
civilians in WW2 bombing raids were as much terrorists committing war
crimes as were the Nazis who bombed British civilians during the
Blitz.
There are politicians in office now whose organisations and parties
were previously branded as terrorists – South Africa and Northern
Ireland are two examples. Look no further than the history of
Palestine itself – when it was part of the British Empire in the 20th
Century, Zionist Jews waged a very effective terrorist campaign
against their occupiers, featuring bombings and murders.
Hamas doesn’t seem to have thought far beyond that initial surprise
attack into Israel in October 2023. Which brings up another similarity
with the Vietnam War. In 1968 the NLF and North Vietnam took the US
and its South Vietnamese puppets completely by surprise by launching
the Tet Offensive right across South Vietnam and right into the
grounds of the US Embassy in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City).
At the time, the West judged it to be a military failure, a suicide
mission. The same with Hamas’ attack – deemed a suicide mission. But
both Tet in 1968 and Hamas in 2023 were looking beyond the purely
military. They were both making a political point, issuing a wake-up
call, putting their struggle front and centre on the global agenda. In
both cases the impact was seismic. And there are other similarities.
Tet finished the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson. 1968 was an election
year – he announced that he wouldn’t run again.
2024 is an election year – it remains to be seen what impact Biden’s
“ironclad” support of Israel’s genocide has on his re-election. Here’s
an even stranger coincidence - the 1968 Democrat convention was in
Chicago (the protests became a legendary event in the history of the
US anti-war movement). The 2024 Democrat convention is also in
Chicago, with this generation’s anti-war movement building up a head
of steam in advance.
Important
Differences Between The Vietnam And Gaza Wars
Vietnam could count on the rock- solid support of its ideological
allies, the Soviet Union and China, who armed it and enabled it to
have some air defences that could shoot down the US bombers that waged
a much more devastating bombardment on Vietnam (and Laos and Cambodia)
than anything Israel has unleashed.
Gaza has no friendly next-door neighbours – Vietnam had China, Gaza
has Egypt, which regards Hamas as a threat and an enemy. The Arab
states sold out the Palestinians decades ago, after they lost several
wars to Israel. It was no coincidence that Hamas launched its attack
just before Israel was about to announce a normalisation of relations
with Saudi Arabia, the most vicious of the regional dictatorships.
Hamas does not even have the support of the Palestinian Authority in
the Occupied West Bank, headed by the people who lost the 2006
Palestinian election to Hamas and were subsequently driven out of Gaza
by it. So, Hamas is basically on its own, apart from Iran and its
allies in the region, such as Hezbollah and the Houthis, but they are
all a long way from Gaza.
There are other differences with the Vietnam War. Hamas has no air
defences and, although it has done a very good job of protecting its
own ranks with tunnels, it has provided no network of air raid
shelters for civilians. It has effectively left its own civilian
population defenceless against Israel’s genocide from the sky. And,
unlike Vietnam, it seems to have done little or nothing to mobilise
those civilians, either for defence or guerrilla war.
A striking feature of the Vietnam War was the military participation
of women. Hamas appears to be an all-male military and political
movement. Having said that, there is no sign of Hamas having lost
popular support in Gaza. There has been no uprising or mass clamour to
escape. Indeed, Hamas has apparently increased in popularity in the
Occupied West Bank, which is run by its Palestinian rivals. The reason
why is obvious – it is the only organisation offering any kind of
effective armed resistance to the Israeli occupation from within.
Murderers,
Liars, Cowards
Which brings me to the other side in this one-sided war. If Hamas is a
terrorist organisation, then Israel is a terrorist state. If one has
committed atrocities, the other is committing genocide. The keyword
here is disproportionality. Yes, Israel is entitled to defend itself.
But so is Palestine, specifically Gaza, which has been used as a
real-world testing ground for Israeli weapons and surveillance systems
ever since Hamas won that 2006 election.
The West is fed a constant diet of soothing noises about “surgical
strikes” and “smart bombs”, which is all just so much bullshit. The
world sees that the reality is massive death and destruction. If
Israel really was “smart”, then it might have won the allegiance of
some of Gaza’s people (there were never going to be cheering crowds
throwing flowers onto Israel’s conquering troops).
But, no, it declared that its war was against all Gazans, that they
are all the enemy, that they are sub-humans, and it is a war of
annihilation. Despite their worst efforts, the Israeli military has
still not won (at the time of writing) – whatever “won” means in this
context. Hamas has neither surrendered nor been exterminated. I’d say
Israel’s methods have guaranteed a fresh supply of Hamas recruits.
Because Israel can count on the unquestioning support of the US, other
major Western governments and a supine Western media, it knows it can
commit genocide with impunity. Mass murder in broad daylight and in
plain sight. It got such a fright from the successful Hamas attack
that it reacted with an all-consuming blood lust, killing everyone in
its path in Gaza. It has killed its own hostages, by accident or
design; it has murdered record numbers of women and children;
civilians; aid workers; health workers; journalists and UN staff.
It has weaponised the withholding of desperately needed humanitarian
aid and deliberately induced mass starvation. It has systematically
destroyed hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, homes, etc., etc;
to make Gaza unliveable for the foreseeable future. In some cases, it
tried to concoct a cover story – “Hamas had a control centre and/or
tunnels under this hospital”. It gave up on that because it realised
it didn’t have to pretend – it could do anything it liked without
consequences, provoking only the feeblest of tut-tutting from its
Western allies who bankroll and arm it, to the tune of billions of
dollars per year. So much for “the international rules-based order”
that they tiresomely, and lyingly, pontificate about.
It is plainly obvious that the Israeli military are mass murderers.
They are also liars – they ordered Gazans to relocate to “safe zones”,
which then made them easier to attack and murder. And their chosen
method is to murder a defenceless civilian population from the air (a
tactic favoured by their American accomplices in their various wars in
recent decades). That’s why I call them cowards.
US Is The
Enabler Of Genocide
If Israel is the mass murderer, then the US is the enabler of that
mass murder, providing vital military support and political cover at
places like the UN. Minor US satellites like NZ follow the US lead.
Gaza is certainly not the only war at present, not even the biggest.
Until October 2023 the West was fixated on Ukraine, whose war includes
old-school features from both World War 1 (trench warfare) and World
War 2 (long-range rocket attacks), combined with modern features such
as drones and cyber-warfare.
Syria has become yesterday’s story; the war between rival gangs of
thugs in Sudan has been forgotten. The West has only ever taken
passing interest in the Congo, Africa’s decades-long world war, one in
which millions have died. Gaza is not the only recent example of
ethnic cleansing. Just the month before it started, Azerbaijan
launched a victorious one-day long lightning strike into the Armenian
enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, resulting in the exit of nearly 100% of
ethnic Armenians. This was one of the big stories in world news until
Gaza wiped it out of global consciousness.
The world has been fed this myth of “plucky little Israel”, surrounded
by enemies. Furthermore, we’ve been told it’s the only democracy in
the Middle East. Maybe, but Israeli democracy is only for the
occupiers, not the occupied. It certainly has never accepted the
result of the 2006 Palestinian election which brought Hamas to power
in Gaza. It has barred international media from Gaza during the war
and shut down al Jazeera in Israel.
Zionism: An
Inherently Racist & Terrorist Ideology
In fact, Israel is a bully, both domestically and regionally. A
heavily militarised bully which wages continual war, both internally
and regionally. Armed to the teeth and politically sheltered by the US
superpower, it recklessly tries to provoke a wider war with Iran in
order to draw in the US and its Western allies. A state governed by
Zionism, an inherently racist and terrorist ideology, it is an
apartheid state on the same model as the former white-ruled South
Africa.
A state currently governed by
the extreme Right and headed by a corrupt Prime Minister who is a
literal criminal (in addition to being a war criminal), one who is
keen to keep the Gaza War going indefinitely in order to postpone his
various criminal trials. A lawless state which arms vigilante settlers
and lets them rob, starve, terrorise and murder Palestinians with
impunity.
Yes, Israel has got a problem neighbour in Hamas. Any country is
entitled to defend itself against being regularly attacked by barrages
of low-grade rockets. But Irael’s response has always been
disproportionate and the most recent response is the most
disproportionate of all. Israel is modelling its response on Sri
Lanka, which ended the decades-long separatist war with the Tamil
Tigers by finally driving them, and a huge number of civilians, into a
corner, then bombarding them all into death and defeat.
But Israel will not achieve peace by military means – it will have to be a political solution (which has to be more than a ceasefire. Korea has had one of those since 1953, and it’s not a good precedent). Above all, Israel, the US and its’ fellow accomplices and enablers of genocide have to recognise that old truism: no justice, no peace.
Murray Horton
Secretary/Organiser Anti-Bases Campaign.