The Marxist-Leninist Daily

The Israeli state is the negation of Palestine and its right to be. Israel is a military settler state imposed upon Palestine. Before, during and after the Second World War the most powerful imperialist forces, mainly Britain and the United States with the active connivance of Germany, France and others prepared conditions for its establishment. Once fortified the Israeli military settler state became a beachhead of Anglo-U.S. imperialism to intimidate and enforce control over West Asia and North Africa.

To maintain the Israeli military settler state as a beachhead of Anglo-U.S. imperialism has required the negation of Palestine's right to be through genocide of the native people and their forceful expulsion from their home villages and towns and the introduction of hundreds of thousands of settlers from abroad who have become the main and leading human force and fodder of the Israeli military settler state. The imperialists used their own persecution of members of the Jewish religion in Europe and elsewhere as a cynical cover for the forcible expulsion of Palestinians and the seizure and occupation of their land. The current Israeli military settler state aggression against Gaza is a continuation of its basic nature to negate Palestine's right to be and either kill Palestinians en masse or expel them from their homeland.

The modern weaponry used by the Israeli military settler state, especially its air power is now mainly furnished by the United States, which remains its most powerful military, political and financial backer. Without Anglo-U.S. imperialist support, the Israeli military settler state would never have come into being and now would soon succumb to Palestinian resistance eliminating the major factor in the negation of Palestine's right to be and allowing new arrangements of Palestinian statehood to emerge.

Palestine's right to be has been nurtured and developed by the human factor of resistance to its negation. This human factor/resistance has gone through many stages in its maturing according to the local and international conditions. The imperialist negation of Palestine's right to be has always been met with the human factor/resistance from the beginning of the twentieth century, as the imperialist project was being prepared, to today's murderous war against Gaza. For over one hundred years, if a certain Palestinian leadership fell in battle or wavered because of imperialist bribery and stumbled into conciliation with the negators of Palestine's right to be, then another leadership arose to replace it.

To the great glory of Palestinians, their human factor/resistance to Palestine's negation has been continuous and unbroken under all conditions before, during and since WWII including:

- the 1948 Nakba with the forcible expulsion and killing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the establishment of the Israeli military settler occupation state acting as a beachhead of Anglo-U.S. imperialism;

- the complicated struggles during the bi-polar division of the world including the 1967 Israeli military settler state war of aggression, expansion and occupation of the rest of Palestine, which continues to this day;

- the ascension to global dominance of the U.S. Empire in 1989, the First Palestinian Intifada from 1987 to 1993 against the Israeli military settler state occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, and the subsequent corruption of the Palestinian Authority epitomized in the Oslo Accords of 1993, whose aim was the negation of the human factor/resistance to the negation of Palestine as illegal and terrorist;

- the smashing in practice of the capitulationist Oslo Accords and its negation of the right to resist through the reformation of the resistance movement and the beginning of the Second (al-Aqsa) Intifada in 2000;

- the 2005 victory of the human factor/resistance led by Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) in expelling from Gaza the Israeli military settler state occupation forces, the only area of Palestine not currently occupied, which is one of the reasons it is now being bombed and threatened with re-invasion;

- the success of the human factor/resistance led by Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) in winning a majority in the January 2006 Palestinian national elections;

- the earthshaking 2006 summer triumph of the Lebanese resistance movement led by Hezbollah over the Israeli military settler state's armed aggression to seize Lebanon's southern territory, forcing the aggressors to retreat back into occupied Palestine and inflicting enormous damage on the Israeli-Nazi aura of invincibility mainly through air power, which the U.S. Empire has carefully cultivated and financed since the 1967 war;

- the present aggression against Gaza and the heroic human factor/resistance to this murderous assault.

The Israeli military settler state is the negation of Palestine and its right to be. To resolve this contradiction requires the negation of the negation. This reality is uppermost in the minds of the Anglo-U.S. imperialists and the main reason they hate and pour bile on the Palestinian human factor/resistance, which is determined to bring the Palestinian nation into being. For those living anywhere in Palestine, including within the confines of the Israeli military settler state and those Palestinians in exile and wishing to exercise the right of return, their future belongs with the negation of the Israeli military settler state and unity with the human factor/resistance fighting for Palestine's right to be.

Canadian workers and their allies are organizing to bring a Canada into being under the banner of the human factor/social consciousness. A new Canada necessarily entails arrangements that recognize the right to be of Quebec and the First Nations. This modern consciousness extends to a natural solidarity with all nations throughout the world that are fighting for their right to be against imperialism and reaction, including the Palestinian nation and its human factor/resistance. Canadian workers and their allies have the duty to mobilize solidarity with Palestine's right to be through denouncing the annexation of Canada into the U.S. Empire and the Canadian government's slavish adherence to the war aims of U.S. imperialism and the Israeli military settler state. An effective workers' opposition must force the Canadian government to declare illegal, with severe penalties, any transfer of funds or material to the Israeli military settler state. All military, government, financial, business, social, academic and cultural contacts with the Israeli military settler state must stop and be declared illegal.

Importantly, Canadians must keep in mind that the imperialists always make a central issue the methods of struggle of those peoples, nations and social classes resisting their negation and fighting for their right to be. The imperialists must be constantly reminded that the negation of Palestine's right to be is the root contradiction and the source of war, killing and bombing in the region. Peace and stability can only be achieved when the negation of Palestine's right to be is negated and Palestine takes its rightful place among the community of nations.

Advancing their own work to build Groups of Writers and Disseminators and Committees for Democratic Renewal, Canadian workers and their allies can concretely move the struggle forward to build a new Canada in the image of the working class, with sovereignty vested in the people guided by the human factor/social consciousness, which cuts all ties with the Israeli military settler state, severs all military ties with the U.S. Empire and establishes close bonds of friendship, mutual support and affection with Palestine and its right to be.

The right to be of Palestine is inviolable! Denounce, isolate and defeat the U.S. Empire and the Israeli military settler state, the negator of Palestine's right to be! Long live the heroic Palestinian people, their human factor/resistance and courageous fight to establish in action and fact Palestine's right to be!

Israel's Fabricated Rocket Crisis

In The Iron Wall (2001), Israeli historian Avi Shlaim shows that in July 1981, US diplomat Philip Habib brokered a ceasefire between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel. For the next year, the PLO infuriated Israel by refusing to violate the ceasefire and thereby provide an excuse for Israel's long-planned attack on PLO refugee camps and bases in Lebanon. Then, on 3 June 1982, a member of the Abu Nidal organization shot and wounded Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador in London. Abu Nidal, or Sabri Khalil al-Banna, was a Palestinian, but he was anything but a PLO stalwart: "Abu Nidal was supported by Iraq in his struggle against Arafat's 'capitulationist' leadership of the PLO. Abu Nidal customarily referred to Arafat as 'the Jewess' son.' The PLO had passed a death sentence on Abu Nidal for assassinating some of its moderate members who advocated a dialogue with Israel."

The next day, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin called an emergency cabinet meeting. When his advisor Gideon Machanaimi and Avraham Shalom (the head of the General Security Service) began to discuss the nature of the Abu Nidal organization, Begin cut them off: "'They are all PLO.' [Army Chief of Staff] Rafael Eitan was equally dismissive. Shortly before entering the conference room, an intelligence aide told him that Abu Nidal's men were evidently responsible for the assassination attempt. 'Abu Nidal, Abu Shmidal,' he sneered; 'we have to strike at the PLO!'"

Two days later, Israel invaded Lebanon, which would kill over 18,000 people, including the massacres of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila, and push Lebanon further into a morass of imperial and sectarian violence. Of course, the lying excuse endlessly proffered for the invasion, enshrined in its nickname "Operation Peace for the Galilee," and obligingly circulated by the American media, was that Israel could no longer be expected to tolerate a constant barrage of PLO rockets across its northern border.

In Israel's recent rush to invade Gaza, we witness the same predisposition to violence, the same aching aggravation with Palestinian peace offensives, and the same willingness to conflate all resistance, all frustrations, into a single enemy: "They are all Hamas!" And we see that Hamas, like the PLO, refused to oblige Israel with a single provocative act. For more than four months after 19 June 2008, Hamas refrained from any military actions that might endanger the negotiated truce or "calm" with Israel.

The evidence for this is ready to hand. For example, the Wikipedia entry on the events of the summer, "List of rocket and mortar attacks in Israel in 2008" (revised 4 January 2008), based almost exclusively on Israeli newspapers and government sources, confirms that there were no rocket or mortar attacks claimed by or plausibly attributed to Hamas during the calm. This can also be verified by surveying archives of news reports from the period.

The few that were launched, none of them causing any casualties, were claimed by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, by Islamic Jihad, by "the Badr Forces," or by nobody. Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called repeatedly for a cessation of rocket fire, and denounced those factions who broke the truce. A Hamas spokesman criticized Fatah for allowing the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is affiliated with Fatah, to fire rockets. Meanwhile, Israeli occupation forces' murders and settler pogroms continued unabated on the West Bank. They included an attempt by a settler to fire a homemade rocket toward the Palestinian village of Burin, which nearly killed another settler. During the lull, then, Israeli settlers fired more rockets (i.e., one) than did Hamas.

In a document entitled "The Hamas terror war against Israel," The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides striking visual evidence of Hamas's good faith during the lull. It reproduces two graphs drawn up by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center.

The graphs show that the total number of rocket and mortar attacks shrank from 245 in June to 26 total for July through October, a reduction of 97 percent. Even this was not enough for Israel, which violated the truce by imposing a terror-famine in Gaza for most of these months. But despite these violations, Hamas refrained from launching rockets until Israel definitively cancelled the truce on the night of 4-5 November by sending an Israeli commando squad into Gaza, where it killed six Hamas members. Hamas responded with 30 rockets.

These charts proved too revealing for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On the night eve of 4 January 2008, as Israeli occupation forces launched a ground assault on Gaza, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs removed them from its website, substituting an almost illegible graph in which the labels obscure the data, while the caption does all it can to hide the de facto end of rocket and mortar fire during the calm, until 4 November.

This document was also titled "The Hamas terror war against Israel." But a Korean webpage has cached the original document, preserving the evidence of Israel's sticky-fingered hasbara, or propaganda.

Clearly, the Israelis violated the truce in order to increase the number of Qassam attacks, not to end them. Qassams provide Israel with its best shot at its favorite media role of plucky little David fighting the Palestinian Goliath. And by nimble revision of its webpage, the Israeli MFA is able to turn cause into effect -- turning the retaliatory Hamas Qassams of 6 November into the cause of Israel canceling the truce on 4 November, and smashing it flat on 19 December.

We have heard, and we will continue to hear, a droning litany of "Qassams! Qassams! Qassams!" The repetition will be difficult to resist, but for all of us who remember the reiterated U.S. lies about Iraq of 2002-2003, whether with pride for our skepticism or shame for our credulity, a good first step might be for us to think "WMDs!" every time they say "Qassams!" Like the U.S. Coalition of the Willing, Israel's Operation Cast Lead has not let the absence of actual provocation get in the way of a good bloodbath. Indeed, chronology itself proves no obstacle, as Israeli commandos, Apaches and F-16s retaliate for rocket attacks that haven't occurred yet. In the immortal, influential and profoundly depraved words of neoliberal crusader Michael Ignatieff, "Against this kind of enemy ... it makes sense to get our retaliation in first."

When the history of the war on Gaza is written, Hamas's remarkable restraint during the lull, as Israel attempted to starve Gaza into submission, will form an important prelude to what Joseph Massad has called the heroic Gaza Ghetto Uprising. But for the moment, it's vital to remember that what we are witnessing in Gaza is not Israeli retaliation, but an act of unprovoked Zionist genocide using American-made weapons, based on a bloody lie about Qassam barrages obligingly circulated by American media. The question for Americans to ask now is this: what must we do, with our American-made mouths, brains, and bodies, to stop it?

* Jim Holstun teaches world literature at SUNY Buffalo. He has previously written "Nonie Darwish and the al-Bureij massacre" for the Electronic Intifada. He and Joanna Tinker live in Buffalo, New York. This item was published in the Electronic Intifada.

Israel's New War Ethic

Watching Israeli public television (Channel 1) these days can be an unsettling experience, and lately I've abstained from the practice. But after being stuck for seventy-two hours with our two young children inside a Beer-Sheva apartment, the spouse and I decided to visit my mother, who lives up north, so that our children could play outside far away from the rockets. My mother, like most Israelis, is a devout news consumer, and last night I decided to keep her company in front of the TV. For the most part, the broadcast was more of the same. There were the usual images and voices of suffering Israeli Jews along with the promulgation of a hyper-nationalist ethos. One story, for example, followed a Jewish mother who had lost her son in Gaza about two years ago. The audience was told that the son has been a soldier in the Golani infantry brigade and together with his company had penetrated the Gaza Strip in an attempt to save the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.

"Because members of his company did not want to hurt civilians, they refrained from opening fire in every direction, which allowed Palestinian militiamen to shoot my boy," the mother stated. When the interviewer asked her about the current assault on Gaza, she answered that, "We should pound and cut them from the air and from the sea," but added that, "We should not kill civilians, only Hamas." The report ended with the interviewer asking the mother what she does when she misses her son, and, as the camera zoomed in on her face, she answered: "I go into his room and hug his bed, because I can no longer hug him."

Thus, despite the ever-increasing loss of life in the Gaza Strip, Israel remains the perpetual victim. Indeed, the last frame with the mother looking straight into the camera leaves the average compassionate viewer -- myself included -- a bit choked up. Over the past few years, I have, however, become a critical consumer of Israeli news, and therefore can see through the perpetuation of the image that Israel and its Jewish majority are the victims and how, regardless of what happens, we are presented as the moral players in this conflict. Therefore, this kind of reportage, where the huge death toll in Gaza is elided and Jewish suffering is underscored, no longer shocks me.

What did manage to unnerve me in the broadcast was one short sentence made by a reporter who covered the entry of a humanitarian aid convoy into the Gaza Strip on Friday.

My mother and I -- like other Israeli viewers -- learned that 170 trucks supplied with basic foodstuff donated by the Turkish government entered Gaza through the Carmi crossing. That the report had nothing to say about the context of this food shipment did not surprise me. Nor was I surprised that no mention was made of the fact that 80 percent of Gaza's inhabitants are unable to support themselves and are therefore dependent on humanitarian assistance -- and this figure is increasing daily. Indeed, nothing was said about the severe food crisis in Gaza, which manifests itself in shortages of flour, rice, sugar, dairy products, milk and canned foods, or about the total lack of fuel for heating houses and buildings during these cold winter months, the absence of cooking gas, and the shortage of running water. The viewer has no way of knowing that the Palestinian health system is barely functioning or that some 250,000 people in central and northern Gaza are now living without any electricity at all due to the damage caused by the air strikes.

While the fact that this information was missing from the report did not surprise me, I found myself completely taken aback by the way in which the reporter justified the convoy's entrance into Gaza. Explaining to those viewers who might be wondering why Israel allows humanitarian assistance to the other side during times of war, he declared that if a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe were to explode among the Palestinian civilian population, the international community would pressure Israel to stop the assault.

There is something extremely cynical about how Israel explains its use of humanitarian assistance, and yet such unadulterated explanations actually help uncover an important facet of postmodern warfare. Not unlike raising animals for slaughter on a farm, the Israeli government maintains that it is providing Palestinians with assistance so that it can have a free hand in attacking them. And just as Israel provides basic foodstuff to Palestinians while it continues shooting them, it informs Palestinians -- by phone, no less -- that they must evacuate their homes before F-16 fighter jets begin bombing them.

One notices, then, that in addition to its remote-control, computer game-like qualities, postmodern warfare is also characterized by a bizarre new moral element. It is as if the masters of wars realized that since current wars rarely take place between two armies and are often carried out in the midst of civilian populations, a new just war theory is needed. So these masters of war gathered together philosophers and intellectuals to develop a moral theory for postmodern wars, and today, as Gaza is being destroyed, we can see quite plainly how the new theory is being transformed into praxis.

* Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University. Read about his new book, "Israel's Occupation" (due out this fall from the University of California Press), and more at israelsoccupation.info. This item was published in The Nation.

Israel's Blonde Bombshells and Real Bombs in Gaza

"I reiterate that we will treat the population [of Gaza] with silk gloves"
- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

I am not sure that most people understand the meaning of the name "Operation Cast Lead" chosen by Israel for its murderous and criminal attack on Gaza. The name is borrowed from a Hebrew nursery rhyme which was (and may still be) very popular among Israeli children in the 1950s. In this song, a father promises to his child a special Hannukah gift: "a cast lead sevivon." Sevivon, in Hebrew (a dreidel in Yiddish) is a four-sided spinning top, played with during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Somebody in the Israeli army, who apparently feels nostalgic about his childhood, decided that if Israeli kids would enjoy a sevivon cast from lead there is no reason why Palestinian children would not appreciate it too. After all Operation Cast Lead is not the first (and unfortunately, will not be the last) of Israel's cruel war games.

The cynicism embedded in the name, selected for what Ari Shavit, one of Israel's most celebrated commentators, called "an intelligent, impressive operation," is symptomatic to the cold, meticulous and calculated cruelty with which this attack was "designed," "executed" and "marketed" to the world. As the perpetrators themselves proudly boast, Operation Cast Lead is not only a great military victory but also a success story of Israeli hasbara (meaning in Hebrew, explanation, but practically referring to misinformation, spin and lies).

This great victory, as some (but not enough) noticed, prominent among them, Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, is targeted against the "wretched of the world." They are first, second and third generation refugees (originating from the area currently being rocketed from Gaza), the poorest people in the world, crammed in one of the most densely-populated areas on the planet, already starved and weakened by months of Israeli blockade. The sanitized language of the western media calls it "a disproportionate reaction." But the ground zero that it creates for the Palestinians, who, over the last decades, have achieved the dubious honor of becoming the world's quintessential victims, should be a "shock and awe" for any person who has not, as yet, lost his or her basic humanity and sense of justice.

Israel's oiled propaganda-machine was further lubricated by its self-acknowledged decision to select women as their masbirim (misinformation spokespersons) so as "to project a feminine and softer image." To add some cool glamour to Israel's hot lies, Tzipi Livni, the state's foreign minister and a natural blonde, announced, in response to calls for truce: "There is no humanitarian crisis in the [Gaza] Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce." The blonde offensive, led by the rising star of Israeli politics, was fortified by a team of peroxide blonde Israeli women, whose sex, lies and video games decorated TV screens worldwide. They explained to the sympathetic world the hardships endured by the nuclear-armed Israelis threatened by the crude rockets. After all, one Israeli was killed in the last six months, while three other Israelis (one of them a Palestinian citizen of Israel) were killed by rockets since Gaza has been turned into a slaughter-house by the silk gloves of the Israeli army.

Quick to join this sugar-coated team of blonde bombshells were Israel's most celebrated and translated writers abroad, Amos Oz and David Grossman. The two project to the international community (i.e., the so-called liberal west) what it regards as Israeli political conscience and moral voice. Both are given a special stage by prestigious western media platforms to express their opinions regarding major political events involving Israel. They are Israel's hamasbirim haleumim (the national spokespersons) a euphemism for national (or international) deceivers, who whitewash Israel's dirty laundry in the global launderette.

Grossman (slightly more to the "left" than Oz) has obtained an extra moral authority after his own tank commander son was killed in Israel's murderous attack on Lebanon in 2006. In a militaristic society, centered on the cult of the fallen soldier, a bereaved father (av shakul in Hebrew) enjoys a special status. One could have expected Grossman to "cash in" this newly gained status and come out with a more courageous stance, one that would criticize Israel's immoral massacre, rather than re-play the eternal Jewish victim, pleading "to halt" Israeli fire while promising Hamas that: "Even if you continue to fire on Israel, we will not respond by resuming combat. We will grit our teeth, just as we did throughout the period before our attack."

Israelis, in Grossman's self-adulatory discourse, are rahmanim bnei rahmanim (merciful sons of merciful fathers), dignified and righteous victims. Perhaps this is what Olmert meant when he talked about the silky touch of the Israeli gloves caressing "ordinary," non-militant Palestinians in Gaza.

One could think about a braver bereaved parent, Smadar Elhanan-Peled for example. A mother who, after losing her daughter in a suicide bomb attack in Jerusalem, publicly and openly put the blame for her daughter's death on the Israeli government and its cruel policies towards the Palestinians. Her teenage daughter, unlike Grossman's son, was not a tank commander, not even a soldier but just an ordinary girl.

The well-orchestrated propaganda machinery was also equipped with Israel's most successful "secret weapons" of mass deception: playing the role of the victim again. It is not an accident, therefore, that, as the Israeli spin doctors themselves explained in an interview to The Jewish Chronicle, that: "The international media were directed to a press center set up by the foreign ministry in Sderot itself so that foreign reporters would spend as much time as possible in the main civilian area affected by Hamas rockets." The scenes of crying, panic-stricken Israelis added some excessive emotionalism which counter-balanced, but nicely complemented, the team of the icy blonde offenders.

The designation of the Gaza Strip and south Israel as a "closed military zone," and the ban on media coverage of the Gaza carnage contributes to the sanitized view of the Gaza story as manufactured by Israel. The real horror and gore is reserved for the Al Jazeera's spectators, particularly the Arab ones. Ghetto-under-siege Gaza remains almost silent and partly invisible to the rest of us. We hardly hear or see in mainstream media, testimonies from the ground.

But we are bombarded by statements and "explanations" given by Israeli officials and "international experts" who discuss the "situation" calmly and "logically." After all, unlike the hysterical, always shouting and crying Gazans, they have not been bombarded by for nine days straight. They are interviewed in their comfortable (probably leather-clad) offices. They look and sound like respectable westerners, just like "us," and their foreign minister is very calm and cool as her blonde hair obliges.

A pioneering study by the Glasgow University Media Group on media coverage of conflicts, taught us that if you look respectable and calm you must be right. The Palestinians, by contrast, usually interviewed when they are in a state of shock, look disheveled, disoriented, slightly hysterical. And they are always surrounded by chaos and disorder. The buildings around are destroyed, debris is scattered everywhere, and the noise is unbearable (not to mention that they speak this incomprehensible language). Is something wrong with them? Also, even when they are not "extremists" they are always on the defense, almost apologetic, trying to convince us that they are not terrorists, not even militants, just ordinary people who want to survive, if not to enjoy this life. This makes them look even more suspicious.

After all, if they are not terrorists, what are they doing in Gaza? Gaza, we should remember, was declared as "hostile entity" by Israel in September of 2007. And since only the powerful have the power to define, even if their definitions amount to tautologies or oxymorons, they are still the accepted ones. According to this perverse logic, produced in Fortress Israel and marketed to the whole world, any Gazan deserves to die. Furthermore, despite the fact that Israel claims to attack only Hamas and not the Palestinians (conveniently oblivious to the fact that, as David Boardman reminds us, the majority of Palestinians voted democratically for Hamas), it still clings to its old law of blood, according to which, as John Berger observes: "One Israeli life is worth a hundred Palestinian lives." So if in the course of the last six months, one Israeli died as a result of a Hamas rocket attack, it is perfectly logical that in a week 500 Palestinians will lose their lives and thousands more will be injured. This is what the Israelis view as a policy of deterrence.

We should not forget, however, that behind this cruel apparatus of sex, lies and video war games, a more "primitive," "organic," and tribal cruelty, usually well hidden from the scrutiny of the outside world, is operating. Most people in the west do not realize the indifference, and more disturbingly, the joy with which Israelis receive news about the suffering of Arabs and particularly Palestinians. It is more common in the west to see Arab and Muslim crowds "dancing on the roofs" when missiles or rockets hit Israel (as was the case during the 1991 Gulf War) but it is less common to see or hear Israelis cheered at the plight of suffering Palestinians and Arabs. More than once, I have encountered a jovial taxi driver applauding the good news that he has just heard. "Let them all die in agony" was a standard reaction that I have become accustomed to hear on a day-to-day basis while I was still living in Israel.

It was also not uncommon in my Jerusalem neighborhood -- even prior to the onset of the second Palestinian intifada -- to see Israeli Border Police brutally harass poor old Palestinians who came to collect some "valuables" from the garbage bins of the affluent Jews. Time and again it happened in front of a popular Jerusalem cafe, where people were sipping their lattes, completely oblivious to the unfolding drama. Nobody, among these beautiful people, seemed to be bothered by these scenes, or to suffer from some disturbing reflections on the transfer of guilt.

Israel's cruelty -- manifested through its use (or rather abuse) of language, and creative "strategy" of "re-branding" its continuous assaults on the Palestinians as a war of defense, using their tautological logic to justify the extermination of an "entity" which they designate as "hostile" -- should be interpreted in the spirit of Giorgio Agamben. The influential Italian philosopher argued in relation to the Nazi death camps that the "correct question to pose concerning the horrors committed in the camps is, therefore, not the hypocritical one of how crimes of such atrocity could be committed against human beings" but what were "the juridical procedures and deployments of power by which human beings could be so completely deprived of their rights and prerogatives that no act committed against them could appear any longer as a crime."

We may well ask the same question today when listening to Israel's blonde bombshells explain the bombs tearing apart the people of Gaza.

* Yosefa Loshitzky is Professor of Film, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of East London. Her most recent books are Identity Politics on the Israeli Screen (2001) and (as editor) Spielberg's Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler's List (1997). This item was published in the Electronic Intifada. Cartoon courtesy Carlos Latuff.

We Lived to Tell the Story

Yesterday, we met with the President of Lebanon, the Chief of the Military, and the Interior Minister who all thanked us for responding and risking our lives on a mission of mercy; we profusely thanked them for rescuing us.

What would we have done, stranded out at sea, prohibited from reaching our destination, low on fuel, with a badly damaged boat if Lebanon had not accepted us? Lebanon sent their ships to find us. Lebanon rescued us. Lebanon welcomed us. And we are truly thankful.

It's official now. We've been told that the sturdy, wood construction of our boat, Dignity, is the reason we are still alive. Fiberglass would probably not have withstood the impact of the Israeli attack and under different circumstances, we might not be here to tell the story. Even at that, the report that came to us yesterday after the Captain and First Mate went back to Sour (Tyre) to inspect the boat was that it was sinking, the damage is extensive, and the boat will take, in their estimation, at least one month to repair. Tomorrow, we will bring the Dignity from Sour to Beirut. And now, we must decide what to do and from where we will do it and how we are to get back to wherever that might be.

Photos of the Dignity whose crew had planned to transport some of the wounded out of Gaza for treatment and was carrying three tons of medical supplies at the request of doctors in Gaza. On December 30, 2008 at 5:00 am, several Israeli gunboats intercepted the Dignity in international waters, 150 km off the coast of Gaza. One gunboat rammed into the boat on the port bow side, heavily damaging her. The Dignity clearly flies the flag of Gibraltar and is piloted by an English captain. On board were international journalists and activists, as well as three doctors coming to provide relief at Gaza hospitals. At no time was the Dignity ever close to Israeli waters. They clearly identified themselves and the Israeli attack was willful and criminal. On two previous occasions, August 23, 2008 and October 29, 2008, the Dignity had successfully broken the siege and docked in Gaza.

My personal, and I know the group's, thanks must go to Al Jazeera, that allowed three of their reporters to be onboard with us on our voyage. As a result, Al Jazeera carried the story of the Dignity live, from castoff in Cyprus when our spirits were high, right up through the menacing maneuvers of the huge, super fast Israeli ships before they rammed us, the Israeli calls on the ship phone after the ramming calling us terrorists and subversives and telling us to return to Cyprus (even though the Israelis later claimed that they didn't know who we were, they knew enough about us to tell us where we had come from), and the fact that we didn't have enough fuel to follow their instructions, right up to their threat to fire at us if we didn't turn around, ending with our beaten-up boat limping into Sour harbor in Lebanon. Al Jazeera carried our story as "breaking news" and performed a real service to its audience and to us. Al Jazeera called the Israelis to inquire about the incident right as it was happening and I am sure the Israelis were prepared to leave none to tell the story. Al Jazeera told the story and documented it as it was happening.

One of those Al Jazeera reporters with us was Sami El-Haj, who was detained in Guantanamo by the United States for six incredibly long years. What an honor to even exchange glances with such a humble man who had endured so much pain at the hands of the U.S. government. I apologized to him that my tax dollars were being used in such a despicable way. And Sami's crime according to the U.S.? Born in Sudan, and reporting for Al Jazeera in Afghanistan, Sami was the wrong color, the wrong nationality, the wrong religion, reporting for the wrong news outfit, telling us the truth about a wrong war. And for that he survived incarceration for six long years. Sami El-Haj, Guantanamo prisoner number 345.

Another incredibly committed journalist who was with us was CNN's Karl Penhaul. Karl reported the truth even when his own station was repeating Israeli disinformation. The fact that we were traveling with these alert journalists added to the flat-footedness and obvious crudeness of the Israeli response. Sadly, Israel has changed its story too many times to count, and that's because they are not telling the truth.

I'm told that CNN only played my full statement once -- and that's the time that it aired live. Of course, they cut the reference to the USS Liberty [a U.S. naval ship attacked by Israel in international waters on June 18, 1968 -- TML Ed. note]. What are they afraid of?

Last night I was on PressTV.com, along with others who were on the Dignity, and we debated a representative from WINEP, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I reminded the audience that the Palestinians don't have nuclear weapons, depleted uranium munitions, white phosphorous, or F-16s, but the Israelis do. The facts, however, tend to get garbled after being processed by the "Grand Wurlitzer" organ of state-sponsored disinformation utilizing the world's press.

With the truth clearly on our side, Israel has been reduced to releasing the ridiculous bombast below, given to me by a reporter who came to our hotel in Beirut for a visit. With their multiple, conflicting stories, it is clear that the Israelis did not expect us to live to tell the truth.

On the drive from Sour through Saida to Beirut, we were welcomed like heroes because our ordeal had been seen by everyone on Al Jazeera. The mayor of Sour came to welcome us. The mayor of Saida insisted that we stop there, on our way to Beirut, for a special ceremony. But there was something else that was visible along our drive, and that is the devastation that Lebanon, itself, has received as a result of the Israeli war machine. The scars of the war are still evident everywhere. I will write more on that tomorrow.

And one final note, President-elect Obama roared like a mighty lion onto the political scene, but now he is as silent as a lamb in the face of the death and destruction that is happening in Gaza. As we approach the birthday celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. let us remember what Dr. King said:

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

And after five days of aerial bombardment by Israel, the carnage in Gaza continues.

* Cynthia McKinney ran for U.S. president on the Green Party ticket. This item was published in Counterpunch.

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