GAZA: ONE OF EARTH'S MOST DESPERATE PLACES
By Harmony Grant Daws
13 June 10
After the news hit Israel that commandoes stormed the aid flotillas
and seized control, Israeli civilians threw impromptu celebrations.
They waved Israeli flags and honked their car horns. Later, official
parades and demonstrations by grade school kids filled the streets,
extolling the heroism of the commandoes who stopped relief aid from
entering Gaza.
While the world rages in unprecedented criticism of the IDF brutality,
the United States is different. Here, pro-Zionist politicians and evangelical
leaders alike have celebrated as if they were on the streets of Tel
Aviv. Hundreds rallied behind Israel in Miami. Sen. Chuck Schumer spoke
at an Orthodox Union event in Washington and said Gazans
should be “strangled
economically” until they admit Israel’s right to exist.California
Congressman Brad Sherman called
for the arrest and prosecution of any
US citizen who was involved in the Gaza flotilla, under the 1996 anti-terrorism
laws.
We sound just like Israel. Henry Siegman, in Haaretz, says
he called a lifelong friend in Israel after the flotilla attack. He
wanted to know the mood of the country. Knowing that his friend was
an Israeli right-winger, Siegman says he was still unprepared for his
response. The friend said, “in a voice trembling with emotion,” that
the world’s condemnation of Israel was just like the days of
Hitler. Siegman was shocked because he, like most of the world, recognizes
the tremendous evil and injustice being perpetrated by Israel. To those
inside Israel, however—like those inside the American pro-Zionist
camp—the truth seems nowhere to exist!
“A million and a half civilians have been forced to live in
an open-air prison in inhuman conditions for over three years now,
but unlike the Hitler years, they are not Jews but Palestinians,” Siegman
writes, seeming astonished. “Fully 80% of Gaza’s population
lives on the edge of malnutrition, depending on international charities for
their daily nourishment. According to the UN and World Health authorities,
Gaza’s children suffer from dramatically increased morbidity
that will affect and shorten the lives of many of them. This obscenity
is a consequence of a deliberate and carefully calculated Israeli policy
aimed at de-developing Gaza by destroying not only its economy but
its physical and social infrastructure while sealing it hermitically
from the outside world.”
Israel reoccupied Gaza and the West Bank in the
1967 war and has remained in power there ever since. The UK Mirror calls it “one of the most desperate places on earth.” Lack of medical supplies and training keep Gazans in crisis. The Mirror’s
June news story tells of a woman whose newborn died because she couldn’t
reach the Israeli hospital—one hour away. “Gazans must
pay extortionate rates to buy essential items like lightbulbs, kettles
and tea, which are smuggled from Egypt at extortionate prices. Around
300 tunnels have been dug from Egypt into Gaza to do this.” Egypt
is currently building a steel underground wall to prevent even this
exploitative relief.
Americans moan about “The Great Recession” with national
unemployment at less than 10 percent. Gazans would shake their heads
at us. Their unemployment rate is at least 45 percent.“Hundreds
of Gazans
have not been able to rebuild homes destroyed in the invasion
as they cannot obtain the building materials, and children are forced
to attend school in shifts. Farmers are unable to plough their lands
and fishermen are restricted to a tiny area now empty of fish. And
much of Gaza's sewage is pumped into the sea because sanitation facilities
are poor.”
Norman Finkelstein explains, “Today 80 percent of Gaza’s
inhabitants consist of refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants,
and more than half of the population is under 18 years of age. Its
current 1.5 million inhabitants are squeezed into a sliver of land
25 miles long and five miles wide, making Gaza one of the most densely
populated places in the world.” (from his new book This Time
We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion, available
for download or purchase) According to former U.S. President Jimmy
Carter: “Palestinians
in Gaza are being actually ’starved to death,’ receiving
fewer calories per day than people in the poorest parts of Africa.
This is an atrocity that is being perpetrated as punishment on the
people in Gaza. It is a crime… an abomination that this is allowed
to go on. Tragically, the international community at large ignores
the cries for help, while the citizens of Gaza are treated more like
animals than human beings.”
From the beginning, it has been a brutal and inhumane oppression.
While major media describes Israeli attacks as “clashes,” the
Palestinians have never had more than rudimentary weapons with which
to resist the iron fist of the Israeli government. Israeli historian
Benny Morris, in his 2001 book, Righteous Victims: A history of
the Zionist-Arab conflict,1881–2001 , says the “brutal
and mortifying” occupation of Gaza and the West Bank was “founded
on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings
and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliation, and manipulation…”(New
York: 2001), pp. 340–43, 568.
For American evangelicals, this history does not exist. Jews are “God’s
chosen people,” both in Israel and outside. Any means are justified
to keep them safe—even killing the innocent. Indeed, as Israeli
and Anti-Defamation League propaganda says, there are no innocent non-Zionists—only
anti-Semites and potential terrorists. American evangelicals seem incapable
of recognizing objective truth about the situation, outside the lens
of their pro-Jewish bias.
The anti-flotilla satire video “We Con the World” was widely
spread around on American right wing and evangelical websites, including
Pat Robertson’s huge Christian Broadcasting Network. When international
anger erupted at the video’s trivialization of the deaths of nine
peace activists, Israel quickly apologized for sending a link of it to
media outlets around the world. Christians should do as much to the people
of Gaza. The church should apologize for its own trivialization, even
contempt, for those who have suffered for more than 60 years without
sympathy from Jews or Christians. It should repent of its vacuum of Christian
love and begin to behave like the good Samaritan toward those Israel
has thrown into its own inescapable ditch to die.
Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative
watchdog organization.
Aaron and Harmony Daws are staff researchers and writers for the
National Prayer Network.
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