After years of Israeli occupation in the territories of Palestine until today and at least 70 years of conflict, after a mountain of resolutions from the UN plenary session demanding Israel return to the borders before the Six Day War of 1967 (resolution 67/19 of 2012) to bring peace to those territories, after the occupation by the Israeli army of the Palestinian territories, killing and torturing the elderly, women and children, hiding behind alleged military actions, after authorizing settlers Israelis to take away their land from poor Palestinian citizens to install new Israeli populations in these illegally occupied territories, after finally Israel has turned the 365 km2 that comprise Gaza and the West Bank where 2.3 million people live into a true ghetto – perhaps the place most densely populated in the world – after all that, the civilized “West” is shocked by Hamas’s attack on Israel and condemns it categorically. “Without any threat,” says an Israeli official impassively. And he repeats with Biden “Israel has the right to defend itself.” In other words, we are going to war.
The Israeli press in the first two days after the Hamas attack made an analysis of what happened in which it only regretted that the Israeli intelligence and armed forces did not know nor could they anticipate the attack. And then some blamed Netanyahu as the Haaretz newspaper does, others blamed the generals. To the neglect of the occupation troops at the end of religious festivities. Not a single word about the root causes of the Hamas attack and an illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territories for decades. Military representatives of the Palestinian people who, tired of suffering occupation, death and humiliation of all kinds, rise up against the occupier of their lands. The Palestinians, of course, have no right to defend themselves from the occupier. They have no right to defend a land that has existed theirs since the dawn of civilization on those lands.
For his part, the President of the United States naturally did not waste a moment as soon as the conflict began. Not to call for peace and stop violence. Nothing of that. He immediately decides to send the most modern aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean in an act of clear imperial arrogance and arrogance. The so-called gendarme of the world gets involved in another warlike action, one of those that are inherent to the history of the United States. No calling for peace. No, calling for war by supporting his long-time useful pawn in the Middle East. The dead are far from Washington.
For its part, the European Union has stumbled to decide to withdraw humanitarian support from the Palestinian people, clarifying that not one euro will go to Hamas, criticizing in passing any violence that may be exercised against both Israeli and Palestinian civilian populations, in what seems like a rebirth of the attitude of repeated political inaction of Europeans in the past on this conflict. We will see how effective that aid will be in the current context where there are several EU members against it.
Meanwhile, and without wasting a minute, the war propaganda machine is immediately put into motion. Televisions and news programs around the world are filled with Israeli flags, showing only the destruction caused by missiles and Palestinian Hamas fighters. In addition to showing civilians declaring clearly and loudly in long television minutes that in the face of these attacks “we have to kill them all.” And this is repeated by the Israeli generals, a bit to cover up the military ineptitude they have shown. And they repeat to us: “this war with Hamas will be the first and the last.” “We have to eliminate them all.”
On the fourth day of the conflict, the Israeli government denounces “massacres” of civilians in Israeli kibbuts near the border, while its army massacres the civilian population of Gaza. Civilians who have nowhere to escape from the bombs living in a very small territory of millions of people. The only way to escape the incessant Israeli bombings that continued today at dawn (October 11) would be a passage across the Gaza border with Egypt, a negotiation that curiously is in the hands of the US and its ally Israel. They have not opened this passage. It seems that the Israeli military criterion that all “terrorists” must first be eliminated will be imposed first. As will be understood, air attacks that continue up to this minute in addition to an imminent ground invasion will mean the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians. All in accordance with what was declared on day one by the Israelites. We must eliminate them all. A true genocide as the Palestinian authorities denounce at the UN. Uselessly.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said the usual phrases in these cases, although naturally first condemning the Palestinians and Hamas. In his first statements (10/9) he hastened to ask Hamas to stop its attack on Israel and release the hostages taken by Palestinian fighters, despite he says he recognizes the legitimate grievances of the Palestinians. He finally declared himself “distressed” by Israel’s announcement to enter the occupied territories as retaliation, cutting off energy, water and fuel.
The truth is that it doesn’t matter much to anyone, least of all Israel, what Mr. Guterres says or doesn’t say. For decades, Israel has trampled time and again on the resolutions of the UN General Assembly Plenary, accusing Israel of the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and urging it to return to the borders that existed before, with the eternal veto of the US. The only concrete and objective thing in this regard is that nothing has happened despite Israel’s non-compliance.
To this day (10/10), we see how Israel demolishes entire buildings in Gaza with bombs using its non-existent air power in the Palestinian countryside. Indiscriminate bombings where hundreds of thousands of civilians live. There is talk of a death toll that already exceeds 2,000. How many of those are Palestinian civilians? American citizens and the world in its exact dimension and horror will know none of this. The “Western” press follows the script written from the desks of Mr. Antony Blinken, the very fanatical Minister of Foreign Affairs of the American empire who runs to Tel Aviv this week to demonstrate his unconditional support for his lifelong ally in the region . He repeats to us the imperial message that, because it is so well known, is already becoming ridiculous. The empire’s recipe for these cases. The same one they occupy today in Ukraine. Misinformation, decontextualized story, Manichaean description between good and bad, visual images of injured children and elderly people, tragic statements of poor women crying for their loved ones. It is about convincing the world that Israeli revenge, revenge that belongs to the old war policy of Zionism of an eye for an eye, is just and, above all, necessary. Evil must be exterminated, says Biden of Hamas. According to these statements, the Israeli army is preparing for the total destruction of Gaza, with the aim of “killing them all” as they have said. A kind of Nazi “final solution” adopted by a people like the Israelites who suffered so much with the previous one.
The current crisis in Palestine has, in its general context, a lot to do with what is happening in Ukraine, although the actors, geography and situation are different. The Russians have carried out their invasion of Ukraine, after years and years of the bombing by the Ukrainian government of the regions populated by Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine, and after observing an entire military preparation that occurred before their eyes, of the Ukrainian army – now full of neo-Nazis – by NATO military instructors. After all kinds of announcements by the “West” to bring NATO with its atomic bombs to the doors of Russia. After learning that the Minsk-1 and Minsk-2 settlement agreements for the Ukrainian conflict in 2014 were in fact nothing more than a crude ploy to prepare a Ukrainian army for war with Russia as later acknowledged by Angela Merkel and François Hollande . After warnings for the last 40 years from all world geopolitical strategists warning that “the West” should not encircle Russia with NATO because they would create a major conflict between atomic powers. Nothing. Finally the Russians decide not to expect to be attacked themselves. And immediately “the West” labels them as the bandits of the world. Which must be fought with all means.
What is happening today in Palestine has a parallel with the war in Ukraine in the way the entire process has developed. Years and years of Palestinian complaints corroborated at the UN calling on Israel not only to withdraw from the occupied territories but to stop the repressive waves of its army in Palestinian territory. Palestinians who have been robbed of an important part of their national soil who today live mostly crowded in the Gaza Strait and less in the West Bank. The world press has said nothing all this time. Of course neither does the US, which has always sold its weapons as a priority to the Zionist State. When the Palestinians can no longer tolerate a cruel and ruthless invader and decide to exercise their right to defend themselves against the invader by attacking him for once in his own territory so that he can learn his own medicine, then the entire “West” does jump up shouting against terrorism. As always, two different weights and two measurements.
So of course there are similarities between one conflict and the other. Always among those who ultimately seek to run the world to favor their own interests to the detriment of other peoples.
Always playing the role of victims, after all the provocations, attacks and threats they make against those same people.
Israel has the right to defend itself they tell us. And doesn’t Palestine have the same right?
The conflict with Hamas, on the other hand, has a whole series of geostrategic objectives for the US and its Israeli gendarme in that area of the world. Of course, the US is interested in Iran, about which the propaganda machine is already releasing anonymous news – in other words fake news – to indicate that it was the Iranians who prepared the Hamas attack together with them. Bringing Iran into the conflict as an accomplice has the advantage of attacking a current ally of Russia, who is said to provide thousands of drones for the war. And they add speculating that the conflict – supposedly organized by Iran – would have the objective of cutting off the new relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia, an ally of the US in the recent past but eager to shake off the imperial yoke as demonstrated by the recent establishment of good relations. relations with Iran precisely.
In the coming days we will see how the conflict develops and how Israel destroys an entire territory with the aim of erasing it from the face of the Earth in the face of the complicit silence of the West. We will see how the world press dominated by the US and the global Right informs, or misinforms. One thing is certain, the US will continue to develop, together with its global propaganda machine, a well-known and perverse script. Let’s hope that the world no longer continues to believe this false image of good and bad, civilization versus barbarism. And for its part, the struggle of the Palestinian people will endure until the final recognition of their Homeland, the only political decision that can bring lasting peace to this region of the world.
By Patricio Serendero
The opinions expressed in this section are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the thoughts of the newspaper El Clarín
