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| Francisco de Goya, No llegan a tiempo |
Deir Yassin was like Black Kettle’s village on the Washita River. Gaza is Wounded Knee.
Before the current invasion, Yuval Diskin former director of Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet, told Der Spiegel:
"They [Palestinians] will never accept the status quo of the Israeli occupation. When people lose hope for an improvement of their situation, they radicalize. That is the nature of human beings. The Gaza Strip is the best example of that. All the conditions are there for an explosion. So many times in my life I was at these junctions that I can feel it almost in my fingertips."
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| Francisco de Goya, It will be the same |
The Israeli Cabinet, unable to decide mission or rules of engagement, turned the decision over to the IDF. Which is to say, in 2014, turned it over to the military industrial corporate world by which the IDF, like its US counterparts, has long been captured. The Masters of War decided IDF could spend a year’s defense budget, or five, if it wanted, on the Gaza campaign. It would all be replaced with newer, more advanced, and more expensive munitions over the next few contract cycles. What might 10 or 20 billion in ordnance do to one hundred thirty nine square miles of sand? Only time will tell. There are no restraints.
We keep hearing in the Western press that the current military offensive in Gaza is a reprisal for kidnapping and murder of three Israeli yeshiva students; and the later firing of rockets by Hamas militants in Gaza when an Israeli settler mob killed a Palestinian child and Israeli police severely beat another. But we have to ask, in all honesty, really?
The military decision had nothing whatsoever to do with these prior events. It came at the end of one of the most tranquil periods in many years. Those events were pretext for what had already been planned — “mowing the grass” as the commanders called it.
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| Missile strike on Gazan farm, Unosat image by NY Times |
At first glance it seems an impossible task. Israel’s strategy in the twenty-first century against hostile non-state groups, such as Hamas, and even moderate two-state initiatives, is disengagement, subversion and brutal reprisal for any offense. Israel and Palestine thus find themselves in a protracted intractable conflict. The use of force in such a conflict is not intended to attain political goals, but rather to debilitate or ridicule the opponent.
The Gaza operation’s army code-name is “Protective Edge” in English, but the original Hebrew is more revealing: Tzuk Eitan, or “solid cliff.” That, the army seemed to feel, is where Israel is headed.
The western press likes to frame the story “as if Palestinians and Israelis were fighting each other on an equal level playing field,” says Mnar Muhawesh, a journalist who lived in Jerusalem (and, in 2009, the first US reporter to wear the hijab to anchor/report the news).
“It was framed as Muslim versus Jew, and the Palestinians were referred to as terrorists or militants in most media coverage. However, the majority of our neighbors in Jerusalem were Palestinian Christians suffering from the same military occupation as their fellow Muslim Palestinians. This was no Muslim versus Jew fight.”
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| Francisco de Goya, May 3rd |
As in Deir Yassin, the Christian churches of Gaza, which seem to be untargeted at the moment, have given shelter to displaced families. At least one pastor has said that Islamic prayers in his church are welcome.
Israel has been surprised by the resistance but, actually, it only helps Israel, not Palestine, when rockets are fired from Gaza. As Israeli peace activist Rabbi Michael Lerner wrote recently, Hamas rocket attacks are “the best friend of the Israeli settlers, right-wing Israeli extremists, and the Netanyahu government.”
“Netanyahu’s recent statement essentially confirming that he will never accept an independent Palestinian state show how foolish the US’s calls for ‘more negotiations’ are, because the US just adds fuel to the fire by simultaneously asserting that it supports Israel’s right to defend itself when in danger. Israel’s legitimate fear of ISIS, Iran, and fundamentalist forces in the Middle East, does not excuse the state from confronting those of us who argue that the strategy of ‘power over’ is not one that will strengthen Israel in the long run—it will weaken it.
***Hamas’s demands all seem quite reasonable to most Palestinians, and really make sense: free the newly arrested Palestinians who were doing nothing but sitting in their homes when Israeli troops invaded looking for the three kidnapped Israeli teens (a complete sham since the Israeli top leadership knew [for 18 days] that those teens had already been murdered the very night they were kidnapped), stop the blockade of Gaza and allow Gazans access to the Mediterranean sea for fishing purposes, and end the targeted assassinations of Palestinians and the drone strikes that have caused an average of 2-3 children to die every week for the past eight years (something that most Israelis and most Americans don’t know or can’t grasp).”
Clashing Perspectives
In much the way that Hamas short-term goals strengthen the hand of Israeli NeoCons, so continued unfettered financial aid plays into the hands of Arab militant groups and those who would rather Israel simply ceased to exist. As Joel Bainerman, publisher of Tel Aviv Business, wrote for Middle East Quarterly:
“In the debate over U.S. aid to Israel, politics has always taken precedence over economics: supporters of Israel in the United States see money as a means to express commitment to Israel. But this is a mistake. … Unless Israel’s supporters see the wealth-generating capability of the Israeli people and their thriving industries, the Jewish state will remain relegated to economic and political dependency, no matter how high its per capita GDP or how large its economy.”
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| Gaza Main Power Station July 30, photo by @Farah_Gazan |
Israel is the only country to receive nearly all of its economic aid in the form of a cash payment. By spending a mere tenth of one percent of the defense spending budget it receives from the United States on elections of Congressmen and Senators in the United States (with no restrictions because of the U.S. Supreme Court), Israel can choose whom it wishes to win any US (or UK, or EU, or Ukrainian) election and whom it wishes to lose. This political truth is clear to anyone running for national office, as can be readily seen from any of their public statements. This is the Balfour legacy: a pox on the governments that divided Transjordan. They are now captives of the devil they knew.
Perhaps we should be grateful. In the Tea Bag era, foreign aid is perhaps the least popular budget item but Israel is easily the most popular recipient of funds. Its presence is often the only thing that makes it possible to pass a bill assisting victims of tsunamis, drought, war and AIDS.
And over that dark cabal — the militaries, the elected officials, the economies that control the citizenry by enclosing the commons — is one ring to rule them all — the ring of corptopcracy; the plutocrats, gold parachutists, vulture capital lenders and banksters. Gaza is being reduced to rubble because there are profits to be made.
Israel had a chance to de-fang Hamas by endorsing the coalition government and all of the concessions Hamas made to get that to happen. It did the opposite, condemning the coalition. Israel had the chance to follow the roadmap to a Two State Solution and instead continued to colonize the West Bank with illegal settlements. We could go on ad nauseum, and can readily acknowledge the Palestinians cannot claim clean hands or clear conscience either.
Always attracted by its natural beauty and heroic inhabitants, we have returned to Israel and Palestine often since 1991. We have visited scores of kibbutzim and lived in two of them for a time. We have stayed in the Palestinian West Bank, where today we sponsor a Peace thru Permaculture project at a farm near Nabluus. We went with our Muslim friends to morning and evening prayer, learned to make hummus and pita, and picked fresh olives.
We have also shared a Shavuot banquet out in the moonlight on kibbutz under a canopy of lights, and listened to the kuddish recited over a glass of wine, eaten apple slices dipped in honey, and broken challah on Rosh Hashanah in Tel Aviv. These cultures should not be at war. They are very similar; brothers and sisters under the skin. They worship one God, revere desert traditions, and share a common love of the same birds, butterflies and flowers.
Until the political duels of great powers spilled into their region in search of oil, they lived together in peace and prosperity.
For Israel today, it is whack-a-mole. Even if Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or other groups could be terminated, the alternatives are draconian: Israeli occupation rule; risky elections with the possibility of even more radical groups; or continuing civilian bombings like Gaza. To the policymakers, there are no good choices.
But actually, there are.
Peace never comes from the barrel of a gun. It comes from willingness to be peaceful in seeking fair and just solutions, even when outrages surround you.
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| 16 March 2003, Rafah, Occupied Gaza. Rachel Corrie holds a megaphone and pleads with the IDF soldier who is about to kill her. |
It takes courage. We remember with tears in our eyes 23-year-old Rachel Corrie, of Olympia Washington, who, in 2003, placed herself in front of an IDF bulldozer to protect a Palestinian family, and was mowed down in plain view of the driver, who then reversed and backed his blade back over her limp body.
We think about that young Israeli soldier in 1991, about Rachel Corrie’s age, standing guard in his iron tower at Gaza Beach and thinking how idyllic the scene was. Turning around, he looked down the barrel of his Uzi at 1000 Palestinians, most of them boys of 14 or 16, arrested and imprisoned for life for throwing stones, or because another boy, under hideous torture, named a friend or rival as an accomplice whether it was true or not. That boy wrote:
“We too, in our way, are the victims…. I realize that the problem is the division of labor—the labor of evil. This division makes it possible for evil to take place apparently without evil people.
Francisco de Goya, Prisoner III After all, the people who voted ‘Likud’ aren’t evil. And the ministers who sit in the Likud government aren’t evil. They don’t hit children in the stomach with their fists. And the chief of staff is not evil. He carries out what the elected government obliges him to carry out. And the commander of the internment facility is not evil—really not. And the interrogators—well, after all, they are doing their job. And it is, they say, impossible to govern the territories unless they do it. And as for the jailers, most of them are not evil either.
Yet in some magical way, all these not-evil people manage together to produce a result that is very evil indeed. Worse: a result that is evil itself. And evil is always greater than the sum of its parts. Or the sum of those who contribute to it.
That is to say: despite our Schweikian exterior, our clumsiness, our pathetic petty-bourgeois ways, we are the evil in Gaza. Only this evil of ours is an evil in disguise. A cunning evil. For it is an evil that happens, as it were, apart. The responsibility is no one’s.”
We would not venture so far as to say the responsibility is no one’s. We play our part every time we pay our taxes or vote for another fawning lapdog politician. Every young Israeli who chooses to serve instead of becoming a conscientious objector takes responsibility. Every Palestinian who hurls a rock or votes for Hamas must take responsibility.
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| Sarah Vardi spent 3 years in prison for her beliefs, photo by Judy Rand |
And then there is Sahar Vardi. Her Israeli father went to prison as a sarvanim—a conscientious objector. When Sahar was a young girl she would join her father with Ta’ayush, a coexistence group of Israelis and Palestinians. She went to work with Palestinian villagers planting trees and tending crops. She witnessed first-hand what few Israeli children ever see: abuse from teenage soldiers whose powers are unchecked; 1000-year-old olive trees bulldozed; taunts and insults from militant immigrant settlers; the slow, random, meaningless bleeding deaths in ambulances stopped for hours at checkpoints.
She recalls that “[t]he shock was not from the brutality of the occupation or of a specific soldier, but from witnessing the ordinary day-to-day situation of going through checkpoints, fearing the demolition of their homes and knowing that every 18-year old soldier has the power to control their life.”
Sahar is now 21 years old. In addition to her on-going work as a conscientious objector to military service, Sahar now also actively protests the eviction of Arab Israeli families from their homes in order to make way for Jewish settlements. She is working with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity movement.
There is no peace through war. Peace only comes by being peaceful. There is no justice through violence. Justice can only be achieved by non-violence. Ultimately, there can be no peace without first finding a path to justice. It is that simple, and that difficult.
Boycotting Apartheid
On July 9 2005, a year after the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s Wall in the Occupied Territories (OT) illegal, Palestinians called upon people of conscience all over the world to launch broad boycotts, implement divestment initiatives, and to demand sanctions against Israel until Palestinian human rights are restored.
The campaign for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) is shaped by a rights-based approach and highlights the three broad demographics of the Palestinians: the refugees, those under military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Palestinians in Israel. The call urges various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law by:
- Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall;
- Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
- Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.
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| Peace Protest in Tel Aviv |
The BDS strategy is unifying many who used to argue. It is now endorsed by over 170 Palestinian political parties, organizations, trade unions and movements. And, it is going global.
We had intended to close this 3-part series with a link to a new crowdfunding campaign, but that did not turn out as we expected. Our Palestinian partners felt it would be unethical and unseemly to turn the groundswell of world sympathy for Gaza to their benefit.
Moreover, as one of our partners, a Palestinian woman in Jerusalem, pointed out:
My main concern with this is the abuse of the peace concept especially on an environmental level. The BDS movement is growing and becoming strong and after many discussions we had with many permaculturists in Palestine, there seems to be an agreement to follow the BDS guidelines when it comes to permaculture work or environmental work in general. Therefore, any campaign that calls for peace is highly criticized unless it is with partners that are officially acknowledging occupation and are working to a just peace and an end to the control of land and resources. Unfortunately, no Israeli permaculture farm is willing to do that and especially not [green kibbutzim].
Still, to walk the long walk to peace we have to exchange each other’s shoes.
So, for example, Noam Chomsky makes the point that “the United States should also be condemned and punished for providing the decisive military, economic, diplomatic and even ideological support for these crimes.” We wholly concur. Indeed, true justice dictates that the US should get out of North America and pay reparations to the continent’s original inhabitants, as well as restoring their lands, forests, soils and animals.
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| Irish Protest, Aug 1 |
That said, even we would have great difficulty adopting a boycott of all US-made products and services to accomplish that end. There is no way we could still remain living here in Tennessee and adhere to such a boycott. Perhaps that is the point with respect to the Boycott National Committee’s position towards Israeli peace activists — they should first acknowledge the occupation and then adopt BDS. Easy enough for outside permaculturists to endorse BDS. Not so easy for Israeli permies, or even Palestinian permaculturists living inside Israel.
Permaculture brings peace by achieving food sovereignty, decolonizing our food systems and supporting local producers. It restores the natural world that makes human life possible, even in the desert. People care/Earth care. This is as true in a war zone as anywhere.
Our Palestinian friend concluded:
“I also firmly believe that through permaculture, we will achieve and regain our dignity, sovereignty and power to make the occupation and the government that designed it obsolete — and not merely a peace opportunity.”
We do what we can. Using our website and tax-exempt number, we channel donations directly to permaculture projects inside both Israel and the OT. We support the peace flotillas. We recommend especially worthy crowdsource campaigns. We urge anyone who can, to go there and get a personal experience. Apprentice or take a permaculture course. Volunteer to work alongside Sahir Vardi, wherever she goes. Get on the right side of history.
Lord Balfour may have had the best of intentions, but what he created is something no one should have to endure. If the British had wanted it to be over quickly, they should have gone with Uganda.
Denouement
The situation may take a sharp turn very soon in any event. Sweltering temperatures and a rising sea will place more demands on an already precarious water supply. Keeping all those high-rise buildings air-conditioned will take a lot more energy. Electricity? There’s a gap of 100 to 150 billion cubic meters between what Israel’s Natural Gas Authority says will be needed by 2020 and what can be produced. Moreover, Israel’s geologists are warning that its natural gas, now one of its major exports, is unlikely to last much longer.
Canadian analyst Michel Chossudovsky has estimated that the amount of natural gas BP has in proven reserves just off Gaza could make Palestine as gas-rich as Kuwait, to the tune of $4 billion at current world prices. That assumes a lot, such as the willingness of Palestine’s government to sacrifice life on Earth by bringing that gas up and selling it (for the value of a one year in public and private US aid to Israel).
If Gaza ceases to exist as part of Palestine, however, that decision would fall to Israel. It would have to choose between the political truth of air conditioning demanded now and the physical consequence of human extinction a century or more from now. And, when that gas is gone — and the sun is beating down hotter than before — what then?
Take away natural gas, electricity or international aid and what do you have left? If the Cuban Special Period was a preview for what is coming globally, Israel should be preparing for the possibility all its major donors might suddenly be forced to pull the plug on their aid. Philanthropy is already running through a gauntlet of calls for boycott. Nations will too.
If the national electric grid runs out of gas and oil, the supply of food in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem will be gone in just a few days. What then?
Israelis will suddenly realize that those thousands of agricultural kibbutzim that used to support the economy, and did so amazingly even before modern petrochemical farming, are no longer there, and you can’t eat bullets, helicopter parts and drone software.
In the collapse scenario, who’s the biggest loser? People living in high rises in urban areas, the ones that have moonlight jazz bands on their patios. Who wins? Rural farmers with solid family connections to tribal village support systems. Who are they? Palestinians, by and large.
