Noam Chomsky, Gilad Sharon and 10 Things You Need To Know About Gaza

The Israeli land grab

A recent statement by Professor Noam Chomsky indicates a different take on Israeli aggression than he has had in the past.  His statement has been misquoted over the weekend, so, for the record, this is it in full:

“The incursion and bombardment of Gaza is not about destroying Hamas. It is not about stopping rocket fire into Israel, it is not about achieving peace.

The Israeli decision to rain death and destruction on Gaza, to use lethal weapons of the modern battlefield on a largely defenseless civilian population, is the final phase in a decades-long campaign to ethnically-cleanse Palestinians.

Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely-crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques, and slums to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command in control, no army… and calls it a war. It is not a war, it is murder.

“When Israelis in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupier has to defend itself against the population they are crushing. You can’t defend yourself when you’re militarily occupying someone else’s land. That’s not defense. Call it what you like, it’s not defense.”

* * *

For context the article below (reproduced in full) was published in the Jerusalem Post (18th Nov) and shows the thinking among certain Israelis.  Draw your own conclusions and let the Scottish and British governments know your thoughts.

A DECISIVE CONCLUSION IS NECESSARY

by Gilad Sharon

Anyone who thinks Hamas is going to beg for a cease-fire, that Operation Pillar of Defense will draw to a close and quiet will reign in the South because we hit targets in the Gaza Strip, needs to think again.

With the elimination of a murderous terrorist and the destruction of Hamas’s long-range missile stockpile, the operation was off to an auspicious start, but what now? This must not be allowed to end as did Operation Cast Lead: We bomb them, they fire missiles at us, and then a cease-fire, followed by “showers” – namely sporadic missile fire and isolated incidents along the fence. Life under such a rain of death is no life at all, and we cannot allow ourselves to become resigned to it.

A strong opening isn’t enough, you also have to know how to finish – and finish decisively. If it isn’t clear whether the ball crossed the goal-line or not, the goal isn’t decisive. The ball needs to hit the net, visible to all. What does a decisive victory sound like? A Tarzan-like cry that lets the entire jungle know in no uncertain terms just who won, and just who was defeated.

To accomplish this, you need to achieve what the other side can’t bear, can’t live with, and our initial bombing campaign isn’t it.

THE DESIRE to prevent harm to innocent civilians in Gaza will ultimately lead to harming the truly innocent: the residents of southern Israel. The residents of Gaza are not innocent, they elected Hamas. The Gazans aren’t hostages; they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences.

The Gaza Strip functions as a state – it has a government and conducts foreign relations, there are schools, medical facilities, there are armed forces and all the other trappings of statehood. We have no territorial conflict with “Gaza State,” and it is not under Israeli siege – it shares a border with Egypt. Despite this, it fires on our citizens without restraint.

Why do our citizens have to live with rocket fire from Gaza while we fight with our hands tied? Why are the citizens of Gaza immune? If the Syrians were to open fire on our towns, would we not attack Damascus? If the Cubans were to fire at Miami, wouldn’t Havana suffer the consequences? That’s what’s called “deterrence” – if you shoot at me, I’ll shoot at you. There is no justification for the State of Gaza being able to shoot at our towns with impunity. We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.

There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.

Were this to happen, the images from Gaza might be unpleasant – but victory would be swift, and the lives of our soldiers and civilians spared.

IF THE government isn’t prepared to go all the way on this, it will mean reoccupying the entire Gaza Strip. Not a few neighborhoods in the suburbs, as with Cast Lead, but the entire Strip, like in Defensive Shield, so that rockets can no longer be fired.

There is no middle path here – either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip. Otherwise there will be no decisive victory. And we’re running out of time – we must achieve victory quickly. The Netanyahu government is on a short international leash. Soon the pressure will start – and a million civilians can’t live under fire for long. This needs to end quickly – with a bang, not a whimper.

* * *

If you got through that shameful justification of mass murder and land theft without throwing up this useful article may shed some background light on what is really happening in Gaza:

Ten Things You Need To Know About Gaza

Comments (11)

Leave a Reply to Sam Sobol Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

  1. Doug Daniel says:

    Sharon’s article is quite appalling. I would quite like to see these two views presented to people like Jim Murphy and Michael McCann (who had the temerity to call Aamer Anwar “despicable” for just raising the issue of football fans being banned from waving Palestinian flags at matches on Saturday, before going on to claim that anti-Semitism was “very much alive today”) so they can perhaps reflect on the damage they do when they conflate criticism of mass murder by the Israeli state with irrational hatred of Jewish people.

    It is not anti-Semitism to be appalled by the things we are seeing in Gaza. However, the knee-jerk reaction by people in organisations like Labour Friends Of Israel in throwing the “anti-Semite” card around so liberally – as well as the continued silence by the US government on the atrocities performed by the state of Israel (using US weapons) – does more harm than good, just as anti-intellectualism always does. Trying to shut down any criticism of Israel helps no one but the true anti-Semites, who use this as “proof” of some sort of Jewish conspiracy at the centre of all that makes the world tick.

    The kind of people who indulge in this suppression of debate is sadly all too predictable – Jim Murphy and Michael McCann are merely the tip of the iceberg.

    1. bellacaledonia says:

      Jim Murphy is one of Israel’s useful idiots. Working for the Yankee Dollar as they say.

      KW

  2. Sharon’s rant is hate-speech, period, end-of. It’s one thing to harbour such putrid views, but to submit them for publication shows how disconnected from reality these people are.
    Right now, on Al-Jazeera, Mark Regev is taking a total roasting from the anchor over the targetting of journalists. The more these people commit their view to various media, the more evidence there is to help convict them when they stand trial for war crimes

  3. John Souter says:

    Israel as it stands and by its own actions is an anathema to humanity and the god it claims to have chosen them.

    It has effectively erased the name of Palestine as a nation and is now pursuing the genocide of its people by herding and hemming them in the concentration camp called Gaza.

    For Palestinians living in Gaza is not a choice but an absurdity of direction created by the practice of apartheid. Which by definition means those who preach,practise or subscribe to these practices must believe in the depths of their psyche that it is they who are the master race.

  4. Re. Sharon. He believes his father (still alive in a P.V.S./coma) is communicating to him via thought. Scary stuff. The article by Sharon Jr. was published in a ‘liberal’ Israeli newspaper. Chilling.

    1. Thanks weluvenglish, good link.

  5. Sam Sobol says:

    I stand with Israel.

    1. Spout says:

      You stand in shame.

      1. Sam Sobol says:

        Don’t judge me. I proudly support Israel and I have my reasons, just as you have your reasons to support Palestine.

Help keep our journalism independent

We don’t take any advertising, we don’t hide behind a pay wall and we don’t keep harassing you for crowd-funding. We’re entirely dependent on our readers to support us.

Subscribe to regular bella in your inbox

Don’t miss a single article. Enter your email address on our subscribe page by clicking the button below. It is completely free and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.