Things cannot stay the same after Israeli genocide in Gaza

After every bloody episode of violence perpetrated by Israel, media spin doctors are usually deployed with one grand mission: to absolve Israel of any responsibility for  carnage.

These apologists demonise not only the Palestinians, but anyone who dares take a stand on their behalf.

The main staple of this Israeli strategy has been blaming the victim. Such tactic has been constantly used in presenting the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict in Western media, whose narrative has been much closer to that of Israeli official and media discourses than of Palestinians.

It has been used continually, despite the decades long military occupation, successive wars and countless massacres perpetrated by Israel.

Specifically, since the Israeli siege on Gaza, following the democratic elections that brought Hamas to power in January 2006, Israel needed all its hasbara, alongside that of its backers in Western countries, to explain why a population has been brutalised for making a democratic choice.

The amount of deception involved in the cleverly knitted story that purposely made one of Hamas and Al Qaeda (as it once did of Yasser Arafat and Hitler), among other ruses, marked a new low even by Israel’s standards.

While the media demonised Hamas, the resistance and all the other “bad” Palestinians who voted for the movement, they intentionally ignored the fascism that was taking over Israeli society.

For the bad — as in “radical”, “extremist”, anti-peace — Palestinians to exist, they have to be juxtaposed to the good Palestinians, represented by and any faction, person or leader willing to, practically speaking, co-exist with the Israeli occupation.

The Palestinian Authority went even further, cooperating with Israel to ensure the demise of the Palestinian “radicals”, those who insist on resisting the occupation.

Thanks to the PA, the price for the Israeli occupation has never been so cheap.

Repeated attempts to reactivate the so-called peace process were always torpedoed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even those promoted by its closest allies in Washington.

“Peace” is a major risk for Netanyahu, whose government is sustained by Jewish nationalists and extremists who feel no particular need to end their colonisation of the West Bank.

Abbas had done a great deal to ensure that Israel feels no pressure to negotiate. Every attempt at resistance, even by standing peacefully with placards and banners in Ramallah’s Al Manara Square, was crushed, often brutally.

Gaza, however, remained an exception.

Israel’s brutality there reached unprecedented levels, especially after Israel’s Cast Lead Operation, which killed and wounded thousands.

Many predicted that the crimes in Gaza would turn the tide against Israel, but they did not. 

The Israeli influence over the media was still tight enough so it somehow managed to, at least, neutralise the impact of Cast Lead.

The advent of the Arab Spring and the devaluing of human life, as happened in Syria, Libya and Egypt, somehow buried the Israeli crimes in Gaza, however temporarily.

But Israel’s latest war on Gaza mounted to genocide. Israel’s argument that it was “defending itself” was no longer a sufficient excuse.

No amount of hasbara was enough to explain the burying alive of entire families, the summary execution of civilians, the pulverising of entire neighbourhoods, the gunning down of fleeing children playing on the beach during a deceptive moment of “lull”, the destruction of dozens of mosques and churches, the killing of civilians hiding in UN schools turned into temporary shelters.

It was particularly embarrassing for Israel, but also telling, that the Gaza resistance, which stood alone, fighting tens of thousands of well-armed invaders from tunnels, killed 64 Israelis. All but three were soldiers, mostly killed inside Gaza.

As the world was awakened to the devastation wreaked by Israel in Gaza, many also became aware that such behaviour stems from the fascism that has gripped Israeli society for years.

In Israel, there is no longer room for dissent, and those in the highest positions of power, are the ones who openly and freely preach genocide.

In his excellent article in the American Conservative of August 6, Scott McConnell, wrote: “All societies have their hate groups and extremists, but nowhere in the democratic world are they nearer to the centre of power than Israel.”

He elaborated: “In the 1980s Meir Kahane had a small following in Israel, but his pro-ethnic cleansing party was made illegal. Now Kahanists are in the centre of the country’s ruling ideology.”

This was discussed in context of statements made by Moshe Feiglin, Knesset deputy speaker and “top player in Israel’s ruling Likud Party”.

Feiglin called for Palestinians from Gaza to be resettled in concentration camps, and Hamas and all its supporters to be “annihilated”.

Who can now, with a good conscience, protest against those who make an analogy between what is happening in Palestine and Nazi behaviour?

Meanwhile, in this age of social media when mainstream news networks no longer have complete command over the narrative, no self-respecting intellectual, journalist, official or any citizen with a conscience can plead ignorance of what is happening and stand on the fence, playing neutral.

Gaza has indeed changed everything.

Israel’s criminality and fascism should no longer be open to media debates, but acknowledged as an uncontested fact.

Our language and our perception must also change to accommodate this uncontested reality.

To end the Israeli genocide and occupation, the wheel of continuous action must keep on turning.

Those who support Israel must be exposed, and those who facilitate the Israeli occupation and sustain its war machine shown as partakers in the war crimes committed daily in Gaza and the rest of Palestine.

They must be boycotted.

The boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement must grow and serve as the main platform for international solidarity.

The time for clever words and no action is gone, and those who remain “soft” on Israel, for whatever reason, have no place in what is becoming a global movement with uncompromising demands: end the occupation, punish its sustainers, halt ethnic cleaning and genocide, end the siege, and bring Israeli and other culprits to the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

The writer, managing editor of Middle East Eye, is an internationally syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London). He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.