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FEATURE ARTICLE
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Cultures of Hate: Israelis, Not Palestinians, Excel at Vengeance
Jul 9 2014 / 12:25 pm
By Jonathan Cook - Nazareth Shock and anger have engulfed Israeli and Palestinian societies since they learnt last week of the barbarous murder of children from their communities. Hours after three Israeli teenagers' bodies were located, long after their abduction, a Palestinian youth, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, was kidnapped, beaten and burnt to death, apparently as revenge. These horrifying events should serve as a lesson in the obscene futility of vengeance. As a relative of one of the murdered children observed: "There is no difference between blood and blood." Sadly, that was not the message implicit in much of last week's coverage. On social media, a juxtaposition of pictures from the same day's New York Times showed how easy it is to forget not only that our blood is the same but that grief is too. A headline about Israelis' "heartbreak" was illustrated movingly by the families of the three Israeli teenagers huddled together, overwhelmed by their loss. A report on the killing of 16-year-old Abu Khdeir, on the other hand, was accompanied by an image of masked youths throwing stones. These contrasting depictions of mourning were entirely misleading. True, Palestinian youngsters have
been violently protesting in Jerusalem and communities in Israel since Abu Khdeir was buried. But so have groups of Israeli Jews. They have rampaged through Jerusalem and parts of Israel, calling out "Death to the Arabs" and attacking anyone who looks Palestinian. Nonetheless, Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, a US Jewish organization that claims to fight bigotry, was peddling an equally divisive message. In the Huffington Post he wrote of a Palestinian "culture of hatred". According to Foxman, Palestinian and Israeli societies are fundamentally different. Palestinian discontent is "fanned and incited into hatred by a widespread, unfettered support for violence against Jews and Israel". He was echoing a sentiment common in Israel, and famously voiced in the late 1960s by the then prime minister, Golda Meir. She suggested that even harder than forgiving the Arab enemy for killing Israel's sons would be "to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons". In a bout of similar self-righteousness, many Israelis berate Palestinian parents for putting their children in danger's way by allowing them to throw stones at Israeli security forces. The implication is that Palestinians - as a result of either culture or religion - value life less than Israelis. Strangely, Israelis rarely question the implication of the decision taken by one in 10 of their number to live in
illegal colonies on stolen Palestinian land. The settlers choose to put themselves and their children on the front lines too, even though they have far more choices than Palestinians about where to live. In fact, neither Israelis nor Palestinians can claim to be above a culture of hate. As long as Israel's belligerent occupation continues, their lives together in one small patch of the Middle East will continue to be predicated on bouts of violent confrontation. But that does not mean Israeli and Palestinian culpability is equal. The reality is that Israelis, unlike Palestinians, have a sovereign state that represents them and protects them with a strong army. Last week, the Israeli army announced that it had arrested several soldiers who posted online photographs of themselves vowing revenge against "Arabs" - part of a flood of calls for vengeance on ¬Hebrew social media. The arrests played well with Israel's image as a country that enforces the rule of law, but they concealed deeper truths. The first is that the Israelis thirsting for reprisals are simply echoing their politicians and religious leaders whose statements for vengeance surpassed even the ugly grandstanding of Hamas, which had praised the Israeli teenagers' abduction. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led the way, citing a famous line of Hebrew poetry: "The devil himself has
not yet created vengeance for the blood of a small child." His economics minister, Naftali Bennett, urged Israel to "go mad", while a former legislator vowed that Israel would turn Ramadan into a "month of darkness". An influential and supposedly moderate rabbi hoped for "an army of avengers". Last week, left wing Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv to castigate the Netanyahu government for "incitement to violence". But even this underestimated the problem. Israeli leaders' threats are not simply stoking an ugly mood on the street. The huge muscle of the Israeli security apparatus is flexing at their behest too. That was given graphic illustration in video footage of armed police in Jerusalem relentlessly kicking and punching a child
- a 15-year-old American relative of Abu Khdeir - as he lay cuffed and helpless on the ground. The cabinet is plotting a more subtle revenge. It plans to build new settlements - violence against Palestinian life on the little slivers of territory left to them - specifically to honor the three teenagers. Guarded by the army, settlers have already set up a new encampment in the West Bank. The army, meanwhile, launched a series of strikes on Gaza, culminating in a new large-scale attack dubbed Operation Protective Edge. It has also revived a policy of demolishing the homes of relatives of Palestinian terror suspects. Backed by the courts, soldiers blew up the family homes of two men it accused of being behind the teenagers'
abduction. As Human Rights Watch warned, Israel's recent actions - mass arrests; armed raids; the killing of Palestinians, including minors; lockdowns of cities, house demolitions; and air strikes - amounted to "collective punishment", international law's euphemism for revenge, against Palestinians. In the face of the enduring violence of Israel's occupation, and the licence it provides soldiers to humiliate and oppress, ordinary Palestinians have a stark choice: to submit or resist. Ordinary Israelis, on the other hand, do not need to seek revenge on their own account. The Israeli state, military and courts are there every day doing it for them. - Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.jonathan-cook.net. (A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.)
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LATEST NEWS
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48 Killed in Gaza, Israel to 'Intensify' Attacks
Jul 9 2014 / 2:06 pm
Pictures published in Maariv show the faces of Hamas leaders Israel is targeting in its latest offensive on Gaza (Maariv)
Israel will step up its air strikes on Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said.
"We have decided to further intensify the attacks on Hamas and the terror organizations in Gaza," his office quoted him as saying following a consultation with security chiefs.
"The operation will widen and continue until the rocket fire on our cities will stop and quiet returns," he added.
The Prime Minister's official spokesperson Ofir Gendelman posted a photo to Instagram of Netanyahu receiving a briefing from military leaders in Southern Israel on Wednesday morning.
The announcement comes after a bloody day in Gaza, during which 20 people have been killed so far. The total death toll in the Palestinian enclave now stands at 48, including several children.
According to Palestinian Ma'an news agency, the most recent deadly Israeli airstrike hit Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, killing 40-year-old woman Sahar Hamdan al-Masri and her teenage son 14-year-old Ibrahim. The strike comes shortly after 13-year-old Mohammed Aref and his father were killed in Gaza City and several hours after two-year-old Muhammad Malaka and his 27-year-old mother Aminah Malak were also killed in the strikes.
The majority of those killed so far are believed to have been civilians, although several Hamas figures - who Israel says they are targeting - have also been killed. Hamas member Abdullah Difallah was shot down on Wednesday morning when a missile hit his motorcycle. A leading figure inside Islamic Jihad's armed wing, al-Quds Brigade, Hafez Hamed, was also killed.
Operation Protective Edge, as it has been named by the Israeli army, was launched on Monday night and Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said on Wednesday they are open to it continuing for some time to come.
"We are killing terrorists of different ranks, and this operation will persist and intensify," he said. "For our part, this doesn't have to be a short battle."
"From our standpoint, this is a campaign that will not end anytime soon, and we must continue to maintain stamina and patience," he added.
28 Palestinians were killed in attacks on Tuesday and Israeli General Moti Almoz confirmed the army had hit 160 targets in Gaza overnight as it stepped up operations.
"Overnight, the [Israeli army] hit about 160 targets in the Gaza Strip. Over the last two days we attacked a total of about 430 targets," Almoz told military radio.
According to Almoz Israeli targets included about 120 rocket launchers, 10 Hamas command and control centers, among them two homes, and many tunnels into Egypt.
Rockets Fired from Gaza towards Tel Aviv
Hamas meanwhile continued to launch more rockets into Israel, with the latest reports indicating that it fired five long range rockets at Tel Aviv, on Wednesday morning.
Warning sirens have been heard throughout much of Israel, including Tel Aviv to the north although so far all long range missiles have been intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome system.
Some shorter range missiles, however, have penetrated southern and central Israel. A man was confirmed dead from smoke inhalation following an attack on Rishon Letzion earlier today, while there have been various reports of minor damage to other councils.
By Wednesday morning, 225 rockets had been fired from Gaza toward Israel since the start of Operation Protective Edge. Some 40 of these were intercepted by the Iron Dome system, although these numbers have swelled as the day has gone one.
On Tuesday, Hamas' armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades confirmed that it was behind the barrage of long range rockets fired at Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa.
"For the first time, the Qassam Brigades strike Haifa with an R160 rocket, and strike occupied Jerusalem with four M75 rockets and Tel Aviv with four M75 rockets," a statement by the group said.
The last time Gaza-based fighters had fired rockets at Jerusalem was back in 2012, with the group laying out four conditions for a ceasefire.
Israel must end all action in Jerusalem and the West Bank, end the bombardment and siege of Gaza, release all the prisoners re-arrested in the Israeli operation launched on 12 June after the disappearance of three Israeli settlers and stopping "meddling" in the Palestinian Unity government, the group said.
"They will not dream of calm if they do not stop their aggression towards our people and stop attempting to break our unity government," the statement said.
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SELECTED TITLES
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By Samah Sabawi As Israeli air strikes rain death and destruction on Gaza, and as protests rage in Palestinians cities and camps throughout the West Bank as well as inside Israel's 1948 borders, an op-ed appearing in Haaretz written by the president of the Palestinian Authority clearly reveals that the chasm between the Palestinian people [...]
By Jonathan Cook - Nazareth Shock and anger have engulfed Israeli and Palestinian societies since they learnt last week of the barbarous murder of children from their communities. Hours after three Israeli teenagers' bodies were located, long after their abduction, a Palestinian youth, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, was kidnapped, beaten and burnt to death, apparently as [...]
By Jamil Khader The savage and irrational lynching of Mohammad Abu Khdeir marks a new troubling trend in the radicalization of Israeli Jewish society. The seventeen year old Palestinian teenager was abducted on his way to the dawn prayers, brutally beaten up, forced to drink gasoline, and was incinerated alive by members of La Familia, [...]
By Ramzy Broud As Iraq stands on the verge of a complete breakdown into mini sectarian states, former leading neoconservative and Iraq war advocate Richard Perle has chimed in on the situation on Newsmax TV. His statements in an interview given on Saturday were yet another testimony to the intellectual degeneration of a group that had once promised [...]
![Abbas: The security relationship [with Israel]...is sacred, is sacred.](https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/SjAqqUMRVOybMUkHo6_EDmn5x2tGpIsSdqkUQndbhnLc2gJsjmwAFNMLXNsJfrXwExmkTZJj3yN_et5IOvKP-qJ0vSHE93RfyGZ1r6EIcU4JpiwNe71OhJkhma-p-smG-VmsrdMP4hQNN8jP=s0-d-e1-ft#http://www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/abbas_baseball_cap-90x65.jpg)
By Vacy Vlazna 'A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, [...]
By Steven MacMillan For years now, the government of Israel has pursued increasingly belligerent policies towards Palestinian journalists who cover the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the expansion of the illegal settlements program. On the 2nd July, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) denounced Israel's treatment of a Palestinian TV crew who were covering an [...]
By Samah Jabr, MD This morning I woke up to the noise of helicopters, police cars, and ambulances as clashes erupted in our previously peaceful neighborhood of Shufat, East Jerusalem, with Israeli security forces shooting at Palestinian youths who were protesting the killing of a 16 year old boy, Mohammed Abu Khudair. Mohammed had been [...]
By William James Martin On BBC's news program Hardtalk, historian Dr Ilan Pappe answers questions from interviewer Stephen Sackur which begins with Mr Sackur describing Ilan Pappe as maintaining that the Jewish state is racist, born of a deliberate program of ethnic cleansing. This very interesting discussion, which takes the form of an adversarial debate, [...]
By Sam Bahour The reignited cycle of violence in Palestine and Israel provides the Israeli government with exactly what it has been begging for months for, violence. However, for once, Israel may be facing a new fact of life-as the sole military power in the conflict, it has the full ability to start a widespread [...]
By Eric Walberg Osama Bin Laden's goal in the September 11, 2001 attacks was to suck the US into Afghanistan and Iraq, sparking a regional conflagration that would sweep away the imperial legacy. Over a decade later, this plan is still on track. As he led his jihadists triumphantly into Mosul and declared an emirate [...]
By Mamoon Alabbasi A French investigation looking into the death of former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat is reportedly being revived, after the emergence of new information suggesting Arafat may indeed have been poisoned. In December 2012, a French enquiry concluded that the Palestinian leader had not died of poisoning from polonium-210, as was suggested by [...]
Palestine Chronicle Readers and Supporters, It is that time again. The Palestine Chronicle, which continues into its 15th year, needs you to come to its aid, and dare we say, rescue. As you may already know, the Chronicle is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization, which mission is to educate and inform readers the world over of [...]
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SELECTED NEWS
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Israel will step up its air strikes on Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said. "We have decided to further intensify the attacks on Hamas and the terror organizations in Gaza," his office quoted him as saying following a consultation with security chiefs. "The operation will widen and continue until the rocket fire on [...]
The armed wing of Hamas claimed that it fired long range rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and Haifa on Tuesday. "For the first time, the (Ezzedine al-) Qassam Brigades strike Haifa with an R160 rocket, and strike occupied Jerusalem with four M75 rockets and Tel Aviv with four M75 rockets," a statement said. It [...]
15 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, at least 90 wounded Tuesday as the Israeli army prepares for all possible scenarios amid spiralling tensions, including an invasion or a ground operation. A rocket fired at Tel Aviv from Gaza was reportedly intercepted off the coast of Israel's second most populated city by the Iron Dome [...]
Israeli airstrikes on the northern Gaza Strip killed three Palestinians on Tuesday evening, bringing the total death toll in Israel's latest assault on the besieged enclave to 14. Ahmad Moussa Habib, 48, and Ahmad Ahed Habib, 19, were killed after an airstrike targeted a tuk-tuk vehicle in the al-Shujaiyeh neighborhood in Gaza City, medics said. [...]
Seven Palestinians were killed and 25 were severely injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting a house in the southern Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll from Tuesday's airstrikes to 11, a health ministry spokesman said. Ashraf al-Qidra told Ma'an seven Palestinians, among them two children under five years of age, were killed in an airstrike [...]
An Israeli airstrike on a vehicle in Gaza City killed three Palestinians on Tuesday, bringing the total death toll in Israel's latest assault on the besieged enclave to four, medics said. Three people were killed in a Israeli strike on a civilian car in the Daraj neighborhood in the center of Gaza City, emergency services [...]
Israel's security cabinet late Monday has reportedly given approval to military forces to escalate their attacks against Gaza. A large-scale military operation against the Palestinian enclave is off the table for now, but the cabinet has ordered the Israeli army to significantly expand its operations, senior officials told Israeli daily Haaretz. "The blows will be [...]
Dozens of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip struck southern Israel late Monday, Israel's army said, while residents of the occupied West Bank said three landed near Bethlehem. There were no immediate reports of injury or damage. An army spokesman said "several barrages" of rockets from Gaza hit southern Israel. He said the exact number [...]
Hamas is demanding the release of all Palestinian prisoners re-arrested after their release in the Shalit exchange deal before returning to ceasefire, Israeli media reported Monday. Israel's Hebrew-language Walla news website cited a high-ranking Hamas official who denied Hamas' involvement in the recent kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers weeks earlier. The official, Walla [...]
Palestinians in the northern West Bank say Israeli settlers kidnapped and attacked a young Palestinian man early Saturday. Locals in the village of Osarin south of Nablus told Ma'an that settlers approached the village in two vehicles around midnight and abducted 22-year-old Tariq Ziad Zuhdi Adeli. The settlers stepped out of a car and "sprayed [...]
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