The Fate of the Palestinians

The Gaza Plantation

Except for acceptances of United States requests during the Gulf and Lebanon Wars, Israel’s governments have nonchalantly proceeded with their plans, disregarding multiple United Nations (UN) Resolutions that affected them and eschewing suggestions from United States leaders. Knowing the history of the one-way relationship, why is President Joe Biden recommending the Palestinian Authority (PA) govern Gaza after Israel liquidates a major part of the Gazan population? Could it be to delude others into thinking that, after Israel destroys Gaza, a new and refreshing life awaits the Gazans? Once rid of “corrupt Hamas,” who built an amazing amount of residential housing, educational institutions, medical facilities, sports facilities, and cultural institutions, which have been purposely destroyed by “benevolent” Israel, the Gazans who survive the onslaught will have a barren space to rest and thrive. The American president continues his Don Quixote role, slaying the Gaza windmills, with Secretary of State Blinken, his faithful Sancho Panza, at his side.

Three problems with the thoughts emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and from others who believe they can inform the world of how to direct the fate of the Palestinians after their destruction:

(1)    Israel intends to destroy the Gazan community and landscape so that it will not be governable.

(2)    Israel has unofficially announced it will surround the entire Gaza area with a military force. which means Israel’s high command will filter communication with the remaining Gazans.

(3)    Whatever Biden proposes, Israel will do the opposite.

Tally the daily slaughter of Palestinians by the most vicious and repulsive fighting force in modern history, extrapolate it to the eventual termination of the bloodletting, and we have tens of thousands murdered, hundreds of thousands wounded, hundreds of thousands in shock, children without parents, parents grieving lost children, women without husbands, husbands without wives, extended families of up to 30 destroyed, and suffering people unable to find a close relative or authority to reach out for assistance.

·         Security and safety will not exist. Gazans who return home will return to rubble. Buried under the rubble of 100,000-plus destroyed buildings are possessions, memories, and identifications. Destruction of the home is a metaphor for the destruction of the psychological existence of its former occupants.

·         Medical assistance will be sketchy; illnesses will escalate, and contagious diseases will be difficult to control.

·         Work, income, and ability to provide food, shelter, and clothing will be constrained. Subsistence diets and marginal living will be the norm.

Keep in mind that the ethnic cleansing that began in 1948 did not achieve its goal and morphed into a quiet genocide that has grown in intensity. The genocide is an ongoing plan and Israel has not shown any intention of changing direction. So, how does having the military surround the territory enable the genocide plan to be fulfilled?

Gazans will be separated from agricultural lands and the sea. Growing food, grazing animals, and fishing will be impossible. Israel will control the food supply, entrance of all raw materials, and imports of all goods. Communication with the outside world will be limited and electronic communication will be controlled. Capital for loans and investments will be nonexistent. Outside of home industries, the Israeli military will parcel all work. If Israel gets its way, Gaza will be a collection of individuals, without a central government, the inhabitants relying on one another for support ─ a slave labor camp, the Gaza plantation.

In this gigantic plantation, where a huge population cramps into an area that cannot contain it, labor will be plentiful and jobs will be scarce. Gazans will work for low wages and receive a marginal life. With every aspect of their lives controlled by an outside force, they will not be able to control their destiny; population increase will be regulated and population decrease will be ruthlessly managed.

This extreme view of the fate of the Palestinians sounds too shocking to believe and comprehend. Is it more shocking than the 75-year and ongoing oppression of the Palestinians, which is too shocking to believe, but happened and continues to happen? Read the words of Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British Palestinian doctor, who spent 43 days tending to the wounded in Gaza City. The Washington Post reported his comments on December 17, 2023.

There was this little girl. I think she was 8 or 9 years old, the daughter of a doctor at al-Shifa Hospital. The doctor was killed and her two [other] kids were killed, and [the girl was] alone. Half of her face was missing. Half her nose, her eyelids had been ripped from the bone and had moved sideways. When you start out those cases, you have to clean them, because it’s all dirt and dust and gravel in the wound.  

Multiply the indiscriminate killing of this girl’s family and her wounds by tens of thousands, and you have a clue to Israelis monstrous behavior. The controlled fate of the Palestinians is not encouraging.

Hamas’ October 7 military action lacked leadership, clarity, know-how in responding to unforeseen circumstances, and strict control to prevent atrocities. Killing innocent civilians and taking them captive is disgraceful and beyond the bounds of civilized behavior. Too few know that Israel made it acceptable. Starting from 1948, almost every day has been a mini October 7, 2023 in occupied Palestine.

Classified Docs Reveal Massacres of Palestinians in ’48 – and What Israeli Leaders Knew, by Adam Raz, Haaretz, 9 December, 2021, details mass atrocities committed by Israeli forces, including rapes. These are not rumors, these are excerpts from Israel cabinet meetings.

Morris recorded 24 massacres during the 1948 war. Today it can be said that the number is higher, standing at several dozen cases. In some of them a few individuals were murdered, in others dozens, and there are also cases of more than a hundred victims. With the exception of the massacre in Deir Yassin, in April 1948, which has resonated widely over the years, this gloomy slice of history appears to have been repressed and pushed aside from the Israeli public discourse.

Among the major massacres that took place during Operations Hiram and Yoav were the events in the villages of Saliha, Safsaf and Al-Dawayima. In Saliha (today Kibbutz Yiron), which lay close to the border with Lebanon, the 7th Brigade executed between 60 and 80 inhabitants using a method that was employed a number of times in the war: concentrating residents in a building in the village and then blowing up the structure with the people inside.

In Safsaf (today Moshav Safsufa), near Safed, soldiers from the 7th Brigade massacred dozens of inhabitants. According to one testimony (subsequently reclassified by the Malmab unit), “Fifty-two men were caught, tied them to one another, dug a pit and shot them. Ten were still twitching. Women came, begged for mercy. Found bodies of 6 elderly men. There were 61 bodies. 3 cases of rape.”

In the village of Al-Dawayima (today Moshav Amatzia), in the Lachish District, troops of the 8th Brigade massacred about 100 people. A soldier who witnessed the events described to Mapam officials what happened: “There was no battle and no resistance. The first conquerors killed 80 to 100 Arab men, women and children. The children were killed by smashing their skulls with sticks. There wasn’t a house without people killed in it.” According to an intelligence officer who was posted to the village two days later, the number of those killed stood at 120.

Dan Eliyahu Ya'akov Illouz, a Canadian-born Israeli politician, must have been referring to Israel when he said, “It is dangerous to reward violence with statehood.”

Another way of predicting the fate of the Palestinians is by examining Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7 attack. Numbers tell the story. After silencing the militants who had entered their dispossessed land and who exacted excessive revenge on those who had ethnically cleansed their parents and grandparents, Israel could have pursued an entirely different path than all-out war. Addressing the imminent dangers of another Hamas incursion and harm to the captives had priority and was a preferred solution to the menacing situation.  

Reinforcing the border and containing Hamas behind the border was not difficult and would have resolved one issue. Negotiating release of the captives was only a matter of numbers in a quid pro quo deal that may have irritated Israel’s leaders but would have satisfied Israel’s anguished population. That leaves combatting the mortars and rockets that cause havoc to Israel. That problem could be simply resolved if the larger problem of oppression was resolved.

Unlike media presentations of Hamas wanting to destroy world Jewry and their nation of Israel, Hamas has never attacked Jews, has a limited number of fighters who can encroach far into Israel, and would have trouble overcoming Tunisia in a war. Hamas preferred to warn Israel that if it continued murdering Palestinians in the West Bank, seizing their properties, and encroaching upon the Haram-al-Sharif, its military wing would respond. Israel knows that if it provokes, Hamas will send rockets and the continuous oppression of the Palestinians will be responsible for the damage done to Israelis. The two situations are linked together and Israel concluded it could only separate the link by a bloody operation that hurts both. Wrong! Israel would have suffered less if it allowed the rockets to fall, which is mostly on barren ground.

Exact statistics on Israeli casualties due to rockets fired from Gaza in the last 10 years, after barrages became heavy, are difficult to confirm. Research and estimation have about 25 Israelis killed from rocket fire, an average of 2.5/year. As of December 24, 145 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the invasion. Before hostilities end this toll will rise to more than 150. Israel has traded 60 years of deaths to its citizens for assuring ??? there is no Hamas to launch rockets. Why does Israel prefer to have its youth immediately killed and all hostages severely endangered when another plan is less deadly to the Israel population? Does that sound plausible? Netanyahu says the only way to save the hostages is by the invasion. Does that sound plausible?

Plausible is that the carnage is the driver for genocide and, once started with full force, has no brake. Ceasing hostilities does not mean halting the genocide; herding the Palestinians into complete dependency, into an area that does not permit independent survival, and navigating them into psychological defeat with traumas that cause the people to lose a sense of security and a will to live are the next steps in the genocide.

It may be overkill, but let’s dig deeper into the wanton killings that have nothing to do with waging war against Hamas. What war with Hamas? News reports have not mentioned a single battle with Hamas, only bombs pulverizing buildings and snipers killing unarmed people.

Samar Anton, 49 a Gaza City church worker, knew there was a risk in helping her mother Nahida, a grandmother in her seventies who was weak from two months of war and little food, to the bathroom. A sniper bullet cracked through the air and into Samar’s head. Another hit Nahida, a grandmother of 15, in the stomach.

GAZA, Dec 18 (Reuters) - When the Israeli soldiers entered the Gaza school where Yousef Khalil was sleeping near his family, they began shooting indiscriminately, killing nine people including children, he said, pointing to bullet-pocked, bloodstained walls. Reuters footage of the school filmed Dec. 13-15 showed ruined classrooms, at least two corpses on the floor of indeterminate age, bloodied bedding, and bullet holes and bloodstains low to the ground.

The deliberate killings during 1948-1949, the last 75 years of repression of the Palestinians, and the wanton slaughtering in Gaza, which now includes deliberate starvation and promoting disease, tell us that the genocide is growing in intensity and design. Bringing the genocide to another inconceivable level, if that is possible, is the combination of a murderous mentality and a public relations force that disguises the mentality that solicits support for genocide. Israel’s supporters do not ask Israel to stop the slaughter, they ask “Why is Israel unable to explain the war in Gaza to the world?”

Especially disturbing is that for the first time in history, a worldwide assembly of people and organizations manipulate people and governments into approving Israel’s genocidal policies. Most egregious and serious is control of the U.S. government and the patriotic and nationalist American people permitting this to happen. Much is written about Russia steering elections by having ads on Facebook and China engaging in cyber spying, which enrage American audiences to almost calling for war. Little attention is given to:

•                    Trained Israeli supporters dominating most social media — Facebook, Twitter, Quora, and Reddit with massive trolls who contest, deceive, lie, twist, and distort news reports and information.

•                    Public media — print, radio, cinema, and television are injected with administrators who guide the narratives to favor Israel. Interviews with employees and internal documents obtained by The Intercept indicate that Upday, the largest news aggregator app in Europe, gave directives to color the company’s coverage of the war in Gaza with pro-Israel sentiment. 

•                    American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) raises massive funds for candidates friendly to Israel through political action committees and its own Super-PAC.

•                    Tens of Jewish organizations bring Israelis to the United States to influence Americans and send Americans to Israel to be influenced by Israelis.

•                    The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) springs into action with new revelations of anti-Semitism every time Israel blasts the Palestinians.

•                    Israelis migrate to America, mostly to New York, Florida, and California, where they become dual citizens, influence voting patterns in those states, and determine close elections

•                    Israel on Campus Coalition and Canary Mission act as key intelligence assets for the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, and, together with highly secretive intelligence organizations, silence anti-Israel dissent and gather names of Israel’s critics.

•                    Jewish day schools and Birth Right Israel, which gives Jewish youth free “transformational and educational trips to Israel,” condition Jews to automatically accept Israel as their beautiful mother country. Listen to Americans, born in America, raised in America, and living the most wonderful lives in America, ignore their own country, and enter rapture when they hear the word Israel spoken.    

All peoples in the world, from Lapland to Tierra del Fuego and from the Philippine archipelago to the Peloponnesian islands should be aware of this repugnant arrangement of worldwide human resources, used to manipulate information and control minds into accepting the destruction. After knowing the truth, billions of people can march to the borders of Israel and proclaim in a loud voice. “We don’t want genocidal maniacs steering our lives,” and huff and puff so that the symbolical walls of apartheid come down — making sure that Joshua does not return to blow down the walls of Jericho, complete the Reconquest of the biblical land of Canaan, and slaughter all its inhabitants.