Report from Gaza: Refaat Alareer on Israel's "Barbaric" Bombardment Campaign

[Uncle Joe]

As hospitals in Gaza are overwhelmed by those killed and wounded in Israel’s massive bombing campaign, we go to Gaza City to speak with Palestinian academic and writer Refaat Alareer about conditions inside the besieged territory. Israel announced Monday it was completely cutting off all food, fuel and electricity to Gaza amid airstrikes of unprecedented intensity, launched in response to Saturday’s surprise attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel. Hamas has threatened to begin killing hostages if civilians inside Gaza are targeted without warning. “No one is safe. No place is safe. Israel is bombing everywhere,” says Alareer, who describes his own children as “shaking out of fear” amid the assault. “Why is this happening? Because we refuse to live under occupation. We refuse to live in total submission. We want freedom.”

[republianmushroom]

1. Retribution

[onecaliberal]

2. But but but, they deserve it.

[The Magistrate]

3. One Really Hates To Point It Out, Sir

But there would be no bombs falling from the sky had Hamas not embarked on a campaign of atrocity several days ago.

The things cannot be separated.

And a man capable of saying at this juncture “Why is this happening? Because we refuse to live under occupation. We refuse to live in total submission. We want freedom.” is a man fully supporting this atrocity, and willing to see it repeated.

[Stainless]

4. Bullshit!

The Hamas terrorist attack was brutal and evil. Israel will take whatever means necessary to decapitate and eliminate Hamas and any Palestinians who support them.

[Uncle Joe]

5. How do you believe this will end?

Do you believe, that there is a military solution?

[The Magistrate]

6. Does Hamas, Sir?

Do they imagine their violence will secure a Palestine free from the river to the sea?

[Uncle Joe]

7. I think from their perspective, Israel's occupation has left them with no hope in Gaza

When a person or people have no hope, violence is going to be the natural result as any pressure cooker will eventually explode if given too much pressure.

There are only two answers to this that I see.

1. Political, work out a fucking deal!

2. Military, that path will only lead to genocide and as for me, I don't want to be on the side of that.

[The Magistrate]

8. Violence Is Not a Natural Result, Sir, Violence Is A Conscious Choice

Until this is acknowledged, no fruitful discussion is possible.

What do you think Hamas would consider a political solution?

Officially, they still call for the goal stated above, and for expulsion of all Jews who emigrated to Israel, and descendants of same.

[Uncle Joe]

9. Consciousness and sub-consciousness are all tied to our reality.

Israel has the greatest power and most influence on the reality of living in Gaza.

As for a political solution, I'm not jumping ahead until they get to the table.

Having said that I have no doubt Hamas knows that position will not be accepted.

[The Magistrate]

10. I Expect You're a Decent Fellow, Sir

Being such a person makes it difficult to appreciate fanatics and violent types, and make any sense of their doings.

If the political leadership of Arab Palestine wanted a political solution, they would have one, indeed, could have had one in place for generations by now. The best that can be said of their failure to do so is that they have little understanding of what a political solution entails. It must bear some relation to what force might be capable of extracting: you don't get back at the negotiating table what you failed to achieve by warfare, any more than get back what you lost at a poker table when you overplayed your full house and met four deuces.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Anyone can become fanatical or violent given the right circumstances,

that's just the human condition.

I believe Israel knows this as well, I also believe that you're a decent fellow.

I just never have been very adept at appreciating bullies.

[The Magistrate]

12. It Remains A Choice, Sir

I agree there are circumstances where violence is a necessity. In others, it is an emotional indulgence. The violence of Hamas is of the second sort. No matter how it is dressed up, it's done because it feels good to do, not because it aims at some achievable goal, or because it is required for bodily preservation at the moment. Even in the most miserable of circumstances 'because it feels good' is no decent motive for deciding to do violence.

[Uncle Joe]

13. I believe it more a choice akin to a abused and battered wife

attacking her husband.

[The Magistrate]

14. That Is Bodily Preservation In the Moment, Sir

Hamas has only to eschew violence to secure that....

[Uncle Joe]

15. Yes and if the moment lasts for decades?

This isn't just Hamas, it's over 2 million people living in one of the world's most densely packed areas that have been abused with no end in sight.

[The Magistrate]

16. If A Gram Weighed A Ton, We'd Need Less Of them

Decades are not moments, moments are not decades.

That's why different words are used to indicate the differing intervals of time. Try telling someone you'll be back in a decade with a six-pack, or that in just a decade you'll take the roast out of the oven, and treasure the stares and laughter turned your way....

[Uncle Joe]

17. Believe it or not, different realities would give you that result.

It literally rains diamonds on Neptune and Uranus.

[The Magistrate]

18. I Like Dancing Angels On Pin-Heads, Sir

If we are going to come over all metaphysical and multiverse here. At the moment, we have this reality, and must deal with, and within it. In this reality, most of the difficulties afflicting the people of Arab Palestine flow from the decision long ago to take up the gun and the bomb rather then political action, and having failed of success in the initial passage of arms, failing then to reassess their course in light of that failure.


"When you appeal to the court of force, the one thing you must not do is lose."

[Uncle Joe]

19. That's just it, we don't have this reality, even Israel doesn't have that reality.

The 2.4 million million human beings with 40+% of them being children living in one of the most densely populated areas on Earth blockaded by Israel in a open air prison are living in that reality.

[The Magistrate]

20. When You Can Explain What The 'It' Is In That Sentence, Sir, I'd be Grateful

Our circumstances in the reality we share are different, certainly.

I don't often simply repeat myself, but this clear statement remains:

'I agree there are circumstances where violence is a necessity. In others, it is an emotional indulgence. The violence of Hamas is of the second sort. No matter how it is dressed up, it's done because it feels good to do, not because it aims at some achievable goal, or because it is required for bodily preservation at the moment. Even in the most miserable of circumstances 'because it feels good' is no decent motive for deciding to do violence.'

Most of what you say seems to agree with my view, that the violence of Arab Palestinian militants is at best a sort of self-medication, rather than any attempt to secure an attainable political end through whatever violent means are actually at their disposal.

[Uncle Joe]

21. You don't do things in the most miserable of circumstances to "feel good"

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You do it to escape feeling bad, with no hope of a future, only poverty and death.

With 40+% of 2.4 million people being children living in an open air prison for years if not decades, this is all they know and will know until Israel actually works to change their reality.

[The Magistrate]

22. Whatever: Feel Good/Feel Less Bad, It's Tomato/Tomahto

You've conceded the point: the militant bodies engage in violence because it feels good in their present circumstances to do so. Or makes them feel less bad, if you think it worth insisting.


"He made two mistakes. The second was making the first one, like it always is. That's all you get. Two mistakes."

[Uncle Joe]

23. Those militant bodies are fed by the children growing up in open air prison

blockaded by Israel and escaping feeling bad is not the same as trying to just feel good.

There is no end this, except for a political solution unless Israel wants to just be done with it and kill them all.

[The Magistrate]

24. Oh, Lord

Those militant bodies create and feed a culture which glorifies martyrdom and hate for Jews, and has for decades. That, too, is a choice. People think and feel what the culture and society they are raised up in inculcates. As the song says, you've got to be carefully taught. So long as people babble about violent resistance as a right which must be exercised above all else, there will not be a political solution, there will be to improvement in the lot of people in Gaza. That's just how it is, no good can come of pretending otherwise.

[Uncle Joe]

25. What do you expect?

I have never heard of a people growing up in a prison with great affinity for their guards.

I can't imagine it would be different in Gaza.

It's the water they swim in, Israel created the pond and whether intentional or not enables Hamas hold on power by its' draconian policies against the entire city/strip of 2.4 million people.

"Those militant bodies create and feed a culture which glorifies martyrdom and hate for Jews, and has for decades. That, too, is a choice. People think and feel what the culture and society they are raised up in inculcates. As the song says, you've got to be carefully taught. So long as people babble about violent resistance as a right which must be exercised above all else, there will not be a political solution, there will be to improvement in the lot of people in Gaza. That's just how it is, no good can come of pretending otherwise."

[The Magistrate]

26. You Have Trapped Yourself In Your Metaphor

When you can fight your way clear of that, and address the fact of the current situation, there might be some point to further conversation.

The prison you imagine leaves violence the sole choice people in it have is one created by the glorification of violence and martyrdom dubbed 'resistance'. The prison is created by the dream of ending Israel, expelling the Jews, and getting back everything great grandpa owned in the glory days. The prison is created by prioritizing these dreams over concrete action to improve the situation of the people. The prison is created by the refusal to recognize political, social, and military realities. Renounce violence, spurn martyrdom, accept the long-ago loss and the fact that people you hate do exist and will continue to exist, and bend all ingenuity to concrete improvement in the material and social capital of the place, this prison will cease to exist.



"Reality is that which, when you cease believing in it, continues to exist."

[Uncle Joe]

27. Do you believe that's the only way this prison was created?

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin: ‘He never knew it was one of his people who shot him in the back’

(snip)

His words carried extra weight because of his own history. He was a soldier turned politician, a commander in the founding 1948 conflict Israelis call the War of Independence; the victorious chief of staff in the 1967 war Israelis saw as a miraculous deliverance from extinction at the hands of three neighbouring Arab states; and a serial defence minister famed as “Mr Security”. Rabin was no dove: in 1988, he had ordered Israeli troops to put down the first intifada by breaking the bones of stone-throwing Palestinian protesters. But as the uprising dragged on, his position slowly evolved: he came to see Palestinian resistance not as a military threat to be crushed, but as a political grievance requiring resolution. When the Oslo talks suggested broad agreement might be possible, he faced a choice: to keep fighting or find a different way.

The latter option was available to him in part because of his hawkish credentials: Israelis saw him as a man they could trust with the nation’s defences. So when he declared it was time to agree an accommodation with the Palestinians – even if that meant giving up some of the territory Israel had won in 1967 and occupied since – Israelis were prepared to listen.

(snip)

Meanwhile, Israel’s internal security agency, the Shabak, was picking up talk in far-right circles that alarmed them. Ultra-nationalist rabbis were calling Rabin a rodef: a murderer who, under Jewish religious law, could be killed to prevent further acts of murder. And the temperature at the anti-Rabin rallies was rising.

The then leader of the opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu, was the star speaker at two now infamous demonstrations, where the crowd’s slogans included “Death to Rabin”. In July 1995, Netanyahu walked at the head of a mock funeral procession featuring a fake black coffin.

(snip)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/assassination-yitzhak-rabin-never-knew-his-people-shot-him-in-back

[The Magistrate]

28. Coals To Newcastle, Sir

Each party to the conflict comes with its own 'hard men'. Everyone knows this. As a practical fact, they depend on one another, prop each other up like a stand of arms. Neither could, and probably neither would, exist without the other. I am at present not too interested in the sins of Israel's worst, as they are not the ones who are at present embarked on a campaign of atrocity, intended to provoke a stronger foe to kill the militants' own people in great quantities, because they think this might somehow advance the cause of Palestine, and because they treasure the idea of killing Jews like so many frightened rabbits.

[Uncle Joe]

29. I do believe that sometimes it's easier for people to focus on the symptoms versus the cure.

One of those "hard men" spoke in Israel as *rump speaks in the U.S. today and I have little doubt Israel's greatest leader/warrior for peace died because of it.

[The Magistrate]

30. The Cure, Sir

Is Arab Palestine abandoning violence as a means towards the goal of a secure state. Violence is a means which cannot secure them that end. Persisting in actions which cannot achieve an end raises the question of whether the actions are actually aimed at achieving it. The only thing persistence in violence can achieve for Arab Palestine is vengeance in some measure, and given the present balance of force between Israel and Arab Palestine, the latter is sure to emerge from any violent passage much the most bloodied of the two. Which of course can be minted into fresh need for vengeance, and so on, and so on, ad infinitum, apparently. With no goal but the quest's own persistence. A sort of careerism, if you will --- peace would be the final disaster.

[Uncle Joe]

31. The cure is freedom, that is the ONLY cure.

Collective punishment of an entre people is the disease.

The symptoms are poverty, the breeding of mindless hatred combined with the never ending promotion of violence and the need for revenge.

Yitzak Rabin knew this.

[The Magistrate]

32. Now You Have Just Made Me Laugh, Sir

And I do not appreciate the image of Mel Gibson in blue-face yelling 'They can't take our FREEDOM!!!' in the hysterical epic film conjured up by that silly outburst.

So long as armed men stand ready to kill in order to achieve it, there will never be a free state of Palestine.


"I don't make the rules, I just draw up the lists."

[Uncle Joe]

33. I'm glad that you're easily humored.

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To my knowledge, Mel Gibson, you, me, nor anyone else here were born and grew up, (or are growing up) in an open air prison for decades.

Don't make the mistake of devaluing freedom just because some of our celebrities or politicians don't think highly of it or use the term cynically just for political purposes.