On Conflict Peace and Genocide: Time for New Language on Palestine and
Israel
It will not be easy to deconstruct the seemingly endless edifice of lies,
half-truths and intentional misrepresentations of Zionist Israeli
colonialism in Palestine. Yet, there can be no alternative to this feat.
by Ramzy Baroud
June 14th, 2021
Mint Press News
By Ramzy Baroud
On May 25, famous American actor, Mark Ruffalo, tweeted an apology for
suggesting that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
I have reflected and wanted to apologize for posts during the recent
Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing genocide,
Ruffalo wrote, adding, Its not accurate, its inflammatory, disrespectful
and is being used to justify anti-Semitism, here and abroad. Now is the time
to avoid hyperbole.
But were Ruffalos earlier assessments, indeed, not accurate, inflammatory
and disrespectful? And does equating Israels war on besieged, impoverished
Gaza with genocide fit into the classification of hyperbole?
To avoid pointless social media spats, one only needs to reference the
United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide. According to Article 2 of the 1948 Convention, the legal
definition of genocide is:
Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as (a) Killing
members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members
of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
In its depiction of Israels latest war on Gaza, the Geneva-based human
rights group, Euro-Med Monitor, reported:
The Israeli forces directly targeted 31 extended families. In 21 cases, the
homes of these families were bombed while their residents were inside. These
raids resulted in the killing of 98 civilians, including 44 children and 28
women. Among the victims were a man and his wife and children, mothers and
their children, or child siblings. There were seven mothers who were killed
along with four or three of their children. The bombing of these homes and
buildings came without any warning despite the Israeli forces knowledge
that civilians were inside.
As of May 28, 254 Palestinians in Gaza were killed and 1,948 were wounded in
the latest 11-day Israeli onslaught, according to the Palestinian Ministry
of Health. Though tragic, this number is relatively small compared with the
casualties of previous wars. For example, in the 51-day Israeli war on Gaza
in the summer of 2014, over 2,200 Palestinians were killed and over 17,000
were wounded. Similarly, entire families, like the 21-member Abu Jame family
in Khan Younis, also perished. Is this not genocide? The same logic can be
applied to the killing of over 300 unarmed protesters at the fence
separating besieged Gaza from Israel between March 2018 and December 2019.
Moreover, the besiegement and utter isolation of over 2 million Palestinians
in Gaza since 2006-07, which has resulted in numerous tragedies, is an act
of collective punishment that also deserves the designation of genocide.
One does not need to be a legal expert to identify the many elements of
genocide in Israels violent behavior, let alone language, against
Palestinians. There is a clear, undeniable relationship between Israels
violent political discourse and equally violent action on the ground.
Potentially Israels next prime minister, Naftali Bennett, who has served
the role of Defense Minister, had, in July 2013, stated:
Ive killed lots of Arabs in my life and theres no problem with that.
With this context in mind, and regardless of why Ruffalo found it necessary
to back-track on his moral position, Israel is an unrepentant human rights
violator that continues to carry out an active policy of genocide and ethnic
cleansing against the native, indigenous inhabitants of Palestine.
Language matters, and in this particular conflict, it matters most,
because Israel has, for long, managed to escape any accountability for its
actions, due to its success in misrepresenting facts, and the overall truth
about itself. Thanks to its many allies and supporters in mainstream media
and academia, Tel Aviv has rebranded itself from being a military occupier
and an apartheid regime to an oasis of democracy, in fact, the only
democracy in the Middle East.
This article will not attempt to challenge the entirety of the misconstrued
mainstream medias depiction of Israel. Volumes are required for that, and
Israeli Professor Ilan Pappés Ten Myths about Israel is an important
starting point. However, this article will attempt to present some basic
definitions that must enter the Palestine-Israel lexicon, as a prerequisite
to developing a fairer understanding of what is happening on the ground.
Why the Overton Window has Suddenly Shifted on Israel-Palestine
The Overton window on Israel and Palestine is rapidly shifting. To
understand why, we spoke to academics, experts, and human rights groups.
MintPress News|Alan Macleod|Jun 4
A Military Occupation Not a Conflict
Quite often, mainstream Western media refers to the situation in Palestine
and Israel as a conflict, and to the various specific elements of this
so-called conflict as a dispute. For example, the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict and the disputed city of East Jerusalem.
What should be an obvious truth is that besieged, occupied people do not
engage in a conflict with their occupiers. Moreover, a dispute happens
when two parties have equally compelling claims to any issue. When
Palestinan families of East Jerusalem are being forced out of their homes
which are, in turn, handed over to Jewish extremists, there is no dispute
involved. The extremists are thieves and the Palestinians are victims. This
is not a matter of opinion. The international community itself says so.
Conflict is a generic term. Aside from absolving the aggressor in this
case, Israel it leaves all matters open for interpretation. Since American
audiences are indoctrinated to love Israel and hate Arabs and Muslims,
siding with Israel in its conflict with the latter becomes the only
rational option.
Israel has sustained a military occupation of 22% of the total size of
historic Palestine since June 1967. The remainder of the Palestinian
homeland was already usurped, using extreme violence, state-sanctioned
apartheid, and, as Pappé puts it, incremental genocide decades earlier.
From the perspective of international law, the term military occupation,
occupied East Jerusalem, illegal Jewish settlements and so forth, have
never been disputed. They are simply facts, even if Washington has decided
to ignore international law, and even if mainstream US media has chosen to
manipulate the terminology as to present Israel as a victim, not the
aggressor.
Process without Peace
The term peace process was coined by American diplomats decades ago. It
was put to use throughout the mid and late 1970s when, then-US Secretary of
State, Henry Kissinger, labored to broker a deal between Egypt and Israel in
the hope of fragmenting the Arab political front and, eventually, sidelining
Cairo entirely from the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Kissingers logic proved vital for Israel as the process did not aim at
achieving justice according to fixed criteria that has been delineated by
the United Nations for years. There was no frame of reference any more. If
any existed, it was Washingtons political priorities which, historically,
almost entirely overlapped with Israels priorities. Despite the obvious
American bias, the US bestowed upon itself the undeserving title of the
honest peace broker.
This approach was used successfully in the write-up to the Camp David
Accords in 1978. One of the Accords greatest achievements is that the
so-called Arab-Israeli conflict was replaced with the so-called
Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Now, tried and true, the peace process was used again in 1993, resulting
in the Oslo Accords. For nearly three decades, the US continued to tout its
self-proclaimed credentials as a peacemaker, despite the fact that it pumped
and continues to do so $3-4 billion of annual, mostly military, aid to
Israel.
On the other hand, the Palestinians have little to show for. No peace was
achieved; no justice was obtained; not an inch of Palestinian land was
returned and not a single Palestinian refugee was allowed to return home.
However, American and European officials and a massive media apparatus
continued to talk of a peace process with little regard to the fact that
the peace process has brought nothing but war and destruction for
Palestine, and allowed Israel to continue its illegal appropriation and
colonization of Palestinian land.
Resistance, National Liberation Not Terrorism and State-Building
The peace process introduced more than death, mayhem and normalization of
land theft in Palestine. It also wrought its own language, which remains in
effect to this day. According to the new lexicon, Palestinians are divided
into moderate and extremists. The moderates believe in the
American-led peace process, peace negotiations and are ready to make
painful compromises in order to obtain the coveted peace. On the other
hand, the extremists are Iran-backed, politically radical bunch that
use terrorism to satisfy their dark political agendas.
But is this the case? Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, many sectors of
Palestinian society, including Muslims and Christians, Islamists and
secularists and, notably, socialists, resisted the unwarranted political
compromises undertaken by their leadership, which they perceived to be a
betrayal of Palestinians basic rights. Meanwhile, the moderates have
largely ruled over Palestinians with no democratic mandate. This small but
powerful group introduced a culture of political and financial corruption,
unprecedented in Palestine. They applied torture against Palestinian
political dissidents whenever it suited them. Not only did Washington say
little to criticize the moderate Palestinian Authoritys dismal human
rights record, but it also applauded it for its crackdown on those who
incite violence and their terrorist infrastructure.
A term such as resistance muqawama was slowly but carefully extricated
from the Palestinian national discourse. The term liberation too was
perceived to be confrontational and hostile. Instead, such concepts as
state-building championed by former Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam
Fayyad, and others began taking hold. The fact that Palestine was still an
occupied country and that state-building can only be achieved once
liberation was first secured, did not seem to matter to the donor
countries. The priorities of these countries mainly US allies who adhered
to the American political agenda in the Middle East was to maintain the
illusion of the peace process and to ensure security coordination
between PA police and the Israeli army carried on, unabated.
The so-called security coordination, of course, refers to the US-funded
joint Israeli-PA efforts at cracking down on Palestinian resistance,
apprehending Palestinian political dissidents and ensuring the safety of the
illegal Jewish settlements, or colonies, in the occupied West Bank.
Mowing the Grass No More: How Palestinian Resistance Altered the Equation
The Palestinian resistance, not the peace process, is placing Israel in a
new quandary wherein cannot win the war on the Palestinians.
MintPress News|Ramzy Baroud|Jun 1
War and, Yes, Genocide in Gaza Not Israel-Hamas Conflict
The word democracy was constantly featured in the new Oslo language. Of
course, it was not intended to serve its actual meaning. Instead, it was the
icing on the cake of making the illusion of the peace process perfect.
This was obvious, at least to most Palestinians. It also became obvious to
the whole world in January 2006, when the Palestinian faction Fatah, which
has monopolized the PA since its inception in 1994, lost the popular vote to
the Islamic faction, Hamas.
Hamas, and other Palestinian factions have rejected and continue to reject
the Oslo Accords. Their participation in the legislative elections in 2006
took many by surprise, as the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) was
itself a product of Oslo. Their victory in the elections, which was
classified as democratic and transparent by international monitoring groups,
threw a wrench in the US-Israeli-PA political calculations.
Lo and behold, the group that has long been perceived by Israel and its
allies as extremist and terrorist, became the potential leaders of
Palestine! The Oslo spin doctors had to go into overdrive in order for them
to thwart Palestinian democracy and ensure a successful return to the status
quo, even if this meant that Palestine is represented by unelected,
undemocratic leaders. Sadly, this has been the case for nearly 15 years.
Meanwhile, Hamas stronghold, the Gaza Strip, had to be taught a lesson,
thus the siege imposed on the impoverished region for nearly 15 years. The
siege on Gaza has little to do with Hamas rockets or Israels security
needs, the right to defend itself, and its supposedly justifiable desire
to destroy Gazas terrorist infrastructure. While, indeed, Hamas
popularity in Gaza is unmatched anywhere else in Palestine, Fatah, too, has
a powerful constituency there. Moreover, the Palestinian resistance in the
Strip is not championed by Hamas alone, but also by other ideological and
political groups, for example, the Islamic Jihad, the socialist Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and other socialist and
secular groups.
Misrepresenting the conflict as a war between Israel and Hamas is
crucial to Israeli propaganda, which has succeeded in equating Hamas with
militant groups throughout the Middle East and even Afghanistan. But Hamas
is not ISIS, Al-Qaeda or Taliban. In fact, none of these groups are similar,
anyway. Hamas is a Palestinian Islamic nationalist movement that operates
within a largely Palestinian political context. An excellent book on Hamas
is the recently published volume by Daud Abdullah, Engaging the World.
Abdullahs book rightly presents Hamas as a rational political actor, rooted
in its ideological convictions, yet flexible and pragmatic in its ability to
adapt to national, regional and international geopolitical changes.
But what does Israel have to gain from mischaracterizing the Palestinian
resistance in Gaza? Aside from satisfying its propaganda campaign of
erroneously linking Hamas to other anti-American groups, it also dehumanizes
the Palestinian people entirely and presents Israel as a partner in the
American global so-called war on terror. Israeli neofascist and
ultranationalist politicians then become the saviors of humanity, their
violent racist language is forgiven and their active genocide is seen as
an act of self-defense or, at best, a mere state of conflict.
The Oppressor as the Victim
According to the strange logic of mainstream media, Palestinians are rarely
killed by Israeli soldiers, but rather die in clashes resulting from
various disputes. Israel does not colonize Palestinian land; it merely
annexes, appropriates, and captures, and so on. What has been taking
place in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem, for
example, is not outright property theft, leading to ethnic cleansing, but
rather a property dispute.
The list goes on and on.
In truth, language has always been a part of Zionist colonialism, long
before the state of Israel was itself constructed from the ruins of
Palestinian homes and villages in 1948. Palestine, according to the
Zionists, was a land with no people for a people with no land. These
colonists were never illegal settlers but Jewish returnees to their
ancestral homeland, who, through hard work and perseverance, managed to
make the desert bloom, and, in order to defend themselves against the
hordes of Arabs, they needed to build an invincible army.
It will not be easy to deconstruct the seemingly endless edifice of lies,
half-truths and intentional misrepresentations of Zionist Israeli
colonialism in Palestine. Yet, there can be no alternative to this feat
because, without proper, accurate and courageous understanding and depiction
of Israeli settler colonialism and Palestinian resistance to it, Israel will
continue to oppress Palestinians while presenting itself as the victim.