[Marxism] Petras on Israel's total war

[David Thorstad <binesi@xxxxxxxxx>]

[A powerful cri de coeur marred only by Petras's use of "principle" for 
"principal."]
DT
=========================================================================
**

*The Politics of An Israeli Extermination Campaign:
Backers, Apologists and Arms Suppliers
James Petras, January 2, 2009
*
*Introduction*
Because of the unconditional support of the entire political class in 
the US, from the White House to Congress, including both Parties, 
incoming and outgoing elected officials and all the principle print and 
electronic mass media, the Israeli Government feels no compunction in 
publicly proclaiming a detailed and graphic account of its policy of 
mass extermination of the population of Gaza.
IsraelÂs sustained and comprehensive bombing campaign of every aspect of 
governance, civic institutions and society is directed toward destroying 
civilized life in Gaza. IsraelÂs totalitarian vision is driven by the 
practice of a permanent purge of Arab Palestine informed by Zionism, an 
ethno-racist ideology, promulgated by the Jewish state and justified, 
enforced and pursued by its organized backers in the United States.
The facts of Israeli extermination have become known: In the first six 
days of round the clock terror bombing of major and minor populations 
centers, the Jewish State has murdered and seriously maimed over 2,500 
people, mostly dismembered and burned in the open ovens of missile fire. 
Scores of children and women have been slaughtered as well as 
defenseless civilians and officials. They have sealed off all access to 
Gaza and declared it a military, free fire zone, while expanding their 
target to include the entire population of 1.5 millions semi-starved 
prisoners. According to the Boston Globe (December 30, 2008): Israeli 
military officials said their target lists have expanded to include the 
vast support network on which the Islamist movement relies to stay in 
power âwe are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is 
connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel. A top 
Israeli in its secret police apparatus is quoted saying, "Hamasâ 
civilian infrastructure is a very sensitive target" (ibid). What the 
Israeli Jewish politicians and military planners designate as "Hamas" is 
the entire social service network, the entire government and the vast 
majority of economic activity, embracing almost the entire 1.5 million 
imprisoned residents of Gaza.
Israelâs "target" list thus involves the _total population_, using the 
totality of its non-nuclear weaponry and for an unlimited time period 
(until the "bitter end" according to the Israeli Prime Minister). 
Israelâs defense ministry spokesman has emphatically reiterated the 
Jewish stateâs totalitarian war concept emphasizing the targeting of 
civilians: "Hamas has used ostensibly civilian operations as a cover for 
military activities. Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target."
Like all totalitarians in the past, the Jewish state boasts of having 
systematically pre-planned the extermination campaign  months in 
advance  up to and including the precise hour and day of the bombing to 
coincide with inflicting the maximum murder of civilians: The rockets 
and bombs fell as children were leaving school, as graduating police 
cadets were receiving their diplomas and as frantic mothers ran out from 
their homes to find their sons and daughters. The mass military 
extermination campaign was a follow up of its non-stop total economic 
embargo and unremitting selective assassination campaign of the previous 
two years: Both were designed to purge Palestine of its Arab population, 
first via puppet Abbas. When they discovered that mass hunger and 
selective Israeli murder only strengthened the populationâs links to its 
democratically elected government and the resolve of the Hamas 
government to resist Israel, the Israeli regimes unleashed its entire 
arsenal of weapons, including its new "American gifts" up-to-date 1000 
pound "bunker buster" bombs and high tech missiles to incinerate large 
numbers of human beings within their deadly radius and to obliterate 
Palestinian civilization.
Moving directly from its totalitarian vision to its military blueprint 
to the savaging of Palestinian population centers, the Jewish state 
destroyed the principle university with over 18,000 students (mostly 
women), mosques, pharmacies, electrical and water lines, power stations, 
fishing villages, fishing boats and the little fishing port that 
provided a meager supply of fish for the starving population. They 
destroyed roads, transport facilities, food warehouses, science 
buildings, small factories, shops and apartments. They destroyed a 
womenâs dormitory at the university. In the words of the Israel leader: 
"âbecause everything is connected to everythingâ" it is necessary to 
destroy each and every facet of life, which allows humans to exist with 
some dignity and independence.
The Israeli totalitarian leaders knew with confidence that they could 
act and they could kill with impunity, locally and before the entire 
world, because of the influence of the US Zionist Power Configuration in 
and over the US White House and Congress. They knew they had the full 
backing of all the major Israeli political parties (Right, Left and 
Center), trade unions, mass media and especially public opinion. Israeli 
state terror is backed by 81% of Jewish Israelis according to a poll 
taken by Israelâs Channel 10 (Financial Times December 30, 2008).
Israeli totalitarian violence and extermination of Palestinians is 
extremely popular among the Jewish electorate, especially in raising 
support for the Labor Party candidate Minister Ehud Barak. They knew 
they would "succeed" with virtually no casualties because they bombed, 
burned and dismembered a defenseless population totally lacking the 
minimum means to defend themselves from F16 bombers, helicopter gun 
ships and missile assaults. The vile depravity of the assault on the 
defenseless population is matched by the utter cowardice of the Israeli 
military command and its cheering bloodthirsty public ensconced behind 
their aerial monopoly. They suffered no threats of aerial retaliation, 
no wounded or dead pilots, helicopter gunners, as wave after wave swept 
in and over a defenseless imprisoned population in a crowded and 
besieged ghetto.
Hundreds of tanks and armored carriers are prepared to invade once the 
cities and towns have been leveled, once the population is too weakened 
by starvation to resist, once the leaders and fighters have been 
murdered and the normal Palestinian institutions of law and order have 
been pulverized, making way for the corrupt thuggish collaborators of 
the so-called Palestinian Authority â then and only then, will the 
Israeli General staff risk the skin of a precious Jewish "soldier" and 
risk the anxiety and worry of their kin in Israel and the US.
*Overseas Allies: The Presidents of the Major American Jewish 
Organizations (PMAJO)
*>From the moment that the Israeli Government decided it would destroy 
the newly elected Hamas government and punish the democratic electorate 
of Gaza with starvation and murder, the entire Zionist Power 
Configuration (ZPC) in the US, including the PMAJO, pulled all stops in 
implementing the Israeli policy. The PMAJO encompasses the fifty-two 
Jewish organizations with the largest membership, with the greatest 
financial clout and the most influential backers. The most prominent 
lobbyist within the PMAJO is AIPAC, which has over 100,000 members and 
150 full-time operatives in Washington actively pressuring the US 
Congress, the White House and all administrative agencies whose policies 
may relate to the interests of the State of Israel. However Israeli 
political influence extends far beyond its non-governmental agencies. 
Over two score legislators in the Congress and over a dozen senators are 
committed Zionists who automatically back IsraelÂs policies and push for 
US funding and armaments for its military machine. Top officials in key 
administrative positions, in Treasury, Commerce and the National 
Security Council, senior functionaries in the Pentagon and top advisers 
on Middle East affairs are also life-long, fanatically committed 
Zionists, who consistently and unreservedly back the policies of the 
State of Israel.
Equally important, the majority of the largest film, print and 
electronic media are owned or deeply influenced by Jewish-Zionist media 
moguls who are committed to slanting the "news" in favor of Israel. The 
composition and influence of the ZPC is central to understanding three 
main characteristics of IsraelÂs power: (1) Israel can commit what 
leading United Nations and international human rights experts have 
defined as "crimes against humanity" with total impunity; (2) Israel can 
secure an unlimited supply of the most technologically advanced and 
destructive weapons and use them without limit on a civilian population 
in violation of even US Congressional restrictions and (3) scores of 
almost unanimous United Nations condemnations of the construction of 
genocidal apartheid barriers against a native population, starvation 
embargoes and the current extermination campaign in Gaza are always 
vetoed by the US representative.
Many critics of IsraelÂs genocide in Gaza also condemn what they call 
"the complicity" of Washington or the United States without clearly 
identifying the actual socio-political forces influencing policy-makers 
or the _dual_ political loyalties and identities of the American 
politicians who have long-standing and deep allegiances to Israel. As a 
consequence, most critics fail to counter, protest or even identify the 
ideology and politics of the organized power configurations which define 
US complicity with Israel, who intimidate potential critics, who write 
and mouth the pro-Israel editorials in the mass media and who filter out 
any criticism, any truth â even when Israel engages in sustained bloody 
extermination campaigns.
*The ZPC and the Israeli War of Extermination in Gaza*
The ZPC played a major role in all stages of Israelâs extermination 
campaign against Gaza including a sustained propaganda effort. The ZPC 
orchestrated a massive successful campaign through the extensive network 
of American mass media, which it controls and influences. It fabricated 
an image of the Hamas administration in Gaza as a terrorist 
organization, which allegedly seized power through violence â totally 
denying its rise to power through internationally supervised, democratic 
elections and its defense of its electoral mandate against a US-Israeli 
backed PLO military takeover. The entire Zionist Jewish leadership 
backed Israelâs land grabs, its ghetto wall around Palestinians, the 
hundreds of road blocks, the Jewish settlers violently taking over 
Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the criminal, 
genocidal Israeli economic embargo on Gaza designed to systematically 
starve the Palestinians into submission. Throughout the two years of 
this Israeli extermination campaign, American Zionists played a major 
role in leading the servile US government at home and abroad in backing 
each totalitarian measure: The vast majority of local synagogues became 
bully-pulpits defending the starvation and degradation of 1.5 million 
Palestinian refugees in Gaza caged on all sides by deadly force and the 
"walling off" into economically and socially devastating cantons of the 
4.5 million West Bank Palestinian population under foreign occupation. 
The US Congress shamelessly followed the Zionist lead, backing every 
single criminal measure taken by the State of Israel and approving 
dozens of resolutions, which in most cases were entirely written by 
AIPAC lobbyists acting as unregistered agents of the Israeli government 
(contrary to US federal statute, which requires foreign agents and 
lobbyists to be registered as such). Israelâs demands for the most 
up-to-date US warplanes, including F-16s, Apache helicopter gun ships, 
and 1,000 pound bombs were secured by dint of effort of the AIPAC 
lobbyists and their clients in the US Congress. In other words, the 
American ZPC created the ideological cover and military instruments for 
Israelâs "total war" against the defenseless Palestinian population.
Equally important, prominent Zionist leaders in the US Congress and 
members of the foreign policy establishment blocked or vetoed any 
international criticism of Israel  securing its impunity and immunity 
from any of the Congressional sanctions usually enacted against criminal 
states. In other words, Israeli policy makers operated with the 
knowledge that there would be no negative economic, diplomatic and 
military repercussions to their launching the planned Gaza extermination 
campaign because they knew, in advance, that "their people" were in 
total control of US Middle East policy to the extent of actually 
repeating verbatim each and every propaganda lie in defense of Israelâs 
total war against the entire population of Gaza.
*In Defense of Israelâs War of Extermination
*The Zionist-controlled US print media, in particular the New York Times 
and the Washington Post, systematically fabricated an account that fit 
perfectly with IsraelÂs official line defending its massive assault on 
Gaza: Omitting any historical account of the hundreds of Israeli armed 
incursions and _targeted_ assassinations of Palestinian leaders and 
officials (even in their own homes) which repeatedly violated the "cease 
fire" agreed by Hamas and provoked its retaliation in self-defense of 
its people; omitting the years of an Israeli enforced starvation embargo 
of food and essentials that threatened the lives of 1.5 million 
Palestinians and led to the desperate efforts of the elected Hamas
leadership to secure supplies for the peopleâs survival via tunnels 
across the Egyptian border and through missile attacks against Israel to 
pressure the Jewish state to negotiate an end of the criminal blockade.
The Conference of President of the Major American Jewish Organizations, 
and the vast majority of Jewish communal groups and congregations, gave 
enthusiastic and unanimous support to Israelâs total war, its 
extermination campaign against the captive Palestinian population of 
Gaza. Even as images and reports of the massive destruction, killing and 
wounding of over 2,500 defenseless Palestinians filtered in the mass 
media, not a single major Jewish organization broke ranks; only 
individuals and small groups protested. All the "Majors" persisted in 
the politics of the Big Lie: the destruction of hospitals, mosques, 
universities, roads, apartments, pharmacies and fishing ports were all 
labeled "Hamas targets". The systematic all-out assault by uncontested 
helicopter gunships against 1.5 millions civilians was erased by 
tendentious accounts of Hamasâ homemade missiles falling ineffectively 
near Israeli towns.
A close reading of the most important propaganda organ of the PMAJO, The 
Daily Alert (TDA), during the first 5 days of Israelâs assault, reveals 
the propaganda tack taken by the leadership of the pro-Israel power 
configuration. TDA systematically worked to achieve the following:

1. Exaggerate the threats to Israel by the Palestinian missiles from 
Gaza, citing 4 Israeli deaths, while omitting any mention of the 2,500 
Palestinian dead and wounded and the total destruction of their economy 
and living conditions (without safe water, electricity, food, cooking 
fuel, medicine and heat in the winter).
2. Promote Israelâs military assault as "defensive", directed at 
eliminating Hamas rocket attacks while omitting mention of Israelâs 
clearly stated purpose of destroying all civil organizations, social 
welfare agencies, educational facilities, medical clinics and public 
security institutions connected in any way with the elected Hamas 
government and any auxiliary agencies.
3. Cite select statement from Israelâs allies and clients (Washington, 
the US media, Germany and the UK) blaming Hamas for the conflict without 
mentioning the vast majority of countries in the United Nations General 
Assembly condemning IsraelÂs brutality.
4. Reproduce Israeli slanders against any and all international human 
rights leaders and organizations that condemn the Jewish stateâs policy 
of genocide against the native Palestinians. In this regard, TDA is the 
foremost "genocide denier" in the United States and, perhaps outside of 
Israel, in the world.
5. Repeatedly cite Israeli political and military leadersâ claims of 
acting "with restraint", "safeguarding civilians", and "targeting 
military objectives", even in the face of reports and images of mass 
civilian destruction and loss of life documented in the vast majority of 
(non-US) Western media.
6. Defend every Israeli bombing mission, every day, every hour, of every 
building, every home, and every economic, religious and educational 
institution in Gaza as "defensive" or a "reprisal", all the while 
quoting some of the most notorious, unconditional, perennial apologists 
of Israeli violence as if they were unbiased intellectuals, including 
Benny "Nuke Tehran" Morris, Marty Peretz and Amos Oz.
7. The Daily Alert quotes US writers, journalists and editors who praise 
and defend Israelâs "total war" without identifying their long-standing 
affiliation and identification with Zionist organizations, giving the 
false image of a wide spectrum of opinion behind the assault. Never has 
even the most moderate Jewish or Gentile critic of Israelâs massive 
extermination campaign appeared in any issues of The Daily Alert.
The principle American Jewish organizations have bombarded the US 
Congress, influencing, intimidating and purchasing the craven so-called 
"representatives" of the American people, the media and public notables 
with lies in defense of IsraelÂs total war to exterminate a people.
Their public, brazen, open complicity in genocide can be considered 
crime against humanity: The willful promotion of acts of a state 
designed to destroy an entire people.
And yet these willing accomplices, these "willing executioners" of state 
mass murder go uncontested within the US political class. One of their 
leading mouthpieces in the incoming Obama Administration, Chief 
Presidential Adviser David Axelrod, even cites an Obama campaign speech 
defending Israeli assaults on the people of Gaza.
Israel arrogantly repudiates all calls to end this mass murder, because 
Israel knows that "its people" are still in control of US policy toward 
the Middle East and will use their power in the new presidentâs 
administration to block any condemnation of this crime.
To date the entire human rights and anti-war movements have failed to 
even mention, let along challenge, the most powerful propaganda and 
political organizations, which influence US policy and manipulate the 
mass media in favor of IsraelÂs extermination campaign. They will play 
no restraining role on IsraelÂs totalitarian policies as long as its 
principle US backers are free to lie, manipulate and defend each and 
every crime.
There is little hope for an independent US Congressional policy as long 
as Israelâs war of extermination in Gaza can be defended by the Chairman 
of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (and Zionist zealot) Congressman 
Howard Berman in the following terms: "Israel has a right, indeed a 
duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and 
mortars fired from Gaza over the past week. No government in the world 
would sit by and allow its citizens to be subjected to this kind of 
indiscriminate bombardment. The loss of innocent life is a terrible 
tragedy and the blame for that tragedy lies with Hamas." Thus 
Congressman Berman cynically omits the 2 years of Israelâs embargo, the 
daily "targeted" assassinations of Palestinians, the "targeted" missile 
attacks against civilians, the land, sea and air blockades and the 
blatant "targeted" destruction of the infrastructure of Gaza. No 
government, indeed a democratically elected Islamist government, can 
stand by while its people are starved and murdered into submission. But 
according to the respected Congressmen Bermans of the world, only the 
lives of Jews matter, not the growing thousands of murdered, dismembered 
and mutilated citizens of Gaza  they do not count as people!
*What is to be Done*
Israelâs crimes against humanity demand a public response: social 
action, which will force it to cease and desist from its campaign to 
exterminate the people of Gaza. Because the Jewish state has assaulted a 
vast array of Palestinian social institutions, which resonate with those 
in our own society, we can and should mobilize them to condemn and 
boycott their counterparts in Israel:
1. We should urge the entire academic community to denounce Israelâs 
bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza and the total destruction 
of all of its science facilities. An organized boycott of Israeli 
universities and all academic exchanges, especially scientific, should 
become university policy throughout the country. Special attention 
should be paid to the 450 US university presidents, who in the recent 
past, denounced a call by British academics for a boycott and who remain 
silent and complicit in the face of IsraelÂs total physical annihilation 
of all ten faculties for 20,000 Palestinian university students.
2. All American health workers, doctors, nurses, technicians, should 
organize and denounce Israelâs medical embargo against the 1.5 million 
Palestinians crowded into the Gaza Strip. They must condemn Israelâs 
bombardment of GazaÂs ChildrenÂs Hospital, the neighborhood pharmacies 
and the attacks on any transport of those critically wounded Palestinian 
victims of its aerial and missile attacks. Medical personnel should 
raise the fundamental ethical issues regarding the collaboration of US 
medical personnel and programs with the Jewish Stateâs "total war" 
policies of extermination.
3. All citizens should demand the end of all US military aid to Israel, 
especially F-16 fighter planes, Apache attack helicopters, missiles, 
1000 pound "bunker buster" bombs used by the Israeli armed forces on the 
civilian infrastructure of Gaza and the murder and maiming of over 2,500 
Palestinians, civilians, civil servants, police and national militia. In 
pursuit of a cutoff of US military aid to Israel, every effort should be 
made to target and denounce the most forceful, aggressive and successful 
Zionist advocates and lobbyists who influence the elected members of the 
US Congress and White House on foreign military aid budgets. No progress 
in ending US military aid for Israelâs ethnic cleansing will succeed 
unless the peace movement and others appalled by Israelâs mass murder 
tackles the Zionist lobby head on. This includes boycotts, rebuttals and 
demonstrations against the AIPAC, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and 
the other 50 leading American Jewish organizations, which initiate and 
secure US governmental endorsement of Israelâs extermination policies.
4. US religious institutions should forcefully denounce Israelâs crimes 
against humanity, including its demolition of 5 mosques, uniting all 
faiths (Christian, Moslem, Buddhist) and especially reaching out to the 
tiny minority of rabbis and observant Jews willing to forthrightly 
denounce the totalitarian practices of the Israeli state.
5. Port and long shore workers, sailors and other maritime workers and 
officials should boycott the handling of all trade with Israel and 
denounce its NavyÂs violent illegal assault, in international waters, of 
civilian fishing boats and vessels carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. No 
ships carrying Israeli products should be loaded or unloaded as long as 
Israel maintains its criminal military blockade of the port facilities 
of Gaza.
6. Tens of millions of US citizens subject to the one-sided pro-Israel 
bias of the electronic and print media, the lop-sided presentations of 
Zionist op-ed writers, news reports and the self-styled Middle East 
experts, should demand equal time, coverage and reportage for 
non-Zionist specialists, analysts and commentators. We should demand the 
end of euphemisms and fabrications, which convert victims into 
aggressors and exterminators into victims.
7. We should wage a battle of ideas everywhere (in every public forum) 
against the efforts by the Zionist Power Configuration to monopolize 
discussion over the Israeli policy of genocide, to censor, intimidate 
and slander critics of Israeli apartheid  as UN General Assembly 
President Manuel dâEscoto so aptly calls Israelâs Ghetto Wall 
surrounding Palestinian villages. The outpouring of public âprotest over 
IsraelÂs war of extermination is an enormous step forward in countering 
the Zionist monopoly of the mass media and encouraging the tens of 
millions of Americans who clearly recognize and privately despise 
IsraelÂs crimes against humanity and resent the local Zionist eliteâs 
thuggery against those who speak out. Mass pressure on elected 
representative may sway some to reconsider their abject servility to 
their Zionist contributors and their Israel First Congressional colleagues.
8. A patriotic nationwide campaign should demand that the Israel lobby, 
especially AIPAC, come clean and register as a foreign agent of the 
State of Israel. This might undermine the Lobbyâs appeal to American 
Jews, reduce its influence over Congress and open up judicial processes 
and investigations over its abuse of tax-exemptions, money-laundering 
and lead to revelations over its treasonous procurement of confidential 
US state documents for a foreign power. There is a powerful political 
and legal basis for such a denial of the Lobbyâs tax-exempt status and 
legality, apart from the transparent and overwhelming evidence that all 
Zionist organizations act as transmission belts for Israeli state 
policies: In the early 1950Âs up to 1963, the forerunner of AIPAC was 
obligated to register as a foreign agent of the State of Israel. More 
recently, an Israeli prosecutor presented evidence that the 
Israeli-Jewish Agency and its US counterparts were laundering billions 
of dollars especially for the funding of Israeli colonial settlements on 
occupied Palestinian land, condemned as illegal under international law.
Congressional hearings, law suits and further published research would 
reveal the role of the Lobby as a Fifth Column for the State of Israel 
against the interest of the people of the United States.
Until we neutralize the pervasive power of the Zionist Power 
Configuration in all of its manifestations  in American public and 
civic life  and its deep penetration of American legislative and 
executive offices, we will fall short of preventing Israel from 
receiving the arms, funding and political backing to sustain its wars of 
ethnic extermination.
When told that the great majority of the worldÂs people are sickened and 
incensed by IsraelÂs mass murder of the citizens of Gaza, we can easily 
imagine the contemptuous dismissal by IsraelÂs top leaders, paraphrasing 
Joseph Stalin: How many bombers, missiles, fighter planes and powerful 
lobbies do they (the outraged people of the world) have?



**

*James Petras is the author of Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US 
Power, Clarity Press 2008.*

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