Gaza-War Cease Fire: So Who Won?
Roy Ratcliffe | 24.11.2012 18:13 | Palestine
In the recent bombardment of Gaza by Israel and the retaliation by rocket fire from Gaza - just who won and who were the losers?
a) Who won?
At a superficial level it may seem as if the Zionist-based colonialist entity called Israel won the just over a week-long war. After all with their superior weaponry and expertise funded and informed by North American and European military sources, they had incessantly pulverised Gaza from the air, from land and from sea - all in order to subdue them. The Nazis tried to do the same to London during the Second World War and also failed. It is a historical fact that you cannot easily subdue a people and their culture by aggressive and belligerent military destruction. In contrast to this latest incessant Israeli barrage only a very few of the Palestinian resistance forces rockets were able to avoid interception and do damage. For this reason, the military mentality of the Zionists and those who identify with them imagine they have won. But struggles are not always or entirely won by military means. There are other factors at work in the modern world.
One is the fact that the Palestinian David in Gaza, despite this month’s battle with the Goliath of Israel, continues to exist. For sixty years the Palestinians have resisted being entirely cleared off their land even though the Zionists have re-drawn their maps to remove the name ‘Palestine’ from the colonised territory. Through armed struggle and two Intifada’s, Palestinians have continually struggled to assert the moral and legal rights to exist and to their land. They have not been beaten into submission. Indeed, they continue to fight back in the only way they can with the only weapons they have - civil disobedience, peaceful demonstration and now rockets and guns. Of course, just to exist is to resist; but to resist with whatever weapons are available is to resist positively. In this sense the Palestinians have continued to win against the Zionist struggle to obliterate them - and this time in Gaza they have won that battle again.
But in an even greater sense the Zionist have lost! In fact they have been loosing the moral, intellectual and legal ground ever since the world awoke to what was really going on in former Palestine. When the Nakba became internationally recognised as the Zionist putsch instigating the colonialist land grab in 1948, the ‘facts on the ground‘ were matched by the 'facts in peoples heads' and printed in the historical records. The last two bombardments of Gaza, operation ‘Cast Lead’ in 2009 and operation ‘Pillar of Cloud’ in 2012 have demonstrated to the world the complete and utter inhumanity of the ideology of Zionism and the inhumanity of those Jewish nationalists who have failed to break decisively and completely with all it stands for. Israel is increasingly seen as a rogue nation and the majority of its people an anathema to all who do not directly benefit from its existence. As with all such elitist ideologies, humanity has nothing positive at all to learn from the example of Israel and the ideology of Zionism.
b) Who else won?
It was claimed by many commentators that Mohammed Morsi role as intermediary won him a spectacular level of respect from the world’s leaders. He was feted by Obama and his political coterie. But did he and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood really win much by this action? The best the newly elected Brotherhood leadership in Egypt could do to openly and practically support the people of Gaza, was to broker a cease fire. No other form of publicly declared practical help appeared to be given to those suffering the bombardment in Gaza. Were the borders opened to allow support to go in and non-combattants to escape destruction? And are eulogies from Obama, Clinton and any of the other European and North American political pirates of capital any form of useful endorsement for Morsi? I think not. Quite the opposite! And of course the resistance of Gaza was not only the work of Hamas, who played a considerable role, but of all non-betraying Palestinians, Christian, secular and Muslim.
If a gang of thugs were holding you down, squeezing your throat and punching you in the face you may well be glad when they stop hitting you in the face. You would nonetheless still want the thugs to stop strangling you. And you would hope that any sufficiently strong bystanders or so-called friends, would not only help you but would intervene and insist the thugs did exactly that. You would certainly not expect bystanders to urge you to stop struggling or to stand idly by and watch as did the western international community of Senior Politicians. Yet this may be exactly how many Palestinians in Gaza feel now the week-long bombardment from high-tech weaponry directed from land, air and sea by the armed Zionist state has ended. Punching Gaza in the face may have stopped for the moment, but the economic stranglehold on the lives of the people of Gaza remains as the despicable blockade initiated by Israel continues. So there still remains much to be done.
c) So who are the other losers?
It is obvious that the very many dead Palestinians in Gaza, the injured and the survivors who have lost their families and their homes are the losers in this tragic and brutal demonstration of Zionist inhumanity. In a direct physical sense this - and those blinded by Zionist loyalty and killed or injured in the struggle against the occupation of Palestinian land - is the greatest loss. Buildings can be replaced, at least if and when the Zionists allow building materials and machinery to be imported to Gaza. Human beings can not be replaced as easily. But of course deaths and missing limbs, are not the only losses in this latest battle. Further related non-physical losses have been demonstrated over this latest period of Zionist blitzkrieg. They are different from the loss of life, and have been losses we need not mourn. There has been a visible loss of respect, trust and integrity in the international political classes - of all political and religious denominations.
Apart from occasional hot-air rhetoric, and the odd visit, what have the Arab and Muslim leaders throughout the world done in a practical way to aid their co-religious counter-parts in Gaza or the West Bank? They have definitively not grabbed the chance to publicly do more during the bombing and shelling. And the recent self-elevation of Morsi to status of effective dictator in Egypt demonstrates that the ideology of Islam as with Judaism and Christianity is an ideology suitable and necessary to the respective governing classes. It is not enough for them to allow people to choose to be self-governed by the ‘book’, whether this is the Old Testament, the New Testament or the Qur’an. The people must be ruled by them and they mean to enforce their interpretation of social conformity through the coercion of the state. All the US war-mongering presidents have been devout Christians and the vast majority of European political leaders are similarly ‘guided’ including the war criminal Tony Blair.
The best the so-called liberal-democratic elite political bystanders such as those in America, Europe and Britain, could do during the time powerful Israel was raining high explosive blows on defenceless Gaza, was to urge them (as Obama did) not to retaliate in any way. The same people who have supplied military equipment, intelligence and personnel to Israel - knowing it will be used against Palestinians - unsurprisingly stood on the sidelines and did little or nothing positive. They are definitely the losers - even if they don‘t know it yet. The same politicians are being further exposed as such as they implement austerity measures to ensure that ordinary people in Europe and North America pay for the financial crisis created by their counter-parts in the public and shadow banking sector.
Finally, in the absence of direct support and through its continued collusion with the Zionist entity, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, following the ’Palestine Papers’ revelations, are also poised to be the losers. One can hardly see how they come out of recent events with anything other than serious loss of standing in the eyes of Palestinians. So for anyone freed from one-sided partisan blindness, or sectarian prejudice - with the exception of those solidarity groups and individuals who spoke out and demonstrated, - there have been no other winners except the Palestinian people themselves. Their complete victory is not as yet assured but the justice of their cause certainly is. And if we succeed in creating a truly positive humanity out of the coming turmoil’s, their homeland will eventually be re-instated.
Roy Ratcliffe. (November 2012.)
At a superficial level it may seem as if the Zionist-based colonialist entity called Israel won the just over a week-long war. After all with their superior weaponry and expertise funded and informed by North American and European military sources, they had incessantly pulverised Gaza from the air, from land and from sea - all in order to subdue them. The Nazis tried to do the same to London during the Second World War and also failed. It is a historical fact that you cannot easily subdue a people and their culture by aggressive and belligerent military destruction. In contrast to this latest incessant Israeli barrage only a very few of the Palestinian resistance forces rockets were able to avoid interception and do damage. For this reason, the military mentality of the Zionists and those who identify with them imagine they have won. But struggles are not always or entirely won by military means. There are other factors at work in the modern world.
One is the fact that the Palestinian David in Gaza, despite this month’s battle with the Goliath of Israel, continues to exist. For sixty years the Palestinians have resisted being entirely cleared off their land even though the Zionists have re-drawn their maps to remove the name ‘Palestine’ from the colonised territory. Through armed struggle and two Intifada’s, Palestinians have continually struggled to assert the moral and legal rights to exist and to their land. They have not been beaten into submission. Indeed, they continue to fight back in the only way they can with the only weapons they have - civil disobedience, peaceful demonstration and now rockets and guns. Of course, just to exist is to resist; but to resist with whatever weapons are available is to resist positively. In this sense the Palestinians have continued to win against the Zionist struggle to obliterate them - and this time in Gaza they have won that battle again.
But in an even greater sense the Zionist have lost! In fact they have been loosing the moral, intellectual and legal ground ever since the world awoke to what was really going on in former Palestine. When the Nakba became internationally recognised as the Zionist putsch instigating the colonialist land grab in 1948, the ‘facts on the ground‘ were matched by the 'facts in peoples heads' and printed in the historical records. The last two bombardments of Gaza, operation ‘Cast Lead’ in 2009 and operation ‘Pillar of Cloud’ in 2012 have demonstrated to the world the complete and utter inhumanity of the ideology of Zionism and the inhumanity of those Jewish nationalists who have failed to break decisively and completely with all it stands for. Israel is increasingly seen as a rogue nation and the majority of its people an anathema to all who do not directly benefit from its existence. As with all such elitist ideologies, humanity has nothing positive at all to learn from the example of Israel and the ideology of Zionism.
b) Who else won?
It was claimed by many commentators that Mohammed Morsi role as intermediary won him a spectacular level of respect from the world’s leaders. He was feted by Obama and his political coterie. But did he and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood really win much by this action? The best the newly elected Brotherhood leadership in Egypt could do to openly and practically support the people of Gaza, was to broker a cease fire. No other form of publicly declared practical help appeared to be given to those suffering the bombardment in Gaza. Were the borders opened to allow support to go in and non-combattants to escape destruction? And are eulogies from Obama, Clinton and any of the other European and North American political pirates of capital any form of useful endorsement for Morsi? I think not. Quite the opposite! And of course the resistance of Gaza was not only the work of Hamas, who played a considerable role, but of all non-betraying Palestinians, Christian, secular and Muslim.
If a gang of thugs were holding you down, squeezing your throat and punching you in the face you may well be glad when they stop hitting you in the face. You would nonetheless still want the thugs to stop strangling you. And you would hope that any sufficiently strong bystanders or so-called friends, would not only help you but would intervene and insist the thugs did exactly that. You would certainly not expect bystanders to urge you to stop struggling or to stand idly by and watch as did the western international community of Senior Politicians. Yet this may be exactly how many Palestinians in Gaza feel now the week-long bombardment from high-tech weaponry directed from land, air and sea by the armed Zionist state has ended. Punching Gaza in the face may have stopped for the moment, but the economic stranglehold on the lives of the people of Gaza remains as the despicable blockade initiated by Israel continues. So there still remains much to be done.
c) So who are the other losers?
It is obvious that the very many dead Palestinians in Gaza, the injured and the survivors who have lost their families and their homes are the losers in this tragic and brutal demonstration of Zionist inhumanity. In a direct physical sense this - and those blinded by Zionist loyalty and killed or injured in the struggle against the occupation of Palestinian land - is the greatest loss. Buildings can be replaced, at least if and when the Zionists allow building materials and machinery to be imported to Gaza. Human beings can not be replaced as easily. But of course deaths and missing limbs, are not the only losses in this latest battle. Further related non-physical losses have been demonstrated over this latest period of Zionist blitzkrieg. They are different from the loss of life, and have been losses we need not mourn. There has been a visible loss of respect, trust and integrity in the international political classes - of all political and religious denominations.
Apart from occasional hot-air rhetoric, and the odd visit, what have the Arab and Muslim leaders throughout the world done in a practical way to aid their co-religious counter-parts in Gaza or the West Bank? They have definitively not grabbed the chance to publicly do more during the bombing and shelling. And the recent self-elevation of Morsi to status of effective dictator in Egypt demonstrates that the ideology of Islam as with Judaism and Christianity is an ideology suitable and necessary to the respective governing classes. It is not enough for them to allow people to choose to be self-governed by the ‘book’, whether this is the Old Testament, the New Testament or the Qur’an. The people must be ruled by them and they mean to enforce their interpretation of social conformity through the coercion of the state. All the US war-mongering presidents have been devout Christians and the vast majority of European political leaders are similarly ‘guided’ including the war criminal Tony Blair.
The best the so-called liberal-democratic elite political bystanders such as those in America, Europe and Britain, could do during the time powerful Israel was raining high explosive blows on defenceless Gaza, was to urge them (as Obama did) not to retaliate in any way. The same people who have supplied military equipment, intelligence and personnel to Israel - knowing it will be used against Palestinians - unsurprisingly stood on the sidelines and did little or nothing positive. They are definitely the losers - even if they don‘t know it yet. The same politicians are being further exposed as such as they implement austerity measures to ensure that ordinary people in Europe and North America pay for the financial crisis created by their counter-parts in the public and shadow banking sector.
Finally, in the absence of direct support and through its continued collusion with the Zionist entity, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, following the ’Palestine Papers’ revelations, are also poised to be the losers. One can hardly see how they come out of recent events with anything other than serious loss of standing in the eyes of Palestinians. So for anyone freed from one-sided partisan blindness, or sectarian prejudice - with the exception of those solidarity groups and individuals who spoke out and demonstrated, - there have been no other winners except the Palestinian people themselves. Their complete victory is not as yet assured but the justice of their cause certainly is. And if we succeed in creating a truly positive humanity out of the coming turmoil’s, their homeland will eventually be re-instated.
Roy Ratcliffe. (November 2012.)
Roy Ratcliffe
e-mail:
royratcliffe@yahoo.com
Homepage:
www.critical-mass.net
Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
Win or lose?
24.11.2012 20:13
Ahmed Khaled Durghmush - Missile attack on 14th, died on 18th.
al-Doula massacre. Eleven from one family dead 18th November.
To be identified. Probably killed on 19/20 November.
The culprits.
Just going along with it by writing in these terms is a crime in itself.
Justice for the victims.
anonymous
The ultimate winner- not us.
25.11.2012 19:05
This argument has one fatal flaw. The monsters measure their success in terms of an ultimate victory.
Since WW2, the march of technology has provided Mankind with weapons (and the means to deliver them) that can totally eliminate population clusters of any size, anywhere on the planet, with only one exception. That exception, of course, is for the tiny number of people who will be living in very deep bunkers at the time of any strike.
These modern genocidal weapons began with chemical warheads (ineffective), and then evolved to include an incredible array of nuclear bombs, and biological agents. When Tony Blair first came to power, his main goal was to create the global circumstances where research and development of genocidal weapon systems would be massively accelerated. Today, he and his foundations continue with this agenda.
Meantime, the rise of the police state, all-encompassing surveillance, and complete dominance of the mass media, allows for a massive shift in the ways people think and perceive the world.
The people of Britain, for instance, can be told that a massive database keeping detailed information on all their children has been rolled out in secret in the UK, with access granted to any groups or people the elite consider useful- and the parents express not one word of concern. Teachers in Academy Schools are paid to enter data about their pupils multiple times PER DAY, providing potential future 'Jimmy Savile's with the most resource for choosing and targeting vulnerable children, and no-one even thinks of protesting.
It has been revealed (like these things ever remain secret) that the recent holocaust in Gaza was actually an American action, under the direct control of Obama, using his proxy forces in Israel. The 'war' started at Obama's explicit command, and ended the same way. Obama has been at the forefront of opposition to Palestinians receiving any recognition at the UN, and has explicitly stated that these "sub-Humans" will never gain political rights while he is in power. Recall that the entire US Senate, with no exceptions, passed a resolution loudly praising the recent holocaust in Gaza, expressing the heartfelt desire that it would not end until every aspect of Gaza's infrastructure had been destroyed. It is not as if these people even need to hide their evil these days.
The end game, for Blair and those he works with, is global suicide. Firstly, the most powerful Human population groups on the planet need to be conditioned to accept the unacceptable, through methods that people like George Orwell warned the world about after his experience with Fabians and 'Communists' (or more correctly, the monsters behind the Communist movements).
Gaza is part of this, but in many devious ways. For the people of the West, Gaza is designed to teach people that the leaders of the West are entitled to act like the worst child-abusing serial killer, and that all the mainstream media organisations will daily praise these 'leaders' and their vile methods. People who dare to speak out against this evil are to be labeled as deviants, radicals, racists, terrorists, etc.
Online, even in forums, the discussion about Israeli crimes against Humanity is now heavily suppressed. Why? Because over and over, organised zionist extremists have attacked these forums with 'race-baiting'. The attacks are always well co-ordinated, with some zionists using 'flooding', some using 'derailing', some using 'sock-puppet' discussions, and some baiting the decent posters with constant sniping designed to carefully remain within the rules of the forum, so that responses to the 'baiting' can lead to bans.
Most forums (even the honest ones) give up in disgust, either effectively banning discussion of Israeli warcrimes, or creating 'ghetto' sub-forums where such discussions can be safely buried.
Where people still manage to gather and oppose the evil actions of the West, they find themselves targeted by the ever growing state security services. Agent provocateurs, armed with videos showing Israeli or NATO 'soldiers' raping Muslim women or torturing Muslim children to death, attempt to instigate 'violent' plots by those sickened and outraged by what they are shown. These patsies, usually mentally ill or educationally 'sub-normal', are trained and armed by agents of the state, and then 'busted' in a massive media frenzy.
The families and communities around these 'plotters' can then be subject to massive oppression and abuse, dissuading most ordinary members of these communities from further 'legal political protests.
This is the issue when you ask "winners or losers". All across our planet, the standard of living for ordinary people is rising. People have better lives, and more fun options for enjoying these lives. However, the same technological advancements that make this true also change the ability of ordinary people to have a greater say in the direction their lives will take.
As Man lives longer, healthier, and has more toys to play with, and more means to communicate with other people, the Elites grow ever more powerful. It is as if Mankind is invited to return to The Garden of Eden, at the cost of accepting evil gods in complete control of Man's destiny.
"Do not think, do not question, do not organise." Go along with these commands and you had better be bloody certain about the motivations of those that rule you.
If you say "there is always going to be a bastard in charge, so I'm going to enjoy my new iPhone and to hell with the Gaza strip" you are nothing more than a steer in a long line of cattle waiting for their turn in the slaughter house. Evil has a purpose, and that purpose is the elimination of thinking life at its own hand. At least cattle are not responsible for the existence of the slaughter houses in which they will be butchered. Ordinary people, on the other hand, proudly design and build the very things required to exterminate themselves, while the Elites wallow in luxury giving the orders.
The propaganda messages most commonly repeated in the mainstream media ALWAYS predict future events. You are being told over and over that NOW is the time to begin using nuclear weapons again, and that the first target is Iran. After this line is crossed, we will truly be at the beginning of the end. Luckily for most of you, Apple will have a new iPhone out at that time to allow you to better discuss the latest happenings on 'reality' TV with your friends.
luke
Luke...I am your father!
26.11.2012 01:48
I think Israel is just failing...thats all.
It was never right to start with!
anonymous
we demand
26.11.2012 12:44
Dabka not Debka
non hasbarats