THE SIEGE OF RAFAH AS A GEOPOLITICAL EVENT
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What has been going on in the last few days in and around Rafah is not a radical change in the situation, it just made the political background of the catastrophe a little more visible. The Israeli PM Netanyahu is increasingly humiliating Biden openly - recently he said: "Those who say that under no circumstances should we enter Rafah are basically saying lose the war.”[1] One speaks like this to his enemies… How can Netanyahu treat Israel’s principle ally like this? It is not enough to evoke the strength of the Israeli lobby in the US: something more is at stake. In spite of all verbal critiques of Israel, the US government ultimately supports the goals of Israeli politics.
As expected, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a criminal convicted for racism who now serves as the minister for national security in Israel, thereby “fostering a gang ethos from within the halls of power,”[2] went a step further in a recent interview to the Wall Street Journal: “Instead of giving us full backing, Biden is busy giving humanitarian aid and fuel to Gaza, which goes to Hamas. If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different.”[3] As expected, the Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid tweeted: “The interview Ben Gvir gave to the Wall Street Journal is direct damage to Israel’s international standing, direct damage to the war effort, harms the security of Israel and mostly proves that he doesn’t understand anything in foreign diplomacy”[4] – note that there are no moral qualms in this critique, just pure pragmatic considerations. Not “what IDF is doing is a war crime,” but “what some ministers are saying hurts Israel’s international standing”…
Ben-Gvir also demanded that the army shoot Palestinian women and children in the Gaza Strip to protect the Israeli forces: “There cannot be a situation in which children and women approach us from the wall. Anyone who approaches in order to harm security must receive a bullet, otherwise we will see October 7 again.”[5] Again, this statement cannot be dismissed as a mere rhetorical exaggeration of an extremist lunatic – it provides justifications for what regularly happens on the ground. Enough to recall the fate of the six-year-old Hind Rajab who, on January 29, had been traveling in a car with her uncle, his wife and their four children, fleeing the fighting in northern Gaza, when they came under Israeli fire, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS). After two weeks, they were all found killed by the Israeli Army. The PRCS also confirmed the death of two ambulance workers dispatched to rescue the girl. An IDF unit deliberately targeted the Red Crescent crew despite obtaining prior coordination to allow the ambulance to reach the location to rescue the girl. When contacted again by CNN, the IDF said they were “still looking into it.”[6]
As a comment, on cannot but quote Owen Jones: ”Just imagine we had the recording of a six-year-old Israeli girl, desperately ringing the emergency services after Hamas militants slaughtered her relatives in a car, including three other kids. Imagine we also had a prior recording of her fifteen-year-old cousin, desperately pleading for help, before you hear her being violently murdered by Hamas gunfire. Imagine then an Israeli ambulance sent to rescue this little girl was then blown up by Hamas militants, killing both paramedics. What would be the response? You know what the response would be. It would be offered up as evidence of the supreme evil and barbarism of Hamas. We would be told it showed they’re worse than the Nazis. It would also be offered up as justification for the need to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth.”[7]
Three radical conclusions are to be drawn from all that has been said and done by Israeli politicians and the IDF. First, people like Ben Gvir (and Smotrich and…) are not just a crazy minority of fundamentalist radicals: even if they are often mocked by the Israeli establishment, their stance determines the actual politics of the State of Israel. To put it bluntly, the silent majority is behind them, all they really want is the job of ethnic cleansing to be done more discreetly.
Second, the mantra we were hearing all the time after October 7 - that the Hamas attack should not in any way be relativized, that it was an act of unprovoked, pure evil - has lost all its credibility. What Israel is doing now in Gaza is a crime which cannot be justified as an act of defense. It should be judged as an act of its own, in exactly the same way that the Nazi Holocaust and the October 7 Hamas attack should be judged. And Palestinians now have the full right to fight back in exactly the same way Israel had the right to counterattack Hamas. Israel itself gave them this right with the manner of its “defence” (or, in Putin’s words, of its “special military operation”).
Third, what is now dying in the ruins of Gaza is nothing less than the European idea of universal emancipation. With its self-humiliating servitude to the US and to Israel, Europe put the last nail into the coffin where its emancipatory legacy will be buried. Donald Trump recently said that he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” if it attacked a NATO country. Instead of reacting to these words with dismay, we Europeans should rather ponder the possibility that we deserve this fate.
[1] Netanyahu ahead of Rafah ground invasion: 'Victory is within reach' - ABC News (go.com).
[2] Israel's Ben-Gvir Is Fostering a Gang Ethos From Within the Halls of Power - Haaretz Editorial - Haaretz.com.
[3] Bar-Raving Time! - The Promised Podcast (tlv1.fm).
[4] Lapid, Gantz slam Ben Gvir for his comments on Biden: 'Harming war effort' | The Times of Israel.
[5] US wary Ben Gvir could inflame tensions at Temple Mount over Ramadan -- officials | The Times of Israel.
[6] Five-year-old Palestinian girl found dead after being trapped in car under Israeli fire | CNN.
I have no words to adequately express my horror and outrage. As a Jew, it is impossible not to feel responsible. I don't know what to do other than to continue to speak out and attend protests. NOT IN MY NAME!
It's also worth noting the continued crisis of democracy this US policy represents. There have been in the span of just a few months to massive, historic demonstrations on Washington DC, each time with hundreds of thousands of participants including myself, demanding an end to us support for this ethnic cleansing. These protests rivaled those opposing George Bush's surge of the year 2007. But the will of many millions of Americans is not being heated.