Steve_Bamlett_blog

As Israeli forces mount their early scoping attacks on Rafah that will lead to the death of vast numbers of displaced Gazans, asked to move there by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who can teach Donald Trump how to defend himself against a proven case for corruption and abuses of power leads the defence now of genocide in the name of anti-terrorist action. It will lead too to the death of the remaining hapless Jewish hostages so wickedly offered by terrorist HAMAS forces as a pretext for Netanyahu to fulfill his dream. But Hamas is what it is. It is not the force for danger and destabilisation that is an Israeli State as the right wing and Netanyahu in particular want Israel to be. Thus, Israeli weapons (provided in all probability by the USA or GB) will fulfill the wish of this warrior, who has traded on his youthful military charisma in the IDF, for achieving a ‘final solution’ to the Arab claims to have a home in the lands it occupied in peace with many nations for so long.

Netanyahu’s history, as he sells it, is of a courageous, charismatic military commander on the ground.

Israel has substantial nuclear military weaponry too. We should not dismiss the fact that it claims a right to use these against the wishes of its allies in the West. Netanyahu remains the smiling apologist of actions against those not guilty of action against Israel. Meanwhile the West worries that the International War Crimes in the attack on Gaza might be recognised, as it continues to appease Israeli war power as it treads, it thinks subtly, to its declared purpose, the removal of Gaza as a ground in which it thinks Hamas grows.

We need to ignore the many organised voices fuelled from Israel that it is antisemitic to criticise Israel or its chief voice of military power used against citizens of a culture or ethnicity or ‘race’ considered secondary by that state and made secondary by its historic and present laws and internal practices. Even Eurovision is a tool for this purpose, drenched in MOSSAD support and the language of ‘soft intelligence’ that has made the politics of every liberal nation fearful that the condemnation of military adventure by Israel is, by definition, antisemitic.

Let’s be clear, antisemitism is a horrible crime but it is not about one’s support for a Israeli military clearing itself of responsibility of international law except by its own biased interpretations (rejecting as it does those of much of the rest of the world). Indeed, openly fascist groups seek to be primary in counter-demonstrations to people appalled by genocidal actions in Gaza. Tommy Robinson defended his right successfully to do that very thing in British courts. It is not that Netanyahu is like Hitler but that the ideology of racial defence is merely an inversion of that monstrous example without the hindsight that shows its evil. I have no doubt that Israelis feel that must defend themselves, and agree they should. But there are other ways of creating a defence for a people. They must involve a rebuilding of a new and more open state in the Middle East not defined by race and enforced by race-based law making.

The chances of such a thing lessen daily. Meanwhile, the West looks to its economic interests, not to any humanitarian guide. It speaks of defending Israeli democracy without conceding that majorities for the status quo were created by racially-engineered immigration and housing (and dispossession) legislation. It continues to ignore the right of Palestinians to find a home  of which they can’t be dispossessed. Gaza is a kind of allegory. Make an area umlivable for Palestinians, urge, by force of deafly bombs, movement on from it, and then attack the very places you urged movement onto. We end up with Rafah about to be the last place to be dispossessed, with a people urged to return to an area they were told to leave earlier – now bombed into an arena rich only in.potential for the starvation of a group Israel thinks it would be better without. The Rafah crossings for FOOD AID are closed. A tank has rolled over the words ‘I love Gaza’ in footage seen worldwide that must have been provided by the Israeli military.

Do you remember this 8 year old boy. He was shot running away from an IDF soldier. The minister of the government said on the BBC: ‘ 8-year-old boys can be terrorists too’.

It is this case in particular where the International Criminal Court (ICC) wants to press a first charge of war crimes. Meanwhile Western governments, and spineless oppositions in the form of Keir Starmer, think it ‘impolitic’. It should be clear now that what the West wants is the genocide to be called off but only when the Israeli state and IDF considers it ‘complete’a job done’. It will then rush in aid to survivors and help in the reconstructive Israeli resettlement of Gaza. The West Bank will be next. But who listens to them, or Jordan.

Their are many brave Jewish people who say this too and themselves get called traitors and self-oppressed antisemites. Netanyahu ought to be isolated. Why isn’t he? What a world!

Children in a damaged building in Rafah, Gaza Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock available: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/14/dont-look-left-by-atef-abu-saif-review-in-the-line-of-fire

All my love

Steven xxxxxx