Chosen hope over fear

OBAMA-hypeology

 

“Chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord”, “Harnessing the sun and wind and soil”.. and for sure other Obama soundbites will enter the lexicon as the craftily designed inauguration speech gets analysed to death. How to say a lot of things, move people towards optimism and hope, yet not lay on too much for people to bite you in 3-4 years time as the realities of the world’s problems set in.

 

We all live in hope that tomorrow, next year, 5 year’s time will always be better. But the values that remain is of how we touch the hearts of others, and of that I have been a terrible failure to myself in my lifetime and moreso in my adult life. But the thought processes of leaders, particularly the great ones who could mobilise the masses to believe, and to bring forward the collective issues in their own voice, is a model for others to emulate.

 

We all can build our opinions, with hindsight, based on the mistakes of others, but those were judgments they had made within their circumstances. Of greater value is the ability to extend the same lines of reasoning to the future and choose our path, the best path for us and those we want to be with. That is a trait difficult to obtain and carries the risk of creating more bystanders instead of those partaking in the forging of the path to tread. Obama has chosen his way.. and our greatest hope is that he does not fall by the wayside too early. Pak Lah had a similar effect, though perhaps not in scale, when he took over from Tun, but 6 years on, he moves on with a whimper, generally with some sympathy at his inability to stamp his personality and character onto his political support, and in some cases reviled as the guy who brought shame to UMNO.

 

All this is well and good, but what can I use for my takeaway? A better adab when addressing people, including those of my kith and kin, and a greater sensitivity towards decision making when faced with life’s intersections.

 

Everton fallout

Firstly, good for Kaka to reject Mansour’s millions – money isn’t and cant buy everything. And it takes a devout Brazilian Christian raised in poverty to remind an Arabian billionaire that. Now if only he can donate the money towards reconstruction of Gaza and Palestine, I’m sure Gaza’s GDP is equivalent to that obscene amount for a footballer.

 

Secondly, MU has gone top, Chelsea is slowly turning things around and we’re still drawing games. Fans are getting anxious about the way things are going on and off the pitch, Chelsea, Villa and Arsenal are closing in, and not only are we falling off the top to MU (of all things), we’ll have to contend with the new, increased threats. I’ll support Rafa, though he has done many good things, not sure if his mind games are that good though although it was a valiant effort to take on all-comers – SAF, G&H, Parry et al. Now if only we can focus on regaining the early season and the first half form against Hull and Newcastle where we looked every bit as title contenders. In the meantime, I’ll have a lot of anxiety watching things unfold. I remember coming back from Hajj and seeing in the papers we had a chance to win the EPL in 2002 until that defeat to Spurs, and feeling a bit guilty that Liverpool playing many miles away is still a concern despite just coming hope from Mekah.

 

But, I do choose hope over fear.

 

self-reflection

There are occasions, like now, where I feel like I’m drifting, unsure of life’s priorities, unsure of where I’m heading. It includes a sense of guilt at expectations unmet, aspirations unachieved and hopes dashed. It includes the feeling of unresolved personal relationships, including of those close to me within my own family, of my mum, my wife and childred, my sisters, and my late father, those then closer, my in-laws, those through my own marriage or through my siblings, and others related to me. Those among my friends who I fail to endear myself to, whether they be in good health, or not as in Aman Firdaus’ case, and whether I have responded justly to those that I know, or those I have yet to know.

 

All this seems to point to me leaving behind an agenda, frequently dubbed in sort of secret code, “Sebuah Agenda Perjuangan”. It’s a simple concept, and it consists of several life creed that we live with and die for. Not having this means a life tortured by meaningless meanderings, of uncertainties. For a while, early in my twenties, I grasped the concept. Then I let it go when I could not find the balance between what is right and what is necessarily pragmatic. And thence starts the cycle that I need to break free from.

 

Living for something means I am able to overcome hardship in the form of mental fortitude when people start throwing dirt and shit at you for what you hold dear. It comes in the shape of rising above the stupid and the crass, the bitchy and the intolerant, and preaching the language of peace while maintaining the direction of truth and good. It is easy to speak in these terms, but without a built-in intrinsic moral compass to dissect what is right or wrong, we may forever end up going in cycles.

 

Interpersonal skills are indispensable. Being respectful, maintaining good relations, being courteous, curious and without a trace of an arrogant air, while being assertive should be an everyday habitual occurrence. Being respectful of others should not mean replacing respect for my own self. Stand my ground on things which I feel is right, stop asking for directions at every intersection, but start pointing out directions.

 

Why Israel's war is driven by fear

This was spotted on the guardian.co.uk site and I thought you should see it.

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Israel and Jews double speak. Who has control of the media controls issues and society's talking points of the day. Who undertands this better than the Jews?
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To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/11/gaza-israel-political-attitudes

Why Israel's war is driven by fear
Outrage at Israeli actions has mounted across the world as the Gaza conflict goes on. But as Israel expands its military action, support for the aggressive strategy is growing, while sympathy for Palestinians is receding. And, with an election looming, political attitudes are hardening
Chris McGreal at the Gaza border
Sunday January 11 2009
The Observer

Yeela Raanan says she would prefer not to know about the war in Gaza. She doesn't want to see the pictures of dead children cut down by Israeli shells or read of the allegations of war crimes by her country's army as it kills Palestinians by the hundreds.

But there is no escape. Raanan can hear the relentless Israeli bombardment by air, sea and land from her home, just three miles from the Gaza border. Hamas rockets keep hitting her community. And somewhere in the maelstrom of Gaza, her 20-year-old son is serving as an Israeli soldier.

"I'd rather not know. I can't do anything about it. We didn't see the pictures of the Palestinian kids who were killed. It's easier not to feel," she said. "I just turn on the news for five minutes a day and that's it, just to see if anybody says anything about my kid."

But when Raanan thinks about her son - whom she prefers not to name - she also thinks about Palestinian mothers and their sons in Gaza. And that's when she finds her herself out of sync with the neighbours. "I don't talk to the neighbours about it any more," she said. "Hamas is violent. Hamas is stupid. I don't like what they are. But I don't feel angry towards them. I understand why they were elected, I understand why they act as they do."

Attempting to understand has earned Raanan, a former operations officer in the Israeli air force, denunciations as a traitor and accusations of "selling her nation to the devil". Doesn't she love her son?, they ask.

The world has reeled in horror at revelations of Israeli atrocities as the Palestinian death toll has climbed toward 800. The International Red Cross was so outraged it broke its usual silence over an attack in which the Israeli army herded a Palestinian family into a building and then shelled it, killing 30 people and leaving the surviving children clinging to the bodies of their dead mothers. The army prevented rescuers from reaching the survivors for four days.

Israel's shelling of a UN school that had been turned into a refugee centre near Gaza city, killing 42 people who had fled the fighting, drew further accusations of indifference to civilian lives. And Israel has struggled to justify the eradication of entire families, including small children, in pursuit of Hamas officials.

But ordinary Israelis have been told little about this and when they are they generally brush it aside with assertions that it is sad but Hamas has brought it on the Palestinian people. Israel is the real victim, they say. The mainstream Israeli press has stuck firmly to the official line that it is a war of defence, a moral conflict forced on Israel by Hamas rocket fire.

The scale of Palestinian civilian casualties is played down. The dead are overwhelmingly described as terrorists. The accounts of entire Palestinian families being wiped out are buried beneath stories of the Israeli trauma at Hamas attacks.

"The news said the Israeli army had killed 100 'terrorists' and also a bomb fell and 40 lost their lives," said Raanan about the shelling of the UN school. "That was more or less the rhetoric that was used, so the focus was on the fact that we had managed to kill terrorists rather than we had also killed 40 other people. We weren't told who they were." There are alternative voices in the press, but they are mostly dismissed or shouted down. Israeli Arabs who protested against the war have been arrested for undermining national morale. Television anchormen berate critics of the onslaught on Gaza, questioning their patriotism.

The paradox of Israel is that most of its citizens tell the pollsters they agree with Raanan and the peace lobby that there should be a negotiated agreement of the establishment of a Palestinian state. But a significant number of Israelis now question whether this is possible. They view the continued conflict after Ariel Sharon pulled Jewish settlers and the military out of Gaza in 2005 as evidence that Arabs don't want peace; that giving up territory does not bring security.

Support for the vague notion of peace has been further buried under the rhetoric of the looming Israeli election, where the right in particular, led by a former prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is playing on fear of a nuclear Iran in league with Hamas. Netanyahu, who is likely to win the 10 February ballot, has no intention of dismantling settlements or relinquishing the control that Israel exercises over the lives of Palestinians on the West Bank. He dances around the issue of a Palestinian state and has made clear in the past that what he wants to see amounts to a canton or bantustan (homeland) surrounded by Israeli control.

And so the vast number of mainstream Israelis, while saying they support peace, once again find themselves in bed with the settlers and on the side of oppression. "I hate to say we told you so," said Yisrael Medad, a prominent Jewish settler from Shilo, deep inside the West Bank. "Now you hear all the time that it was a mistake to pull out of Gaza. You hear it on the television when it was never discussed before. More of the anchors are willing to ask that question. They would never ask that a year or two ago. They used to say ours was the extreme view. Now I would say that it's the mainstream, that no matter what we have done territorially speaking it's not going to satisfy them [the Palestinians]. They are always going to attack us."

The settlers might be an extreme minority, but their views as to why Israeli soldiers are fighting in Gaza are not exceptional. Raanan lives in Ein Habsor, a moshav or cooperative agricultural community of about 1,000 people. It suffers regular hits from Hamas rockets. "In the last few days we've had two a day. In the vicinity. A couple inside. Close enough that it could have been your house," she said. No one was hurt but a student at the nearby Sapir college, where Raanan teaches public policy and administration, was killed by a Hamas rocket in February. Roni Yechiah, a 47-year-old father of four, died after the missile hit the car park.

About a quarter of the families in Ein Habsor have left. "They didn't so much go because of the rockets. It was because of the war and being really scared. They closed the schools. Those with little kids have mostly gone," said Raanan. It's not an atmosphere in which to question whether Israeli troops should be in Gaza. Most of the residents of Ein Habsor see the assault as a straightforward and necessary response to Hamas rockets, uncomplicated by issues such as occupation or the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

But Raanan does question. She wants to see a government willing to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians, and she takes the view that just because Israel is strong enough to get one over on the Palestinians, that does not mean that it is in its interests to do so. Raanan also wants other Israelis to understand what the Palestinians are suffering. "My moshav is quite right-wing," she said. "They believe in using power and they don't particularly like Arabs. I don't talk to my neighbours much about these things.

"If you do open your heart to the fact that 40 completely innocent people in a United Nations school were killed you have a very hard time. It's difficult to open your heart to that place and also hold on to wanting the soldiers to succeed. It's a very hard split in personality. I think it's necessary but it's a difficult thing to do." Raanan says Israelis have dehumanised Palestinians to such an extent that they are no longer sensitive about who they kill. "It's so difficult for them to put themselves in the place of someone who lives in Gaza. I guess you have to be able to dehumanise to be able to accept this type of war," she said.

"Israelis think of Hamas as a terrorist group and therefore anything we do to Hamas is OK. But the question is, why do we think it's OK also to kill civilians while we're killing or destroying Hamas? We rationalise; they do it to their own people. That's the rhetoric in Israel. It makes it OK to do what we're doing. In Israel we're brought up to be afraid of Arabs. It's a short step to hating them. It's unusual for people not to have hostile feelings toward Arabs, and it's racist feelings because it's a whole group."

In Shilo, Medad finds himself in agreement with Raanan on one thing. He sees Israeli public opinion as increasingly indifferent to Palestinian suffering. But he says it is because of foreign criticism of Israel's actions. "With the harshness of the criticism, they're slowly but surely turning off more Israelis to elements of humanity, consideration, so eventually they say: who the hell cares?" he said. "We don't see the human face. In that situation we can do anything we want. There's a lack of identity of who the enemy is. He's not human any more."

You might not know there was a war on while visiting Jerusalem's restaurants, Tel Aviv's frantic bars or the Azrieli shopping centre. The mall is one of the largest in Israel. Next door is the Kirya military headquarters, which houses Israel's defence ministry and the country's top military officers. The two buildings are linked by a bridge.

Through the Gaza war, Israel has accused Hamas of endangering civilians by establishing military installations in populated areas. It has been a central justification by the army for the killing of Palestinian civilians. The shoppers at the Azrieli mall see no contradiction between that claim and Israel building its defence headquarters next door to a shopping centre. "They might have a point if they attacked it," said Yoni Ahren, a computer engineer sipping coffee. "But they don't. Instead they send suicide bombers to blow us up in the mall. The Palestinians set out to kill any Jew. The Israeli army sets out to kill Hamas and, yes, innocent Palestinians get killed. But that is not why the army is in Gaza."

A soldier with Ahren, who declined to be identified because he was in uniform, said the Palestinians brought it on themselves. "They voted for Hamas and then Hamas attacked Israel so it's their problem," he said. "I don't know if this [attack on Gaza] will solve anything. Probably not. We cannot get rid of Hamas. But the lesson we've learnt is that we can't trust the Palestinians. We knew that with Arafat. Now we know it again."

That is the upside of the conflict in Gaza for Medad. He believes it could help assure the future of the West Bank settlements by reminding Israelis that control over what Israelis call Judea and Samaria is what keeps Hamas rockets from falling on Tel Aviv. "Things are changing. It's Gaza that's changed things," he said.

Shilo sits alongside the main road from Ramallah to Nablus, a long way from the "security barrier" Israel has built through the West Bank and Jerusalem. Shilo's residents are religious and mostly assert Israel's claim to all of the territory west of the Jordan river. A Palestinian presence is tolerated at best.

When Ariel Sharon pulled Jewish settlers out of Gaza in 2005, he called it a painful sacrifice for peace. Another view was that he had run out of political options and the pull-out was a way to stave off international pressure to talk to the Palestinians. What the dismantling of the Gaza settlements did not do was end the expansion of colonies on the West Bank. Shilo has grown by about 25% since 2005. The "outposts" around it, which are illegal even under Israeli law, have been expanding so fast that the "Shilo block", with about 10,000 residents, is now as large as the main settlement that was dismantled in Gaza.

Most Israelis tell the pollsters they would sacrifice Shilo for peace. But influential voices are against it, among them the man tipped to be Netanyahu's defence minister. Moshe "Bogie" Yaalon, the former military commander in the West Bank, pressed the government for months to attack Gaza, and is against a withdrawal from the West Bank.

Medad is confident that Yaalon's views will prevail. "If you don't have control over a population, you suffer. You want to call it occupation... fine. But there has to be some sort of control, supervision," he said. Yaalon recently asked: "What is the big difference between Gaza and Judea and Samaria - Judea and Samaria we can go in at night, we know where they are, and pick them up. In Gaza we can't do that."

It is a view largely shared by Netanyahu, who has called for the assault on Gaza to be carried through until it forces Hamas from power. Most Israelis may not want to go as far as Netanyahu, but he remains ahead in the polls. Even on the left, attitudes have hardened. Support for Ehud Barak, the Labour party leader and defence minister, has risen sharply because of the assault on Gaza.

Jeff Halper, a veteran peace campaigner, says this is further evidence that Israeli public opinion is principally shaped by fear. "The Israeli public is being held hostage by its own leadership," he said. "This whole idea there's no partner for peace has been internalised by Israelis. Everything has been reduced in Israel to terrorism because Israel has eliminated the political context of occupation and claims it only wants peace and has made generous offers and the Arabs always reject them."

"Seventy per cent of Israeli Jews say they don't want the occupation. They would be happy with the two-state solution. But what they say to us is: 'You don't have to talk to me about peace, I want peace. The Arabs won't let us because the Arabs are just terrorists.' There is in Israel a deeply held assumption that Arabs are our permanent enemies."

Raanan hopes not. She is counting the days until the Gaza assault is over and her son is pulled out. But the personal trauma will not be over if and when that happens. Her second son is due to be called up in six months. The way things are, he could be following his brother into Gaza.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2009

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Despicable human traits: Israel, Singapore and Karpal

There are some human traits that are so abhorrent to others, arrogance, bullying and oneupsmanship. It’s a trait that Israel displays since time immemorial, and allied with their incessant lies and hypocrisy of shouting “help, I’m victimized” even when they wallop other deprived, impoverished and destitute people into humiliation physically, after finding that doing so mentally isn’t sufficient through their proxy administration in the refugee camp they call Palestinian land in Gaza and the West Bank, it is no wonder how much despise they are despised. And this hatred extends to those who show a willingness to back them, and that includes the ever-present neo-cons in all US administrations, inadvertently exposed in the Bush administration due to his clumsy leadership and persona.

 

Singapore has imported this trait, evident in their ‘kiasu’-ness, give no quarter, expect no quarter attitude to their closest neighbours. Was Dr M right when he employed a particularly aggressive foreign policy relationchip with Singapore? Only time will tell. Singapore does not care for history and cordial relations, they care about the present, and their continuing dominating (and overbearing) presence in the future. If it’s to the detriment of their neighbours, so be it. This lack of charm can be attributed to their single-mindedness to achieve comfort and standing toe-to-toe with the rest of the developed world, a good virtue on its own, but when it comes with a disregard for others, you might as well leave them alone in their quest, but the simmering discontent can easily spill over to anger.

 

Karpal Singh from DAP is yet another. LGE has perhaps distanced himself with the old guards in DAP, perhaps with a greater appreciation of the sensitivities of the diversity we have in Malaysia. But Karpal continues to talk from his excreta when dealing with Malays. Perhaps, it was lost in the media translation. Perhaps it was just political positioning for his constituencies. But, it has been too consistently done for him to be excused. If you fail to recognize that you are now leading a multi-racial Malaysia, with a very sensitive Malay race as its majority, but continuously try to ignore the leanings of many highly educated Malay professionals who form thought leadership within the Malay community who wants Islam to play a major role in dictating their lives, ie to have hudud implemented in some form, then you are not fit to become a leader.

 

Sorry, Karpal, you will have to go. If you don’t understand this, please, I urge you as you have urged others before this, resign and let others who have greater appreciation of the multiple polarities of their various constituencies lead. You are just too old and useless.

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Most Malays I met expressed sorrow at happenings in Gaza. Given our
continuing inertia and apathy at issues such as baby-killers, new year
orgies, Mat Rempits, to expect the emotions felt at an individual level
to be translated to collective action expected of a civil society may be
too much. The happenings in Gaza may not be sufficient 'shock therapy'
for M-A-L-A-Y-S-I-A-N-S, things are just too far away from KL's
'kedamaian abadi Al-Shafie'.

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To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go
to http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the
Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its
merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions
Avi Shlaim
Wednesday January 7 2009
The Guardian

The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through
understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel
in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British
officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the
infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign
secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the
creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of
leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's
vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's
complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the
mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of
Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist
colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had
very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial
expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent
political, economic and military control over the Palestinian
territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and
brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy
of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into
a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources,
Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case
of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate
de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of
Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of
cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of
local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the
Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the
economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial
era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and
an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of
exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish
settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local
residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the
arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by
jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population
lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them
still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip
remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to
resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a
unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and
destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic
resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the
Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli
Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza
as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the
year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further
reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing
and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it
chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders
of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West
Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude
to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further
Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move
undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli
national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the
Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a
long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent
political existence on their land.

Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to
control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was
converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the
Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make
sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to
terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of
authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done
anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal
to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with
reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite
all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only
genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of
Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative
Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led
government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically
elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist
organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and
demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by
withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus
developed with a significant part of the international community
imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the
occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed
for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently
purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they
reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is
little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious
fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple
truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal
aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other
national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to
call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political
programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism
of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a
two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national
unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with
Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that
included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival
Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the
nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement
led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and
pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and
recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in
the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling
was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and
in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah
coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination
of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In
a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian
people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared
aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until
its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared
aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world
simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for
independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general
election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the
election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to
prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit
to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on
their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon
in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and
impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from
President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush
readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas,
vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire
and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian
aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves
little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a
conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been
inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily
armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute
military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of
victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness.
In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and
shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict.
Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an
unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak -
terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam
rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza
until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused
by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is
immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government.
Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but
its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally
disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years
after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire.
On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in
Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to
Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of
unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza.
Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came
into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a
violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any
exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord,
leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1%
of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted
drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas
canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical
supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the
civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the
border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of
collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international
humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of
its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza,
Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages
of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire
agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population;
and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent
civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in
getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack
of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric
of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire.
It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men.
Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the
eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people
against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians,
Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old
blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to
the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But
Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an
eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of
more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet
ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are
incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket
attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and
destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their
resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that
glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution
to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's
concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security
to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is
not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly
declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the
Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years.
Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab
League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves
concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it
difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with
"an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually
violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and
practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for
political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap
fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence
with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps
compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones.
Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies
and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

? Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University
of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and
of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2009

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Curses on Israel and Bush!

Last Christmas I posted a somewhat admiring stance on the Jews money-making chicanery capability, even to their extent of swindling. Since then, there have been various happenings in Gaza, and I hold my hands up in utter embarrassment at having even a hint of admiration for such an abominable group of people. The Jews will always be a group of people who live by their own laws, outside of the global community, living by their own standards and waiting for their destiny to rule the world by decree from their God above.

It’s this mindset that has spawned the Zionist movement, which set in motion the political machinery of corrupt British Empire politicians to overrun land owned by domiciled Palestinians on the flimsiest of excuses, that this is their ancestral land of long ago. Having attained this objective by force, they then set out manipulating political lobbies of major powers able to offer them aircover, and idiotic unthinking US Presidents such as Bush winning electoral votes from idiotic unthinking electorates.

As their economic and military strength grows, and the Palestinians slowly strangled in a living hell by blocking all means of economic development, ignoring democratic processes which voted in Hamas into the Palestinian power, attempting to gain the upper hand in all negotiations - if it can be called that, the notion of kiasu-ness for Singaporeans have had their origins in the political thought of this Jewish state - they then justify their actions, again with the flimsiest of reasons.

Rockets fired into their cities by ill-equipped, and largely unproven by Hamas cells? Send in firepower, airstrikes, tanks, 10,000 infantry troops with night vision goggles. Swat a mosquito using a flamethrower. Why? So that a message can be sent to the 1.5m Gaza city population, women, children and civilians.

Little do they know what they are doing is to breed more suicide bombers amongst the Palestinians and further degrading reputation amongst the international community. Other muslims, while action from the surrounding international Muslim community remains that of quiet fear, wait for the emergence of Al-Ayyubi with an army of angels to annihilate this race of people.