Page 2 of 2 THE ROVING
EYE Welcome to Planet
Gaza By Pepe
Escobar
hostile entity to the US as
well." Nobody asked Rice what kind of "peace" she
is exactly lobbying for.
Rice added that
the US "will make every effort to deal with their
[Palestinian] humanitarian needs". How? By bombing
Gaza with cornflakes? "Hostile" Hamas called the
plan "a declaration of war". "Friendly"
Palestinian Authority chairman Abbas - who
meets his friend Bush next
week in New York - only called it "oppressive". It
was up to one of his ministers, Ashraf Ajami, to
dare to use the crystal-clear words "collective
punishment".
Voices of reason in Israel,
such as Meretz (leftist political party) chairman
Yossi Beilin, at least had the courage to denounce
the plan as "foolish as well as dangerous".
University of Michigan professor and
Informed Comment blogger Juan Cole has defined
Gaza as "the worst outcome of Western colonialism
anywhere in the world outside the Belgian Congo".
And just like contemporary Belgium in relation to
the Congo, Israel will never admit to what it has
inflicted on Palestine.
No wonder Likud
superstar Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu loves these
Likudnik-style methods. It proves how the majority
of Israel's political elite is still wallowing in
the mire of Zeev Jabotinsky, a Zionist in love
with fascism in 1930s Europe. This treatment of
Palestinians bears all the elements of fascism:
radical (Israeli) nationalism; racism (the
demonization of Palestinians as a sub-race);
colonialism; expansionism (the goal of Israel); a
penchant for a military dictatorship (the
preferred method for ruling Palestinians); and
absolute indifference to the point of despising
the (Arab) poor.
As much as peace and
security for Israel are more than a just cause,
the colonization and hardcore repression of the
"friendly" West Bank and "hostile" Gaza are
nothing but fascism. Professor Toni Negri, author
of Empire and Multitudes, is one among
throngs of top public intellectuals appalled that
among so much cosmopolitanism at a global level,
many Jews are simply not part of it, and are still
attracted by "archaic and barbarian" ideologies
such as Zionism.
Get me to my gulag on
time Planet Gaza may be our contemporary
Congo - the heart of darkness, especially when
taken in conjunction with that other heart of
darkness, Iraq. There's nothing about a "Korea
model" in Iraq - as much as Washington will try to
keep an array of permanent military bases in
Mesopotamia.
The logic of the US in Iraq
is pure Planet Gaza. French geopolitical master
Alain Joxe, in his book L'Empire du chaos,
has been one of the few who have identified
Palestine as the ultimate live textbook on urban
repression - a "technical experiment" in the
ultimate red zone carefully studied by the
Pentagon, with all its known attributes (blast
walls, checkpoints, pinpoint military incursions
and "acquisition of targets", collective
punishment, etc).
The Israeli wall
penetrating the "friendly" West Bank like a dagger
has been replicated by mini-walls in Baghdad. As
much as Israeli armed settler/missionaries do
their ethnic cleansing in slow motion in
Palestine, mercenary Blackwater and their ilk do
the dirty work in Iraq. "Friendly" West Bank Fatah
and "hostile" Gaza Hamas are mirrored in Iraq by
the "good" (Sunni tribes, collaborator Shi'ite
parties Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, Da'wa, the
Kurds) and the "bad" (Sunni guerrillas, al-Qaeda
in the Land of the Two Rivers, the Shi'ite Mahdi
Army).
Iraq is actually Planet Gaza redux.
According to British polling organization ORB, no
fewer than 1.2 million Iraqis may have died
violent deaths, most of them caused directly or
indirectly by the occupation, since 2003. That's
close to the entire population of Gaza.
Invisibility is also part of the logic of
Planet Gaza. Invisibility at least for US and
Israeli exceptionalism - as both could not
possibly assimilate the hard truth pointing to US
and Israeli administrations killing loads of
innocent Arab civilians. The "international
community" - an antiseptic construct that
basically means the US and western Europe - may
not see it; autocratic, incompetent, corrupt Arab
leaders may not see it; but the real world -
public opinion in the Middle East, Latin America,
Africa, Asia, Russia - sees Planet Gaza for what
it is. It's not about "al-Qaeda". It's not about
"Islamo-fascist terrorists". It's about fighting
neocolonialism. It's about national liberation.
And - barring any possibility of dialogue - it's
about perennial blowback.
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