Israel and the myth of 'self-defence!'

On 15 October 2023, David Hearst, editor-in-chief of 'Middle East Eye', said this:

"If there’s blood on anyone’s hands it's on those who say 'Israel has a right to defend itself!' If anyone is guilty for the bloodshed that's going on, it is the international community, particularly Britain. The international community has given the greenest of green lights to the Israeli Army to do what it wants, and that means the freedom to commit war crimes.

You'll see Western values as they actually operate raining down bombs on completely innocent Gazan civilians, whether they're supporters of Hamas, Fatah, whether they're civilians, they're going to die and are dying in their thousands! Where are western values there? If there's blood on anyone's hands, it's on those who say Israel has a right to defend itself...

It's not the defense of Israel, it is the expansion of Israel and it is the creation of an apartheid regime even more severe than the one that happened in South Africa.

Israel says it's fighting an existential war and it has compared what Hamas did to a holocaust. Half my family died in the Holocaust, there's no comparison...

You have to realize that Israel was the Lord, the master of the land, they controlled all your movements, they controlled who you married... This is a country used to total control over one half of the population and it lost that control wildly...

Desperation turned into savagery... at Kafar AAR (and) the music festival... where unarmed festival goers were shot like ducks. These scenes were unknown to the current generation of Israelis and the shock this has produced the sudden loss of confidence in its star performer, which is its army and its intelligence services, cannot be underestimated. That shock has now turned to anger. That anger has now turned to an unholy desire to kill Gazans.

'We need to erase Gaza!'

'We got to wipe them off the map... Flatten them like a parking lot!'

'Kill all Palestinians, all of them!'...

It's happening every night in Gaza. Women and children buried under rubble... Absolutely apocalyptic scenes going on. There the Israeli Air Force deliberately targeting blocks, individual families and wiping them out with precision weapons. And and this is happening now to one family after another. I don't think Israel, and in particular, the Israeli Army, can give people lectures on brutality, particularly directed at children. It happens all the time.

In the so-called stable peace there were 304 children killed so far this year by soldiers in the West Bank, so there is butchery and there's barbarity on both sides. The problem is what's taking place in Gaza, which is truly apocalyptic, is done on an industrial scale and, by the time this comes out. the death toll will mount and mount!

You have Gallant the Israeli Defense Minister, the man who said that 'Palestinians are human animals,' said Israeli forces will not be held accountable for anything they do, so all the past rules have been torn up and Israel is going for the maximum number of Gazan casualties, and that's what the International Community is allowing Israel to do. They have given Netanyahu the green light and an unlimited time to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

Gazans have tried to break out of their open air prison before it happened on the day in which Donald Trump's son-in-law was signing the ceremony that transferred the official American Embassy to Jerusalem. On that very day you had Palestinians, unarmed, who were gunned down demonstrating right next to the fence. They didn't break out of the fence, they were simply being shot at rather like ducks, with the most sophisticated weapons, when that demonstration happened. Gazans learned a lesson. The next breakout that they do would have to be armed...

There's no analytical comparison between Hamas and Isis, and the main difference between them is that although the Hamas is a islamist organization and offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is a resistance group dedicated to ending the occupation, and this still is a dispute and a conflict over land and not religion.

Having said that, Hamas called its attack on Southern Israel the Alaxa Flood for a reason. Alaxa is being invaded and attacked all the time. Alaxa isn't just their third holiest site, for Islam it's also a national symbol for Palestine. This sacred turf is actually being taken away piecemeal. And again, the West is letting them do this.

This was the reason for Hamas saying 'enough is enough' but there were lots of other reasons as well.

If you can imagine it, 16 years in an open air prison, with the electricity controlled or rationed, food rationed, 60% unemployment, settler attacks on Palestinian villages, protected by the Army, which Israelis themselves describe as pogroms. The total impossibility of a political solution or even a national unity government, and that suited Israel. Absolutely fine when they were demonstrating about democracy in Israel. No one was talking about the obvious elephant in in the room, which was an apartheid regime for half of the population, the Palestinian population."

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