v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Excerpt of Sacco's Groundbreaking Footnotes in Gaza at Mondoweiss Blog

Excerpt can be viewed at MondoWeiss blog

One Year after the Siege

One year after the Israeli violent invasion in Gaza Rami Khouri, Editor at Large at the The Daily Star in Beirut, writes at his blog:

A year after the Israeli attack on Gaza, a scorecard of “winners and losers” suggests that nobody won anything, but Israel has probably suffered political losses that it could not have envisioned when it decided to invade Gaza. I count seven main aims that Israel had in mind when it launched its war a year ago and tightened its siege of Gaza; one of them was achievable without a war, and the six others have not been achieved, or have turned things to Hamas’ and the Palestinians’ favor.

Here is my review of where things stand a year after the Gaza war:

1) Israel’s first aim was to stop the small projectiles fire that was directed at southern Israel from Gaza. Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups had twice stopped firing projectiles at Israel from Gaza in the two years before the war, according to the terms of truce accords that had been negotiated. The idea that a war was needed to stop the attacks is Zionist lying and deception at their worst, given that the attacks had been stopped through nonviolent agreements that saw Israel also cease its much more vicious and destructive attacks against Gaza.

2) Israel’s second unaccomplished aim was to try and destroy much of Hamas’ military and political infrastructure, and weaken it as a movement to be reckoned with. Hamas remains firmly in control of governance in Gaza, and a major national and regional actor. The greatest irony is that Israel has intensified its negotiations with Hamas, through German intermediation, to release the Israeli war prisoner Gilad Shalit.

3) The third Israeli aim was to force a weakened and chastened Hamas to release Shalit on terms advantageous to Israel, but the opposite is happening now. Israel’s stepped-up negotiations to release Shalit only strengthen Hamas’ credentials as a movement that resists Israel and thus generates more respect and credibility for itself. The imminent prisoner exchange will be a tacit admission by Israel that its military tactics failed, and it must engage Hamas politically instead.

4) Israel’s fourth aim was to weaken Hamas’ standing in Palestinian society and strengthen the standing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The war resulted in exactly the opposite effect: Abbas has been grievously weakened by his Fateh movement’s behavior during and after the war, to the point where he has had to admit that he will not run for re-election.

5) The fifth Israeli aim was to re-establish its deterrence power and political supremacy over the Palestinians and other Arabs, as it had tried to do in attacking Lebanon in 2006. Israel assumed that unleashing its massive military power to kill and maim thousands of civilians and destroy normal life would cause frightened and chastened Palestinians and fellow Arabs to comply meekly with Israeli demands. This has not happened. The Arabs even refused to make even symbolic gestures of coexistence to Israel when US President Barack Obama asked for these in exchange for an Israeli settlement freeze.

6) Israel’s sixth aim was to reassert its self-confident political posture and sense of supremacy in the international community. The exact opposite has happened in the past year, as reflected in five dynamics: The international movement to boycott and divest from Israeli investments has gained steam; Israel is increasingly ignominiously compared to Apartheid South Africa; the Goldstone Report by the UN Human Rights Council struck a severe blow to Israel’s sense of invincibility and exemption from complying with international law dictates; Israeli officials are more hesitant to travel abroad for fear of being detained and indicted for war crimes; and, hardline pro-Israeli lobby groups in the United States and Europe are increasingly being challenged and subjected to public scrutiny.

7) Israel has tightened its strangulation siege of Gaza, hoping to force the Palestinians to surrender. The opposite has happened. The most important new development during the last year has been the world’s repeated negative assessment of Israel’s behavior, and calls for international political action to rein in Zionist military and colonial excesses. The latest example of this was the report three days ago by 16 British humanitarian and human rights organizations (including Amnesty International, Oxfam International, and Christian Aid) asking the European Union to commit itself to ending the blockade of Gaza and to put its relations with Israel on hold to achieve this.

Israel militarily attacked and laid siege to Gaza, but a year after its war Israel now finds itself under political siege by much of the world. Some Israel political and military leaders should not only be investigated for war crimes; to judge by the balance sheet of Israel’s standing a year after it attacked Gaza, they should also be held accountable by the Israeli and Jewish people for massive political incompetence and outright stupidity.

The killings in Khan Younis

From this weekends NYT-a review of Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza:

Sacco will find readers for “Footnotes in Gaza” far into the future because of the unique format and style of his comic-book narrative. He stands alone as a reporter-cartoonist because his ability to tell a story through his art is combined with investigative reporting of the highest quality.

His subject in this case is two massacres that happened more than half a century ago, stirred up little international attention and were forgotten outside the immediate circle of the victims. The killings took place during the Suez crisis of 1956, when the Israeli Army swept into the Gaza Strip, the great majority of whose inhabitants were Palestinian refugees. According to figures from the United Nations, 275 Palestinians were killed in the town of Khan Younis at the southern end of the strip on Nov. 3, and 111 died in Rafah, a few miles away on the Egyptian border, during a Nov. 12 operation by Israeli troops. Israel insisted that the Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces were still facing armed resistance. The Palestinians said all resistance had ceased by then.

Sacco makes the excellent point that such episodes are among the true building blocks of history. In this case, accounts of what happened were slow to seep out and were overshadowed by fresh developments in the Suez crisis. Sacco, whose reputation as a reporter-cartoonist was established with “Palestine” and “Safe Area Gorazde,” has rescued them from obscurity because they are “like innumerable historical tragedies over the ages that barely rate footnote status in the broad sweep of history — even though . . . they often contain the seeds of the grief and anger that shape present-day events.”

Governments and the news media alike forget that atrocities live on in the memory of those most immediately affected. Sacco records Abed El-Aziz El-Rantisi — a leader of Hamas (later killed by an Israeli missile), who in 1956 was 9 and living in Khan Younis — describing how his uncle was killed: “It left a wound in my heart that can never heal,” he says. “I’m telling you a story and I am almost crying. . . . They planted hatred in our hearts.”

The lost molecules of conflict

Interview with author Joe Sacco at January Magazine:

And, what are your theories for the reasons behind that? Just because those are tumultuous parts of the world?

It's not about that, because you can find other tumultuous parts of the world. It's the fact that, for whatever reasons, when I was younger I became interested, say, in the Middle East, and sort of sucked into it. I went once and I did the book Palestine, and I wasn't really going to go back, I didn't really have any intention to go back, but when the second Intifada broke out, my interest was rekindled, and it's back to that same feeling that I had, I used to feel, which is that I feel compelled to go and do something there. I'll only go to a place I feel sort of compelled to go to. You know, that just pulls me in. I mean there are other places that interest me, and I wouldn't mind going if a magazine sort of made it easy for me to do it. The places I'm really sucked into, that I'm going to go out of my way to go to, there aren't that many of them, to tell you the truth.

You recently spent some more time in the Middle East? In the Occupied Territories?

Yeah, in particular Gaza. I was there in November for a couple of weeks, and then I was there February and March, a couple months, and I just got back less than a week ago.

And how did it compare with the first time you went there?

Very different, I felt that I was much more on the inside this time. And I actually rented a place in a refugee camp. So I stayed in the camp. And I got to know people that way, where I actually had someone with me the whole time, because I don't speak Arabic, and it's a place where you don't want to be just a random foreigner walking around because they'll be suspicious of you. For good reason. So, I think I was a bit more on the inside this time around, and I hope the book'll reflect it.

And so was that sort of more like your experience in the other book, Safe Area: Gorazde?

Yeah, maybe a little more like that. I mean, Safe Area: Gorazde had some elements that won't be in this book; I was staying with a family. But in Rafah that was very difficult to organize, because people are so poor and because of the situation with women, where you can't really be in the same place that the women are in the household. It's very difficult for you to stay at someone's house for an extended period of time. You know, for a couple days OK, but, ultimately, it's just a situation where it's very hard to be in the same -- you know, you're not even really supposed to see the women in a lot of these households. So that wouldn't really have been practical for any extended period of time.

And how did the situation there compare to the last time you were there?

It was just a lot harder, a lot more violent. You know, life's pretty bad, pretty rough in certain parts. It's very different in different parts of the Occupied Territories. Where I was was a refugee camp called Rafah, which is on the southern border of Gaza, with Egypt. And there were a lot of house demolitions going on there, and there are just some sort of spooky parts of the town because they're basically under fire, or in zones where there's a lot of bullets flying around at different times, so it was just a different sort of feeling from where I was before, where I could just sort of travel, get in a taxi and go anywhere. Getting down to Rafah was hard. You know, there are checkpoints, and you can get trapped there. There's only one road out, basically. And if it's closed for three days or four days, you're stuck there. In the first intifada I was kind of going from one place to another, sort of doing a little tour. In this case I just wanted to be in one place, much like the Gorazde book, I feel it was a better way of doing it, get to know some people well.

Christianity in the Arab world

From Electronic Intefada:

The Cremisan area is of significant heritage value, home to the only winery in Palestine and two monasteries. Some of the finest examples of the regions ancient terraced landscape can be found here. The wall will carve through these terraces destroying agricultural landscapes that have survived for centuries. When the wall is completed, Beit Jala district of the Bethlehem area will have lost access to two-thirds of its land.

It is not the Palestinian Muslim population that is responsible for the expropriation of more land for the construction of this 430-mile/700-kilometer separation barrier. It is not the Palestinian Muslim population that is responsible for the expansion of illegal settlements and the creation of a "Greater Jerusalem" depopulated of its Palestinian citizens. It is not the Palestinian Muslim population that is responsible for the checkpoints that obstruct mobility, nor the demolition of homes and other forms of collective punishment. It is not the Palestinian Muslim population that is responsible for the "one big prison" status of Gaza. It is not the Palestinian Muslim population that is responsible for this separation barrier that will become the de facto border of a "Palestinian State" composed of several isolated islands of land on roughly 40 to 50 percent of the West Bank. It is not the Palestinian Muslim population that will be responsible for, absent a viable, contiguous Palestinians state, the "reservation" life that will parallel the Native North American experience in the United States. No, it is the ongoing Israeli structure of occupation and dispossession that continues to devastate Palestinian livelihood for both Christian and Muslim alike.

At a time when the U.S. Congress is considering the plight of Palestinian Christians, they are witnessing the destruction of their community's land, heritage and livelihood. The people of Bethlehem have been very clear in their message to the international community, "If you want to help us, stop the construction of Israel's Wall." [3]

Israeli brutal blockade continues

FT news has a revealing news article today outlining the continuing problems Gaza faces as a result of the Israeli attack earlier this year:

Indeed, the suffering of ordinary Gazans during the war has been compounded in the months since by the absence of any meaningful reconstruction, and the lack of building materials and aid shipments to the strip. Even before the conflict, Israel imposed a tight embargo on the territory, refusing to let anything other than basic humanitarian supplies enter Gaza, home to 1.5m Palestinians.

Ibrahim Radwan, the deputy minister of housing in the Hamas government, says his department has been able to clear the rubble and secure some 700 housing units that were threatening to collapse. Beyond that, however, the government has neither the money nor the materials to start rebuilding. The cost of rebuilding destroyed and damaged residential property alone runs to about $1bn (€700m, £630m), Mr Radwan estimates. His ministry’s entire budget for 2009 was just $350,000.

Immediately after the war, there was a burst of diplomatic activity and countless calls for Israel to open the Gaza borders in order to allow reconstruction materials to enter. However, as a group of human rights organisations pointed out earlier this week, the early pressure has yielded no results.

Kate Allen, the UK director of Amnesty International, said: “The wretched reality endured by 1.5m people in Gaza should appal anybody with an ounce of humanity . . . All states must insist that the Israeli government end its blockade and let the people of Gaza rebuild their lives.”

Israel says it is committed to preventing a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, but refuses to allow in goods or materials that it says would strengthen Hamas or pose a security risk to the Jewish state.

Children, as is usual in these types of conflicts, bear the brunt:

Children bear emotional scars

The Gaza war is estimated to have destroyed 2,800 homes, with 56,800 damaged. Harder to quantify is the harm done to the mental health of children who live in the Gaza Strip .

Eyad el-Sarraj, a psychiatrist and the president of the Gaza community mental health programme, predicts that the effect will be “massive, far-reaching and long-term”. He says: “We are observing that nearly 15 per cent of children are showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. That means they are showing a combination of eight symptoms, including depression, anxiety and night terrors.”

Treatment is difficult. There are only about 500 mental health workers for a population of 1.5m – more than when Dr el-Sarraj started out on his own over 20 years ago but still not enough. Then there is the reluctance of many Palestinians to recognise mental health as an issue.

“Depression in our culture often does not come with words. People don’t say: ‘I am depressed.’ Instead, people complain that they have head or stomach aches.”

In the aftermath of the war, mental health workers noticed a sharp rise in the already high number of children wetting their beds or showing speech defects. Dr el-Sarraj believes these will be temporary; the deeper damage, however, will not.

“Fear is the most important psychological factor that determines the future of a young personality,” he says. “Children are the product of their environment, and right now the environment is driving them into extremism, into fear, into desperation and into hopelessness.”

Dr el-Sarraj points out that it was children who grew up during the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, that brought forward the volunteers for suicide bombings in Israel. He does not know whether history will repeat itself, but one thing is clear to him: “The majority of children will be suffering in the future.”

Gaza must be rebuilt now, says Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter writes:

Of more immediate concern, those under siege in Gaza face another winter of intense personal suffering. I visited Gaza after the devastating January war and observed homeless people huddling in makeshift tents, under plastic sheets, or in caves dug into the debris of their former homes. Despite offers by Palestinian leaders and international agencies to guarantee no use of imported materials for even defensive military purposes, cement, lumber, and panes of glass are not being permitted to pass entry points into Gaza. The US and other nations have accepted this abhorrent situation without forceful corrective action.

I have discussed ways to assist the citizens of Gaza with a number of Arab and European leaders and their common response is that the Israeli blockade makes any assistance impossible. Donors point out that they have provided enormous aid funds to build schools, hospitals and factories, only to see them destroyed in a few hours by precision bombs and missiles. Without international guarantees, why risk similar losses in the future?

It is time to face the fact that, for the past 30 years, no one nation has been able or willing to break the impasse and induce the disputing parties to comply with international law. We cannot wait any longer. Israel has long argued that it cannot negotiate with terrorists, yet has had an entire year without terrorism and still could not negotiate. President Obama has promised active involvement of the US government, but no formal peace talks have begun and no comprehensive framework for peace has been proposed. Individually and collectively, the world powers must act.

One recent glimmer of life has been the 8 December decision of EU foreign ministers to restate the long-standing basic requirements for peace commonly accepted within the international community, including that Israel's pre-1967 boundaries will prevail unless modified by a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians. A week later the new EU foreign policy chief, Baroness Catherine Ashton, reiterated this statement in even stronger terms and called for the international Quartet to be "reinvigorated". This is a promising prospect.

The US Currently Has 189,000 Personnel in Afghanistan

From Counterpunch, Jeremy Scahill writes:

The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since 2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since 2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related contracts.

Despite the massive number of contracts and contractors in Afghanistan, oversight is utterly lacking. “The increase in Afghanistan contracts has not seen a corresponding increase in contract management and oversight,” according to McCaskill’s briefing paper. “In May 2009, DCMA [Defense Contract Management Agency] Director Charlie Williams told the Commission on Wartime Contracting that as many as 362 positions for Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs) in Afghanistan were currently vacant.”

A former USAID official, Michael Walsh, the former director of USAID’s Office of Acquisition and Assistance and Chief Acquisition Officer, told the Commission that many USAID staff are “administering huge awards with limited knowledge of or experience with the rules and regulations.” According to one USAID official, the agency is “sending too much money, too fast with too few people looking over how it is spent.” As a result, the agency does not “know … where the money is going.”

The Obama administration is continuing the Bush-era policy of hiring contractors to oversee contractors. According to the McCaskill memo:

In Afghanistan, USAID is relying on contractors to provide oversight of its large reconstruction and development projects. According to information provided to the Subcommittee, International Relief and Development (IRD) was awarded a five-year contract in 2006 to oversee the $1.4 billion infrastructure contract awarded to a joint venture of the Louis Berger Group and Black and Veatch Special Projects. USAID has also awarded a contract Checci and Company to provide support for contracts in Afghanistan.

The private security industry and the US government have pointed to the Synchronized Predeployment and Operational Tracker(SPOT) as evidence of greater government oversight of contractor activities. But McCaskill’s subcommittee found that system utterly lacking, stating: “The Subcommittee obtained current SPOT data showing that there are currently 1,123 State Department contractors and no USAID contractors working in Afghanistan.” Remember, there are officially 14,000 USAID contractors and the official monitoring and tracking system found none of these people and less than half of the State Department contractors.

Humanism and religion

From Rootless Cosmopolitan:

In a country occupied by a Western power, the locals are faced with a choice. Some have opted to reconcile their own traditions with those of their occupier, borrowing from Western ways that open the path to philosophy and science, and integrating themselves into a wider culture. Others fiercely resist, waging a bitter and bloody war not only on the occupier, but also on those in their own community who seek to collaborate or integrate with the occupiers who are denounced as defilers.

If this were contemporary Afghanistan-Pakistan, you’d know who was whom, right? But before you bite into that latke or sing the dreidel song, you may want to consider that in Judea in the second century BC, the Taliban role is played by the Maccabees. And it is the Maccabees, of course, who are lionized in the Hanukah tale.

In fact, they pretty much invented the holiday to celebrate their victory over the Greeks and all Jews who would embrace their ways, the “Hellenizers.” Hanukah is not mentioned in the Torah. It’s not really a religious holiday at all — the bubbemeis about an oil lamp burning for eight days was tacked on as an afterthought, and a way of smuggling God into what was a ritual celebrating a very temporal insurgent military triumph. Being what my son archly calls a “J-theist”, I’m not about to start trafficking in Biblical miracles (not that Hanukah is mentioned in the Jewish bible), but you have to figure that making a stash of olive oil burn for eight days while replenishments are cold-pressed and consecrated is uh, small potatoes compared with, you know, parting the Red Sea and such like. So the Jewish god really gets involved in such quotidian “miracles” as extending the life of fuel oil in to enable the proper observance of rituals in his honor in a temple recovered from defilers? You’d think if he cared enough to intervene at all, he might have prevented the defilers from taking over in the first place.

Wasted opportunities. . .

Juan Cole writes at his blog:

If it is true that the Nobel committee awarded President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George W. Bush, they must have been dismayed to discover that Bush's war on terror remained the framework for Obama's acceptance speech.

It was a great speech, with its references to Gandhi and King and its emphasis on human rights and economic justice. It was not a speech Bush could or would have given.

But Obama ultimately failed to escape the pull of the GWOT. Accountability is demanded of others but not of the US. No high official will be prosecuted for war crimes in Iraq.

The fringe terrorist group al-Qaeda is depicted as a challenge for the Pentagon, not the Interpol. Then Afghan insurgents are equated to al-Qaeda. Iran, which has no nuclear weapons program, is equated with North Korea.

Obama implied that peaceful conflict resolution is preferable, but that challenges do arise that require a military resolution. But he has unwittingly stacked the deck in favor if the military-industrial complex by adopting Bushian rhetoric at key junctures--speaking of enemies as 'evil,' militarizing the response to terrorism, and asserting false equivalences that help make war seem inevitable.

Obama has yet to decide whether he is a visionary or a technocrat. The prize committee hoped for the former. In this speech they got the latter.