Sophia Conti
10 Oct 2023
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9 Oct 2023
The Gaza Ghetto Uprising
David Rovics
The uprising began on the anniversary of another one, which had become a revolution. The occupying power had had informants throughout the ghetto, but despite their extensive networks of surveillance and control, they were completely blindsided when the uprising began. Those who did rise up did so primarily with ingenuity and homemade weapons, but they compensated as best they could for what they lacked in resources with bravery and brilliant planning.
They had no resources because they were refugees, living in a walled ghetto. They had come from all around, forced at gunpoint to leave their homes in other places, before ending up in the walled ghetto, where the occupying power kept them in a half-starved state, not allowing imports of food, medicine, or basic construction materials.
When the people rose up, the extent of their organization, impeccable planning, and intention to die fighting became clear, as they succeeded in surprising and killing dozens of soldiers among the occupiers. They even at one point broke through the walls of their ghetto, and brought the ghetto uprising beyond the ghetto, shocking the occupier with their accomplishments.
The occupier, who operated under a general principle that one life of an occupation soldier was worth the lives of at least 100 of the occupied, set about to raze the ghetto by fire. Over the course of four weeks, they completely destroyed every building in the ghetto. With nowhere else to go beyond the walls, the vast majority of the residents of the ghetto died there.
I am, of course, talking about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943, when the Jewish Fighting Organization forced the German Army to take troops away from the front line in the war with the USSR that they were losing, in order to deal with this group of half-starved civilians and their homemade weapons.
Living in the “West,” consuming what passes for mainstream media in the West, it would be almost as hard to understand the motives and methods of the Jewish Fighting Organization in 1943 by reading Nazi propaganda as it would be to understand Hamas today through the western media’s distorted lens.
We can start with where they start the narrative. Very predictably, because their narratives always start the same way. It always begins with “Hamas launched an attack.”
If half-starving people with no clean water or the ability to travel outside of their ghetto launch any kind of uprising, the obvious context is the fact that they were under siege, living in a walled ghetto, prevented from importing the things they need to survive and prevented from traveling. This is the obvious reason for any people living in such conditions to rise up against their occupying power. But instead, we are fed a narrative that begins with the ghetto uprising, without any explanation for the basic nature of the situation, that is, that an occupying army is forcing people to live and starve in a walled ghetto.
Given the completely dishonest state of the Western media when it comes to making any sense of anything happening anywhere in the Middle East (as the British Empire named Western Asia a long time ago), I thought establishing a few salient facts to help us make sense of what’s going on right now in and around Gaza could be helpful.
1) Israel is not a democracy. The majority of the people who live under Israeli rule are Palestinian. Of the Palestinians living under Israeli rule, the vast majority of them are in the West Bank or Gaza, and are subject to military “justice,” not civilian courts. They do not have the right to vote in Israeli elections, although every aspect of their lives is controlled by Israel — whether they live or die, whether their homes are bulldozed or not, whether their fields are razed by settlers or they’re allowed to keep farming, it’s all up to Israel. When they say Israel is a democracy, they’re lying — blatantly, and daily.
2) Hamas is the closest thing to an elected government the Palestinians have. In fact, the last time they had a real election in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas won by a landslide. That’s why they haven’t had another election since then, and that’s why Hamas is in control of Gaza today. They would have been in power in the West Bank as well, to the extent Palestinians can have any power at all under the circumstances, but Fatah annulled the election results, because they lost. With Israel’s active assistance, Fatah tried to overthrow Hamas in Gaza by sending in their armed loyalists, and this coup attempt failed miserably.
3) Physically fighting back against an occupying army, according to international law that all the countries in the world have signed on to long ago, is justified, and is not “terrorism.” You’d have to be very lucky to tune in during one of the very brief moments when international law might ever be mentioned in one of these western news stories about this uprising. International law is only apparently relevant when it comes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or other incidents where it seems convenient to mention.
4) Gaza is under a brutal occupation. It would seem completely ridiculous to mention this, as it’s abundantly obvious. But somehow or other this is not so much the case in the western media, which tends to give inordinate amounts of time to Israeli politicians and American and British diplomats who love to talk about how the Israeli settlements in Gaza were evacuated a long time ago. The implication here being that now the people in Gaza have nothing to complain about. Just don’t mention the siege, the lack of ability to travel or import anything, and pretend Gaza is some kind of Palestinian “neighborhood,” which is what the Israeli politicians call their illegal, exclusively Jewish settlements throughout the ever-shrinking lands of the Palestinians — “neighborhoods.”
5) When Ukrainians fight back against their occupying power and launch attacks in parts of Russia, outside of Ukraine, their bravery and ingenuity are openly celebrated in the west, and they are given massive amounts of military aid. When Palestinians do exactly the same thing under exactly the same kinds of circumstances, it is their occupier who gets the military aid, not them — they get called “terrorists” for fighting back.
6) When Netanyahu tells the people within the walled ghetto to “leave now” because he’s going to turn every corner of Gaza into “rubble,” which is what he just said, this is genocide talk. There is nowhere for the people of Gaza to go, other than the closed border with Israel, the closed border with US client dictatorship Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea. The way he is talking about Gaza now is remarkably similar to the way Jürgen Stroop talked about turning the Warsaw Ghetto into rubble.
7) When Armenians are forced at gunpoint to leave their enclave within Azerbaijan, we hear nothing of the history of Azeri displacement, but only of the suffering of the Armenians, which is regularly characterized in the western press as genocide. If forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of people from their land and making them move into refugee camps is genocide, then the Palestinians are victims of genocide, and have been since 1947. You’ll never hear this word seriously used in the western press in relation to the suffering of Palestinians, however, unless it’s to accuse Iranian leaders of antisemitism for daring to use the term themselves.
8) As the United Nations budget for Palestinian refugees to do things like eat and have health care and schools for their children is continually gutted in order to send more money to Ukraine, Netanyahu and Biden and others love to complain about Iranian assistance to Palestinians. Unlike the US or Israel, Iran has not invaded another country in 2,500 years, but apparently they’re going to start attacking other countries sometime soon, according to Netanyahu and Biden. In the meantime, they’re aiding (democratically-elected and popular) “terrorists” (who are fighting for the freedom of their people to survive) and this is a bad thing!
9) When the Russian military intentionally or accidentally bombs an apartment building, or when Ukrainian air defenses accidentally bomb one of their own apartment complexes, it is immediately called a war crime and a crime against humanity, and denounced by every western diplomat, wherever they may happen to be at the time. When Israel very intentionally bombs and totally demolishes a high-rise apartment building full of civilians, as they did yesterday and have done on many occasions in the past, we are simply treated to information about the body count on both sides, and whether the dead are civilians, children, combatants, etc., is apparently irrelevant.
10) When the Russian military kills Ukrainian civilians, intentionally or accidentally, we hear about each incident and the dead are often given names, especially if there were any children killed. When Israel kills Palestinian children we are informed that they may have been throwing rocks, or that they were unfortunately living in a high-rise that contained a Hamas office of some kind. And international law on the subject of the rules of war, and whether it’s OK to destroy an apartment building full of civilians in order to get at one of the so-called terrorists is not discussed. That’s only discussed when it comes to Russian attacks on Ukrainians.
The Middle East may never be the same
James M. Dorsey
Hamas, the Islamist militia that controls Gaza, will likely emerge a victor regardless of how the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting ends.
Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel, described by some analysts as the Jewish state’s 9/11, changes the dynamics of Middle Eastern geopolitics.
The brutal attack involved prolonged fighting with the Israeli military in Israeli towns and cities, the firing of thousands of rockets at Israeli population centers, the random killing of innocent civilians in Israeli homes, and the kidnapping of scores of Israeli soldiers and civilians.
BBC foreign correspondent Secunder Kermani described sirens sounding off and multiple explosions as he disembarked at Tel Aviv airport on Saturday.
Like the Turkish assault on Kurdish positions in Syria and Iraq in the wake of the October 1 suicide bombing in Ankara, the Hamas attack and Israel’s retaliatory pounding of Gaza call into question the sustainability of a regional de-escalation that freezes rather than tackles perennial conflicts.
Similarly, the attack pours cold water on the notion of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative coalition partners that Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands can be sustained indefinitely.
On Hamas’ tailcoat, Iran, long opposed to Arab normalisation of relations with Israel, sees the Palestinian offensive as vindication of its position.
Only days before the hostilities, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cautioned that normalisation of relations with Israel amounted to “gambling” that was “doomed to failure.”
He warned that countries establishing relations with the Jewish state would be “in harm’s way.”
Raising the specter of a wider regional conflict, Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad told the BBC that the group had direct backing for the attack from Iran. Mr. Hamad did not specify what support entailed.
Even if suggestions prove correct that Iran helped Hamas plan and prepare for the attack, the group would have launched its assault because it served its purposes rather than serving Iranian interests.
Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia, bolstered the threat of a regional conflagration by firing rockets at the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms in southern Lebanon. Israel retaliated with armed drones.
The Hezbollah attack came after Israeli soldiers opened fire on pro-Hamas demonstrators carrying the group’s flag on the Lebanese side of the border. There were no reported casualties.
Meanwhile, a Saudi statement suggested that the Hamas attack had complicated US-led efforts to engineer Saudi recognition of Israel.
The Saudi foreign ministry recalled the kingdom’s “repeated warning of the dangers of the explosion of the situation as a result of the occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights, and the repetition of systematic provocations against its sanctities.”
The statement indicated that the fighting reinforced Saudi conditioning of diplomatic relations with Israel on viable steps toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Already, the fighting will stop Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman from becoming the third Cabinet-level Israeli official to visit Saudi Arabia in less than two weeks.
Ms. Silman was expected to attend this week’s MENACW 2023, the Middle East and North Africa Climate Week conference in the kingdom, one of four Regional Climate Weeks held worldwide ahead of next month’s COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai.
In what diplomats described as an indication of the United Arab Emirates’ predicament, Emirati officials insisted that Sunday’s United Nations Security Council discussion of the fighting would be a closed session rather than a private meeting. The UAE called for the meeting alongside Malta.
Unlike a private meeting, the closed session excluded Israeli and Palestinian representatives. It ended without a Council statement.
The UAE was one of four Arab states to recognize Israel in 2020. At the same time, UAE officials describe Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
Had there been a Palestinian representation, the Palestinian voice would have been President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestine Authority, dominated by Al Fatah, Hamas’ archrival, further marginalized by the fighting.
This weekend, Mr. Abbas was reduced to issuing a statement insisting that Palestinians had the right to defend themselves against the “terror of settlers and occupation troops.”
With the perennial potential collapse of the Palestine Authority, Hamas’ attack strengthens the group in a likely struggle to succeed 87-year-old Mr. Abbas, who has lost public support.
While the Israeli-Palestinian fighting was likely to boost popular Arab rejection of relations with Israel, social media responses in Turkey indicated a different sentiment among one segment of Turkish public opinion.
“Israel is probably more popular than ever among Turks,” said Turkish Middle East scholar Karabekir Akkoyunlu.
Mr. Akkoyunlu attributed Israel’s popularity to Israeli support for Azerbaijan against Armenia, rising anti-Arab sentiment in Turkey, and Arab countries normalizing relations with the Jewish state.
That did not stop many Turks from marching in Istanbul this weekend to support the Hamas attack.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosted Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July and has allowed the group to operate.
However, unlike Arab statements that blamed Israel for the violence, Mr. Erdogan offered to mediate between Israel and Hamas.
The fighting risks, at least in the short-term, stiffening Israel’s refusal to entertain steps that would enable the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel or a viable one-state solution, even if the Netanyahu government, the most ultra-conservative and ultra-nationalist in Israeli history, becomes a victim of renewed violence.
Israeli reticence will be further reinforced by likely increased violence on the West Bank, where Palestinian militants resisting Israeli occupation are certain to be emboldened. Militants called this weekend on Palestinians to fight Israelis in their West Bank towns.
Some Israeli sources suggested that Israel’s focus in the last year on Palestinian resistance in the West Bank had led Israel to pay less attention to Gaza.
More than 50 years after initial Egyptian-Syrian advances in the early days of the 1973 Middle East caught Israel by surprise, the Hamas attack has put a dent in Israel’s image of military superiority and prowess.
In addition, perceptions of Israeli weakness may be reinforced once the guns fall silent, with the country likely to be wracked by assertions that the Hamas attack was an intelligence and operational failure.
Nevertheless, Israel would likely benefit from an international community breathing a sigh of relief should the Netanyahu government, too, pay a high price with its possible demise.
No Israeli government has survived longer than six months in the aftermath of a major war like the 1973 war or the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
Even so, the Hamas attack is likely to impact Israeli public opinion. On the one hand, it is expected to harden attitudes towards Palestinians, reinforced by Hamas’ brutal attacks on innocent civilians and abuse of soldiers.
On the other hand, Israelis will probably have less confidence in Israeli security. “I’m worried. I can’t believe what happened. I’ve lost confidence,” said an Israeli woman in a text message.
Mr. Netanyahu has sought to capitalize on the hostilities and unprecedented losses suffered by Israel at the hands of Palestinians, — reportedly 600 dead, including 26 soldiers, and more than 2000 wounded at the time of this writing – by inviting opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz to join an emergency government.
Mr. Lapid said in a statement that Mr. Netanyahu would have to ditch his far-right and ultra-conservative coalition partners in forming an emergency government.
The prime minister “knows that with the current extreme and dysfunctional security cabinet, he can’t manage a war. Israel needs to be led by a professional, experienced, and responsible government.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s invitation came as the fighting temporarily eased the prime minister’s immediate domestic concerns.
The rocket attacks and fighting in Israeli towns and settlements close to Gaza ended, at least temporarily, nine months of mass protests against Mr. Netanyahu’s judicial changes.
It also halted protests by military reservists, including fighter jet pilots currently striking Gaza, who had earlier refused to report for duty because of the judicial changes.
Israeli ultra-nationalists and military commanders warned that the reservists’ protest would weaken Israeli military readiness.
On Saturday, Israel called up reservists for a possible ground invasion of Gaza after Hamas took scores of Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage and transferred them from Israel to Gaza.
Israel may take heart from the unconditional US and European support, fueled by Hamas’ Islamic State-style brutality, in public statements after the Hamas attack.
However, reality is very different behind the scenes, according to US and European diplomats.
Mr. Netanyahu has not endeared himself to Western leaders by heading a government that has expanded Israeli settlements in the West Bank; tacitly endorsed increased anti-Palestinian violence by Israeli settlers; violated fragile understandings on the Temple Mount or Haram-ash-Sharif, a site in Jerusalem holy to Jews and Muslims; and responded brutally to Palestinian resistance.
In addition, Mr. Netanyahu has embraced nationalist and far-right European leaders, who look more favorably at his policies than Western Europeans, the European Union, and US President Joe Biden.
Forming an emergency government would ease Western criticism of Israeli policies.
Distressing images from Gaza could counter that as Israel continues with its devastating bombing of Gaza, which has killed at least 300 Palestinians and wounded nearly 2,000 others in less than 24 hours.
Nevertheless, Hamas may have miscalculated by counting on Mr. Netanyahu’s strained relations with his Western partners, leading them to take a more even-handed approach to renewed violence.
Selfies of Hamas fighters lynching the corpses of killed Israeli soldiers, reports of killings of Israeli civilians in their homes in towns near Gaza, and the parade of the dead body of a German tattoo artist buried the slim chance of a more nuanced Western attitude.
Even so, a Middle Eastern diplomat argued, “The Middle Eastern paradigm has changed. Everyone is forced to recalibrate. Hamas shattered perceptions. The Middle East may never be the same.”
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