Perhaps many of you have read the recent Observer guest column by Warren Bell regarding Gaza.
It was a fine piece of writing but it did not go far enough.
Dr. Bell suggested the Israeli government had become “increasingly fascist.” Indeed it has, but what are the Palestinians to do about that?
We are told that Israel has a right to defend itself. But does not Palestine have such a right? Does Palestine not have a right to resist the system of brutal occupation and apartheid under which they have been forced to live for decades?
Amnesty International has maintained that Israel is an apartheid state. They are not alone in this opinion. Nelson Mandela thought so too, and he knew something about apartheid. Mandela held a particular affection for Palestine. “All of us need to do more,” he said, “in supporting the struggle of the people of Palestine for self-determination.” In speech after speech, Mandela spoke out against Israeli aggression and for the liberation of Palestine.
The Palestinians have been accused of using terrorism. It was the same with Algeria, and so many other colonized nations. Their only weapon in the struggle for liberation was terror. As the Algerians said, they would happily give up their terrorist bombs if the French oppressor would give up their heavily armed professional military with their tanks and helicopters. It is the same for the Palestinians. They face a ruthless oppressor armed with massive weaponry, an oppressor that even possesses an unknown number of nuclear weapons.
The Israeli state is now engaged in a policy of open genocide. They have illegally attacked hospitals throughout Gaza. They have fired their tanks at pediatric wards and ambulances. They have arrested and tortured doctors. Their attacks against civilians have led to thousands of little children having their arms or legs amputated, often without anesthetic, because Israel has prevented medical supplies from entering Gaza.
Western doctors who have volunteered in Gaza report that they have seen many children shot dead with a precise bullet through the head, the result of an Israeli sniper.
Thousands of civilians have been arrested and held under a process known as “administrative detention,” wherein those arrested are imprisoned without ever being charged with a crime or allowed to defend themselves at a trial. Often they too are tortured.
Famine and disease are spreading, especially in the north of Gaza which has been cut off from the south and is under siege.
We cannot pretend that all this, and much more, is not happening. The United Nations seems paralyzed to act. They have told Israel that their presence in the occupied territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal and that they must depart. Israel’s response is, as usual, to thumb their nose at the UN and to accuse it and all its agencies of being antisemitic.
What can we do? Israel has been clear they will never allow a two-state solution, that Palestine will never be permitted a state, and that Palestinians will either be forced out of their own homeland o else have to forever submit to occupation and apartheid. Already Israel is preparing to absorb the West Bank and northern Gaza.
We must pressure our own government to act. We must demand that the genocide be ended and to recognize that the Palestinian people have a right to resist and a right to their own state on their own homeland.
A former professor of psychology, David Lethbridge has written extensively on psychology, philosophy and antifascist politics.
