Erdogan and Morsi, stop shielding Israel!

 

 

The wave of attacks that started when Israel assassinated Ahmad Jabari, the operational commander of Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al Qassam Brigades, along with 12 people, including an infant, ended on the evening of 21 November 2012 with a cease-fire. As a result of the Zionist attacks, 161 people were killed, of which 42 children, and 1222 people injured.

 

The brutality of the aggression by Israel is clear for all to see. It has led to justified outrage around the world. However, unless the anger is accompanied by a clear vision of the political reality behind the aggression, it will merely serve to soothe consciences, without bringing a palpable benefit to either the Palestinians or to the oppressed peoples of the region.

 

 

Under no circumstances can there be talk of the right to self-defence for Israel. Israel is a racist and religious state that has, from the very beginning, based its existence on Zionist ideology and fought for the cleansing of Arabs from Palestine. That is why it constantly attacks the peoples of the region, starting of course with the Palestinians.

 

Moreover, the target of the rocket attack that was the excuse for the wave of Israeli assaults this time round was a military jeep and it injured four soldiers. In other words, it was directed at a military target. Not one single Israeli had lost their lives under rocket fire so far this year until Israel started its onslaught. Since 2004, rocket fire, about which Israel has made so much fuss, has killed no more than a score of Israelis.

 

The aggressive policies of Israel are being supported, financed, and defended by US imperialism. When the aggression on Gaza started, the United States, the strongest force behind Israel in the region, declared high and loud that it upheld the “right to self-defence” of Israel. Despite a show of concern for humanitarian aspects, European imperialism has also supported Israel and upheld the “right to self-defence” on the part of the Zionist state.

 

 

The continued existence of the pirate-like Zionist state of Israel on Palestinian territory does not rely solely on its own fire power and the imperialist support behind it, but to the complicity and hypocrisy of collaborationist Arab states as well. The fact that Turkey is a strategic ally of US imperialism, however sour Turko-Israeli relations may be at the moment, also contributes to the impunity with which Israel commits its crimes. For it is a fact that one cannot make friends with the US and with Palestine at the same time.

 

The concern shown by the powers of the region, first and foremost Egypt and Turkey, in this most recent episode, the rebuke by Erdogan directed at Israel and the visit paid by 11 foreign ministers of the Arab states together with that of Turkey to Gaza, do not change the fact that these states have, through their collaborationism, always been the covert de facto sponsors of the Zionist state of Israel.

 

 

There is no doubt that, compared to the silent complicity of the past, the visit to Gaza is a step forward, a show of ownership of Gaza. However, it would be utterly naive to attribute it to this or that leader’s courage or good will. After the Arab revolution brought down two dictators (Ben Ali of Tunisia and Mubarak of Egypt) who had closely collaborated with Israel, the cost of remaining silent in the face of blatant Israeli aggression has become prohibitive. These regimes are scared of the impact of the Arab masses up in anger all over the Muslim world. There used to be a time when one paid a price only for standing up to Israel and the leadership of these countries were dead scared of the Zionist state and the US. Now is the time when they are also scared of their own peoples. It is this fear that propels them to take action.

 

 

They now take action but in a miserable, hypocritical and faint-hearted manner. On the day the foreign ministers of the Arab League and Turkey visited Gaza, precisely at the moment when they are there, the Israeli war machine murdered 27 Palestinians. With the US and the EU behind it, the Zionist state defies the whole world. The political outcome has not been the raising of the voices of the Arab states and Turkey, but the acceleration of cease-fire diplomacy.

 

The political significance of this cease-fire should be grasped clearly. It is true that the people of Gaza are satisfied, for they have lost 161 of their own, including a commander, in the space of eight days. Who will not feel contentment when the descent of death from the heavens is arrested? But this should not make us forget the hypocrisy of those like Erdogan and Morsi, who step forth victoriously, waiting for a display of gratitude on the part of the Palestinian people. Once again, they have intervened in a fight to hold the arm of the victim.

 

 

Israel’s foreign minister Lieberman boasts for having done a tremendous job. No! They have made a cowardly aggression on the people of Gaza and the people of Gaza, preferring to die standing rather than to live on their knees, have responded to them in kind!

 

What has dissuaded Israel from launching a ground assault and made them opt for a cease-fire is the resistance displayed by Gaza. It is the fact that the so-called Iron Dome, the air defence system installed by Israel, has not been able to destroy half the rockets fired from Gaza. It is the impact of the texting of resistance messages to the cell phones of Israeli soliders by the youth of Gaza, which acted to bring down morale in the Israeli army. It is the courage and resolve of the Gaza fighters, who saw in a prospective ground assault an opportunity to capture Israeli soldiers.

 

Iran has declared that it has sent arms to Gaza and that these have reached their destiny. The Fajr rockets that Hamas fires on Israel are made in Iran. A ground war increased the prospect of fraternisation between the Sunni and Shi’a forces that had been made enemies to each other as a result of the divisive policies reactionary states pursued in and around Syria. And the memory of the beating suffered by Israel at the hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 is still fresh.

 

 

The true political meaning of cease-fire diplomacy appears clearly in the light of all this. The governments of Egypt and Turkey now pose as heroes. Of these, Turkey is a shield that protects Israel not only against Iran through the missile shield established in Malatya in the eastern part of the country only several years ago, but also against Hezbollah through its contingent in the UNIFIL forces of the United Nations stationed in Lebanon. Erdogan is right to characterise Israel as “a terrorist state”. But the same Erdogan acts and will act as a shield for Israel as long as Turkish troops serve in the UNIFIL and the missile shield remains where it is.

 

Morsi, for his part, has been carried to power on the wave of the Arab revolution that has brought down Mubarak. Morsi ought to break with the collaborationist Arab states, in particular with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which, along with Turkey, have been acting to provoke dissension between the Sunni and the Shi’a. For they are enemies of the revolution, allies of imperialism, and shields for Israel. Otherwise, having increasingly frozen the revolution so far, Morsi will shortly have passed to the other side of the barricades against the revolution.

 

 

The Turkish foreign minister Davutoglu has once again made clear the official position of the Turkish state by claiming that this problem will not have been solved until “an independent state of Palestine has been established with its capital in East Jerusalem”. He wishes the Arab states, Egypt and Hamas, which he wants to bring under his control, to share this political stance. This is a reactionary policy. It is a policy that legitimises the piracy of the state of Israel in the territory of Palestine, starting with Jerusalem/al Quds. A Palestine on the separate bantustan-like territories of the West Bank and Gaza, divided by Zionist settlements, will be stillborn. To defend this kind of Palestine does not imply standing for an “independent Palestine” but celebrating Zionist Israel! The road to freedom is closed for Palestine as long as the Zionist state of Israel has not been brought down!