WAR:...Writers See Things, Writers Write...Israeli Hate For Gaza May Be Political ...But It Also Is Much More...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas | Often, it is the artists and writers who inevitably damn war. It's happened through modern history. Not much of it has surfaced as things relate to the war in Israel, if war can be defined as battles between a superior-armed force and one with weapons of another past century.

Then I went looking at places I felt might have what I was looking for - a view of this war from writers with familiar names.

And there it was in the current issue of New York Review Of Books.

Some of America's better writers had gathered their names on a "letter" of the sort you see when consensus is being sought. These are not wild-eyed politicians or necessarily members of either bloody side's ethnicity. They are simply writers who have given the event a looksee and have no formed opinions.

An excerpt from the NYRoB's published piece: [ Israel has imposed what it calls a "complete siege" and told 1.1 million people in Gaza to evacuate within twenty-four hours. To where? After six days of bombing that have already killed 2,215 people, 724 of them children, in the fourth major aerial bombardment in the sixteenth year of closure the question — to where? — rings unanswerable around the world. When Israel’s top general refers to Palestinians as "human animals" and the US State Department deletes a statement calling for "a ceasefire," then we fear we are watching an ethnic cleansing on a scale unseen in decades.

The governments of the USA, UK, France and others are participating in this crime by ramping up military support for Israel as it wages a war that its officials have plainly stated aims to turn Gaza into a city of tents, or even worse, empty of its people. A population of over two million people, mostly from families that were made refugees in 1948, half of whom are children, have been living under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade since 2007, and to many of them, being told to leave again is not an option. On Saturday, after sixteen years of siege, Hamas militants broke out of Gaza. More than 1,300 Israelis were subsequently killed with over one hundred more taken hostage. We deplore the loss of all innocent life and now, as we write this letter, Israel is executing the largest expulsion of Palestinians since 1948 as it bombs Gazans without discrimination.

Our words feel small in this terrifying escalation. After so many years and so many deaths we must all, together, say this has to end, and that it can only end with a free Palestine. ]

A free Palestine has to date not been in any sort of war dialogue.

On the contrary, it is more a Palestine bombed into oblivion that has settled on Israeli minds. They cannot be blamed, but they can be criticized for their part in what led to this particular attack.

The U.S. is fully siding with Israel. Oh, there is talk of "reining in" the warring, blood-thirsty Israeli generals who want to - once and for all - rid themselves of all-things-Gaza.

The issue is not solely a political one. That would simplify things, but it is - again - about Human Life.

And no country - no ethnicity - has the right to say another Human Life cannot exist.

Keep writing...

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