Despite the intensity of the Israeli assault on Gaza, Israel\u2019s politicians are framing the military operation as one they entered against their will.<\/aside>\nAn estimated 200 rockets have been fired from Gaza since Tuesday, but there have been no recorded Israeli casualties.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Despite the intensity of the Israeli assault on Gaza, Israel\u2019s politicians are framing the military operation as one they entered against their will.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not eager for battle, but the security of our citizens and children takes precedence over all else,\u201d Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
An Israeli official\u00a0quoted by\u00a0The Jerusalem Post<\/i>\u00a0lamented that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas could not \u201cinfluence his Hamas partners to exercise restraint and stop kidnapping and murdering Israeli teenagers and sending rocket barrages into Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sort of restraint would have prevented the current crisis,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The implication of these statements are that Hamas has forced Israel into launching a full-scale military operation against them, conveniently ignoring the recent crackdown on the West Bank after the disappearance of three Israeli youths, which Israel blamed on Hamas without providing evidence to back its claims.<\/p>\n
In\u00a0an op-ed\u00a0titled \u2018Send Gaza to the Stone Age\u2019 published on Wednesday,\u00a0Israel Hayom<\/i>\u2019s Editor-in-Chief Amos Regev praised the Israeli government for \u201cthe levelheadedness, restraint and sound judgment it exhibited before ordering the Israel Defense Forces [sic] to launch Operation Protective Edge,\u201d calling for a ground operation in Gaza to be \u201ccarried out with determination and clenched lips, with the knowledge that this is a war of no choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israel, its leaders would have you believe, is reluctantly entering an open conflict out of a sense of duty, once again indulging in the self-victimizing rhetoric that all Israeli military actions are defensive or retaliatory.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s enemy, once again, is Hamas, and Zionist political figures have stepped up their eliminationist discourse.<\/p>\n
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon called for the destruction of Hamas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are continuing to carry out attacks that are exacting a heavy price from Hamas,\u201d Yaalon said. \u201cWe are destroying its arms, terrorist infrastructure, command and control systems, institutions, government buildings, terrorists\u2019 homes, and we are killing terrorists in the organizational high command.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other politicians echoed the sentiment.<\/p>\n
\u201cA sovereign state cannot allow for a bunch of terrorists to run its life; we must cut off the head of the snake and for every Hamas man to know that his blood is upon his head,\u201d Shas party leader Aryeh Deri\u00a0tweeted on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon took it one step further, calling on Israel Wednesday\u00a0to cut off fuel and electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nNeither Yaalon, Deri or Danon have acknowledged the human cost of such actions on Gaza, an enclave already suffering because of the crushing Israeli siege and already struggling with fuel and electricity shortages.<\/aside>\n\u201cIt is inconceivable that on the one hand we fight Hamas and on the other we provide fuel and electricity that are used to transport missiles that are fired at us,\u201d Danon said. \u201cWe are in a campaign against Hamas, which is firing missiles at Israel\u2019s citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Neither Yaalon, Deri or Danon have acknowledged the human cost of such actions on Gaza, an enclave already suffering because of the crushing Israeli siege and already struggling with fuel and electricity shortages. Nor did they mention the loss of civilian life which is the inevitable consequence of wide military actions in such a densely populated territory.<\/p>\n
Israeli leadership, however, has repeatedly emphasized the plight of Israeli civilians. Israeli news outlets have dutifully reported every siren sounded in Israeli towns since the beginning of Operation \u201cProtective Edge\u201d and lamented\u00a0the closure of some Israeli summer camps.<\/p>\n
Cara Lebenzon, a blogger for\u00a0The Times of Israel<\/i>\u00a0penned a postberating those who have spoken out against Israel\u2019s attacks, saying \u201cI would actually argue we are TOO nice to Hamas and the people of Gaza. I\u2019ve never heard of a single country on earth that supplies their mortal enemies with water, goods and electricity on a daily basis, have you?\u201d For these folk, Palestinians are not people entitled to basic human rights, and an assault on Gaza is not only warranted, but long overdue.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have bombarded Twitter with stylized graphics trying to garner sympathy for the fearful Israeli population who must run to bomb shelters — conveniently ignoring Palestinians\u2019 lack of shelters during its deadly air raids.<\/p>\n
Source: Al Akhbar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As Israeli forces began their assault on the Gaza Strip, Israel\u2019s leaders and media ramped up a rhetoric offensive, using dehumanizing discourse to garner support for deadly military action in the besieged Palestinian territory. Operation \u201cProtective Edge\u201d – Israel\u2019s latest military offensive to be given a name with nurturing undertones after \u201cMy Brother\u2019s Keeper\u201d and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[597,1051,252,349,1425,163,183],"class_list":["post-9833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-lectures","tag-attacks","tag-israeli-airstrikes","tag-killing","tag-middle-east-2","tag-palestine","tag-ticker","tag-zionist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9833"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9836,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9833\/revisions\/9836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}