The Crime of the Zionists and the Transnational Elite and the Stand of the Left*

The Israeli Zionists, with their new brutal crime in Palestine, i.e. the bloodbath they have unleashed against a defenceless people who had previously been strangled economically, have perhaps surpassed themselves in their long criminal history. This crime is not only fully supported by all Zionists around the world who, in the last sixty years or so, have managed to dominate the Jewish communities which, before the second world war, were far from supportive of the Zionist plan, with several distinguished Jewish Left intellectuals attacking its potentially criminal nature. It has also been given the direct or indirect support of the equally criminal transnational elite[1] (i.e. the US and EU elites), as well as that of its tyrannical Arab satrap regimes (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Gulf emirates etc.). At the same time, however, the very magnitude of this new crime has led to a new awakening of peoples’ consciousness, which is already being expressed by a growing resistance movement, despite the gross brain-washing and disorientation perpetuated by the international media which are controlled by the elites.[2] Particularly so, when this new crime comes in the aftermath of the still-developing huge economic crime against humanity created by the growing economic crisis of the globalised capitalist market economy[3] ―which was also initiated by the transnational elite, the local elites and the privileged social groups associated with them, that enjoy the benefits of neoliberal globalisation.

This resistance is not surprising, of course, since it is inevitable that people will increasingly realise that the systemic violence against the Palestinian people is part and parcel of the overall systemic violence exercised by the very same transnational elite, with the assistance of local elites across the world, under the mantra of a pseudo «democracy» which has nothing whatsoever to do with genuine democracy ―i.e. the direct exercise of all kinds of power by the people themselves[4] and not by the political elites of professional politicians, or by the economic elites which control the internationalized capitalist market economy. It is the same systemic violence which:

The “crime” of the people of Gaza who are being slaughtered today, is that they voted ―faithfully implementing all «democratic» procedures imposed by the transnational elite― for a regime that was committed to the non-recognition of the Zionist regime which, over the past 60 years, has been occupying by force, or the threat of force (as progressive Jewish historians also admit),[10] not only the territories given to it by the United Nations in 1948 (without, of course, anybody having thought to ask the opinion of the indigenous Palestinians who were the overwhelming majority living on this land for hundreds of years!) but also the rest of Palestine, thanks to the campaigns of the Zionist army, namely the policeman of the West which, with the billions of dollars being poured into it by the West, is now one of the four most powerful armies in the world. The result: 1.5 million refugees have now been squeezed, under the most appalling conditions, into the coastal region of Gaza, an area about the size of the Isle of Wight.

Therefore, regardless of the Islamic character of the regime, the non-recognition of an expansionist and racist[11] regime and the resistance against its military occupation by all available means of popular counter-violence, is an obvious, necessary task recognized even by international law. Yet, there are some self-declared libertarian currents refusing to support those kinds of popular anti-systemic violence which are based on religious, irrational movements ―a stand which is irrelevant to the immediate priority of overthrowing systemic violence in the first place! The Gaza refugees had to be crushed, then, because they did not show any willingness to give in to the Zionists and compromise their rights, as the mainly bourgeois strata in the West Bank did in their support of the Abbas regime ―protected by Zionists, the transnational elite and its Arab satraps. This regime showed a readiness to accept the role of leading a protectorate within the Bantustan kind of state that the Zionists would be willing to grant them, in exchange for the full recognition of a pure Zionist state in Palestine by the entire Arab world (what the “world community” ―read the transnational elite― euphemistically calls the “two-state solution”).

Thus, immediately after the victory of Hamas in Gaza, the transnational elite and its Arab satraps began a campaign for “regime change” ―exactly as was successfully carried out in Yugoslavia and Iraq. The aim was to crush the morale of the people of Gaza so that, in the forthcoming elections, they would vote for Abbas, the “chosen” one ―i.e. favoured by the Zionists, the transnational elite and its Arab satraps. The campaign began with an exhausting economic war. Thus, the alleged withdrawal of the Zionist occupying forces in 2005, in effect, meant the military blockade of Gaza by land, air and sea and the creation of perhaps the largest ghetto in history, complete with the faithful application of methods of collective reprisal employed by the Nazis. This massive crime against the Palestinian people was disguised by the “Holocaust industry”, i.e. the Zionist ideology which was denounced by a Jew[12] whose own family were victims of concentration camps ―a fact that did not prevent Zionists and crypto-Zionist crooks all over the world from accusing him of anti-Semitism, a charge also made against any other fair-minded Jew, or supporter of the radical left, who dared to denounce the perennial crime that is Zionism.

So, after 9/11, the unashamedly mendacious, state-terrorist Zionist elites (with the decisive help of the international media ―controlled by the transnational elite― which basically present only the Zionist version of the “truth”) promptly classified the non-yielding Hamas regime among the “terrorist” rogue regimes on the grounds that it supposedly threatened the very existence of Jews in Palestine! This ludicrous claim was made in the full knowledge that all the Arab armies and the Iranian regime put together (let alone the Hamas regime in isolation!) could never succeed in eliminating Zionist Israel, in the face of its hugely powerful army with its nuclear capability, backed by the most powerful army in human history: the criminal US army! At the same time, the Zionists have been promoting the myth of their withdrawal from Gaza, i.e. a “withdrawal” which, complemented by their economic war, has led to the present economic catastrophe in Gaza: according to the latest report of the International Red Cross,[13] 70% of the people in Gaza suffer from chronic malnutrition and about 40% of the population have been condemned to absolute poverty, with incomes of 90 euros a month being the norm for families needing to feed 7-9 people.

The Zionist campaign for "regime change" ―a plan which has inadvertently been admitted to by certain government officials, (e.g. a couple of days into the assault on Gaza, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, said it would continue for "as long as it takes to dismantle Hamas completely”[14]) ―is underway with the current crime and, once again, a systematic lie is being used to disguise it. While in Iraq the supposed threat was that of “weapons of mass destruction”, which were never found, in Gaza it is the “rockets” fired by Hamas, which were described as follows by a BBC correspondent:

No wonder that this sort of “war”, as it is presented by Zionists and the world media controlled by the transnational elite, has so far claimed the lives of 4 Israelis as opposed to more than 400 Palestinians killed by the air raids. Clearly, the Zionists have well surpassed their Nazi teachers in terms of collective reprisals enforced against those resisting their occupation: while the Nazi ratio was 50 civilians killed for every German, the Zionist ratio is 100 Gaza inhabitants killed for every Israeli! Overall, in the past eight years Palestinians have fired 8,500 rockets from Gaza into Israel, killing 20 civilians, in contrast to the 5,000 Palestinians killed by the Zionist F16s and Apaches (i.e. a ratio of 357 Palestinians for every Israeli killed),[16] ―1,700 of them killed in Israeli military attacks since Jewish settlers were pulled out of Gaza three years ago[17].

Contrary to the systematic Zionist lies about Hamas breaking the ceasefire etc, there is now, in fact, overwhelming evidence to suggest that the present criminal campaign was one of pure, premeditated murder, having nothing to do with what Hamas did or did not do militarily during the ceasefire period. Here is how a serious analyst of Palestinian affairs described this process in a revealing article in the Observer,[18] on the basis of information given to him by Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the UN until a few months ago:

In keeping with this strategy of utter distortion of the facts, Israel has been portraying Hamas as part of an axis of Islamist fundamentalist evil together with Iran and Hezbollah. In reality, the actions of Hamas have been an expression of popular resistance against the continued occupation of the West Bank, the blockade of Gaza and the Israeli military's continued killing of large numbers of Palestinians since the pullout. No wonder the Zionist leadership has had the nerve to deceive world opinion in such a blatant way, with crooked professional politicians like Tzipi Livni declaring in Paris, immediately after the start of the land invasion, that there was no threat of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, despite reports to the contrary by UN and Red Cross organisations on the ground, and that "Israel is part of the free world and fights extremism and terrorism-- Hamas is not," while Simon Peres, the supposedly “progressive” ex-Labor party leader, had no qualms about declaring on 4/1/2009, in a contemptuous dismissal of mounting world disgust at the Zionist crime, that “"Hamas needs a real and serious lesson. They are now getting it”!

This purely Goebbelian propaganda was put forward not only by all the media controlled by the transnational elite, including formerly respectable organisations like the BBC (providing coverage that was completely biased in favour of the Zionists, and backed by a barrage of “Holocaust industry” stories in the midst of the Palestinian slaughter!), but also by the Israeli military, who posted video footage on YouTube, while Israeli diplomats in New York arranged a two-hour “citizens’ press conference” on Twitter for thousands of people. As if all this were not enough, Israel, perhaps for the first time in modern warfare, completely barred foreign journalists from witnessing the results of its strategy, even though its own courts judged this act to be illegal! Obviously, it did not want the world to see its “defensive” slaughtering of a defenceless people ―only the “agony” suffered by Israelis within Israel due to the pathetic Hamas “explosives-packed pipes”. Yet, it has the nerve to claim that it is a “democratic” oasis in the Middle East!

Needless to say that the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed could only be witnessed and heard about through Al Jazeera, the only international TV channel which could send pictures from inside Gaza (as it is manned by Palestinians who did not need approval from the Zionist regime): i.e. of events such as the deliberate bombing of a local fruit market which led to the deaths of many civilians, or the bombing of ambulances and private houses ―apart from the fact that, as doctors in Gaza’s hospital testified, wounded people were dying because of the lack of medicine resulting from the economic embargo.

No wonder that the Zionists have no qualms about interpreting international law in the way that could best “justify” their claims. The International Committee of the Red Cross ―guardian of the Geneva Conventions on which international humanitarian law is based― defines a combatant as a person "directly engaged in hostilities". But Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) spokesman Benjamin Rutland told the BBC[19]: “Our definition is that anyone who is involved with terrorism within Hamas is a valid target. This ranges from the strictly military institutions and includes the political institutions that provide the logistical funding and human resources for the terrorist arm.”

However, as Philippe Sands, Professor of International Law at University College London, has stated, he is not aware of any Western democracy having taken so broad a definition, and he damns the legalistic tricks of Zionist criminals as follows:

In spite of this, Non Government Organisations like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, which were particularly vocal in demanding the prosecution of enemies of the transnational elite like Milosevic or Saddam Hussein for war crimes or crimes against humanity, never raised a single such demand against proven Zionist war criminals like Sharon in the past, or Tzipi Livni, Simon Peres, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert today!

The stand of the Left: keeping an equal distance from perpetrators and victims

However, these facts did not prevent the European centre-Left and the Left from condemning violence “from wherever it may come”, i.e keeping, as usual, an equal distance from perpetrators and victims and equating the systemic violence of the Zionists with the resistance movements’ counter-violence against the occupiers. No wonder that the European Left party once again called”[20] ―after the latest crime had begun to take place― for a 2-state solution under the slogan “Another Middle East is possible” in accordance with their similarly utopian and ultimately meaningless slogan, “Another World is possible”. Nor is it surprising that this “solution” is also supported by the transnational elite and its Arab satraps, as well as by the Zionists themselves, who would like their “pure” Zionist regime to be perpetuated side-by-side with a dependent protectorate of the Bantustan kind!

On the other hand, the Zionist “Left” (Crossman, Amos Oz, et al.) adopt a similar stand, also denying the right of the Palestinian people to resist, allegedly because their “terrorism” kills “innocent” people, (while the overwhelming majority of these people consents to the Zionists’ crimes ―particularly the latest one, as all polls indicated), whereas the multiple Palestinian victims of Zionist state terrorism are, of course, just referred to as “collateral damage”, in adoption of the criminal language of the US military following its murder of civilians on a massive scale in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Why this great bloodbath? The simple answer was given by John McCarthy, a British analyst, on the first day of the land invasion[21]:

This confirms, once again, the conclusion which I reached in the past[22], that the historical crime of creating a “pure Jewish” state in Palestine would have been prevented, and hundreds of thousands of lives (the overwhelming majority of them Palestinian) would have been saved, if the condemnation of such a move by prominent Left-wing Jews like Hannah Arendt and Isaac Deutscher and the Left Zionists, who demanded a bi-nationalist state, had been heard[23]. In other words, if the Palestinian land had not been divided (unequally from the very beginning in favour of the Zionists!) with the aim of creating two states but, instead, had been used as the foundation for a single multicultural secular state, which would have housed both the Palestinians and those Jewish refugees, particularly from Europe, who had wished to move there. In fact, this is the type of solution which is now gaining increasing support among progressive anti-Zionist Jews and Palestinians, who recognise that the “two-state” solution effectively leads to a Zionist monster and a Palestinian Bantustan.

This is particularly obvious now that it is clear that the Zionist aim has always been to Judaise Palestine by forcing the Palestinians to abandon their land under intolerable pressure ―a clearly racist objective, as was stressed by Avraham Burg who, despite having been chairman of the World Zionist Organization in the past, rejects as racist the Old Testament notion that the Jews are God's chosen people. On similar grounds, Shlomo Sand, a professor at Tel Aviv University, argues that Israel should not be a Jewish state, but a democratic secular one which belongs to all its citizens ―a position close to the Inclusive Democracy stand on the Palestine issue.[24]

It is, therefore, becoming increasingly clear today that the way out of the vicious circle of bloodshed would have to be one that transcends the catastrophic two-state solution. The demand for a multicultural state, which was initially proposed by the Jewish Left and backed by the radical Left in Europe more than fifty years ago, is again on the agenda. Several currents are strengthening among both progressive Palestinians[25] and post-Zionist Jews[26] to find a solution which, rejecting both Zionism and religious irrationalism (Jewish and Palestinian alike), would aim to create a multicultural and inclusive state for all the peoples living in Palestine today. In fact, such a solution would also be perfectly consistent with historical evidence, which clearly shows that Arabs and Jews did indeed live together harmoniously in the Mediterranean basin whilst the Arab nation was flourishing[27], and that irrational religious differences did not prevent millions of Jews, Christians and others from living harmoniously within the borders of the Ottoman empire. Similarly, millions of Jews today have no problem living (and thriving) together with other peoples in Europe and the USA either.

Clearly, a one-state solution in the form of an inclusive multicultural state would be an important step towards the creation of a Confederal Inclusive Democracy in Palestine. This is because such a solution could not only lead to a form of government which would bear no relation at all to the present racist Zionist “democracy” and the authoritarian Palestinian Authority ―thereby solving the problem of refugees on both sides― but it could also represent a crucial move towards a future confederation of peoples in Palestine based on an Inclusive Democracy. However, the Zionists, in perfect harmony with the transnational elite, are not even prepared to discuss the solution of a single multicultural state for the peoples of Palestine and have, instead, fought any solution that would undermine their “clean” (and expansive) Zionist state with all the means at their disposal. Furthermore, their present crime has not only made any 2-state solution which would be based on anything other than a Bantustan kind of regime impossible, but it has also made even the one-state solution almost impossible, given the immense hatred that the criminal treatment of the Palestinian people has generated among the Arab peoples. It is, therefore, obvious that the crimes of the Zionists will never be forgiven and forgotten by the peoples of the world in general and the Arab peoples in particular, unless the Jews in Israel and their communities abroad begin a systematic campaign to overthrow this criminal regime and its ideology and replace it with a multicultural regime for all the peoples of Palestine as the first step towards the creation of a confederal Inclusive Democracy there, i.e. a genuine democracy involving the equal distribution of power among all citizens.

* A much shorter version of this article was published in the fortnightly column of Takis Fotopoulos in the mass circulation Athens daily, Eleftherotypia, (3/1/2009).

[1] See for the definition of the transnational elite, Takis Fotopoulos, “Globalisation, the reformist Left and the Anti-Globalisation «Movement»”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 7, No. 2 (July 2001).

[2] Takis Fotopoulos, “Mass media, Culture and Democracy”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 5, No. 1 (March 1999).

[3] See Takis Fotopoulos, “The myths about the economic crisis, the reformist Left and economic democracy”, The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 4, No. 4 (October 2008),

[4] See Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy (London, N.Y.: Cassell/Continuum, 1997/1998), Part II

[5] Takis Fotopoulos, “The First War of the Internationalised Market Economy”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 5, No. 2 (July 1999)

[6] Takis Fotopoulos, “The global «war» of the transnational elite”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 8, No. 2 (July 2002).

[7] Takis Fotopoulos, “Iraq: the new criminal «war» of the transnational elite”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 9, No. 2 (July 2003)

[8] Takis Fotopoulos, “Is degrowth compatible with a market economy?”, The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 3, No. 1 (January 2007).

[9] See Takis Fotopoulos, “A systemic Crisis in Greece” (in this issue).

[10] Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Question (Cambridge University, December 11, 2003); Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld Publications, 2006); see, also, Eric Rouleau, “The «ethnic cleansing» of Palestine”, Le Monde diplomatique (English edition) (May 2008).

[11] On the racist nature of the Zionist regime see Takis Fotopoulos, “Palestine: the hour of truth”, The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 2, No.2 (January 2006).

[12] Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry (Verso, 2000).

[13] Donald Macintyre, “Chronic malnutrition in Gaza blamed on Israel”, The Independent (15/11/2008).

[14] Chris McGreal, “Why Israel went to war in Gaza”, The Observer (4/1/2009).

[15] Heather Sharp, “Rocket attacks plague Israeli towns”, BBC News (28/12/2008).

[16] Seumas Milne, “Israel's onslaught on Gaza is a crime that cannot succeed”, The Guardian (30/12/2008).

[17] Chris McGreal, “Why Israel went to war in Gaza”.

[18] Chris McGreal, ibid.

[19] Heather Sharp, “Who is a civilian?”, BBC News (Jerusalem 05/01/2009).

[20] European Left, “Another Middle East is possible” (29 December 2008).

[21] John McCarthy, “If it was your home, what hope «restraint»?”, The Independent (4/1/2009).

[22] Takis Fotopoulos, “Palestine: the hour of truth”.

[23] Stanley Aronowitz, “Setting the Record Straight: Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Critics”, Logos, Issue 3.3 (Summer 2004).

[24] Takis Fotopoulos, “Palestine: the hour of truth”.

[25] See e.g. Ahmad Samih Khalidi, “A one-state solution”, The Guardian (29/09/2003) & Conal Urquhart, “Gaza shifts to a new solution”, The Observer (14/09/2003).

[26] See e.g. Esther Addley, “Lines in the sand”, The Guardian (25/07/2002).

[27] John Rose, The Myths of Zionism (Pluto Press, 2005).

[ UPDATE: ADDENDUM ADDED (19/01/2009)

ADDENDUM: Why the Zionist Brutality in Gaza?*

The Zionist systemic violence in Gaza, which is fully backed by the rest of the transnational elite (U.S., E.U.) and its tyrannical Arab satrap regimes, has already reached the limits of brutality. It is now clear that the Israeli army not only deliberately ignores the fact that, when it is engaged in supposedly “surgical” bombardments of the most populous region in the world, into which 1.5 million refugees have been herded, it will inevitably cause massive casualties among civilians, but (as has now been established even by the UN agencies and NGOs on the ground) it also deliberately murders civilians in an unprecedented orgy of state terrorism. Thus, the UN's senior human rights body approved a resolution condemning the Israeli offensive for "massive violations of human rights", while a senior UN source said that the body's humanitarian agencies were compiling evidence of war crimes and passing it on to the "highest levels" to be used as seen fit. Furthermore, some human rights activists alleged that the Israeli leadership gave an order to keep military casualties low no matter the cost to civilians. In fact, the reason the Israeli army never entered the very heart of Gaza city was to claim “victory” over Hamas without suffering any significant losses.[1] This is how the ratio of 100 Gaza inhabitants killed for every Israeli was maintained throughout this brutal Zionist attack against defenseless people, with almost 1,300 Gazans, 40% of them women and children, killed in contrast to 13 Israeli soldiers or civilians.

In particular, the Israeli military were accused of:

• Using powerful shells in civilian areas which the army knew would cause large numbers of casualties among innocent people;

• Using banned weapons such as phosphorus bombs;

• Using Palestinian families as human shields;

• Attacking medical facilities, which resulted in the killing of 12 ambulance men in marked vehicles;

• Killing large numbers of police who had no military role.

Furthermore, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) referred to the shelling of a house in Gaza by Israeli forces, into which they had moved approximately 110 Palestinians 24 hours earlier, as “one of the gravest incidents”[2], in addition to the firing at Palestinian civilians as they tried to leave their homes ― in some cases bearing white flags![3]

For Richard Falk, the UN's special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories and professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, “there is a well-grounded view that both the initial attacks on Gaza and the tactics being used by Israel are serious violations of the UN charter, the Geneva conventions, international law and international humanitarian law.”[4] As Falk concluded, “If there were the political will there could be an ad-hoc tribunal established to hear allegations of war crimes.” Of course, nobody is naive enough to believe that any member of the transnational or Zionist elite will ever be punished by an international court within the present system, and it is certain that the NGOs, which were very keen to bring Milosevic and others (who happened to be enemies of this elite) to such a court, will soon forget their present rhetoric!

In all these cases, the Israeli army systematically lied, as it has, in fact, done throughout its history, according to Robert Fisk who personally checked some of their stories. Here is how he described it:[5]

After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Ana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hezbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. (...) Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't even apologise. Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance carrying civilians from a neighbouring village ― again after they were ordered to leave by Israelis ― and killed three children and two women. The Israelis claimed that a Hezbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It was untrue. I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.

In a similar way, Fisk described how Menachem Begin's government accused the world of a blood libel when Israel was blamed for the Sabra and Chatila massacre, until Israel’s own commission of inquiry was forced, after world condemnation, to admit that the Israeli army watched the massacre for 48 hours and did nothing. This did not prevent the “progressive” Zionist film-maker, Ari Folman ―who was among these soldiers― from attempting to present them as being psychologically traumatized by the experience they had undergone in watching this massacre, and from blaming the Sharon leadership for everything, in his Golden-Globe-winning film, Waltz with Bashir. Yet, it was similar soldiers who did not have any qualms whatsoever about committing the atrocities mentioned above, in Gaza!

How, though, can we explain the latest Zionist bestiality, which may well have exceeded any previous one? I think that the explanation should be sought in terms of the aim of this monstrous campaign which, as I stated above, has been “regime change”, i.e. the “weakening of Hamas” (as far as popular support in Gaza is concerned), so that it may be succeeded either by the Abbas regime or, at least, by a government based on both Fatah and Hamas. However, the precondition for this to happen was to bring the resistance to its knees, and the only way for this aim to be achieved was to terrorize the people of Gaza, starting with the economic violence which has led them to their present economic misery, and continuing with the brutal physical violence against the “mob” ―an activity in which the Israeli army specializes perhaps more than any other army in the world. Thus, in the first intifada, the army itself, by order of the “progressive” Yitzhak Rabin otherwise known as the “bone breaker”, was busy physically breaking the hands of demonstrators. Today, that same army is busy breaking the heads of Gazans, whether they are suspected of “terrorism” or not.

The intermediate aim is to compel the people of Gaza and its resistance organisations to renounce the resistance and, ultimately, to accept Abbas ―i.e. the one chosen by the transnational elite and the Zionists― as their leader, in return for a commitment by the Israelis to stop blatantly violating international law through the strangling of Gaza by means of its total blockade! The final goal, which will be implemented by the “progressive” Obama administration with the help of an obliging Congress, which has just sided entirely with the current criminal campaign (passing a resolution in favour of it with a 98% “democratic” majority), is the “two-state” solution which, according to the honest Jewish historian Ilan Pappé ―who was forced by the Zionists into self-imposed exile― means a Zionist state built on 90% of historic Palestine, with the remaining 10% being shared between the two large prisons that are the West Bank and the Gaza strip (i.e. the “Bantustan” solution).[6] Of course, this is what the present centre-right Zionist coalition aims to achieve while, if the Zionist right-wing Likud party takes over in the forthcoming elections, as the Likud leader recently put it after stopping short of endorsing a two-state solution that would create an independent Palestinian state, “I would make sure that the Palestinians have the means to govern themselves but not to threaten the survival of the state of Israel.”[7]

However, the question still remains of what the source of Israeli boldness was, as it has been displayed over the past three weeks, when not only was the slightest sincere regret for this huge crime never expressed but, furthermore, world bodies like the UN Human Rights bodies and various NGOs (not exactly radical institutions!) were openly treated with contempt, as were millions of people all over the world who demonstrated against this crime against humanity on a massive scale. Indeed, in countries like the USA and Britain, Zionists were bold enough even to organise demonstrations in favour of this crime! Clearly, the direct (U.S.A.) or indirect (E.U.) support of the transnational elite and the mass media controlled by it, would partly explain this. No wonder Ehud Olmert ―as he himself revealed― ordered Bush, in the style of a commandante, to abstain from voting in favour of a United Nations ceasefire resolution, despite the fact that it had already been approved by the rest of the transnational elite, including the humiliated Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice![8]

To my mind, however, the main factor behind this boldness is the mass conversion of the Israeli people to a criminal ideology, Zionism, which has led to their brutalisation, as indicated by the fact that up to the last day of this criminal campaign more than 90% of Jewish Israelis backed the invasion[9], with only a few voices (mostly honest Jews outside Israel) rejecting not just mainstream Zionism, but also “Left” Zionism and its “equal distances” stand as expressed by people like Noam Chomsky, Immanuel Wallerstein, Howard Zinn, et. al. Intellectuals such as these signed a statement condemning not only Israel for a crime against humanity, but also the resistance of Gazans (as expressed by Hamas) for its use of “morally false” methods ―although they did not disclose, for our benefit, any “morally correct” methods for dealing with the huge asymmetry of power between the occupier and the victim! Obviously, the excuse given for the massive support of this crime by people like Yossi Sarid, former head of the liberal Meretz party (“people were tired of watching the towns in the south be shelled, so there has been almost no critical view of events)"[10], is particularly flimsy, as even a liberal BBC analyst indirectly stressed[11]:

For many years Britain faced an insurgency and at times a low-level civil war in Northern Ireland. (…) At different times the IRA planted bombs on the British mainland that killed people and did a lot of damage. The actions of the British security forces during three decades of the Troubles were very controversial, and still are today. Sometimes the British army killed innocent people. But Britain never used heavy weapons, jets, and attack helicopters.

This is why I believe that the only meaningful explanation for the arrogance of those supporting this crime, either inside or outside Israel, is the ideology of Zionism. A liberal columnist for the Independent aptly put it as follows[12]:

Pro-Israeli commentators have become even more ferociously “patriotic” as revelations have unfolded of the destruction of people, peace and hope in Gaza. On the letters pages Zionists say the violence ―including phosphorous burns on children― are “regrettable” but necessary. A nation that asks the world not to forget what was done to its people by Hitler, has advocates who believe brutal ethnic cleansing is “regrettable”.

P.S. At the time of publication, following the unilateral ceasefires declared by both the Israeli government and Hamas, representatives of the transnational elite and its satrap Arab regimes, including their protégé Abbas but excluding Hamas, convened in Egypt, in an attempt to force Hamas effectively to abandon any idea of resistance against the occupation and join forces with Abbas in continuing the deadlocked negotiations for a “two-state” (Bantustan) solution, in exchange for the lifting of the Gaza blockade. Clearly, if they succeed in doing this, it would be the clearest indication yet that the brutal campaign against Gaza has succeeded after all in smashing Palestinian resistance, given that, after the effective abandonment of the right to resist by the people in the West Bank, Gaza was the last fortress of resistance in the Middle East.

* The addendum is based on an article published in the fortnightly column of Takis Fotopoulos in the mass circulation Athens daily, Eleftherotypia on 17/1/2009.

[1] Chris McGreal, “Demands grow for Gaza war crimes investigation”, The Guardian (13/1/2009).

[2] BBC, “Israel «shelled civilian shelter» ”, (09/01/2009).

[3] BBC, “Israelis «shot at fleeing Gazans»” (14/01/2009).

[4] Αfua Hirsch, “Israel may face UN court ruling on legality of Gaza conflict”, The Guardian (14/01/2009).

[5] Robert Fisk, “Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask”, The Independent (7/01/2009).

[6] See the documentary by Sufuan & Abdallah Omeish, “Occupation 101”, (2007).

2009).

[8] Ewen MacAskill, “UN climbdown”, The Guardian (14/01/2009).

[9] Toni O'Loughlin, “Backing for invasion remains strong”, The Guardian (14/01/2009).

[10] Ben Lynfield, “«My daughters, they killed them»: TV doctor shows Israelis horror of war”, The Independent (19/01/2009).

[11] Jeremy Bowen’s Diary, BBC (14/01/2009).

[12] Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, “Israel’s friends cannot justify this slaughter”, The Independent (19/01/2009).