Israel’s Sadistic Reprisals Help Shore Up A
Sense Of Victimhood
By
Jonathan Cook
July
13, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- When Israel passed a new counter-terrorism
law last year, Ayman Odeh, a leader of the
country’s large minority of Palestinian
citizens, described its draconian measures as
colonialism’s “last gasp”. He said: “I see … the
panic of the French at the end of the occupation
of Algeria.”
The
panic and cruelty plumbed new depths last week,
when Israeli officials launched a $2.3 million
lawsuit against the family of Fadi Qanbar, who
crashed a truck into soldiers in Jerusalem in
January, killing four. He was shot dead at the
scene.
The
suit demands that his widow, Tahani, reimburse
the state for the compensation it awarded the
soldiers’ families. If she cannot raise the
astronomic sum, the debt will pass to her four
children, the oldest of whom is currently only
seven.
Israel
is reported to be preparing many similar cases.
Like
other families of Palestinians who commit
attacks, the Qanbars are homeless, after Israel
sealed their East Jerusalem home with cement.
Twelve relatives were also stripped of their
residency papers as a prelude to expelling them
to the West Bank.
None
has done anything wrong – their crime is simply
to be related to someone Israel defines as a
“terrorist”.
This
trend is intensifying. Israel has demanded that
the Palestinian Authority stop paying a small
monthly stipend to families like the Qanbars,
whose breadwinner was killed or jailed.
Conviction rates among Palestinians in Israel’s
military legal system stand at more than 99 per
cent, and hundreds of prisoners are incarcerated
without charge.
Israeli
legislation is set to seize $280 million – a sum
equivalent to the total stipends – from taxes
Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian
Authority, potentially bankrupting it.
On
Wednesday Israel loyalists will introduce in the
US Senate a bill to similarly deny the PA aid
unless it stops “funding terror”. Issa Karaka, a
Palestinian official, said it would be
impossible for the PA to comply: “Almost every
other household … is the family of a prisoner or
martyr.”
Israel
has taken collective punishment – a serious
violation of international law – to new
extremes, stretching the notion to realms once
imaginable only in a dystopian fable like George
Orwell’s 1984.
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Israel
argues that a potential attacker can only be
dissuaded by knowing his loved ones will suffer
harsh retribution. Or put another way, Israel is
prepared to use any means to crush the
motivation of Palestinians to resist its brutal,
five-decade occupation.
All
evidence, however, indicates that when people
reach breaking-point, and are willing to die in
the fight against their oppressors, they give
little thought to the consequences for their
families. That was the conclusion of an
investigation by the Israeli army more than a
decade ago.
In
truth, Israel knows its policy is futile. It is
not deterring attacks, but instead engaging in
complex displacement activity. Ever-more
sadistic forms of revenge shore up a collective
and historic sense of Jewish victimhood while
deflecting Israelis’ attention from the reality
that their country is a brutal colonial settler
state.
If that
verdict seems harsh, consider a newly published
study into the effects on operators of using
drones to carry out extrajudicial executions, in
which civilians are often killed as “collateral
damage”.
A US
survey found pilots who remotely fly drones soon
develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress from
inflicting so much death and destruction. The
Israeli army replicated the study after its
pilots operated drones over Gaza during Israel’s
2014 attack – the ultimate act of collective
punishment. Some 500 Palestinian children were
killed as the tiny enclave was bombarded for
nearly two months.
Doctors
were surprised, however, that the pilots showed
no signs of depression or anxiety. The
researchers speculate that Israeli pilots may
feel more justified in their actions, because
they are closer to Gaza than US pilots are to
Afghanistan, Iraq or Yemen. They are more
confident that they are the ones under threat,
even as they rain down death unseen on
Palestinians.
The
determination to maintain this exclusive
self-image as the victim leads to outrageous
double standards.
Last
week the Israeli supreme court backed the
refusal by officials to seal up the homes of
three Jews who kidnapped Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a
16-year-old from Jerusalem, in 2014 and burnt
him alive.
In May
the Israeli government revealed that it had
denied compensation to six-year-old Ahmed
Dawabsheh, the badly scarred, sole survivor of
an arson attack by Jewish extremists that killed
his entire family two years ago.
Human
rights group B’Tselem recently warned that
Israel has given itself immunity from paying
compensation to all Palestinians under
occupation killed or disabled by the Israeli
army – even in cases of criminal wrongdoing.
This
endless heaping of insult upon injury for
Palestinians is possible only because the west
has indulged Israel’s wallowing in victimhood so
long. It is time to prick this bubble of
self-delusion and remind Israel that it, not the
Palestinians, is the oppressor.
Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth- based journalist
and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize
for Journalism.
http://www.jonathan-cook.net
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
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shoot dead 2 Palestinians in refugee camp
