An Appropriate Introduction — Noam Chomsky, “Exterminate all the brutes”: Gaza 2009

On Saturday December 27, the latest US-Israeli attack on helpless Palestinians was launched. The attack had been meticulously planned, for over 6 months according to the Israeli press. The planning had two components: military and propaganda. It was based on the lessons of Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which was considered to be poorly planned and badly advertised. We may, therefore, be fairly confident that most of what has been done and said was pre-planned and intended.

That surely includes the timing of the assault: shortly before noon, when children were returning from school and crowds were milling in the streets of densely populated Gaza City. It took only a few minutes to kill over 225 people and wound 700, an auspicious opening to the mass slaughter of defenseless civilians trapped in a tiny cage with nowhere to flee.

In his retrospective “Parsing Gains of Gaza War,” New York Times correspondent Ethan Bronner cited this achievement as one of the most significant of the gains. Israel calculated that it would be advantageous to appear to “go crazy,” causing vastly disproportionate terror, a doctrine that traces back to the 1950s. “The Palestinians in Gaza got the message on the first day,” Bronner wrote, “when Israeli warplanes struck numerous targets simultaneously in the middle of a Saturday morning. Some 200 were killed instantly, shocking Hamas and indeed all of Gaza.” The tactic of “going crazy” appears to have been successful, Bronner concluded: there are “limited indications that the people of Gaza felt such pain from this war that they will seek to rein in Hamas,” the elected government. That is another long-standing doctrine of state terror. I don’t, incidentally, recall the Times retrospective “Parsing Gains of Chechnya War,” though the gains were great….

[Update: for a related discussion, see the collection of videos of Noam Chomsky’s 13 January 2009 address on Gaza, and the Q&A session, on 1D4TW.]

What Happens to Dirty Arabs…

The first ten photos and stories were borrowed from The Guardian, Child Victims in Gaza — spread the photos and stories around (make sure you select these stories, and not the altered versions that follow below, since they are very offensive if taken out of context). These personal materials do not belong to any corporation, but to the families who want them to belong to the world as a whole. See also “Children of Gaza: stories of those who died and the trauma for those who survived,” Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, 23 January, 2009. The subsequent images are copied from Vittorio Arrigoni’s Guerrilla Radio.

Warning: This is how some people might stomach, even justify the photos that follow: they might tell themselves…

“These are not pictures of the good people, the chosen people, the important people who are better than others, more deserving of special recognition, rewards, compensation, military support and constant, aggressive, defense. These are mere animals, brutes, vermin to be removed from the landscape. These are just dirty Arabs, they don’t matter.”

Dirty Arab #1 is Abdul Rahim Abu Halima, 14, (wearing a yellow T-shirt), who was killed when his home was hit by a white phosphorous artillery shell on 4 January. In spite of photos to the contrary, in spite of this boy’s death, Israel will not confirm it used white phosphorous in Gaza.

Dirty Arab #1 died with two of his dirty Arab brothers, Zayed, eight, and Hamza, six, his sister Shahed, who was 15 months old, and their dirty Arab father Saad Allah, 45. “He was a very active boy, a little bit nervous sometimes, but he was good at football,” said his brother Mahmoud, 20. “I loved him so very much. He was a wonderful boy.”

Here is Dirty Arab #2…

Dirty Arab #2 is Adham Mutair, 17, who was shot at his dirty Arab home near Beit Lahiya, Gaza, on 9 January. Israeli tanks had taken up positions around the houses and Adham was shot when he went onto the roof to check the dirty Arab family’s pigeons. He died the next day. “We haven’t even had a chance to set up a funeral tent to mourn him properly,” said his uncle Khader, 53. “I don’t think the rest of the world understands how painful our lives are here.”

Dirty Arab #3 is Amal Abed Rabbo, two, a mere baby, pictured after she died in an attack at the village of Izbit Abed Rabbo, on January 7, 2009. According to her dirty Arab father Khalid, 30, Amal and her dirty Arab sister Souad, seven, were killed by gunfire from an Israeli tank after soldiers ordered the dirty Arab family out of their dirty Arab house. Another sister, Samer, four, survived the attack but is paralysed below the waist. “Amal was just learning to talk,” said Khalid. “I want to know from the Israeli army: why did they kill my daughters?”

Dirty Arab #4 is Amira Qirm, 15, in her bed at Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Amira was injured in an Israeli attack that killed her father, brother and sister, also dirty Arabs.

Dirty Arab #5 is Lina Hassan, 10, who was killed by an Israeli shell which hit her as she walked to the shops next to a UN school in Jabaliya on 6 January. “She asked me for a shekel to go to the shops to buy something for her and her brothers and sisters,” said her father Abdul, 37. “I heard the shell and I ran out. I saw her body lying on the ground … Was my daughter Hamas? Do you think a 10-year-old even knows the difference between Hamas and Fatah?”

Dirty Arab #6 is Mohammad Shaqoura, 9, who was also killed by Israeli shelling at the UN school in Jabaliya on 6 January. He was playing marbles in the street outside with his friends in the middle of the afternoon. “I went to help the injured. I didn’t realise Mohammad was one of them,” said his father Basim, 40. “I try to talk about him as much as possible with my other children. But it’s hard for them to understand.”

Dirty Arab #7 is Ghaida Abu Eisha, eight, who was killed along with her dirty Arab parents and two dirty Arab brothers when an Israeli missile struck her  dirty Arab home in Shamali on 5 January. Saber Abu Eisha, 49, the children’s uncle, said: “Ghaida was in the second grade at school. She was like any little girl, she was pretty, she loved to play. Sometimes she was laughing, sometimes she was crying. She liked to dress up, wearing a bride’s dress, showing off.”

Dirty Arab #8 is Mohammad Abu Eisha, 10, was also killed in the Israeli missile strike on his dirty Arab family’s home in Shamali on 5 January. Two dirty Arab children survived: Dalal, 12, and Ahmed, five. Both dirty Arabs are deeply traumatised. “Whenever they hear a loud noise they fall to the ground,” said their uncle Saber Abu Eisha. “Sometimes I think it’s easier for the people who are dead and it’s harder for those who are living.”

Dirty Arab #9 is Sayyd Abu Eisha, 12, the third dirty Arab child killed when an Israeli missile struck the house of the dirty Arab Abu Eisha family in Shamali. Surviving dirty Arab family members searching in the darkness using the lights from their mobile phones until they found their dirty Arab bodies lying in rubble outside the house.

Dirty Arab #10 is Shahed Abu Sultan, eight, was killed by a bullet apparently fired from a helicopter as she sat on her dirty Arab father’s lap at the doorway to their home in the Jabaliya refugee camp on 5 January. Her father, Hussein, 40, wrote a message to his dirty Arab daughter which hangs on their sitting room wall: “I cried a sea of tears for you but those tears have not calmed my heart because you left, my daughter. I have no tears remaining, but my heart wants to go on crying blood, my daughter, my beloved Shahed.”

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What Dirty Arabs Look Like After Israelis “Go Crazy”…

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Imagine Yourself as a Dirty Arab…

[Israeli Defense Minister Ehud] Barak also cited a comment made by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, who visited Sderot during his election campaign earlier this year.

“Obama said that if rockets were being fired at his home while his two daughters were sleeping, he would do everything he could to prevent it,” Barack told the plenum. (source: Ha’aretz, 29-12-2008)

Hear Obama make the statement himself:

Note: “Sderot” is how the Israelis refer to ethnically cleansed Najd, once territory of Palestinians now in Gaza. Palestinians were expelled by the Negev Brigade as part of Operation Barak.

What would Obama do if he was a dirty Arab man in Gaza, and the lives of his two dirty Arab daughters were menaced or terminated? Would a dirty Arab Obama fall prey to grief and rage, that most explosive of mixtures? Would a dirty Arab Obama ingest five pounds of ball bearings, insert 10 ball bearings up his ass, fill his mouth and hands with concrete nails, strap on a dynamite vest and “hug” the nearest Israeli soldier, or the nearest Israeli civilian who cheered as his daughters were splattered against the wall of his dirty Arab home?

What would you do?

It’s just a question.