Editorial

Israel’s fascism

What was the response of the Australian government to the mass murder of unarmed Palestinian protesters by the Israeli military last month? The atrocity perpetrated by the “most moral army in the world”, that last week, as a symbol of this oppression included the shooting dead of Palestinian volunteer paramedic Razan al-Najjar in Gaza?

The United Nations Human Rights Council, of which Australia is a member, issued a strong rebuke to Israel, voting through a resolution calling on the council to “urgently dispatch an independent, international commission of inquiry ... to investigate all alleged violations and abuses ... in the context of the military assaults on large scale civilian protests that began on March 30, 2018.” The HRC passed the resolution with 29 votes in favour, two opposed and 14 abstentions.

The two HRC members in opposition were the United States and Australia: thus Australia played its appointed role on the Council, the part of pliant sycophant in service to big power diktat, the US and its military arm in the Middle East, nuclear weapons state, Israel.

And another symbol of oppression is now firmly on the international stage: the military regalia representing the fascist state of Israel.

Najjar was unmistakable as a health worker, wearing a white uniform, when she was gunned down as she treated a man injured by a tear gas canister. The Netanyahu government has, as is now routine, announced its own inquiry into the circumstances of her killing, but we know the result already. And as usual the stock response from Israeli authorities to criticism is to accuse critics of anti-Semitism.

For a military investigator to accurately label this deliberate assassination would call into question Israel’s entire expansionist colonisation project. That won’t happen. Nonetheless, the Israel Defence Force stands condemned by its own Twitter feed: “Yesterday we saw 30,000 people; we arrived prepared and with precise reinforcements. Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed.”

Not a single Israeli soldier been killed or wounded while engaged in sniper practice overlooking the Gaza killing fields.

Najjar was not the only Palestinian paramedic shot that day – three others were wounded. She is not the first to be killed – Moussa Abu Hassanein succumbed to Israel’s death squads a fortnight ago.

According to the Gazan health ministry, 223 paramedics have been injured during the border protests and 37 ambulances have been targeted.

Presumably, according to the twisted logic of those who defend Israel’s willingness to drown angry mass civilian protests in blood and justify relentless colonial expansion and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, these were all engaged as decoys to assist terrorist infiltration.

The IDF has often depicted such obviously non-threatening people as being conscious or unwitting “human shields” used by Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

The “human shield” logic presupposes a military power instructing its forces to avoid civilian casualties, but when has the IDF shown reluctance to kill unarmed men, women or children?

Palestinians face a choice. They surrender to Israel’s iron fist occupation, accept that all previous land lost is gone forever and more will go when Israelis demand it, bid farewell to any prospect of an independent Palestinian state and reconcile themselves to future existence in US-style Native American reservations or apartheid bantustans – or they continue to resist.

Even peaceful resistance guarantees bloody repression, but Palestinians reject surrender.

They should be able to rely on the international community to honour and assist their resistance, but imperialist powers, including the US, EU, Britain and Australia, have switched off their moral compasses, content to see Palestinians treated as less than human.

Governments can be defeated by people power, as happened with apartheid South Africa. It can happen too with apartheid Israel.