Atrocities in Gaza: Piecing Together the Story

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted January 6, 2009.

Of course, not all the victims fall under the category of innocent civilians. Over at Truthdig, Hedges writes about the death of a Palestinian who made no apologies for his support of suicide bombs.

"I often visited Nizar Rayan, who was killed Thursday in a targeted assassination by Israel, at his house in the Jabaliya refugee camp when I was in Gaza. The house is now rubble. It was hit by two missiles fired by Israeli F-16 fighter jets. Rayan, who would meet me in his book-lined study, was decapitated in the blast. His body was thrown into the street by the explosions. His four wives and 11 children also were killed.

Rayan supported tactics, including suicide bombings, which are morally repugnant. His hatred of Israel ran deep. His fundamentalist brand of Islam was distasteful. But as he and I were students of theology, our discussions frequently veered off into the nature of belief, Islam, the Quran, the Bible and the religious life. He was a serious, thoughtful man who had suffered deeply under the occupation and dedicated his life to resistance. He could have fled his home and gone underground with other Hamas leaders. Knowing him, I suspect he could not leave his children.

Many have pointed out the layers of hypocrisy that have surfaced in this conflict. As well as a mosque (reportedly hiding Hamas rockets), among the more shocking targets of Israel's attacks was the Islamic University of Gaza, which was bombed last week, to the condemnation of virtually no one, a least not in U.S. academic circles. As Neve Gordon and Jeff Halper point out:

"Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised his or her voice in opposition to Israel's bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week. Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, who organized the petition, has been silent, as have his co-signatories from Princeton, Northwestern and Cornell universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Most others who signed similar petitions, like the 11,000 professors from nearly 1,000 universities around the world, have also refrained from expressing their outrage at Israel's attack on the leading university in Gaza. The artfully named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which organized the latter appeal, has said nothing about the assault."

As many others are pointing out, Israel's actions are violently shortsighted when it comes to the lasting effects. As Robert Dreyfuss writes for the Nation:

"The outcome of Israel's action is likely to be to strengthen, not weaken, Hamas. It will also have the following collateral effects: it will undermine the moderate wing of the Palestinian movement, perhaps fatally. It will weaken the government of Egypt, boosting the power of the radical-right Muslim Brotherhood there to the point where Egypt's regime could collapse, with incalculable consequences. It will boost radicalism across the region, especially its Islamist variant, in Lebanon and Iraq in particular, and help Iran gain traction among otherwise-unreceptive Arab populations.

Hamas is unlikely to seek a deal now. Having watched Israel blunder into Lebanon two years ago in a futile effort to eradicate Hezbollah, only to see that movement emerge victorious and take control of part of Lebanon's government, Hamas is not going to sue for peace.

…Israel's objectives aren't clear. Israeli hawks, including Benjamin Netanyahu -- appearing Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition" -- insist that Israel cannot stop its action until Hamas is utterly defeated, whatever that means.

Despite Israel's intractability, Western diplomats are reportedly seeking a "four-point agenda":

• Stopping arms smuggling into Gaza
• Financial support for Egypt in controlling the border and detecting tunnels
• International monitoring, with the United Nations, European Union and Arab forces assisting Egypt
• Reopening of all crossing points into the Gaza Strip -- a key Hamas demand

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Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer.

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