Self-defense & security

 

JEFFREY ST. CLAIR 

+ Only Israel is allowed to act in “self-defense.” It is a term reserved for the powerful, a shield against the daily acts of violence, coercion, land theft, illegal detention and economic strangulation imposed on a captive population, whose own self-defense is termed “terrorism” and thus becomes yet another justification for inflicting more overwhelming state violence–what any rational person would call “terrorism”–on impoverished and largely defenseless people.

+ The obvious parallel to Gaza is the Tet Offensive, which was a defeat for the Vietnamese, but it was the defeat that won the war, exposing the vincibility of the US military machine. It also triggered something deep in the psyche of the American occupiers, who responded with attacks of pointless savagery. The massacres and gang rapes at My Lai were a direct response to Tet.  Netanyahu has vowed that Israel’s response will be equally sadistic, which is, of course, a sign of its own weakness–moral and military–and a harbinger of its ruin.

+ All of the “security raids” and airstrikes Israel has conducted almost non-stop for the last few years have done nothing to make Israel more “secure.” Based on yesterday’s “surprise” counter-attack, they’ve done just the opposite. That’s because the raids were never about “security.” They were motivated by territorial expansion and the need to tighten Israel’s control over an occupied population– illegal incursions that would be resisted by any besieged society.