A nuclear-armed state versus the Palestinian people

From END Info 24 | May/June 2021 DOWNLOAD HERE

Tom Unterrainer

Dateline: 16 May 2021. Al Wahda Street, central Gaza City.

Israel intensifies air-strikes on Gaza in a continuation of its latest assault on the Palestinian people. Official Israeli channels insist that such actions are “precision targeted” against individual “terrorists” and related organisations.

Al Wahda Street – in the bustling heart of Gaza – was home to many before the missiles struck. Amongst them were the family of Dr Ayman Abu al-Auf who served as head of Internal Medicine at Gaza’s Shifa hospital. By the end of the day, Dr al-Auf was dead. So were his 13 year old daughter Tala and his 17 year old son. All three killed by Israeli “precision” bombing.

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), “Rula Mohammad al-Kawlak, 5, Yara, 9, and Hala, 12 – all sisters - together with their cousin Hana, 14, and several other of their relatives, as well as sisters Dima and Mira Rami al-Ifranji, 15 and 11, and neighbour Dana Riad Hasan Ishkantna, 9” were killed in the same “precision” attacks.

The NRC reported that by the 18 May, of the 60 children killed in Israeli attacks, 11 had been receiving treatment for pre-existing trauma at one of its facilities. Tala Abu al-Auf was one of their patients.

Tala’s life was dominated by trauma, suffering, uncertainty and violence. Anywhere else in the world, the teenage daughter of a doctor might have expected a relatively care-free and comfortable life. A life loaded with opportunity, hope and joy. Such opportunities are denied to the children of Gaza, be they the children of doctors or the children of the countless jobless in that stretch of land.

Tala is no longer traumatised. Death at the hands of “precision” bombing put an end to her too-short life.

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The most recent Israeli assault on the Palestinian people looks like an all-too-familiar and all-too-tragic event. Every few years the gross ‘normality’ of the protracted oppression of the Palestinian people is punctured by an intense assault at the hands of the Israeli military. Every few years the State of Israel pushes at the boundaries of what has previously been accepted by the international community and demands more. It deploys a highly organised, heavily equipped military and demands one bit more: more Palestinian territory, more Palestinian lives, more traumatised children, more concessions from world opinion.

Rather than maintain a balance between coercion and consent as is the norm in many states – ‘liberal’ or otherwise – Israel employs brutal coercive measures and demands consent from the world. The death, trauma and suffering of the Palestinian people are secondary to the drive for one more cluster of houses, one more stretch of land. The wishes of the Palestinian people or the calculable reaction of an oppressed people are not accounted for. All-too-often the death, trauma and suffering are not recorded on the balance sheet of world opinion.

When the reaction comes in the form of children throwing stones at soldiers in bullet-proof vests with machine guns slung over their shoulders, or in the firing of scores of missiles in the expectation that some of them will penetrate Israel’s sophisticated missile defence system, we are expected to draw an equals sign. We are expected to kneel at the altar of ‘reasonableness’ and condemn an occupied and oppressed people who refuse to kneel in the face of occupation and oppression. We might be tempted to draw an equal’s sign in the name of peace, in the name of opposition to violence whatever its source.

However, we cannot talk sensibly of peace unless we can identify and understand the roadblocks to peace. We cannot talk sensibly of peace unless we are clear that powerful forces are ranged against the conquest of peace. We cannot talk sensibly of peace in Palestine or the Middle East more widely without a clear recognition that in Palestine we are talking about a nuclear-armed state against a people denied a state of their own.

We cannot talk sensibly about peace in this region unless we are clear that the ‘double-standard’ policy employed by the US and allies with respect to Israel’s nuclear weapons is mirrored in the double-standards deployed in the treatment of Palestinians on the streets of Gaza, the West Bank and within the Palestinian community in Israel itself.

When Israel is allowed to maintain obscurity around its nuclear weapons arsenal when other states face threats of attack, sanctions and international opprobrium for seeking the bomb, a double-standard policy is at work. When Israel refuses to sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but threatens NPT member states with attack for developing a nuclear programme, a double-standard policy is at work. When Israel refuses to constructively engage in efforts towards a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East and finds encouragement for doing so, a double-standard policy is at work.

Where is the room for an equal’s sign? To draw such a sign would not only be a crime against mathematics but a crime against reality, a crime against morals and a crime against reason.

When a people stand up against decades of dispossession, occupation, trauma and oppression the peace movement must stand with them. When a nuclear-armed state, armed to the teeth with ‘conventional’ weapons with the help of foreign aid from the US, UK and elsewhere wages war then the peace movements are clear where we stand.

When we learn the name Tala Abu al-Auf, learn of her fate and know that she is one of legions who have suffered then we know where we stand. When we understand that a thick strand connects her killing to the lived experience of millions of Palestinians, to the fate of the Middle East and all the way to the murderous hum of Israel’s nuclear warhead stockpile, we know where we stand.

Stand with Palestine.

A version of this article first appeared on the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament website, www.cnduk.org