Home > The Beginning of the End for Israel
Wars and conflicts International
The Beginning of the End for Israel
By Yvonne Ridley
January 19, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" — - TRY as he might, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert can not snatch any sort of victory out of the jaws of defeat that are closing down on the failed Zionist project.
This, quite simply, is the beginning of the end for Israel.
The only thing Israel has proved it can do militarily better than anyone else is kill innocent women and children. And in its genocidal drive to wipe the Palestinian people from existence it has dealt itself a fatal blow.
In the belief they would seize an easy victory from the people of Gaza, after retreating broken and humiliated by Hizb’Allah in Lebanon two years earlier, Israel once again learned what happens when you underestimate the enemy.
Gaza has been reduced to piles or rubble in some areas as Zionist bombs pounded the tiny coastal strip by land, sea and air. It was a ruthless, brutal campaign deliberately timed for the final weeks of George W Bush’s US presidency and before the start of the Israeli elections.
Olmert and Tzipi Livni, the daughter of a war criminal and terrorist (well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?) boasted how they would crush Hamas and stop the Qassam rockets from being fired into Israel.
And so, playing the victim yet again, the Zionist State unleashed the might of its army - the fourth largest in the world - on the most densely populated piece of land on Earth, claiming it needed to stop a few tin rockets powered by fertiliser fuel heading towards land stolen from the Palestinians in the first place. Oh, the irony of it all.
By trying to win hearts and minds they enlisted the support of Zionist think tanks who would go into overdrive to try and discredit Hamas and its supporters through TV and newspaper columns. Some of the accusations laid against Hamas were plain ridiculous and silly and fooled no one apart from the commissioning editors.
As I write this article I am watching Olmert on the BBC speaking at a news conference with European leaders saying he wants Israeli troops to leave Gaza "as quickly as possible". Meanwhile Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, is on al-Aqsa TV praising his people for their courage and bravery and saying they have won a great victory over Israel.
And indeed they have.
The drive to crush Hamas has failed - in fact many of the millions across the world who marched against the war proudly and loudly declared: "We are all Hamas".
The cries shocked Olmert, Livni and co who, in their breath-taking arrogance believed the world would stand by and applaud from the sidelines as they went to war with the people of Gaza.
What happened instead was demonstrations, riots, anarchy and outrage from ordinary people pouring out of just about every city on the planet. This was the moment when another battle was launched: People Power versus the politicians. And ’we’ the people won it easily.
Leaders who once said they supported Israel began putting a distance between themselves and Tel Aviv. The gaggle of belly-dancing Arab leaders began to dance to a different tune while some of the Arab world’s most brutal dictators clamped down even more on their own citizens seeing coups and plots, real or imaginary, at every turn.
Shameful ’scholars for dollars’ issued fatwas proclaiming demonstrations were haram ... these same sheikhs were full of praise for those of us who rallied and marched to show our anger over the vile Danish cartoons which ridiculed The Prophet Mohamed (pbuh). Such hypocrisy reveals them for what they are - men without honour or integrity.
Oh how the Middle East could do with some revolutionary figures like Venezeula’s Hugo Chavez who kicked out the Israeli Ambassador and then Bolivia followed suit.
But perhaps the most devastating blow to Israel came from one time Gulf ally, The Emir of Qatar who ended trade relations with the rogue state.
We still do not know how many Israeli soldiers have died ... it is a figure Olmert is trying to keep quiet. No public, ceremonial funerals are shown on TV in Tel Aviv. The Israelis, so used to playing the victim for the American and European media, have not been able to publicly display their mourning to the world. Could it be that mothers, wives and daughters of the dead would want to blame the Israeli government for yet another failed campaign?
It is a far cry from the week before, when Olmert regaled a cheering crowd in Ashkelon about how he telephoned George W Bush and interrupted him in the middle of a speech he was making in Philadelphia and told him to instruct Condaleezza Rice not to vote for a UN resolution Condi herself had written. Bush did as he was told, said Olmert to roars of approval.
I hope Barrack Obama and Hilary Clinton take note.
And I hope they realise now that the democratically elected Hamas are the only party in town to sit down and negotiate with. Failed Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas should now viewed as collateral damage. His credibility has gone and any deal he made with Israel over this shameful period will soon be revealed. By the way, I understand his luxury villa in Gaza is about the only building that is free of shrapnel, shells or bullet marks. It certainly survived the bombing in a district which was attacked without mercy. Funny that!
Gaza will rise again from the rubble with its people even stronger than before. They are an example to resistance fighters across the world and they will go down in history for their bravery and courage.
In a few years time children across the Middle East will be raised on the her oic stories and exploits of the people of Gaza. And as they are safely tucked up in their beds, they’ll probably ask: "So what did happen to Israel? Did it really exist?"
Yvonne Ridley is a co-Founder of SGS - Stop Gaza Slaughter. Her website is www.yvonneridley.org She was also part of the Free Gaza Movement and was on one of two boats to break the siege of Gaza and sail into the port for the first time in more than 40 years last August. She and film-maker Aki Nawaz are producing a documentary for Press TV about the historic voyage.
Forum posts
20 January 2009, 17:09, by sardar
If you think that in these genocidal wars , in which both sides are firmly for capitalism and making political-religious capital on the ruins of people’s destroyed future on earth, you better think again and quit sheamering . There were two loosers on the long run hear : N.One Hamass . Which has fallen even deeper in the grip of war-lords of Jiiad Islamic, Iran, Hezbollah or Syria and even Akavane Muslim or Al Khaed ....- which staying behind their "peacefull" fronteers all throughout this genocidal war made a political point that capitalism and their political base will only exist if this genocide against Palestinan People continue ! 0000000000000000000000000 Hamas is torn appart by political alternative of joining calmly the OLP under Mahmood Abbas and hope for a Saudi Arabia-Egypt-Jordanian-U.N.-E.U.-U.Arab.C. best of deals to come out of a transformed "peace comedyII", or the suicidal alternative of a nuclear war in which Hamas will pray to all Gods for the rapid destruction of Tehran before an Iranian nuc. missile can reach Palestine and destroy its future by the ensuing pollution ! Or join the Al Kaeda’s heavenly promissed land and best of this world reserved for a religious clergy and their relatives and very rich freinds enjoying their "heaven on earth" . 0000000000000000000000000 Indeed YOU ARE LYING to yourself and to all of your blind freinds & followers when you say "people of the world’’ - in their legitimate demonstrations against the Israël’s Genocidal War - yielled ’’ We are all Hamas or Hamas Won- or Will Win" the people mostly yielled justly for Palestine and not for your jihadi Hamas capitalists or any other mercantilist empire dreams !
0000000000000000000000000As long as Hamas is anti-workers free secular syndicates and anti-socialist or communist and anti-freedom for popular political movements for a genuine scientific Alternative from CAPITALISM neither Hamas nor Sionist-Israël will have any political future !
21 January 2009, 14:43, by Joyce Mary
I don’t know which demonstrations you went on but the cry "We are all Hamas" could be heard everywhere.
Even if you don’t like Hamas, they were the choice government of the Gazans - and they’ve now become increasingly popular in the West Bank.
Stop fixating on Iran - if they were arming Hamas I think they’d manage to lob something more sophisiticated than barrels of metal junk fuelled by fertiliser into Israel.
23 January 2009, 12:47
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and would-be successor Tzipi Livni had a plan. They would defeat a genuine conservative, former PM Bibi Netanyahu, by staging a quick military campaign against Hamas. The public would realize, these are liberals but they aren’t wimps. But Olmert and Livni are wimps.
Mind you, the bigger wimp, the Alpha Wimp, in all of these proceedings is the O-Bomb, Barack Obama. It takes one to know one, and so Olmert knows he won’t get the traditional margin of support from the new American president. The silent treatment before Inauguration, and the expressed hopes from Obama about Israel opening up Gaza, reminds us that the pig has arrived.
Meanwhile, my favorite moonbat post this week is from Yvonne Ridley at Bellaciao.
Witness:
"The only thing Israel has proved it can do militarily better than anyone else is kill innocent women and children. And in its genocidal drive to wipe the Palestinian people from existence it has dealt itself a fatal blow."
Ideas advanced in this article, that Israel (a) is the aggressor or warmonger in these proceedings; (b) doesn’t have the right to address its basic security problems; (c) is ruthless, brutal, or genocidal; or that (d) Israel is itself the stolen property of the Palestinians, require warped redacted ideology or narcotics to take hold in a human brain.
Note the British English spelling, the British surname, the praise of the world’s dastardly, the inclusive use of "us" and "our" in describing fringe groups, and the mocking aside that predicts Israel’s utter destruction... these are the marks of the Londonistani, the Muslims in England who are waging their campaign of literary jihad. "Stop Gaza Slaughter" is the name of the organization, never officially linked to terrorism during the Bush years when that sort of thing was still done.
And how does al-Ridley presume we stop Gaza slaughter? By wiping out all the Jews, of course.
Yikes.