The ruin of Rafah: A new political disaster for Zionism

By Gerry Foley

The Israeli army’s savaging of the Rafah area on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt is another historical milestone in the discrediting of Israel and Zionism, after the siege of the West Bank town Jenin almost exactly two years before in April 2002. The Jenin operation was termed "Defensive Shield," the Rafah one, "Rainbow." Officially, it lasted from May 18 to 25.

There was an ironic edge to the term of the operation, probably conscious on the part of Zionists steeped in the mythology of the Hebrew scriptures. The rainbow was supposedly the sign of reconciliation between God and humanity, after He had nearly destroyed it in the Great Flood.

In the case of Rafah, as well as that of Jenin, there were significant Israeli casualties, 13 soldiers killed in the Gaza border town when their vehicles, which were carrying explosives, ran over bombs. Undoubtedly, the loss of Israeli lives added an aspect of collective punishment of the Palestinians to both operations.

The siege of Jenin was followed by the first mass demonstration in solidarity with the Palestinian people in the history of the United States. The siege of Rafah came shortly before the next round of antiwar demonstrations in the U.S. on June 5. It offers an opportunity for the growing numbers of people who are coming to understand the repressive and genocidal nature of Zionism to express their outrage at the crimes of Israel and their sympathy with the Palestinian people.

In Israel itself, even some Zionist politicians were shocked and disillusioned. One was Yosef Lapid, the Israeli minister of justice. The liberal Zionist daily Haaretz reported his reaction in its May 24 issue:

"The demolition of houses in Rafah must stop. It is not humane, not Jewish and causes us grave damage in the world."

"Specifying the potential damage in the international community, Lapid said: ‘At the end of the day, they'll kick us out of the United Nations, try those responsible in the international court in The Hague, and no one will want to speak with us.’"

Haaretz noted: "Lapid added that he had seen a picture of an elderly Palestinian woman searching in the debris for her medication, and had been reminded of his grandmother [who perished in the Holocaust]."

"His remarks sparked an uproar in the cabinet since Lapid is a Holocaust survivor and his words were interpreted as a comparison between the IDF and the Nazis."

Of course, Lapid is a member of the Shinui Party, which presents itself as a liberal secularist party, but it participates in the Sharon government cheek to jowl with the National Religious Party, a party that regards it as a rejection of God’s law to cede any part of Palestine to the Palestinians.

One of the rabbis in this milieu, Dov Lior, responded to the slaughter in Rafah by declaring that it was permissible to kill non-Jews for the sake of Jewish soldiers, since Jewish lives were more valuable than those of non-Jews.

The web-site of the Arab TV station Al Jazeera reported: "According to Lior's ruling, which was made public on Wednesday, Israeli occupation troops in Gaza are allowed to kill and harm ‘so-called innocent civilians’ during warfare.

"‘The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them. This is the real moral behind Israel's Torah and we must not feel guilty due to foreign morals,’ the Ma'ariv Israeli newspaper quoted him as saying."

That is the mentality of the theocratic Zionists linked to the Israeli colonies in the midst of Palestinian communities. It is represented in the Sharon government by the National Religious Party but it also influences Sharon’s Likhud Party itself, to judge from the Likhud membership’s overwhelming rejection of Sharon’s plan to remove 7000 Zionist settlers, who are a constant provocation to the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.

This neo-medieval wing of Zionism does not represent a majority of Israelis, but it is more and more and more the dominant voice of the Zionists. In the May-June issue of the liberal U.S. Zionist magazine Tikkun, Meron Benevisti, former vice mayor of Jerusalem, expressed his pangs of conscience at the ruin created by the Israel army in Rafah: "The sights of Rafah are too difficult to bear—trails of refugees alongside carts laden with bedding and the meager contents of their homes; children dragging suitcases larger than themselves; women draped in black kneeling in mourning on piles of rubble.

"And in the memories of some of us, whose number is dwindling, arise similar scenes that have been a part of our lives, as a sort of refrain that stabs at the heart and gnaws at the conscience, time after time, for over half a century—the procession of refugees from Lod to Ramallah in the heat of July 1948; the convoys of banished residents of Yalu and Beit Nuba, Emmaus and Qalqilyah in June 1967; the refugees of Jericho climbing on the ruins of the Allenby Bridge after the Six-Day War.

"And perhaps the most shocking of all, the grandfathers and fathers of the Rafah refugees, abandoning the houses in Yibna in which they were born, in fear of the approaching Israeli army on June 5, 1948. ‘At dawn,’ reported the AP correspondent, ‘it was possible to see the civilians fleeing from the town [Yibna] in the direction of the coast, without the intervention of the Israeli attackers.’

"Some 56 years have passed, and they are again fleeing in fear of the Israeli attackers. "And the attackers adopt the same tactics, spread rumors and fire warning shots; and when the residents flee out of fear, they claim that they are not responsible for the flight, but then destroy the homes, for ‘after all, they are empty and deserted.’

"Laundered language and sterile military terms camouflage a primitive desire for vengeance and uninhibited militancy. Slogans such as ‘combat heritage,’ ‘righteousness of our path’ and ‘the most moral army in the world’ immunize the soldiers and their commanders from having to contend with the humanitarian tragedy they are creating."

That is the curse of Zionism. Whatever the intentions of the different currents within it, the Zionist project can only be achieved by genocide and with the support of imperialism. Therefore, it evolves steadily to the right, toward a merciless dark-age religious mystique.

The Rafah operation came shortly after the first mass peace demonstration in Israel in a long time, a rally of 150,000 on May 14 in Tel Aviv. However, the Israeli "peace movement" is still dominated by liberal Zionists seeking a "negotiated settlement" with the Palestinians that will preserve the essential features of the Zionist colonization.

As the genocidal assault on the Palestinians continues and worsens, that perspective is looking more and more unrealistic. Clearly, Israelis are being put in a more and more difficult position between their consciences and sense of historic realism and the ruinous logic of Zionism.

In its May 27 issue, the Paris daily Liberation reported the United Nationals Relief and Works Agency’s estimate of the damage: "45 Palestinians killed, 45 houses destroyed … 98 families left homeless. In all, 1354 houses have been destroyed, and 13,000 persons left homeless since the start of the Intifada." The Palestinian victims of the assault give a much higher estimate of the cost.

The Los Angeles Times of May 21 reported the protests of Palestinians in the neighborhoods targeted by the Israeli army in the conditions of the assault:

"‘They are demanding for us to get out. They are shooting. How can we get out?’ one resident, Mofeed Salama, said in a telephone interview from his home in a neighborhood called Brazil.

"Palestinian officials said at least 25,000 people in the Tel Sultan neighborhood—the section into which Israeli troops had swept early Tuesday—lacked water, sewer services, and electricity for a third day. "Other residents said they were running out of food and medical supplies such as insulin. Rafah officials were scrambling to arrange water shipments through the United Nations and aid groups.

"‘The infrastructure is destroyed 100%. No one can drink a drop of water,’ said Abu Ali Shaheen, a Palestinian legislator from Rafah who heads an emergency-management committee for the Gaza Strip."

Aljazeera.net reported: "Rafah currently faces an ‘extremely serious humanitarian situation that is much worse than other [situations] that had been characterized as disasters,’ the UNRWA chief told Aljazeera.net." On May 24, there was a massive Palestinian demonstration in Rafah to protest the Israeli operation, reportedly amounting to 100,000 people. It was hit by an Israeli tank shell, by "accident," according to the Israeli authorities.

However, the logic of the Israeli repressive campaign is undoubtedly leading toward deliberate attacks on mass demonstrations. That is probably the next step, if the Zionist authorities and their imperialist supporters cannot be forced to step back.

It is vital for civilization in general, whether "Western" or "Eastern," to mobilize the maximum outcry against the Israeli genocide. That is a task of the antiwar movement in the United States and other Western countries. But it is also important that the support for the Palestinians be politically deepened in the Middle Eastern countries by an understanding of the complicity of the bourgeois Arab regimes with imperialism.

This complicity is becoming more obvious now when the Egyptian government is hinting that it wants to help assure "security" in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli withdrawal.

The article above first appeared in the June 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.