Israel Is Quickly Erasing its already Convoluted Legitimacy — Human Rights Lawyer Brad Parker and Political Analyst Marwan Bishara — Join Henry Giroux — in Pointing to Militarism’s Moral Double Speak

30 July 2014

Collateral damage, as Henry Giroux implied, is a term of butcher’s art worthy of Joseph Goebbels and his ilk

Human rights lawyer Brad Parker noted that:

Israeli forces have killed more than 200 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip over the past 23 days.

In order to obfuscate this harsh reality, Israeli officials claim "self-defence" and contend that civilian deaths are justified because Hamas allegedly uses Palestinians in Gaza as human shields.

Even if Hamas or another Palestinian armed group may have violated the laws of war and used civilians as human shields, this does not relieve Israel from its obligations under international law nor does it justify an attack on civilians or civilian structures.

These civilian deaths are not collateral damage. They are war crimes.

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst made a Henry Giroux-like point about militarism’s double speak

Marwan Bishara observed that:

Chutzpah, pronounced "khoots-pah", is audacity plus deception . . . .

The mother of all chutzpahs came from the late Israeli premier Golda Meir about half a century ago:

"We can forgive the Arabs for killing our sons , but we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children."

The new version blames the Palestinians for civilian deaths in Gaza, and praises Israel for sparing lives, even after the Israel offensive kills over a thousand Palestinians.

It's the ultimate chutzpah when Israel government expresses empathy with the ill-fated civilian victims, as it gives the orders to the Israeli military to bomb entire Palestinian communities.

And more of it when Prime Minister Netanyahu makes the unsubstantiated claim that Hamas built tunnels to attack Israeli kindergartens, when in the last few days, Israeli jet fighters killed more than two hundred Palestinian children and hundreds more injured, according to UNICEF.

Double speak illustrated

As Bishara put it:

Israel is a tiny state built on the ruins of another nation.

The homeland chosen to build their state . . . belonged to its Palestinian inhabitants. But Israel went on to expel or dispossess most Palestinians from their homes and take control of their entire homeland.

One must ask if Israel has a right to retaliate for the capture of one of its soldiers by bombing an entire people and destroying life.

Don't the Palestinians also have right to manifold retaliation after the capturing of hundreds of their leaders and holding them indefinitely or without trial?

If it was a simple numbers game, the numbers simply don't stack up.

If Israel complains about terrorism but looks at the death of Palestinian civilians, including women and children as "collateral damage", would it be an exaggeration that the Palestinians themselves are victims of state terrorism?

The moral? — Militarism blinds the soul

When one has to stoop to defending the extermination of children, one has lost legitimacy as both person and state.

PeteFree.com

Israel Is Quickly Erasing its already Convoluted Legitimacy — Human Rights Lawyer Brad Parker and Political Analyst Marwan Bishara — Join Henry Giroux — in Pointing to Militarism’s Moral Double Speak