Gaza: Who or What Has a Right to Exist?
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1561 ... February 22, 2018
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Gaza: Who or What Has a Right to Exist?
Judith Deutsch
Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom (Verso, 2018), is an extraordinary book. It is also a difficult book to read. In his preface, Norman Finkelstein writes that this work "has been a painstaking, fastidious undertaking born of a visceral detestation of falsehood, in particular when it is put in the service of power and human life hangs in the balance." He writes that "Gaza is about a Big Lie composed of a thousand, often seemingly abstruse and arcane, little lies. The objective of this book is to refute that Big Lie by exposing each of the little lies." His meticulous inquest into Israel’s atrocities and the moral depravity within humanitarian institutions demands answers about... who or what has a right to exist.
The book primarily investigates the official reports about Operation Cast Lead (2008-09), the Mavi Marmara (2010), and Operation Protective Edge (2014). Finkelstein attributes these assaults in part to Israel’s intention to prove its deterrence capacity after its defeat by Hezbollah in 2006. A pattern emerges of Israel’s surreptitious provocations that conceal its own aggression, use of disproportionate military force and targeting of civilians, specious legality, and lies that exonerate Israel and permit ever-increasing brutality. The Dahiya doctrine refers to Israel’s military strategy of acting immediately, decisively, and with disproportionate force. Dahiya is a suburb of Beirut that was flattened by Israel in the 2006 war.
