The Battle
On June 10, the battle began.
Several Palestinian security forces were seized, and one of their officers, Mohammed Sweirki, was thrown off the top of the tallest building in Gaza. The imam of Gaza City’s Great Mosque, Mohammed al-Rifati, was attacked and killed too. As the forces moved in, they opened fire on the home of the Prime Minister, and just before midnight, another militant was thrown off a 12-story building.
The next day, June 11, the invading forces opened fire on the Palestinian cabinet building while the government was meeting inside. The residence of the Prime Minister in Gaza City again came under fire. Thankfully, no casualties were reported.
On June 12, Palestinian military posts were brutally attacked and assaulted. Hundreds of soldiers had moved into position after giving their opposition occupants just two hours to leave. A major Palestinian base in the northern town of Jabalya fell. Heavy fighting also raged around the main government headquarters in Gaza City, with militants attacking with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons.
On 13 June, the headquarters of the Palestinian National Security Forces in northern Gaza were attacked. Gunmen fought for control of high-rise buildings serving as sniper positions, and a Palestinian outpost controlling Gaza’s main north-south road was bulldozed. An explosion wrecked the Khan Yunis headquarters of the Palestinian Preventive Security Forces, with five Palestinians dead.
June 14 saw the declaration of a state of emergency in Gaza, as soldiers took over vehicles and weapons in the Palestinian National Security headquarters compound. The occupying forces of the compound held prayers there and waved their flag on top of the building’s rooftop. 10 militants were killed. There was a TV broadcast with a display of the weapons found inside the building, as well as jeeps, mortar shells, and bulletproof vests seized in the compound, smuggled in over the last few months through the Egyptian border. That afternoon, the Associated Press reported an explosion that rocked Gaza City. According to Palestinian officials, security forces withdrew from their post and blew it up in order to not let the invading force take over. The security forces later repositioned to another location. Later on that day, control was taken of Rafah, where international monitors had quickly fled out of Gaza for safety reasons and concerns.
Finally, on 15 June, the takeover of the Gaza Strip was complete, with all Palestinian government institutions toppled and replaced.
Human Rights Watch accused both sides of violating international humanitarian law, in some instances amounting to war crimes. Fighters targeted and killed people not involved in hostilities - innocent civilians - and engaged in gun battles inside and near hospitals. The accusations also included public executions of captives and political opponents, throwing prisoners off high-rise apartment buildings, and shooting from a jeep marked with press insignia.
During the fighting many incidents of looting took place. A crowd took furniture, wall tiles, and personal belongings from the villa of the deceased Palestinian leader and founder of Fatah Yasser Arafat. The home of former Fatah commander Mohammed Dahlan was also looted, as was President Abbas's seafront presidential compound.
More than 1,000 people were illegally arrested or detained in the first months of the battle. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and Amnesty International documented many instances of people being abducted and tortured by Hamas militants.
Wait a minute
That bit at the end there.
Did it say, “Amnesty International documented many instances of people being abducted and tortured by Hamas militants”?
It did. And if you’re confused, it’s because you’re wondering why you did not hear about this battle having taken place this past June, when you’ve been monitoring the news so closely over the last year.
Well, that’s because this battle didn’t take place.
I mean it took place, but not in June 2024.
It happened in June 2007. Over 17 years ago.
It describes the Battle for Gaza, in which Hamas staged a bloody coup in the Gaza Strip, brutally ousting the then-reigning Fatah from power. All I did was take the description of June 2007’s Battle of Gaza from Wikipedia, and delete the references to Fatah or Hamas. For a second, you thought it described the recent Israeli takeover of Gaza, didn’t you?
When the dust cleared in June 2007, Mahmoud Abbas - the Palestinian President - was no longer welcome in Gaza. Back then he was only in the third year of his four year term (not the 19th year, as he is today). His friends and allies there had fallen. Well, not so much fallen as had been thrown off tall buildings or out of windows. Those with ties to Fatah were notoriously tied to the backs of motorcycles and dragged through the streets of Gaza. They and their families were killed or driven out. Innocent civilians were slain. International monitors were forced to flee to Ashkelon (in Israel), so that they were not subjected to violent abuses from Hamas. It was brutal. Bombs went off. Blood ran through the streets.
So, why did you not hear about it? Where was the outrage? The marches on the streets? The op-eds in college newspapers? The teachers in schools lamenting the death of Palestinian civilians? The wringing of hands over the destruction of Gazan infrastructure? The chants to Free Palestine?
You already know.
When the Jews don’t do it, Palestinian lives just don’t matter to the rest of the world.
Turkiye 2024
Let’s not even just talk about the Palestinians. Let’s go elsewhere.
Turkiye, October 23, 2024. You know what happened? Right? You read all about it on social media and it was covered ad nauseum on the news because innocent civilians were killed. Right? Well, if you missed it, this is what happened. (Also, I’m using the new spelling of the country’s name adopted in July 2022).
On Wednesday, as reported by CBS, four people were killed and 14 others were wounded in an attack on the HQ of a top Turkish defense firm near Ankara. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (yemach shemo), condemned the attack as a “heinous terrorist attack” at Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI). The separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) later took responsibility for the attack.
That night, Turkiye launched airstrikes against Kurdish-held parts of Syria and Iraq in retaliation. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - a Kurdish-led coalition allied with the United States - said the next day that 12 people were killed, including two children. 25 others were wounded in the attacks. Turkiye’s defense minister said that it struck 47 “terrorist targets” in Syria and Iraq. The SDF noted that the Turkish strikes were “indiscriminate”, in that they hit civilian infrastructure, including health centres, in northeast Syria. Later, the Turkish Interior Minister claimed that 59 militants were killed in the strikes.
The SDF noted that, “in addition to populated areas, Turkish warplanes and UAVs (drones) targeted bakeries, power stations, oil facilities, and (Kurdish) Internal Security Force checkpoints.”
In response to this indiscriminate bombing against the indigenous and occupied people of Kurdistan, and attacks on civilian targets like bakeries and power plants, protests erupted on the streets across the West:
Alright not actually. Want to take a guess why? Perhaps it’s because the airplanes bombing Kurdish civilian power plants and bakeries didn’t have the Star of David emblazoned on them.
Not perhaps. Definitely.
Let’s just make one thing clear: the Kurdish people are arguably an occupied people. Over the last century, the region known as Kurdistan has been occupied by several countries, including, most notably, Turkiye. The Turks deported 700,000 Kurds from their ancestral homeland in the aftermath of WW1 to weaken their political influence (having just a few years before killed 1.5 million Armenians in what is now considered the Armenian Genocide - a genocide that Turkiye denies, but that is well documented). Turkiye has also traditionally opposed any form of Kurdish independence, fearing that an adjacent Kurdish state would support Kurdish separatists within Turkiye.
The Kurds are an ethnic group that traditionally inhabited a piece of land, were expelled from that land after WW1, and have been kept in a semi-autonomous region abutting Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkiye, ever since, without being given the opportunity to establish a state of their own. In the meantime, the Turks bomb them indiscriminately, without a peep from the “End the Occupation” crowd.
From the (Euphrates) River to the (Caspian) Sea, Kurdistan will be free?
In the end
There isn’t really anything profound to say about this situation that you don’t already know: it doesn’t matter unless the Jews do it.
Turkiye - stunningly still a NATO member - has condemned each and every action taken by Israel since the 10/7 massacre. Yet they continue to act, with impunity and without criticism, against their own perceived enemies. They can do this, because they are not Jewish. Like so many others around the world, who are free to persecute, imprison, occupy, torture, and kill, they can do so because they are not Jewish. They are not Israeli. They did not dare reclaim their ancient homeland and make it flourish.
The selective outrage is remarkable, though unsurprising these days.
In academia, the focus is on the Jewish State. On the West’s streets, in the newspapers, on social media, in international fora, the focus is consistently on the Jewish people. Those who fight to “end the occupation,” to “decolonize,” to foster “human rights for all,” and to allegedly try to make the world a better place, think that the path to redemption only runs through Jerusalem. Why bother trying to do any of those things in any other country, when Israel is perceived to be - as the unabashedly antisemitic Mehdi Hassan recently put it - a rogue nation. The only country that should be removed from the UN of all places, he believes.
Surely, once Israel is neutralized, once the Jews are deprived of their powers of self-defence, the world will be at peace. North Korea will stop enslaving their people. Iran will stop murdering their un-veiled women. Afghanistan’s Taliban will stop marrying young girls. Russia will stop their war in Ukraine. The famine in Yemen will cease. The Chinese will stop “re-educating” and sterlizing their Uyghers. Christians will stop being slaughtered across Africa. The Lebanese will stop their in-fighting. Hamas and Fatah will stop their feuding. Both Kamala and Donald, Justin and Pierre will make up and be best friends, while their respective economies boom.
Everything can change once Israel - and Israel alone - stops its meddling, and leaves the Palestinians alone.
Give me a break.
Soon the “Israeli facts” on Wikipedia will be re-written too.
If it ain’t Jews it ain’t news. So sad but so true.