March 1, 2008
The Independent (UK)

Israel's Warning: Rocket Fire From Gaza Will Result in a Palestinian 'Holocaust'

by Donald Macintyre

An Israeli government minister warned yesterday that increasing rocket fire from Gaza would bring Palestinians a Shoah - the Hebrew word normally used to denote the Nazi Holocaust inflicted on Jews during the Second World War.

The declaration by the Deputy Defence Minister, Matan Vilnai, came amid fresh calls from some Israeli politicians for a ground invasion of Gaza provoked by the launch of eight Soviet-designed Grad rockets into the southern city of Ashkelon during the lethal violence of the past three days.

Mr Vilnai declared: "As the rocket fire grows, and the range increases - and they haven't yet said the last word on this - they are bringing upon themselves a greater Shoah because we will use all our strength in every way we deem appropriate, whether in air strikes or on the ground."

The former Labour minister and general in the IDF military told Army Radio: "We're getting close to using our full strength." . . .

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"We will establish ourselves in Palestine whether you like it or not...You can hasten our arrival or you can equally retard it. It is however better for you to help us so as to avoid our constructive powers being turned into a destructive power which will overthrow the world." - Chaim Weizmann, Published in "Judische Rundschau," No. 4, 1920

"We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai." - David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.--Examples of the desire for peace by the Israelis

Peter Beaumont, "Gaza's Falling Wall Changes Middle East Map," Observer, January 27, 2008

Saul Sadka, "Chief Rabbi says move Gazans to a Palestine in Sinai," Haaretz, January 28, 2008

[Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has suspended contact with Israel in protest at an assault on Gaza which has killed about 100 people--"Abbas breaks contact with Israel," BBC News, March 2, 2008]

Barak Ravid, "Barak to hold meeting on legality of striking civilian areas in Gaza," Haaretz, March 2, 2008

[Two days earlier Israel killed more Palestinians than have been killed by all the Qassams over the past seven years.--Gideon Levy, "'Restraint' is deceitful, and 'forbearance' is vain," Haaretz, March 2, 2008]

Barak Ravid, "Barak to hold meeting on legality of striking civilian areas in Gaza," Haaretz, March 3, 2008

[No one can claim not to know what is going on there, even if the bald statistics of this uneven struggle invite a certain disbelief: between 54 and 61 killed on the Palestinian side in a single day. On the other side, two dead, both soldiers. Can this be termed a fight? Given that half the dead Palestinians were incontrovertibly civilians and included several children, and that of the other half only their age and sex even allows us to conveniently write them off as "militants", it might be thought Saturday's events in Gaza deserved to be termed a massacre. Yet there is no sense of real urgency in Western capitals about Gaza, nor contrition on the part of Israel over what its forces are doing. On the contrary, the Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, yesterday declared that military operations will not only continue but grow in scale in pursuit of the goal of "bringing down" the Hamas-led government in the strip.--"Only a new President can end Gaza's nightmare," Independent, March 3, 2008]

Jennifer Lowenstein, "Gazan Holocaust," counterpunch.org, March 3, 2008

[Hamas, which was created with the support of Israel and the U.S. government years ago to counter the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), has repeatedly offered cease-fire proposals. The Israeli prime minister rejected them--Ralph Nader, "The Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering That Candidates and Congress Ignore," counterpunch.org, March 8, 2008]

Jonathan Cook, "Israel plots another Palestinian exodus," antiwar.com, March 10, 2008

[After failing to anticipate Hamas's victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.--"The Gaza Bombshell," Vanity Fair, April 2008]

[The UC Santa Barbara sociologist, who is Jewish, sent images from the Holocaust and from Israel's Gaza offensive to students in his class. He has drawn denunciation and support.--Duke Helfand, "Professor's comparison of Israelis to Nazis stirs furor," Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2009]