Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Israel-Palestine: who's the Victim?
    Israel-Palestine: who's the Victim?
    Israel-Palestine: who's the Victim?
    Ebook108 pages1 hour

    Israel-Palestine: who's the Victim?

    By Shahbaz Fazal

    3/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Israel and Palestine are often in the news, but seldom does the mainstream media explain the essential issues of this long running conflict. This short book does just that. It covers the main events and conflicts from 2008 to the end of 2014, and most importantly, it explains the underlying issues that have been driving this conflict since 1948, (with their origins in 1917).

    Palestinian people say they are occupied and oppressed by Israel, which is supported by powerful Western interests, especially the USA. As a result, they are being denied their rightful claim to self determination and nationhood status.

    Israeli leaders on the other hand, claim they represent the only democracy in the Middle East, which is surrounded by hostile Arab nations, who all want to annihilate their nation. Therefore, they argue: Israel, is the victim.

    Western mainstream media claims to be neutral, but mostly tells the Israeli leaders’ story. This book tells you, what the media doesn’t – the seldom heard point of view. It doesn’t claim to be neutral, (though based on real data), but takes a clear stand on the side of the Palestinian victims.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShahbaz Fazal
    Release dateJan 18, 2015
    ISBN9781507030455
    Israel-Palestine: who's the Victim?

    Read more from Shahbaz Fazal

    Related to Israel-Palestine

    Related ebooks

    Middle Eastern History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Stateless in Gaza

      Oct 28, 2021

      Stateless in Gaza
      7 min read

    • Article

      Osama Bin Laden Was Right

      Dec 27, 2018

      Osama bin Laden predicted it and his prophecy appears to be coming true. In his book, "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11," Lawrence Wright quotes bin Laden as saying: "Look at Vietnam, look at Lebanon. Whenever soldiers start coming ho

      2 min read

    • Article

      Palestine Isn’t Ferguson

      Oct 24, 2021

      Palestine Isn’t Ferguson
      14 min read

    • Article

      Postcards From Before The War

      Jan 25, 2024

      YOU HAVE TO FEEL SORRY FOR BOOKS that pass their shelf life before they’ve even been published. “Due out on 8 December”, quipped Private Eye last year of Harry Cole and James Heale’s book about Liz Truss’s “astonishing rise to power” … “the book, tha

      5 min read

    • Article

      How Israel Lost the Culture War

      Jul 20, 2021

      MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA After accepting an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire, which took effect on May 21, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed an “achievement no military has ever achieved” in Israel’s 11-day bombing campaign in Gaza. A

      4 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Apr 10, 2023

      by Sian Norris (Verso, ISBN 9781839764738) versobooks.com You’d be forgiven for thinking that today’s attack on abortion rights is rooted in theological beliefs about when human life begins. Sian Norris, in this timely and chillingly relevant investi

      4 min read

    • Article

      The World Is Indeed A Troubled Place

      Nov 1, 2023

      MUCH of life is characterised by uncertainty and the fear of the unknown. In the world we live in, these are daily occurrences that we have to learn to deal with or become despondent. In 1979, Skylab, the first US space station, fell out of orbit. T

      2 min read

    • Article

      When The Messages Stopped

      Nov 23, 2023

      "After Israel has bombed Gaza into the Dark Ages again, arrested and killed hundreds elsewhere, what then? Will Israeli soldiers occupy the Strip? Will they tighten the siege forever, or in their words, repeatedly 'mow the lawn?'"

      5 min read

    • Article

      Global Conflicts Affect All Humanity

      Nov 1, 2023

      THE Greek saying, “Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad”, is perhaps most applicable in the case of the Middle Eastern conflict. As Israel and Hamas lock horns in Gaza, a tessellated state of a once-proud Palestine, they are causing ha

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Conversation

      Sep 18, 2018

      The Conversation
      5 min read

    • Article

      Better Than Evil

      Oct 26, 2023

      Better Than Evil
      5 min read

    • Article

      For Israeli-Palestinian Peace, A Precursor: Mutual Understanding

      May 26, 2021

      Perhaps there will be no peace between Israelis and the Palestinians until both sides have learned to empathize with the other’s tragic past.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Send Us Your Feedback

      Nov 1, 2018

      Making Peace in a World at War (NI515) was brilliantly done. I was moved and inspired by its accounts of what local people are doing to build peace in the midst of extreme violence and loved its brief introductions to individual peacemakers. I though

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Israel-Palestine

    3/5

    4 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Israel-Palestine - Shahbaz Fazal

      Image missing

      Israel-Palestine: who’s the victim?

      2nd Edition: Jan. 2015

      Shahbaz Fazal

      This is not a copyright book and you are welcome to copy and/or print it off or communicate it with others as you wish, but please be good enough to acknowledge me as the author.

      I want to thank Caroline Petherick (and her friend with specialist Gazan experience) for editing and enhancing the text, as well as Becky Pickard for the ePub and mobi editions.

      I am also indebted to friends and family for their forbearance.

      About the author

      I left school at fifteen, worked some seventeen years in the construction industry. Then resumed my education as a mature student (via Northern College – Barnsley), at Sheffield University. Acquired a Sociology degree, followed by post-graduate teaching as well as social work qualifications, and a Masters in social work. Worked as a social worker for over eight years, before circumstances compelled me to start writing.

      By the same author

      Synthesis

      Image Missing

      The tapestry of threads connecting an escape from Guantánamo with the war on terror, banking crash, global warming, E=mc² and conspicuous consumption.

      Contents

      Cover

      Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

      About the author

      By the same author

      Introduction

      Part One: Israeli Christmas present

      Part Two: Israel – the junior imperialist partner

      Part Three: Why did Palestine vote for Hamas?

      Part Four: Aftermath … and more of the same

      Part Five: 2013 Peace talks – prospects for an equitable peace?

      Part Six: Déjà vu, 2014

      References and Notes

      Introduction

      Israel-Palestine: who’s the victim? is a fact-based, semi-fictional explanation that reveals the essential issues at the heart of this conflict since 1948. The first two parts are a contemporary account of the Israeli Operation Cast Lead, relentlessly inflicted upon the Palestinian people over the course of more than three weeks of 2008/09.

      These were compellingly written during and just after the 23 days of Operation Cast Lead and reflect the raw emotions engendered in millions of people at that time. Part Three looks at why the Palestinian people overwhelmingly voted for Hamas in January 2006.

      Sections four and five provide updates of Israeli responses to the Palestinian people’s struggle for justice and an assessment of the 2013, US-sponsored Israel-Palestine peace talks. The last part is a summary of the current situation and Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 2014 massacre in Gaza – their latest attempt to kill the Palestinian people’s irrepressible spirit of resistance.

      More than anything else, this short book exposes the criminally audacious big lie – the elephant hanging off a cliff with its tail tied to a daisy – of the claim: Israel, the victim.

      This book does not claim to be neutral – it is intended to put the other, seldom-heard point of view across to the reader – with a good dose of artistic licence.

      Please note: This 2nd edition (Jan. 2015), has been updated and extensively re-written to improve the flow and enhance the reading experience for the general reader. It now covers six years from December 2008 to the very end of 2014.

      Part One: Israeli Christmas present

      It was an untimely though well planned moment in world history, when for many people around the world the 2008 Christmas turkey and trimmings had barely been digested. A mere two days from the starting bell of tasting fine wines, cheap booze and seasonal mixed spirits. All pleasantly mellowing even the most cynical of war-hardened journalists, together with their leader writers and foreign field correspondents right across the globe. Except Gaza.

      A time of the annual commerce-led religious rituals of eat, drink and be seen to be merry; the gay abandonment of serious international issues – zooming-out and distancing away life’s all-too-ugly all-too-real pitiful victims’ same repeating narratives; convivially intermingled with the yuletide cards and presents in the warm glow of extended family reunions.

      Just then – as the seasonal spirits and family gaieties of overindulgence had left the journalists stuffed and groggy, their attentions were cruelly abducted by the newsflash of another shock and awe in full swing. Quickly they rushed to find their specs; drink the strong black coffees, digest the texts, have a shave and clean their teeth, before grabbing the laptops and car keys.

      The annual hypocrisy of God’s special seasonal love and peace, together with the festive merriments had just been revoked, as Israel forcefully announced Operation Cast Lead – cynically codenamed: Israeli Christmas Present.

      And free-thinking atheists once again had to remind the world’s religionists, Christmas is just another day. A very pleasant one for the conspicuously consuming $2000-a-day rich and famous, and a daily living hell for the world’s less-than-$2-a-day collateral victims.

      This is when five dozen Israeli F16 fighter jets unleashed their murderous bombs and missiles into 50 locations in the tiny territory of Gaza (around twice the size of Washington DC), killing more than 200 Palestinian people stone-cold-dead.

      They also left behind almost 1,000 of their brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, children and grandchildren – fellow collaterals – damaged and mutilated, with painful life-long hatred-filled reminders. All in the first four minutes.1

      This was the world press launch of Operation Cast Lead – about which the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, announced on the 27 December 2008: This is our response to the barrage of rockets indiscriminately fired by Hamas into our people. No nation can be expected to tolerate such acts of terror against their civilian population – we’ve been constrained long enough.

      He further enlightened the flashing cameras and thrusting Dictaphones: Hamas is a terrorist organisation and Israel is part of the democratic free West. A situation in which Israel is not only defending itself against Hamas terror but an axis of Islamic fundamentalist evil. While our response today is in selfdefence of our civilian population.’2

      Olmert then introduced the first and most daring of his public relations counter-intuitive theories: Israel is the victim here,3 he informed the world’s pretending-to-be-dumbfounded reporters.

      In assessing this, the most daring of Olmert’s new theories, let’s just start with the plain facts of the matter: Israel is the one and only regional nuclear-armed power, and the world’s fifth largest arms exporter. Its economy is three times bigger than the economies of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and both Palestinian territories put together.4

      Israel is not only the greatest military power in the region, it’s also the fifth most powerful in the world. It’s equipped with US-supplied, state-of-the-art supersonic F16 and F15 fighter jets, carrying smart laser-guided 250-lb GBU-39 bombs.5

      Together with US-supplied Hellfire missiles, which can suck the air out of people’s lungs, rupture their livers and amputate their arms and legs, without leaving a trace of shrapnel. Such is progress in the lucrative arms industry, John Pilger, an un-embedded war correspondent, informs us.6

      They also deploy pilotless drones, which don’t see, hear, smell, or register their collateral victims – let alone raise any ethical objections. Such as those voiced by the 27 Israeli air force pilots in 2003, including

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1