Palestinians are not the only ones to use the tactic of targeting civilians in the hope of changing political opinion. You cannot believe the myth that Israel only targets militants. If it did, civilians wouldn’t be the majority of the casualties. Israel uses force disproportionately — many times more brutally and criminally than the Palestinians do — and has an effective spin machine to cover it up and paint the other as the villains. The United States has its own history to own up to.

For instance, as Israel bombed away in Lebanon in 2006, killing over 1,000 people, the vast majority of whom were civilians, they air-dropped fliers blaming Hizbollah for provoking the destruction. The fliers literally described Hizbollah as “a cancer Lebanon must vomit up.” (as I learned from Leila Buck‘s stories).

Israel’s actions and polices in Gaza are largely motivated by diminishing Hamas’s power there. The problem is that Hamas is seen as a defender of the Palestinians. When it kills civilians, many see this as revenge and as a deterrent for future attacks, possibly by turning citizen opinion against it.

Ideally, they could come up with an effective Gandhian movement using non-violence. But, as outside observers, we should first be pressuring Israel to employ a non-violent occupation; that is, end it. Any one criticizing Palestinian modes of resistance, or by calling it terrorism, without condemning Israeli terrorism has no credible footing. In both scale and frequency, Israel has used much more violence against the Palestinians.

Palestinians are unlikely to be swayed by these tactics. But Israelis are. Why? Palestinians have lived under constant occupation and frequent bombardment. Israelis mostly live safe and secure lifestyles, possibly more safe and secure than American college students. Their privilege, ironically, makes their views much more vulnerable to fear. Plus, Israel’s political system actually takes citizens’ views into greater account than Hamas or Fatah does for the Palestinians — a deplorable reality, but then again democracy never flourishes under occupation.

This makes for a tragic calculus. If the Palestinian fighters want to turn public opinion in Israel, it is more effective and easier tactically to target Israeli civilians. If Palestinians just target Israeli military, it has much less resonance in the public. The public, in this violent rationale, pays a larger price when there are civilian attacks, on “soft targets,” in the military parlance. This is grotesque and morally reprehensible. Notably, it is the same exact logic Israeli and American officials employ when their forces bombard civilians.

What!?! Israel and America target civilians, you may ask. They do so, of course, but they obfuscate it by calling it collateral damage or coming up with intricate myths about smart bombs (then they suppress civilian death counts). They treat civilian infrastructure as legitimate military targets. Through embargoes and the use of weapons that do not differentiate between fighters and regular people, they punish civilians directly and with for anticipation of it. Their goals are to eradicate public support for insurgents/resistance. Or they see such violence as way to end the conflict and save more lives; Palestinian attacks on civilians are also aimed at ending the conflict. Sound familiar?

I still find it miraculous that any American is horrified by Palestinian actions without self-criticism first. What the Palestinians do to Israelis is a drop in the bucket compared to American massacres in the world — which also make Israeli crimes appear minor in comparison.

Since Bush I, the American government has killed more than 1.5 million Iraqi civilians with the sanctions regime and various bombing campaigns (more bombs dropped on Iraq than all of WWII!). This is genocide by effect; perhaps America did not want to kill all Iraqis, but they killed so many that it is at least of genocidal proportions.

And Iraq never posed a direct threat to the US. It even sought and obtained from ambassador April Glaspie American permission for the 1990 Kuwait invasion. This was the turning point in US-Iraq relations, which were not unfriendly before that.

2.5 million Vietnamese civilians and insurgents so this little country would not become Communist and inspire others to. What they actually wanted was of no concern.

To go back to WWII. According to John Dower, a leading American historian of Japan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “With the firebombings, we crossed the line that we had said was clearly beyond the pale of civilization. The American reaction at the time was that they deserved it. There was almost a genocidal attitude on the part of the American military, and it extended to the American public.”

The nuclear attacks on Japan and the firebombing of Dresden, Germany were undertaken without Japanese and German forces even occupying the United States. Palestinians are living under a much more threatening regime.

One could talk about the context of global war, of rising American casualties and justify it on those grounds. In fact, America has explanations for all its abuses — whether national security (usually really interests) or fighting for freedom are invoked. However, everything the Americans feared and used to justify these instances has actually happened to the Palestinians.

Making this comparison between the United States and the Palestinians is to go from the hypothetical to the actual. Yet, in public discourse, the actions spurred by the hypothetical are treated as legitimizing and those stemming from the actual are demeaned as “terrorism.”

Afraid of destruction of one’s country, Americans feared during the Cold War? It happened to the Palestinians in 1948 and they are still stateless.

Invasion and occupation (as fantasized in the Cold War movie Red Dawn)? The Palestinians are living this, since 1967.

Afraid of losing one’s freedom? Palestinians have little to no freedom under Israeli control. They were much more free before 1948 under British and Ottoman control (neither of which were displaced).

Afraid of being economically enslaved to a belligerent, opposing power, such as the USSR? Palestinians have no independent economy and are only allowed to buy Israeli goods.

Afraid of not being able to protect society’s most vulnerable, the elderly, children etc? The fact that Israel can kill dozens of Palestinian children in a week with no consequences shows that the Palestinians are experiencing America’s nightmare.

Even apply our current immigration debate. Both sides oppose immigrants being a majority in this country (which is why there are caps and not instant amnesty): Palestine was overwhelmed and taken over by immigrants, thereby transforming the character, and then after armed conflict, the ownership of the land.

With the latter issue, this experience is what binds Israel and America — they both were settler-colonial societies that took over native land and made them into their states. Both developed intricate national stories to make wrong seem right: to make their declarations of socio-political progression seem on firm foundations.

This c
ommon historical experience is why Americans see things through Israeli eyes. This is what frames the debate in America. If people really thought about the right of Palestinians to exist and saw that Israel actually drove the Palestinians into the sea (and desert), we would be much closer to peace. Because American foreign policy would not be so disastrously one-sided. This death and destruction must end.

Related posts:

1. “Hi, I’m Israel..
2. Even Israel Pledges to Palestinians!
3. Israel: The Terrorism of Religious Supremacy
4. Irish Congress of Trade Unions: Boycott Israel
5. Israel to Disenfranchise East Jerusalem Palestinians