Third World Women Resist for International Women’s Day

Photos: Leon Kunstenaar / Pro Bono Photo

(SAN FRANCISCO March 8) - As the resistance to Israel's attempted genocide of Palestine grows, women young and old rallied and marched from Civic Center. With large paper flowers, flags and banners, and in Spanish and English, they proclaimed their determined resistance to Israel's war crimes and US complicity. From City Hall they marched to Market Street, turned right and headed toward the Mission area.

As people throughout the world rise in anger at the horror of Israel's ongoing slaughter of a whole people, Joe Biden says that Israel must do "more" to let in aid. He refuses to recognize that, for Israel, the slaughter of innocents is not the unfortunate consequence of conflict but the goal.

As the US attempts to control the optics of its complicity with token gestures like air drops and talk of a "pier" for seaborn aid it must understand that Netanhayu has concluded that perpetrating a genocide is the only possible way he can try to save Israel. But it will not work. The foundation on which Israel was created and maintained is crumbling. The Zionist movement, founded in 1897, maintained that the only way the world's Jews would ever be safe would be for them to live in their own land and have their own army.

This was an eminently reasonable outlook in view of the Jews' seemingly endless persecution throughout Russia and much of Europe, even before Hitler's Holocaust.

The Zionists decided that the promised land would be Palestine, based on a quasi mythological history that referred to Jewish nations among the many that existed in biblical lands thousands of years ago. They further created a narrative that, embedded in the soul of every Jew, lies a deep connection to and yearning for return to the land that is now called Palestine. The Zionists motto, "a land without people for a people without land" ignored that the Palestinians had been living there for centuries.

When the UN, in resolution 181, partitioned Palestine giving 56% of the land to the Jews that were 40% of the population, the Palestinians and the Arab world found the arrangement unfair and took up arms. They lost. The Arabs lost 56% percent of a land they thought was theirs and the Jews who had started with nothing, got 56% of Palestine and set about working on getting the rest. They have done so to this day.

The Jews could have accepted the notion of a multi-ethnic state, like Belgium or Switzerland, but never really did. The right and ultra orthodox nationalists dominated their politics and still do. Consequently, Israel has condemned itself to endless conflict. Their US equipped and supported army has won most of the battles since 1948. Though they routinely massacre huge numbers of Palestinians, a trickle of Israelis have been also killed over the years. Jews have never been safe. Israel has failed in its primary goal and is, in this sense, a failed state.

Because most Israelis have bought in to the notion that all of Palestine is "theirs" they will never accept sharing the land. Likewise, Palestinians see no reason they should allow the Jews to create a state on their land.

The conflict can only end with one side destroying the other. Because of its overwhelming military strength Israel sees itself as the eventual victor. For Israel to "win" and make Israel a truly safe homeland for Jews, it must either drive out or kill all Palestinians, i.e. pursue the genocide now underway. The grim logic also applies in the other direction.

Netanyahu knows this and this is why he will not agree to anything short of the total elimination of every Palestinian man, woman and child.

Though Israel is the major military power in the region (as long as it is backed by the US), it is boxed in. It is a nation founded as the solution to the persecution of Jews, a nation where Jews would be safe.

But Israel has not made Jews safe. A people who pride themselves on an ancient veneration for life have now have reduced themselves to needing to perpetrate a genocide to stay safe.

There is reason to hope that rest of the world will not tolerate this.

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