The cause, and the goal, of Israeli violence

Another Ramadan, another attack on Palestinian worshipers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem. To achieve these proclaimed intentions and motivations, it is not necessary to attack a woman from behind with a police baton as she films the desecration of the Muslim holy sites; violently push and kick elderly men as if they’re cattle; arrest children and surround one lonesome child with a dozen armed Israeli police as if he is an evil supervillain; break the stained glass windows and damage centuries-old walls in Al-Aqsa Mosque; fire tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber-coated steel bullets at worshippers inside the Mosque; prevent ambulances from reaching the approximately 158 injured; attack medical staff who were helping the injured inside the compound; assault a photojournalist who is documenting Israeli actions; arrest at least 450 Palestinians and then proceed to violently assault their relatives who went to wait for them outside of Israeli jails, and the list goes on and on. Many videos appeared on social media of Israeli civilians dancing and celebrating the onslaught on Gaza and the violence against Palestinians everywhere, chanting “Death to Arabs,” and “May your village burn down,” and showing a general disregard for the death and destruction of the Palestinians as a people. For example, last year in a New York Times report, the desire for the majority of Israelis to continue the onslaught on Gaza is framed as Israelis simply wanting a “final conclusion” to “a very unpleasant situation”, and a “decisive victory against Hamas.” Even when Israelis expressed genocidal wishes against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, when an Israeli person states, “the government should wipe out Gaza once and for all,” even in that situation, the CBC’s flagship nightly news programme, The National, found a way to cleanse and make presentable these expressions of a genocidal and eliminatory drive. So long as the Israeli project is driven by the aspiration towards supreme power and sovereignty over Palestinians and Palestine, then we will be writing about Israeli attacks on Palestinian worshippers for years to come.