Death is no one if he rides in your saddleInterview with Leila Ghanem about Gaza’s October 7

Interview in November 2023 with Lebanese anthropologist and communist leader Leila Ghanem, conducted and translated for the Coordination of Communist Nuclei (CNC) by Ángeles Maestro (in the Spanish state). Translation to English for presentation at the Jan. 21 Lenin centennial in New York City: John Catalinotto. The headline starts with a quote from Andalusian poet Rafael Alberti, whose poem was turned into an iconic hymn sung by anti-fascists in the Spanish state. Register here for the centennial: tinyurl.com/22pfmhv7

Ángeles Maestro (A.M.) 1. Why did the Hamas military operation of October 7 shock the Middle East and even the world? What is the historical impact of this event on the resistance movements in the Middle East?

Some writers go back to Homer to evoke the image of the Iliad, a heroic legend in which the weak manage to defeat their colonizer in an unimaginable balance of forces. In barely two hours, the greatest power in the Middle East, the fifth strongest army in the world, suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of a modest commando unit nicknamed “Zero Distance” (to emphasize the confrontation of the body against the tank), composed of 1,200 men, modestly armed but endowed with heroic courage.

Twenty settlements were liberated, military bases occupied — one of which housed the Tsahal [acronym for Israel Defense Forces] headquarters in the south — a high-tech military observatory in charge of controlling the border. The 545th Research Unit and the 414th Intelligence Unit were neutralized and two generals captured. The Zionist-Western legend of the invincibility of the Zionist state was shattered. 

In a matter of hours, Gaza became Hanoi. And we remember General Giap’s famous phrase during his visit to Algiers in December 1970: “Imperialism is a bad student, who never learns the lessons of history.”

For Palestinian writer and activist Saif Dana, the example that comes closest to this military victory, which happened despite the imbalance in the balance of power between colonized and colonizers, is the “Haitian Revolution,” which was and remains an important symbol for people of color around the world. 

The Haitians, armed with courage and the “will to emancipate” and led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, launched themselves into a decisive battle against the French colonists, who had just received reinforcements, commanded by General Rochambeau. This battle seemed strategically impossible, but after four heroic attacks, the Haitians finally forced the French to capitulate on Nov. 18, 1803, at Fort Vertières, although the Haitians suffered considerable loss of life. 

The French garrisons surrendered one by one, allowing the former colony to proclaim its independence on Jan. 1, 1804. From then on, it took the name of Haiti. This legendary battle has gone down in the annals of history. It later inspired slave uprisings elsewhere, such as Aponte’s rebellion in Cuba in 1812 or Denmark Vesey’s conspiracy in South Carolina in 1822. 

That victory also had a decisive influence on Simón Bolívar and other leaders of independence movements in Latin America, although it was not until 1834 that slavery was abolished [in the British Empire].

What happened on October 7 in Palestine is as legendary as the battle of Haiti, and will henceforth go down in the annals of history, like the battles of Hittin, El Kadissiya, etc., in the time of Saladin [12th century].

Imagine the earthquake that shook the entire system of the Western Empire at the sudden defeat of its right hand, in which it had invested billions of dollars for almost a century. The same power to which the Empire had entrusted the function of being the imperial bridgehead to control strategic sea routes, vital resources such as oil, gas and uranium, and of being the keystone for consolidating its domination by destabilizing the enemies of the Empire, introducing class relations to the benefit of the oppressors … 

Israel was at the heart of this capitalist system that was supposed to keep the countries of the South subordinate; to this end, the Palestinian people were to become a prototype scenario, a model of persecution …

To accomplish this, it was necessary to dispossess the Palestinians, dehumanize them, keep them under blockade, massacre their historical leaders … This required a specific status for their puppets, along with political, institutional, financial and media protection…

The immediate alarm that shook all the leaders of the capitalist world on Oct. 8, who then flocked to Tel Aviv, is the irrefutable proof of the Western world’s investment in this state constituted outside the law, outside all human rights and norms. Rights and norms created by the West itself.

October 7 was a defeat for the imperialist West. And from now on, there will be a before and an after October 7.

Hamas

A.M. 2. Is Hamas a terrorist organization?

L.G.  2. Let’s start by saying that, apart from the U.S. and the European Union countries, no other country in the world accuses Hamas of terrorism.

If we look at history, the term “terrorist” has not always been pejorative. Revolutionaries used “terror” against their class enemies. It was during the French Revolution that the term “terrorist” was used by Gracchus Babeuf when he spoke of “the terrorist patriots of the second year of the Republic.” 

For Marxism, terror was absolutely not a political end, but a tool, the instrument of a policy, and must be judged in relation to the objectives of that policy. This raises two different questions: (1) The question of the legitimacy of the political ends; (2) The adequacy of the means. Condemning terror as a metaphysical “system” hides the interest in delegitimizing the political objectives set by those employing it.

Let us take the example of the Paris Commune [which began March 18, 1871], the culminating point of the French Civil War. After the Commune’s defeat, its members were described, to quote only Le Figaro — the organ of the reaction of those [bourgeois forces] of Versailles — as “terrorists of the Hôtel de Ville [the City Hall]” or “terrorists of March 18” or “the terrorist Commune.”

The Terror was defended or fought according to the objectives pursued by the different social classes and political factions. Each side considered its tactics legitimate.

In a letter to his mother, Friedrich Engels explained: “Of the few hostages [of the Commune] who were shot in Prussian style, of the few palaces that were burned in Prussian style, much is said, because everything else is a lie; but of the 40,000 men, women and children that the Versailles army massacred with machine guns after they were disarmed, no one speaks.” (La Commune de Paris, French edition)

One could almost believe that this description by Engels referred to the recent events in Gaza. One might believe that he is describing how the Western media have disproportionately assessed (and continue to do so) the impact of the Hamas attack on October 7, and the genocide that followed with the bloody retaliation of the Tsahal army — Israel’s army — supported by the U.S. Delta Force and the Pentagon’s three aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean. Those who have spoken of the Hiroshima of Gaza are not far from the figure of the 70,000 victims (U.S. military estimate) who fell in Hiroshima, Japan in August 1945.

The imperialist-colonial states have habitually denounced as terrorism the struggles of the peoples under their domination and treated their fighters as terrorists. Let us recall, once again, that several terrorist organizations, pilloried throughout history, became legitimate spokespersons; this was the case with the Viet Cong, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Algerian National Liberation Front, the African National Congress (ANC) and many other organizations that were themselves labeled “terrorist,” such as the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization]  and the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] in Palestine.

Using this term was and is intended to depoliticize their struggle, to present it as a confrontation between Good and Evil.

Every time the Palestinians revolt, the West — so quick to glorify the resistance of the Ukrainians — shouts “terrorism.” It did so during the first Intifada in 1987 and the second in 2000, during the armed actions in the West Bank and the mobilizations for Jerusalem, and during the clashes around Gaza, which has been under siege since 2007 and has suffered six wars in 17 years.

The question of the legitimacy of Israel’s claim of the right to defend itself and disarm Hamas must still be addressed. Some Zionist media go so far as to invoke Thomas Hobbes and his perception of what he calls the possession by the ruling classes of the “monopoly of legitimate physical force.” 

These media try to ignore that this “legitimacy” cannot be applied to a settler state; it is a legitimacy contested first of all by the Palestinians, also by the peoples of the surrounding countries attacked (Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis and Iranians …) and by all those who consider Israel a settler state. 

Before the deception of the Oslo “peace agreement [1993],” most of the world’s countries did not recognize Israel. Its legitimacy is based only on a decision of the United Nations. At the same time, Israel has systematically rejected all U.N. decisions concerning the Palestinian people (resolutions 242, 3236, 194, right of return of Palestinians to their country).

Axis of Resistance

A.M. 3. Can you briefly explain the political content of the Axis of Resistance, who its members are and what is Palestine’s place in it?

L.G.  3. There are two different axes, which overlap, but do without a common leadership. There is the axis of the states: Iran, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon (south) and the axis of the resistance movements which are anti-imperialist political-military groups of various obediences ranging from the Shiism of the disinherited to Marxism. All of the latter, including Hamas, raise the anti-colonial question and some advocate social justice in their program. 

The movements are essentially composed of Hezbollah (Lebanon), Jihad (Palestine), Ansarallah or Houtiyeen (Yemen), Al-Mad Shaabi/“Popular Reinforcements” (Iraq); and we can add to this bloc the PFLP, the Saraya (special unit of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon) and other communist organizations, for example, the Communist Party of Lebanon, which has just called its militants to mobilization and is training in the bases of Hezbollah. 

There is an important coordination between these political-military groups, which act under the slogan “Unity of Paths.” This provides a form that guarantees the relative independence of each organization, particularly those based in Palestine, such as Hamas. 

However, it should be noted that coordination with Hamas has been more or less at arm’s length, essentially for ideological reasons — Hamas belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, a conservative Sunni Islamic group — but also because of political differences, such as Hamas’ alliance with Qatar and Türkiye, which has affected Hamas’ relations with Syria. In 2014, Hamas had to leave the Yarmouk camp in Syria.

It is important, however, to note that Hamas has a different structure from that of the Islamic mercenary organizations created by the CIA, such as Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, whose sole objective was to destroy the structures of the Arab states and fight against their anti-imperialist resistance.

Hamas is a Palestinian movement rooted in the working classes of Gaza, the West Bank and the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Hamas was democratically elected in a U.N.-supervised election in 2007, and since then, Gaza has been blockaded not only by Israel, but also by Europe and the United States. 

It is not Islam that worries the imperialists, who have historically known how to use fascist Islam perfectly. The reason why they confront Hamas is because this organization refuses to lay down its arms until it liberates Palestine and rejects the so-called peace treaties, such as those of Camp David or Oslo, which have only served to usurp 78% of historic Palestine as it existed prior to the 1948 Nakba. 

Hamas currently receives training and weapons from the anti-imperialist Axis of Resistance and not from its ideological friends in Türkiye or Qatar. This explains the differences within Hamas between two branches: the military branch, Al-Qassam; and the political branch whose leader lives in Qatar and not in Gaza. It should also be noted that the liberation of Palestine is at the heart of the program of this Resistance Bloc, as is ending U.S. intervention in the Middle East.

Despite these differences, the Gaza battle currently being fought has required the unity of all of the above components and perfect military coordination. Their ingenuity and bravery will go down in history.

Historical Bloc?

A.M. 4. Is it possible to speak of a Historical Bloc?

L.G. 4. To characterize it, we refer to Antonio Gramsci and his concept of Historical Bloc, whose first mention is found in his Notebook 4 [which Gransci wrote in a fascist prison and hospital in Benito Mussolini’s Italy from 1926-35], in a passage dealing with the importance of the superstructures — these are seen by Gramsci as the sphere in which individuals become conscious of their material conditions of existence — and of the necessary relationship between the base and the superstructure.

Anti-colonialist movements, regardless of their declared affiliation, play a progressive role in the dynamics of history and represent the emancipatory aspirations of the dominated and exploited classes. Their struggle on the ground necessarily radicalizes them. This is the case of Hamas, which wages a war of national liberation and has forged alliances on the battlefield with all the components of the resistance.

In another passage in Notebook 7, Gramsci links the Historical Bloc to the force of ideology and the relationship between ideologies and material forces; he insists that this is a relationship of organic dialectical unity, in which distinctions are drawn only for “didactic” reasons.

Another of Karl Marx’s statements, very significant, is that which assures us that a popular conviction often has the same power as a material force. I believe that the analysis of these statements leads to reinforcing the concept of “Historical Bloc.” In Notebook 8, Gramsci insists on the identity between history and politics, identity between “nature and spirit,” in an attempt to elaborate “a dialectic of distinct moments, such as those operating within the class struggle, so that the revolutionary impulse of the oppressed peoples acts upon the social relations of production.”

Like Lebanon 2006?

A.M. 5. Is the demonstration of the military vulnerability of the Zionist state for the Palestinian Resistance comparable to the victory of the Resistance in Lebanon in 2006?

L.G. 5. Undoubtedly, the similarities exist, because in both cases we are dealing with minimally armed commandos facing a regular army equipped with powerful weapons. The accounts of the battle that reach us every day from Gaza show that the strength of the fighters’ determination is decisive for the outcome of the battle.

When Gazans refer to their fighters as “samurai” or speak of “Zero Distance,” they want to show the enormous courage of “a fighter facing a tank.” In 2006, in the Khiam plain, when Hezbollah fighters seized 40 Merkava tanks without destroying them, they used the same tactic. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said then to encourage his men: “Israel is weaker than a spider’s web.” In Mao Zedong’s words, “imperialism is a paper tiger.”

Tsahal’s defeat was so bitter then that since 2006, Israel, which has fought six destructive wars in 25 years, no longer dares to venture into Lebanon.

Today in Gaza, Israel’s terrible and cowardly revenge against civilians, especially women and children, does not play in its favor. In military terms, the powerfully armed Israeli-American forces, Tsahal and Delta, have not been able, in 40 days of fierce warfare, to crush the fire of the fighters, to stop Hamas, or to capture a single one of its fighters. The resistance of Gaza, its people and its fighters, is resurrecting the battle of Stalingrad.

Did the Israeli government know?

A.M. 6. Is there any real basis for the opinion that the Zionist government knew about the Palestinian attack of October 7 and allowed it in order to unleash the massacre?

L.G. 6. Quite the contrary. As we have pointed out before, Israel was caught by surprise in an outrageous way. The commandos went so far as to occupy the offices of the Directorate General, which was presented as a jewel of technology. The attack exposed the structural failures of the fifth most powerful army in the world; it showed how this army was destabilized in such a way that it started shooting at anything that moved, including its own citizens. 

These facts were revealed both by members of the Palestinian commandos and by the Israeli press, which quoted witnesses. Nasrallah also alluded in his speech to the bewilderment of the Israeli army, which fired at Israeli civilians.

A.M. 7. What are the main plans of Zionist imperialism that have been thwarted by the Palestinian attack?

L.G. 7. Hamas has not yet revealed the two fundamental reasons for its intervention: the choice of the date and the place of its operation, but it is useful to make a few analyses to characterize the situation:

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• The vital need to break the blockade after the tunnels on the Egyptian side were closed in joint Israeli-Egyptian operations in 2019 that suffocated Gaza;

• The will to stop the ethnic cleansing that has been going on in the West Bank since 2020 and has affected 1,600 young people, especially in Jenin, Nablus, Jerusalem and El-Hawara, where there was a pogrom in 2022.

• The desire to save Al-Aqsa, Muslim shrine and symbol of the capital of Palestine, which Netanyahu has decided to confiscate in order to maintain access to the Wailing Wall. Attacks on [Muslim] Friday prayers had become systematic.

• To put an end to the process of rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which included the construction, already underway, of the Ben Gurion Canal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which will lead to a port in Gaza.

•  Israel’s intention to take over Gaza’s offshore gas fields.

•  Israel’s repeated statements on the need to halve the population of Gaza and send the other half to Sinai, as well as to send Hamas fighters to Guantanamo and political leaders to Qatar.

Two-state solution?

A.M. 8. Why is the two-state solution, Israeli and Palestinian, unacceptable for the various currents of the Palestinian Resistance and why do they qualify this proposal as collaboration with the enemy?

L.G. 8. If we want to summarize the history of the occupation of Palestine in a few dates, we will say that Palestine was occupied in three phases: the Nakba of 1948, the Naksa or defeat of 1967 and the Oslo Accords of 1993. As Elias Sanbar, head of the Palestinian delegation responsible for the peace negotiations, recognizes, these so-called peace agreements (sic), which lasted 32 years, only served to reduce Palestine’s territory. Today, only 6% of the original Palestine remains.

Moreover, one of the reasons for the “popularity” of Hamas, which was democratically elected in 2007 under the auspices of an international U.N. observer mission, is that the Gazans, against all odds, elected it, not because of its “Islamic doctrine,” but because this organization refuses to lay down its arms and negotiate a “capitulation” agreement. This stance cost the lives of a dozen of its historic leaders, including its founder, Sheikh Yassin, who was brutally assassinated. Since then, as a collective punishment, Israel has subjected Gaza to a blockade – a total blockade that has lasted 17 years, making Gaza an open-air prison before it became an open-air cemetery.

Hamas was not alone in rejecting the Oslo Accords, known as the Shameful Accords. All other Palestinian organizations reject them, including sections of the Fatah (Revolutionary Council), as well as most of the PLO leadership, and personalities close to [Yasser] Arafat such as Mahmoud Darwish, who wrote Arafat’s speeches, and [the late] Edward Said. The bedroom state, or buffer state, presided over by Mahmoud Abbas is first and foremost a security state designed to protect Israel.

In reality, the two-state solution is nothing more than a decoy that has allowed Israel to continue dispossessing the Palestinians, accelerating the construction of hundreds of settlements and carrying out systematic ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. This year, before October 7, some 266 Palestinian youths were massacred in their homes in front of their families, in a pre-emptive operation, since by the Tsahal’s decision, “these youths are potential terrorists.”

In fact, long before October 7, 2023, Israel had never hidden its intention to “halve, i.e., annihilate one million human beings — the number of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” provoking a “New Nakba,” and thus exodus and genocide. What we are currently experiencing in Gaza is part of a long, bloody ordeal for the Gazan people: in 2006, 400 martyrs; in 2008-2009, 1,300 martyrs; in 2012, 160 martyrs; in 2014, 2,100 martyrs; in 2021, almost 300 martyrs; and in the spring of 2023, several dozens.

According to Michèle Sibony [Agence Média Palestine, Oct. 13, 2023], an avowed anti-Zionist and spokesperson for the French Jewish Union for Peace (UJFP): “We have known what the objective has been for a long time: ‘the smallest possible number of Palestinians in the largest possible annexed territory from the sea to the Jordan.  In other words, a land emptied of its Palestinian inhabitants and opened for colonization, a real ‘great replacement’.”

In an article published in Haaretz, entitled “Why the Palestinians are killing us,” Amira Hass, an anti-Zionist Israeli journalist, commented on the events of October 7 as follows: “The Palestinians did not shoot us because we are Jews, but because we are their occupiers, their torturers, their jailers, the thieves of their land and water, the demolishers of their homes, the ones who have exiled them and blocked their horizons. The young Palestinians are ready to give their lives and cause enormous pain to their families because the enemy they face shows them every day that its cruelty knows no bounds.”

One of the creators of [the Oslo Accords], Gideon Levy, who was the right-hand man of [former Israeli Prime Minister] Shimon Peres, has just declared at a press conference in New York that “Israel is responsible for what is happening in Gaza and the problem is not the current far-right government, but the fact that Israel refuses peace and has lied all along.” For him, Israel has only one fixed idea in mind: to fulfill what started with the war of 1948. 

Tania Reinhardt has already published a book with the same title [“Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948”]. For Israel, peace “was nothing more than a pretext to gain time and land and to continue building settlements.”

Of course, the Oslo “peace” was made under the auspices of the United States, which wanted to protect its offspring by giving it international recognition. The Oslo Accords allowed Israel to win recognition from all Asian countries, including China, and from Latin American countries and 52 African countries.

According to [Israeli historian] Ilan Pappé, the so-called peace also gave the settler state “total absolution for all its crimes committed against the Palestinian people since 1948.”

Since October 7

A.M. 9. What has definitely changed in the region since October 7?

L.G. 9. It is still too early to assess the full significance of the event, which will depend on the outcome of the war, but what is certain is that the equation on which the balance between the arrogant imperialist West and the countries of the South rests has been shaken.

The fact that Israel has ravaged northern Gaza and killed 30,000 civilians, 70% of them women and children, and forced 1.5 million people to flee, does not mean that Israel has won. After 40 days of attacks, it has still failed to achieve its objectives. [As of Jan. 4, 2024, Al Jazeera reports 30,676 deaths]

It is also true that the de-Westernization of the world has accelerated for the countries of the South. The barbaric West has been unmasked before the peoples. It has put an end to illusions about Europe as a model of democracy or a sanctuary of human rights, and its true face has been exposed throughout the world. Those responsible in the West are being singled out as war criminals.

According to an American newspaper, Israel is the most hated country in the world, which will have repercussions on its privileged status. In an editorial entitled “It’s time to end the special relationship between the United States and Israel,” Stephen Walt, professor of International Relations at the prestigious Harvard University (Cambridge,  Massachusetts), added that “unconditional support” for the Jewish state is beginning to take its toll. “The cost of this strategic relationship is rising, and this cost is not only political but also economic.”

Walt added, “When the U.S. uses its veto right three times, alone, in the U.N. Security Council on a cease-fire, it is in effect endorsing Israel’s ‘right to defend itself,’ a right it supports with a new military transaction worth some $735 million.” Costly or not, the U.S. will not abandon its creature, Israel, but such voices reveal a new reality.

As far as the BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa] position is concerned, it constitutes a total disappointment for the Arab world and especially for the resistance movements. The BRICS have shown themselves to be an exclusively economic alliance, looking out only for their own interests. This is far from the spirit of Non-Alignment or Bandung [A non-alignment conference was held in 1956 in Bandung, Indonesia]. They are interested in the U.S. losing influence in the Middle East and hope to gain from it.

International solidarity

A.M. 10. What is the importance of international solidarity in the countries that are today at the heart of imperialism?

L.G. 10. From Los Angeles to Rio de Janeiro, from Stockholm to Madrid, from Tunis to Cape Town, and from Bombay to Sydney, world public opinion has been expressing its revolt against Israel’s ruthless war against the Palestinians for more than a month.

Now that the masses have made use of the internet to put it at the service of their cause, defying and circumventing all the repressive methods of the multinationals that dominate the media, a breach has been made in the media wall to show what is happening on the ground and to convey to the Gazans the solidarity of the peoples of the whole world.

These massive demonstrations in all the major cities of the world are the testimony of a revolt against the crimes of Israel and its protectors that engage in military actions along with the United States. They are a revolt against the hypocrisy of a West that has stirred heaven and earth against Putin to a point bordering on anti-Russian racism, while they are silent here against these sordid crimes [in Gaza].

Thus, while the United States sees itself as Israel’s chief defender, it is interesting to note that images of student demonstrations in support of the Palestinian people on U.S. campuses show a heterogeneous mix of Arabs, descendants of U.S. enslaved people and grandchildren of Latin American emigrants. The oppression suffered by the Palestinian people is echoed both by the countries of the South and by a significant proportion of the citizens of the countries of the North, who recall the oppression suffered during centuries of colonization and domination — and even humiliation and cruelty — inflicted upon their ancestors.

Israel thus appears as the latest of the “white” countries to oppress a people of the South. And the dispossessed, poor and terrorized Palestinian has become a symbol of class oppression.

Reading the demonstrators’ banners, one gets the impression that the “Israeli exception,” granted by the West in the name of the victims of the Holocaust, and which minimizes the suffering and cruelty endured by other peoples of the world, will soon come to an end.

It must be said that this international solidarity is nourished by the resistance and sacrifice of a martyred people suffering three wars at the same time: the terrible total blockade, the genocide and the exodus.

This afternoon, a representative of the PFLP declared that “our people refuse to leave, they have learned since the first Nakba that if they leave their homeland they will never return; so their only choice is ‘Win or die.’” Remaining in their homeland is already a victory.

Personally, I am convinced that the battle of Gaza is the battle for all of us, just as the Spanish Civil War [1936-39] was, along with Beirut in 1982, and Lebanon in 2006. The words of [Portuguese communist] Miguel Urbano Rodrigues still echo in my ears when he came to greet the resistance: “Where imperialism concentrates its military, political, economic and media forces, those who confront it do so in the name of all humanity.” [January 2009, Beirut Forum] The fall of Gaza would be the fall of all of us in the face of capitalist barbarism. The merit of this solidarity is to have pointed the finger at our class enemy.

November 2023

Notes from Ángeles Maestro:

1. The strategic importance of the Ben Gurion Canal (Ben Gurion is the name of the Zionist leader who led the massacre and dispossession of the Palestinian people in 1948) that would go from the Red Sea to Gaza, alternative to the Suez Canal and that would channel 30% of the world energy trade can be consulted here: https://es.sott.net/article/90564-Israel-se-propone-abrir-el-Canal-Ben-Gurion

2. The importance of the Gaza Marina gas field, estimated at 30 billion cubic meters, along with other gas and oil fields located on the mainland between Gaza and the West Bank in the ongoing Israeli war against Palestine, is discussed here: palestinalibre.org/articulo.php?a=51528