The Jerusalem Post reported in 2014 on the Israeli military policy of “mowing the grass” in Gaza.
Of course, no one living in Gaza has an actual lawn. Instead, this is Israel’s not-so-clever euphemism for its periodic military attacks against the human beings living in Gaza.
Yes, the Israeli military actually thinks it’s clever to describe the way they periodically mow down innocent Palestinian civilians as a public service in lawn care.
Ha ha…
Mowing Gaza’s grass accomplishes several goals for Israel.
First, as I explain in my book Like Birds in a Cage, regular Israeli airstrikes and
bombings, causing mayhem, death, and destruction is intended to remind the Palestinian people of who their Master is.
Thus, mowing the grass gives Israel yet another opportunity to sear the Palestinian conscience, to quote the military’s own description of this policy goal.
Like random electrical shocks administered to a caged dog, the Palestinians are supposed to surrender their will, abandon all resistance, and lapse into a state of learned helplessness.
Fortunately, however, the Palestinian people are refusing to learn Israel’s intended lesson.
Here is the sequence of events for the most recent exercise in Israel’s deadly conscience searing:
It began on August 1st when Israeli commandos captured a leader of the rebel organization called Islamic Jihad (IJ) who was living in the West Bank.
Several days later Israel followed up on that raid by launching an airstrike on Gaza in order to assassinate another IJ leader in his home. He was killed with several others.
Then Israel announced that it was launching a “preemptive strike” against Gaza in response to intelligence reports detailing IJ’s plans to use heavy artillery against Israel. Of course, as usual, Israel never provided any details about this supposed intelligence. The world is expected to simply take Israel’s word at face value.
What followed was another merciless blood-letting.
At last count, as best I can discover, hundreds of Gazans have been injured, approximately 65 people were killed, 15 of them being children. The total damage to homes, businesses, and infrastructure has yet to be determined.
The IJ forces launched almost 1,000 rockets against Israel. Yet, Israel did not suffer a single casualty. Some of these rockets did not even make it outside of Gaza, landing short and killing Palestinians instead.
These statistics tell us everything we need to know about the grotesque asymmetry characteristic of this “conflict.” A nuclear power is using state-of-the-art weaponry to mow down people living under military occupation whose weapons are like children’s toys in comparison.
I can’t help but wonder what happened to the (imaginary) heavy artillery that IJ was supposedly preparing to fire against Israel. Such rockets never made an appearance among the 1,000-or-so homemade IJ missiles that traced their wobbly, white streaks erratically across the Gazan sky this past week.
So, there you have it. The entire Israel-Palestine situation in a nut shell.
Israel continues its military occupation and blockade of Gaza and the West Bank, and they continue to get away with it.
Israel mows down hundreds of innocent men, women, and children, and gets away with it. Again, Israel will not suffer a single negative consequence from the outside world.
Palestinians make a feeble attempt to defend themselves against Israeli aggression, and they are vilified by Israel and its allies.
Which all raises a vital question: Whose conscience is being seared by this perpetual savagery?
