3, October 2014 Stanford University
discussion on Gaza
Last Tuesday, the Peace & Justice
Center of Stanford University hosted a panel discussion on the aftermath of Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza.
Panelists included professors Beinin,
Bisharat, and Omer. Beinin offered a chronology of
the events which led up to the attacks. He dismissed Israel’s claim that the
attack was in defense of Hamas’s rocket attacks. He stated that Netanyahu used
the tragic death of the three Israeli teenagers to launch the attacks and
weaken the unity government of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and fan the
flames of settler attacks.
Israel has recently
admitted that a shadowy rogue group was responsible for the death of the three
teenagers. The other members of the panel concurred with
Beinin and stated that the root cause of the ongoing conflict was the
suffocating siege and occupation. They launched a blistering criticism on
Israel’s bombing of Gaza’s infrastructure and warned that the recent upheaval
of the region with ISIS could be a game changer which may force Israel and the
US to reexamine its failed policies. The panel gave
examples on how Israel’s Gaza assault has backfired in significant ways
– Israel’s tourism has been devastated, losing hundreds
of millions of dollars; the boycott, divestment and sanctions program has
dramatically increased and membership to Jewish Voices for Peace has seen an
exponential growth. The blistering attack by the Obama administration on
Israel’s latest settlement also seems to be a shift in US policy.
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