At the end of 2008, Israel began heavy air attacks on the Palestinian Gaza Strip. It was said that the goal was to stop Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israel. To get rid of the Muslims’ homemade rockets for good, the Israeli government intensified the war with a ground offensive with its high-tech war machinery. After the weapons as well as the infrastructure of Hamas were largely destroyed, and some of its leaders and a lot of civilians were killed, there is now a ceasefire.
In view of these brutalities, one might think that the general public or at least the critically inclined would begin to criticize war. With good reasons: wars as well as the justification for war are not to be mistaken for the interests of people. There is no reason why people who neither know one another nor have motive and means to murder each other would fight. The war logic of states makes these people the material of the programs of their ruling powers – certainly not to their benefit: one side sends its citizens into combat in order to protect them, the other side demands respect for its autonomous rule over a piece of land for which the people living on it may then die.
Instead of noting this cynicism, there are demonstrations in this country by partisans of Israel or by those of Hamas. As if the interests of these countries would simply be identical with those of the subjects who are ordered to go to war, one takes to the streets for Israel’s “right to defend itself” and the other for the Palestinian’s “right to their own autonomous state.” If one follows this reasoning, one becomes a partisan for the claims of the states and their justification of their “completely justified” violence.
Instead of, in view of two parties which lead the war, clarifying the goals of political debate, the wickedness of the partisan’s opponent is noted. So the war is seen as an “unfortunately necessary” means for the party supported in each case. It would be more appropriate to be concerned with the interests and the state programs rather than pedaling the political-moral lies of the respective warring parties.
The Israeli state foundation ideology says that the state of Israel is the homeland of the Jews, which must assert itself in a sea of enemies. Its state program shows that it was and still is anything but a homeland. Over the course of 60 years, Israel has established and asserted itself with the appropriate amount of violence as another state in the world of imperialistic competition. Israel offensively defends this status with the support of World Power No. 1 because the USA considers Israel to be their factor of order in the Middle East. The population has no alternative to the state program; it must make itself useful for this as a soldier, on the one hand, and as a worker, on the other. In the first case, this means holding oneself ready as a murderous high tech fighting machine or as a settler with a chance of being hit by a Kassam rocket. And in the second case this means that one must try to make ends meet under the ruling logic of a market economy.
Their state foundation ideology says that their yet to be founded state is surrounded by an enemy who is best pushed into the sea. Also they as Palestinians require their own state for their protection. They use force for this, exactly like their more powerful enemy, in order to bomb their way into the world of states. Unlike Israel, however, their acts of terrorism do not find an influential supporter in the world power. So the people then are clamped as Palestinian “collateral damage” of Israel’s laser-guided bombs by their would-be statesmen in the war for the foundation of a state. And the civilian use of the population by the Muslim rulers also does not point to anything promising for a Palestinian. The basic arithmetical calculation of monetary increase should also count there; which means to hope for a job in one of the few agribusinesses which supply their neighboring countries and to satisfy Egyptian merchants with their limited purchasing power.
One should not concern oneself with the state programs of either warring party; one can be involved neither in Israel's “right to self-defense” nor the Palestinians’ “right to their own autonomous state.” Both are misleading as attempts to solve problems in service to their people. States objectively create the problems they claim to solve; they wouldn’t exist if it wouldn’t be for the states and their interests.