Collateral Damage: Lighten Up! It's just a heathen!Israel would have us believe that 8 months ago a beautiful ceasefire was signed that was unilaterally violated and torn up by the brigands of Hamas, who started firing terribly destrictive missiles at hapless Israeli civilians for no reason.
Israeli officials have been saying on television repeatedly that "Hamas had a chance to make Gaza a wonderful place, instead they chose terror attacks against us", loosely quoted but accurate and repeated by many Israeli talking heads. The Israelis also claim that the ossupation of Gaza came to an end years ago with Israel's pull-out.
In fact nothing is further from the truth. Israel has been stragulating Gaza and controlling it's exits and entrances with a wire garrotte. Gaza has not been allowed to import or trade even basic food-stuffs and economic items except on an emergency aid basis. The ceasefire that was signed many months ago that Hamas supposedly tragically broke, was supposed to be a live-and-let-live arrangement that could eventually lead to some tacit mutual acceptance. Israel has been claiming to be an innocent victim of the violation of this single ray of hope.
In reality Israel has continued to strangulate and Gaza with a blockade that caused the Gaza economy to totally collapse and depend on what few aid shipments Israel allowed in. Israel was starving Gaza to death, it's economy was non-existent, and for months Hamas honoured the ceasefire, reminding Israel of it's violations and trying to get the siege of Gaza's people to end. Hamas did build tunnels, and these were the only life-line for Gazan economy, as well as Hamas' weapon suppliers, but it did not, for months, attack Israel.
It was after months of intolerable strangulation and economic collpase, with complete intrasigence on Israel's side, that the cease-fire was abandoned by Hamas as a bad deal. It may be true that Hamas is a terrorist organization, but the UK dealt with the IRA with some modicum of fairness and honour to achieve some peace on Northern Ireland. Israel could not be buggered to do the same with Hamas. Instead it imposed a crippling siege on Gaza and strangled the territory into economic collapse, knowing full well that it would lead to a collapse of the ceasefire and a golden opportunity for Israel to push its bloody military agenda, and right before an election! How convenient for the government!
For their part, Hamas may have used the wrong methods, but let's face facts, those Qassam rockets are fire-crackers that so far have killed less than ten Israelis in the last two months, if that. Israel's response was to kill over 400 Palestinians, including women and children. Israel struck offices and mosques, then cynically pretended that it was Hamas' fault that it's offices were located in, of all places, office buildings! The real reason they are doing this to is collectively punish the Palestinian people for voting for Hamas and to intimidate them with the blood of their own children. Hamas offered a resumption of the ceasefire if the siege of Gaza was lifted during the aerial campaign, but Israel was too busy bathing in blood.
I find it interesting that when Hezbollah kidnapped Israeli soldiers (not civilians, uniformed soldiers of an army it had never declared peace with) Israel saw fit to murder a thousand lebanese, mostly civilians, and then claim that Hezbollah was at fault for having offices in, of all places, cities. Hezbollah's actual military assets were located in the countryside, but that didn't matter. You can see why Chutzpah is a Jewish expression.
And interesting contrast is that when Georgia invaded a willingly seperatist region, bombing and shelling civilians and firing on Russian peacekeepers, a Russian military reply was called "disporportionate" and even "criminal". Yet when Israel massacred hundreds of lebanese civilians because of some Israeli soldiers, less than five, killed or captured in the line of duty, it was the beautiful "birth pangs of a new middle-east" according to America's national harpie, Condoleeza Rice.
Now we see again, in exchange for firecrackers the blood of children is flowing freely and homes are being demolished. I guess when the Ashkhe-NAZIs say "never again" they only mean for themselves. A cynical Israeli government with no value for the blood of anyone but Jews and the "good gentiles" (you know, those civilized ones they left behind in Europe that look like them and have the same sounding names) is scoring election points by freely killing innocents. India's been doing something similar in Kashmir for a long time. I guess dead innocents only matter if they are "proper people" to begin with. Nothing wrong with a few stiff rag-heads, thought Joe Sixpack. Apparently Israel agrees.
America's stance, leaving sarcasm behind, has been predictable and appalling. Yet again Israel can do no wrong and the innocent dead of the other side are mere "collateral dammage".
It is sickening. Expecially thinking how the exactly equivalent situation in Georgia was interpreted by this same America. Might is right. This is what America's current government stands for. Unfortunately, because Washington is institutionally beholden to AIPAC and the religious bigotry of the Evangelical Christians of America who believe that ethnic cleansing, colonization and murder are pure and justified if done by The Chosen People (who are supposed to convert after WW3, mind you) at the behest of Christian America. America's bias is almost hardwired. Obama will make no difference. Bush and Obama are the cream and chocolate of the same cake.
I do not support Hamas in principle, but in resisting the Israeli invasion, I wish it well. I hope that there can be peace along the 1967 lines, but Israel simply does not want that any more than Hamas, hence this vile atrocity we are witnessing. I hope that America wakes up and stops urinating on its own Establishment Clause and I hope that Israel is humbled into accepting a fair peace and realizing that the blood of other peoples is as valuable as their own.
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