Enough Outrage Over Gaza?
Is the world reacting with sufficient outrage and urgency to the horrendous humanitarian toll in Gaza? When, in just 20 days, the Palestinian people have lost more than 1,000 dead-- in per capita terms the equivalent of 30,000 American lives, 10 times the number who died on 9/11? That kind of extrapolation, by the way, is a favorite debate tool of former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. He uses it to drive home how a few hundred Israelis killed in terrorist attacks is a national catastrophe for Israel. Few Palestinians are in doubt that they, too, have unjustly fallen victim to a staggering loss of life.
The U.S., other Western governments, pro-Western Arab regimes and Israeli public opinion have been relatively mute about the moral issues like the proportionality of Israel's attacks and Israel's obligation to protect civilians. By and large, they've been eager to show solidarity with the Israeli government's accepted right of self defense against Hamas's rockets, or to cast Hamas as a radical threat to moderate Arab regimes and regional stability.
Yet, stopping there certainly ignores or blames the victims here—the ordinary, long suffering, people of Gaza. Does the relative silence need ignore the fact that a war against Hamas in the densely populated Strip would inevitably be fought with 1.5 million civilians arrayed from one end of the battlefield to the other and therefore caught squarely in the cross fire? Are we so inured to killing in the Middle East that such a huge death toll can be shrugged off in yet another war whose goals are as ambiguous as they are likely to remain elusive?
Actually, there has been an impressively large number of public protests around the world. As far as public officials are concerned, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has notably rushed to the defense of Gaza's defenseless. By coincidence, he was arriving for meetings in Israel with PM Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Thursday, just after Israeli shellfire struck the Gaza headquarters of the United Nations Works and Relief Agency--which has distributed aid to Palestinians since the birth of the refugee problem in 1948.
UNRWA officials said the attack destroyed all of the agency's food and medicine supplies, daily necessities for more than 1 million people who, currently, are under siege. They strongly disputed Israel's contention that Israel had been responding to attacks by Hamas fighters using UNRWA as a protective shelter. "I conveyed my strong protest and outrage to the defense minister and foreign minister and demanded a full explanation," Ban said after meeting Barak and Livni. For his part, Barak acknowledged that the Israeli attack was a "grave mistake." Olmert defended Israeli forces but said "the consequences are very sad and we apologize for it. I don't think it should have happened and I'm very sorry."
One of the strong statements of support for Gazans came from current UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, former Sandinista foreign minister in Nicaragua:
We here in United Nations headquarters have remained too passive for too long as the carnage continues.... Every day, we receive messages from Gaza and from around the world asking, indeed pleading, for the UN to stop the violence, protect civilians and attend to the humanitarian needs. Our business here today is urgent.
During this assault, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed, one-third of them children. More bodies remain buried under the rubble, out of reach of humanitarian workers because the shelling is too intense – the living would be killed trying to reach the dead. If this onslaught in Gaza is indeed a war, it is a war against a helpless, defenseless, imprisoned population.
As easy as it is for many to turn their eyes from the death toll, you can be certain that Gaza will be added as another source of frustration, hurt and anger experienced by Palestinians and Arabs everywhere—adding more fuel to the fire of political extremism, too. President-elect Obama, arguing there's only one president at a time, has been getting a pass for his own relative silence on Gaza so far. But many in the Middle East will be watching closely after the Inauguration next week, to see if Gaza inspired any sense of outrage or urgency in the new "leader of the free world."
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
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1
Well deduced, we shall know new US administration foreign policies outlines for next 4 years by the steps she will take in a next week, no time for honeymoon period, lets see if they're going to be happy to land in middle of this mess which they didn't want to be pushed in to!
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I am an American-Irish dissident and i am FLAMING with 'frustration, hurt and anger' at my governments collusion and $7-10 MILLION US TAX DOLLARS A DAY that goes to SUPPORT 41 years of brutal dehumanizing military occupation and a limp occupied PAID media without the balls/thatchers to REPORT BOTH SIDES ACCURATELY!........
January 10, 2009 I was one WASP among 2,000+ Palestinians and Arabs of all ages at a rally in Orlando, Fl...
We came together in solidarity over our anguish for the misery in Gaza and to March in front of Senator Mel Martinez and Senator Bill Nelson's Orlando offices.........
The area we were consigned to was 'roped' off with one strand of plastic tape that a baby could break. 150 police officers attempted to justify the waste of man power by checking bags and denying fluids to travel into the taped off area. I solved my dilemma at the Orlando Police Checkpoint in the Park by ducking under the tape thirty feet from 'Security's' back..........
We the people with a conscience had come together to take to the streets our demand that USA Government stand up for an immediate bilateral cease fire and the free flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza..........
We the people of all faiths and none came together in heart break over Gaza and anger at USA complicity in Israel's war crimes..........
The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or Israel, is a war crime. There is NO justification for anyone, any army, or state to target innocent people. Over 800 lives have already been lost and an entire generation of children terrorized and traumatized. The 1.5 million human persons in Gaza have no way to escape the USA made bombs delivered by USA made Apache helicopters and F-16's!.........
I arrived at Lake Eola half an hour before the scheduled event and attempted to dialogue with a few of the counter protestors whom I informed, "I have been to Israel six times since June 2005. Here's my card, you can read eye witness accounts of occupied Palestine. Then, let's dialogue!"
..........A few accepted my card but I know they haven't a clue, for one of their signs read: End the Palestinian Occupation of Israel!
............I laughed out loud and then prayed God have mercy on the deaf, dumb and blind. But I lost my temper with a robotic zombie Zionist who thinks she is a Christian...
Across her chest she expressed her mind with a JerUSAlem t-shirt...
I have met her kind many a time on the World Wide Web and in the flesh at such events as John Hagee CUFI conference in Miami-see left margin my home page for THAT REPORT.........
But, this particularly creepy psudeo-Christian was so arrogant, so closed of mind, her eyes so blind, ears deaf to the cries of orphaned babies and a heart so cold she chilled me to the bone.........
But then she said, "God gave that land to the chosen people."
.........The simmering rage I carry with me daily erupted into flame and I raised my voice above hers and chanted: Blessed are the peacemakers-THEY are the children of God...........
This simmering rage I carry with me was lit in June 2005 during my first of six trips to Israel and Occupied Palestine..........
Although I had researched for two years, nothing prepared me for what I saw, heard and felt in my gut that broke my heart and inflamed my mind...........
My Irish has remained up and not a day goes by, that I don't DO SOMETHING to help raise awareness of USA culpability in the suffering of another indigenous people...........
Not just because the USA government has not been an honest broker for peace...
Not just because the USA media has failed so miserably to educate the American people...
More than anything, what keeps my Irish up and flaming are comfortable Christians who do NOT have a CLUE as to what Jesus/AKA the Prince of Peace was all about!...
I leave it to moderate Muslims and Jews to correct their own. As a Christian Anarchist of The Beatitudes, my target is the fundamentalist militant wing in The Body of Christ who have so corrupted his message that they crucify him all over again by claiming to be a Christian yet they support bombing, torturing and occupying other people that God also created in his/her image.........
They also never give a thought to the fact that Jesus was NEVER a Christian...
The term 'Christian' was not even coined until the days of Paul, about 3 decades after Jesus/AKA: The Prince of Peace walked the earth and taught that it is the peacemakers who are the children of God, NOT those that bomb, occupy or torture others!..
2,000 years ago The Cross had NO symbolic religious meaning and was not a piece of jewelry...
When JC said: "Pick up your cross and follow me" everyone THEN understood he was issuing a POLITICAL statement, for the main roads into Jerusalem were lined with crucified agitators, rebels, dissidents and any who disturbed the status quo of the Roman Empire and Military Occupying Forces.........
Jesus, while never a Christian, was a social, justice, radical revolutionary Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up against the corrupt Temple authorities and challenged their job security by teaching the people they did NOT need to pay the priests for ritual baths or sacrificing livestock to be OK with God; for God LOVED them just as they were: Sinners, poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under the Roman Empire and Military Occupation.........
What got JC crucified was disturbing the status quo of the Roman Empire and Occupying Forces by teaching the subversive concept that God preferred the humble sinner, the poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under the Roman Empire and Military Occupation above the elite and arrogant.........
"If enough Christians followed the gospel, they could bring any state to its knees." -Father Philip Francis Berrigan.........
The early followers and lovers of Jesus were called members of THE WAY-being THE WAY he taught one should be and that his sisters and brothers were those that DID the will of the Father:
"What does God require? He has told you o'man! Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord." -Micah 6:8.........
Being just requires all sides are respected as equals and all should be heard.........
There was no justice on Saturday's local NBC TV affiliate that 'reported' on the March for Gaza at Lake Eola Park...........
There was NO video of the over 2,000 strong and nonviolent activists....
There were NO interviews with any of the organizers of the event...
But WESH TV did interview one of about two dozen counter protesters. His ignorance was blatant, but there was NO follow-up question from the ‘reporter' holding the microphone...
While still flaming, I phoned WESH and expressed my distress to the patient and calm man at the News Desk. He then connected me with the voice mail of his superior and I left a message that I am a citizen journalist who has been to occupied Palestine 6 times since June 2005...
I expressed my distress was most acute as I was an eye witness to the event and to then witness such a slanted and uninformative reporting with no mention of the issues raised at the rally makes WESH/NBC News culpable in the ignorance of central Floridians who know NOTHING about the last 60 years of misery of the Palestinians...
Imagine a media dedicated to the enlightenment of the republic...
Imagine a government that listens to a people who take it to the streets...
Imagine if we who claim to be Christian actually did what Jesus said was non-negotiable: you must forgive to be forgiven; you must pray, bless, love your enemies; NOT bomb, torture or occupy them!
...Imagine when we who claim to be civilized respect all people, honor all life, treat all others the way we hope they will treat US.
Imagine a hope that is so audacious that this “HOPE has two children. The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it.”-St. Augustine
Learn More:
http://www.endtheoccupation.org/ -
3
Hey Joe,
Hillary has been a willing collaborator to Apartheid in the so called Holy Land. it is in PIECES: BASNTUSTANS!
The Bush-Sharon Letter/DEAL laid out THEIR "facts on the ground"
...THE other side of The Wall Story can be heard and viewed in a 1:19 minute soundbite:.........Vanunu's Message to Hillary Clinton re: The Apartheid Wall...........Just weeks after his FREEDOM OF SPEECH TRIAL began the whistle blower of Israel's underground WMD Facility sent this message to Senator Clinton and USA Christians re: The Apartheid Wall and The Bombs. Excerpted from "30 Minutes with Vanunu" freely streaming @ WeAreWideAwake...........http://www.wearewideawake.org
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4
I fear it may be naive of me to say that I have lost complete faith in humanity. For years, I have had the impression that, in the age of the internet, brutal war campaigns rife with atrocities were antiquities of the 20th century thanks to an inability by the aggressors to hide their barbarity from the court of public opinion. This was supposed to be especially true with regards to so-called "democracies", where freedom, liberty, and equality are trumpeted as values beholden above any others.
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Today, we are bystanders with no recourse against two governments with policies that cannot be called anything other than genocide, which they have incidentally chosen to somehow justify via something less than the truth.
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It is simply not enough that Mr. Moon is upset with Israel, a country that continually uses the United Nations establishment to implement sanctions against other countries for its "security", while, without fail, ignoring its own violations of over 150 resolutions -- more than ANY other nation in the United Nations. To allow Israel, the member with the most violations, to reap the benefits of a UN membership while permitting it to blow off any obligations is a mockery of the system to say the least. Need we forget what happened to Iraq when it violated just ONE resolution?
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Global citizens are crying for quick justice to be rendered to Israel for its aggressions and its non-commitment to allowing its own founding purpose -- to give a people the right to exist -- for others. The false assumption is made that the International Criminal Court ("ICC"), a court founded specifically "to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression", will effect some sort of punishment against Israel's leaders. But Israel, just as it circumvented the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, did not sign the Rome Treaty which founded the ICC. So, the ICC declared it did not have jurisdiction over Israel.
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Because of this semantic play, also seen in much of the propaganda rhetoric coming from Israel, somehow the notion has been established that Israel is not accountable for its actions.
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Simply put, isn't lack of accountability the very reason the world is suffering from all of its ills today? If we held c-level executives on Wall Street accountable, the economy wouldn't be a shambles. If we held our government accountable, our reputation world-wide would regain integrity.
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If Israel is allowed to slide this time, the precedent is set for future wrongs to be committed in unimaginable scale. We must hold Israel accountable and set an example. -
5
E.F., what the world needs is more people like Bobby Sanders to demand for justice!
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6
Would it not be nice if all of this outrage were around BEFORE the Gaza operation? And if it were directed at Rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel? If UN assitance to Gaza were linked to an end to rocket attacks? If the arrangements currently being negotiated for international supervision of the Egypt-Gaza border to prevent rocket smuggeling would have been put in place as soon as Israel withdrew? If public pressure on EGYPT to effectively fight the transfer of weapons targeting Israeli civilians would have been in place BEFORE the recent bloodshed?
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If any of these steps had been taken Israel would not have had to invade Gaza. And the moral sensitivities of the world would not have been offended.
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As to the Moral issues: Scott, thank you for noting that any military operation in Gaza would levy a civilian death toll and that this was unavoidable. I must wonder if you would reach the same conclusion you have reached concerning Gaza (Must not invade and harm the Hamas voting innocent 1.5 milion civilians) had the rockets been fired from within gaza at YOUR home for three years straight. Allow me to doubt it. -
7
Yoni,
The outrage was definitely there prior to the Gaza operation. The humanitarian crisis that resulted from Israel's brutal blockade of the Strip was widely criticized. This just added fuel to the fire.
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I can understand the outrage over rockets being fired at citizens. But, the shortsightedness of the argument perturbs me. Why is Hamas firing rockets out of Gaza? Because Israel is systematically starving and punishing a population of 1.5 million people that put them into power.
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The operation was a horrible maneuver for Israel's reputation and the worst option as to how the rocket problem could be quelled. Olmert, Livni and Barak strike again!
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