Increasing the Threat of Terror and Violence in the World – Israel’s Campaign of Terror

Suppose you switched the words Gaza/Gaza Strip/Palestinian and Israel/Israeli around in the following passage:

The head of the United Nations children’s agency says 300 children have been killed during Israel’s campaign in the Gaza Strip.

UNICEF director, Ann Venemen, says more than 1,500 other children have been wounded, casualties she calls “tragic” and “unacceptable.”

Separately, Palestinian medics say more than 1,000 people have been killed during the 19-day offensive. (Source)

Commentators around the world and in the U.S. would rightly be describing the horrific atrocities as a second coming of The Holocaust. But when violent crimes are committed by Israel with U.S. backing, funding, equipping, etc., the violence is described as neccessary and liberative, only undertaken in self-defense against an impossibly implacable and extraordinarily powerful enemy.

One might think that the many pictures that have been emerging of Gazans throwing rocks at Israeli’s would dispel with contempt any of the non-sense about Hamas and Gaza being a threat to anyone’s security.

But alas, we live in the United States, where massive campaigns of violence against civilians in the name of “counter-terrorism” are the norm, so long as it’s being done by us.

U.S.-Israeli terror exceeds that of any other state in the world by far. These are the only two states opposed to a two-state solution for the Palestine-Israel problem, contrary to the popular illusions about Bush’s position on the issue, which basically is the same as every other president before him, and will likely be the same policy of the incoming president, who is far more worried about getting Americans to spend money and consume things again than he is about preventing more Gazan children from starving to death and/or being murdered via shrapnel lodged in the skull; the shrapnel is produced here in the United States.

Make no mistake about it, this latest state-terrorism committed by Israel, and the U.S.’s criminal and terroristic invasion of Iraq will have consequences, which is all the more reason why these acts should be, to the rational human being, categorically intolerable, just as it would be if Iran or Russia or North Korea invaded a sovereign territory and killed hundreds, or in the case of Iraq hundreds of thousands of innocent people and claimed they were doing it both in self-defense and in the name of liberty.

A cornerstone of Israel’s strategy in Gaza is to crush Hamas’s will to fight, especially its determination to fire rockets into southern Israel. But in interviews here with wounded supporters of the Islamist militia, Israel’s assaults appear to be breeding more recruits and more popular support for Hamas.

“I supported neither Hamas nor Fatah,” said Anwar el-Sahabani, 35, a carpenter with a casts on his right leg and left arm, the result of an airstrike. He was referring to Hamas’s rival party. “Today, after all that has happened, I have to support Hamas.”

The wounded are among 260 Palestinians, including women and children, who are being treated in Egyptian hospitals. Many expressed guilt for receiving treatment and being safe while their families are trapped in the conflict’s epicenter.

By Tuesday, the Palestinian death toll had reached 960, with more than 3,000 wounded, health officials in Gaza said. According to Israel’s military, 13 Israelis — three civilians and 10 soldiers — have been killed since Israel began its offensive Dec. 27

“I did not support Hamas before,” he added. “Now, I do. The whole world is conspiring against Hamas. And the number one conspirer is the United States.”

Hanni Mohammed, 38, spoke up from the next bed. “Why don’t you blame the Americans?” he demanded. “Why is America not stopping the war?”

He had fought in the previous Palestinian intifidas, or uprisings, but had stayed on the sidelines in the current conflict, Mohammed said. No longer.

Mohammed’s wife and six children are locked in their house. “My family is over there being killed, slaughtered,” he said, clutching a transistor radio that blared the news. “There’s no water, no electricity. There’s nothing I can do. All I can tell them is not to leave the house.”

When he goes back, he said, he plans to fire rockets at Israel.

“After everything I have seen, I will carry a weapon again,” Mohammed said. “I went to fight before, and now I will fight harder.”

(Source)

It still seems as though the U.S. and Israel believe that they can achieve peace through terror and domination. Anyone who believes that this is the answer is complicit in making the world a more dangerous place and increasing the likelihood that the U.S. and/or Israel be attacked in a horrific manner.

But with our government having the ability to make the rules regarding international conduct, and with them having made the choice that massive slaughter of civilians is permissible and indeed laudable if it contributes to hegemony and fear, it will not be acceptbale for us to ask again, as we have for over 50 years now, “why do they hate us?”

The answer is simple. Take a look at our crimes, realize that they are real and devastating, and you should not have to look any further.

Will Obama help usher in a new era of international conduct, one which is actually civilized, not simply in name? I see no evidence that would lead one to believe that he will.

13 Israelis, a few thousand Palestinians. 0 Israeli children, 300 Palestinian children. Tell me again, who are the terrorists?