- I’m afraid that this is another 1948. God forbid. We were driven out in 1948 and we are being driven out again now - Wadha Abu Amr.
As Israel persists with its wanton destruction of civilian life in Gaza, the Zionists are not getting things all their own way. The highest number of Israeli military fatalities sustained in a single day’s fighting, for many years, took place on Sunday. With the same sort of spirit that fuelled the anti-Nazi resistance from the bowels of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Palestinians have come out from the rubble of their homes and fought.
In every image that comes out of the inferno a hellish nightmare is projected from which children desperately try to escape the carnage thrust upon them.
A chain of five children holding hands trotted uphill, dragged by an adult — the smallest boy, around 3, with an expression of confusion and terror. Barefoot, he clutched his flip-flops in his hand.
Others are not so lucky.
At Shifa Hospital, a girl who looked about 9 was brought into the emergency room and laid on a gurney, blood soaking the shoulder of her shirt. Motionless and barely alive, she stared at the ceiling, her mouth open. There was no relative with her to give her name. The medical staff stood quietly around her. Every now and then, they checked her vital signs, until it was time. They covered her with a white sheet, and she was gone.
Shawan Jabarin of the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq pointed out that ‘the obligation not to target civilians and civilian infrastructure is absolute and any intentional violation of this obligation amounts to a war crime.' The Arab League agrees.
Consequently, Jordan has tabled a motion at the UN for a ceasefire while expressing its concern at the rate of civilian casualties. Jordan has also called for the “withdrawal of Israeli occupying forces from the Gaza Strip". Although UN chief Ban Ki-moon has labelled Israel's invasion "atrocious," the UN Security Council has responded to the Jordanian request by playing harps.
Worryingly, despite the unmitigated widespread murder prosecuted by the Israelis the Guardian reported that:
condemnation from international leaders was muted. Amid floundering efforts to start meaningful ceasefire talks, there was little sign of real pressure on Israel to lessen or halt the killing of civilians.
This is nothing short of appalling. So much for the call in yesterday’s Independent for “our leaders” to start prosecuting war criminals. The stum approach has also allowed Netanyahu to claim international endorsement for his SS policy of Search and Slaughter.
The trend setters in this horrendous game of hold your tongue is as usual the US. The inherent dishonesty of the Obama administration was captured in an unguarded moment by US Secretary of State John Kerry who on air praised Netanyahu for a "pinpointed" operation only to be caught off camera while the mic was still running, sarcastically expressing the view 'It's a hell of a pinpointed operation.' He later claimed his off the cuff comment was prompted by his reaction to the deaths of “young children and civilians.”
The US Secretary of State knows that mass murder is being inflicted, privately expresses some reservations about it but publicly endorses the policy that guarantees it. His unguarded but recorded comments to an aide that "we've got to get over there ... I think, Jon, we ought to go tonight. I think it's crazy to be sitting around. Let's go', may be seen against a background of how this is playing out within Western societies, where the muted response of governments is increasing disillusionment which in turn has a knock on effect in terms of problems of legitimation for the Western system of government. Western values ostensibly rooted in an Enlightenment culture of opposition to absolutism that abysmally fail to challenge murderous Zionist absolutism seem markedly unfit as a model for any developmental democracy. Any sense of participatory democracy becomes a mere joke when it ignores those seeking to participate.
There is a sense that Western leaders are increasingly out of step with large swathes of sentiment within their own societies. Many people are appalled that the West is at best turning a blind eye to a modern day Lidice out of political expediency. People who previously seemed to have little or no interest in politics are making efforts to bring pressure to bear that might help offset the Zionist onslaught. It is also noticeable that avowed opponents in other matters have buried their differences in a bid to throw their collective shoulder behind the wheel.
Meanwhile back at the Kibbutz, in a bizarre CNN interview that could easily have come out of the Orwellian Ministry for Truth Netanyahu accused Hamas leaders of being:
genocidal terrorists ... They want to pile up as many civilian dead as they can. They use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause. They want the more dead, the better.
You have to give it to the Fuhrer of Zion: Netanyahu will always call a spade a shovel. Goebbels would have died happy had he known that the political leader of those he unrelentingly sought to exterminate was a pig from the same sow as himself.
Netanyahu of course fails to explain why he is giving Hamas what he claims it wants. His inversion of the truth flies in the face of everything we know about the conflict. Its equivalent would be the Nazis accusing the Jews of possessing genocidal intent towards Germany in the 1930s and 40s. There is never any justification for attacking civilians whether by Hamas or anyone else but it is not Hamas that bears resemblance to the forces that waged murderous assault on the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943; they are as besieged as the defenders of the ghetto. The figures just aren’t with Netanyahu. The vast bulk of Hamas inflicted fatalities are Israeli military whereas it is the opposite for the Israelis.
Gerald Kaufmann, a Jewish member of the British parliament in 2009 came much closer to the truth than Netanyahu ever did or is ever likely to:
My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town.A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians.
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