Three weeks of unmitigated assault. Three weeks of murdering and wounding thousands of innocents. Three weeks of crimes against humanity. Three weeks of infrastructural decimation. Three weeks of wholesale lying by America's media. Three weeks for the atrocity to end. Gaza is in ruins. An eternity of three weeks.
Through it all, President Barack Hussein Obama remained silent on Israel's latest terroristic brutality. Then, in his inaugural speech he clearly chastised militant Islamists for their fight against Zionist oppression. Alluding to same he condemns any nuclear ambitions even as he categorized oil producing nations as our adversaries. With the whole world watching, President Obama had a platform to begin a true peace process long, long overdue. All he had to do was to denounce Israeli violence, hold Israel to account for its illegally assembled nuclear arsenal and promise the Arab world a fair hearing of its grievances.
A new age would have dawned.
The world will have to wait for that distant sunrise.
For, President Obama instead chose to re-issue George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" warning replete with a total one-sidedness of point-of-view/official mythology; also termed Empire Denial. Supporters kept repeating the idea that Obama couldn't speak up due to his not being sworn in yet. Well, what's the excuse now?
If his inaugural speech wasn't offensive enough, we have his just-released official statement as regards the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Be honest. It's essentially the same as W's position. And, Clinton's before that. And George the Elder's before that; the very same stance dating all the way back to 1948. America and Israel will decide who are the bonafide Palestinian leaders. America and Israel will decide how much of nothing is enough for an eventual Palestinian state that will never be free of Israeli interference. America and Israel will decide who can break UN Resolutions and who cannot, who can commit violations of International Law and who cannot. America and Israel will decide what the ratio of dead must be before "crimes against humanity" will apply; in this case Palestinians suffered 1400 dead and 5500 wounded, with most being civilians compared to 13 Israeli deaths, 10 of them military personnel, four of those dead from friendly fire, the other three, civilians. This ratio apparently does not reach President Obama's threshold for calling an atrocity an atrocity. Instead, he is actually demanding that Hamas agrees to accept Israel's existence (or the illegal occupation of Palestine) and abide by past agreements even as Israel has ignored every UN Resolution issued as regards their illegal occupation and settlement of Palestine. Just another case of demanding preconditions of Palestinians while asking nothing of Israel.
Israel likes to claim it isn't in occupation of Gaza. Technically correct. However, having surrounded Gaza with border fencing and check points by the dozens, Israel has essentially imprisoned Gaza since Hamas won a fair democratic election. But, the wrong side won so Israel had no alternative but to make life a living hell. A total blockade action by Israel stopped food and medical supplies from freely flowing into the strip. Daily humiliations by Israeli troops treating Palestinians like animals had to be endured. This blockade stopped people from being able to work. People could not make money. Those that did find work could not get paid. Living conditions steadily eroded to beyond atrocious. Yet still did the people stay loyal to their elected representatives. The Arab world-- once again --sent a very strong, clear message [Beirut Declaration; March 2002] that it was willing to grant Israel everything it claims to have wanted: Full recognition of Israel's right to exist. Full diplomatic relationships. Full economic openness between countries. All that in exchange for a Palestinian state configured on pre-1967 borders with shared Jerusalem.
As of yet Israel remains silent on that proposal first offered six years ago.
Determined to break the Palestinian population, Israel went covert just weeks before the previous truce agreement was to expire, sending in special teams to assassinate Hamas leaders; murdering representatives democratically elected by their people. Hamas responded with crude Qassam missiles even as they demanded that Israel end the blockade and allow Gaza to function by opening the border crossings. Israel launched a vicious aerial invasion that quickly destroyed Gaza's main infrastructure, killed many civilians and then, not satisfied with the mayhem visited on a defenseless population, renewed its crimes against humanity by using white phosphorous bombs and artillery shells, firing on schools and hospitals and UN sanctuaries.
President Obama has delivered a rousing speech emphasizing the responsibility we Americans must shoulder. But, how can a nation fed lies ever hope to understand what their responsibility is? The "common Joe" sanctifies Israeli aggressions. Americans are inundated with pro-Israeli propaganda from every angle and every venue; like the political cartoon that showed a hapless young Israeli couple (the woman cradling a baby) cowering beneath a barrage of missiles raining down upon them; the missiles from the left carrying the message Hamas Missiles, the missiles from the right, reading World Condemnation.
Israel brutally murders 1400 people, most of them children, and Americans are drowned in images and words portraying Israelis as the victims. In 2009 America, George Orwell's famous quote is so apropos as to be eerie: "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
I see a video being harped on the internet showing Gaza supporters in America demonstrating against Israel's murderous rampage saying some pretty hateful things. That video is being used by a group calling itself ACT for America that describes its mission thusly: "ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America's national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam." Act for America offers articles like this, The Face Of Militant Islam. Laughable if it wasn't so pathetic, so typically American; upset that citizens exercise their First Amendment right to petition the government as regards the redress of their grievances— in this case the mass murder of civilians by Israelis gone wild –our "patriots" scold them for their heinous speechifying.
We now will see an American "left" rejoicing our new President; the symbolic breaking of a recent past that enslaved people of color. That great sigh of relief and slap upon our collective back will last well beyond Obama's two terms. Republicans will gripe about the "tax and spend liberals" while Democrats saturate the media with their own spin vis-à-vis the Shock Doctrine applied in the guise of bail outs that will do nothing to fix the system.
Oh, to be sure, America and the rest of the world will leap over this current abyss. Whenever the Doom and Gloomers start up, you can always dismiss them because one thing we Americans know for sure: Those few that got want more and they need humans to do their dirty work. So, jobs will return. Houses will be bought. Fetish consumerism will continue after a brief hiatus.
And, as sure as greed is a Capitalist's creed, Israel will continue its immoral, illegal occupation of Palestine. Israel will continue to flaunt all conventions of decency. And what will the "left" do when Obama continues to chastise the victims even as his Israeli citizen Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, assures him that this skewed, hypocritical stance, one premised on lies and deceit and a cold-bloodedness that escapes human dimension, promulgated by the fiction of Israeli righteousness, is the correct path to take if terrorism is to be ended?
The "left" will take their seats squarely in the center-right. They should then start counting the days until the next 9/11…Only this time the "left" will be fully complicit.
