In what is reported to be the bloodiest onslaught by the Israeli military, which is actually more of an ethnic cleansing, on blockaded Gaza since it was captured and occupied by Israel 41 years ago, more than 350 people have been killed and more than a thousand injured, resulting in World powers calling for an end to the fighting — it took awhile, but the U.S., after playing the usual propaganda-laden-rhetorical-blame-game that the western press picks up and runs with, has finally joined in — as worldwide protests against Israel mount.
Most Middle Eastern newspapers do not, as the Guardian Uk put it, habitually sanitize the barbarity meted out in the name of multiple wars on terror, unlike most of their brethren in the Western world.
Once again Israel embarked on more unnecessary acts of terrorism under the guise of politically motivated war. Israel is committing war crimes in retaliation of Hamas — a corrupt Palestinian Sunni paramilitary organization and political party — launching a series of rocket attacks into Israel, killing one Israeli. Hamas rockets are not nearly as effective as the ones supplied to Israel by the U.S. There are reports that blame Israel for breaking the previous ceasefire with Hamas on November 4, 2008 by destroying the ‘ticking tunnel.’ Israel fired missiles that were aimed at closing down a tunnel operation they believed Hamas was building in order to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Hamas allegedly launched their attack in retaliation of Israeli allegedly breaking the ceasefire. Retaliation between Hamas and Israel never ends.
Retaliation by Israel may or may not be justified, but the slaughter that has resulted since the Hamas rocket attack is inhumane, immoral and violates International law. Israel is now and has been committing numerous war crimes with British and American backing and blessings.
It appears that Israel’s government does not believe in diplomacy, choosing instead to kill more innocent civilians, primarily women and children. Hamas brought the attacks on itself, possibly protesting the ghetto-esque conditions Israel subjects Gazans to, but that does not excuse Israel’s overreaction. The Israeli government does not believe in freedom of the press either since they don’t want to allow reporters into Gaza because they’ll report on the truth, which will contradict the propaganda being fed to the rest of the western world. In some cases political propaganda is used by a government to cover up the genocide they have committed while performing their acts of terrorism.
U.S. Supplied Smart Bombs, Planes and Helicopters
Gaza is a battered strip of land, most of whose population consists of women and children of refugees who have been repeatedly subject to majorly inhumane tribulations by Israel for over two and a half years. Gazans have been caged and ostracized by the whole world.
Three years ago Isreal withdrew troops and settlements from Gaza, but they still maintain complete control of the territory by sea, air and land. Since Hamas won the Palestinian elections — elections that were encouraged by President Bush — Israel has punished the 1 million plus people of Gaza with blockades of essential supplies, including water.
Unlike the crude Hamas rockets that cause more fear than death, Israel is using American-supplied F-16s and Apache helicopters to attack civilian targets it claims are linked to Hamas, including a mosque, private homes and the Islamic university. Police stations in residential areas were swarming with people when they were pulverized. New US-supplied smart bombs are being used by Israel to kill innocent Palestinian women and children. There is a stark contrast between weapons used by Hamas and weapons used by Israel.
Over the past seven years, 14 Israelis have reportedly been killed by mostly homemade Hamas rockets fired from the Gaza strip while more than 5,000 palestinians have been killed by Israel with some of the most advanced US-supplied armanents in the world. No rockets were fired from the West Bank, but 45 Palestinians have died there by Israeli hands in the past year alone.
More information on the Israeli Gaza attacks can be found from AntiWar.com, Counter Punch, The Huffington Post, AlterNet, The World Socialist Web Site, The Atlantic Free Press, Salon, The Guardian UK, Haaretz News, The Times Online UK, The Independent UK and The BBC News.
Despite the lies of Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni regarding “no civilian casualties,” there are many pictures that tell a different story. There have been numerous reports of many innocent women and children killed. There are many photos of Israel’s massacre in Gaza available from Al Jazeera.
Apparently, five Palestinian children who were sleeping when a night-time Israeli airstrike reportedly hit their home instead of the mosque next door that was targeted don’t count as civilians to Livni. The five sisters ages ranged from 4 to 17. As Robert Fisk wrote, leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored. Most of the Gazan casualties of the Israeli bombardment are non-combatants. Israeli’s wide-scale air strike operation against the gaza strip is an act of war that became an act of terrorism.
The Israeli Lobby Owns Congress
In typical tradition, most of our political ‘leaders’ in Washington continue exuding their verbal diarrhea — you know, the blatantly false lies such as “the party is over for Wall Street” — the latest of which includes the U.S. standing strongly with its friend and “democratic ally” Israel, despite the fact that there is little if any evidence that Israeli Democracy actually exists.
Glenn Greenwald from Salon News penned a nice article regarding the American political consensus on Israel. As noted by Mr. Greenwald:
…It is all one-sided support for whatever Israel does from our political class, and one-sided condemnation of Israel’s enemies (who are, ipso facto, American enemies) — all of it, as usual, sharply divergent from the consensus in much of the rest of the world…
…One can travel from the farthest right fringe of the GOP to the heart of the Democratic Party leadership and hear exactly the same thing: Israel is always right. Israel must not be criticized. Israel never bears any blame. Any action taken by Israel is justified. No matter the situation, that just gets repeated over and over like some hypnotic bipartisan mantra. Meanwhile, American citizens overwhelmingly — 71% — want their Government to be “even-handed” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet that view is simply ignored, disregarded, not even viable for any American mainstream political leader to express.
Israel receives strong support from Congress — and President-elect Obama, a former Senator — because many of them, as well as many in the Bush administration, have been bought off by the Israeli lobby. The ‘American Israel Public Affairs Committee’ (AIPAC) is the largest Israeli lobby in America. As noted by SweetLiberty.org, after the Israeli lobby in the US grants a Congress member $100,000 such a member will never dream of backing a motion which contravenes the interests of the government of Israel. Lobbying by large entities has played a major role in corrupting and influencing Washington politics.
U.S. Taxpayers Foot the Bill
Israel is one of the largest recipients of financial aid from the U.S., with taxpayers footing the bill for the almost $3 billion Israel receives from Congress every year. Every American family pays Israel well over $40 annually, resulting in every Israeli family receiving $2500 every year.
For the millions that Israel has bribed the U.S. Congress with, Israel receives over $2 billion, which amounts to an interest rate of 60,000 percent of its orginal investment. As long as corrupted, bought off politicians are in Washington spending American taxpayer money to fund Israel’s terrorist acts, Isreal will continue to get away with their crimes. For years the U.S. government has known that there is Israeli backdoor technology penetrating their Telecom system and compromising National Security, but they have done nothing about it except hide that information from the American public. Israel has been illegally wiretapping America for years.
The response to Israel’s attack on Gaza from our federal government comes as no surprise when you look at how they have terrorized many country’s around the world, including their own. Contrary to what the U.S. government would have you believe, Arabs and Muslims are not the world’s biggest terrorists. Israel is the world’s second largest sponsor of terrorism — second only to the United States. When acts of war become acts of terrorism, too many innocent people are slaughtered.
Several myths that have arisen from the intentional propaganda-laden misinformation campaign waged by the Western press — which includes the U.S. corporate media and the Israeli government — can be found from The Daily Kos. It’s time to put an end to the needless killing and political corruption, otherwise it will never end. A government that commits war crimes — from the individuals who give the orders to slaughter innocent civilians to those who commit the crimes, which can also include military personnel who perform the actual slaughter since they too are part of the government — need to be held responsible for their actions and accountable for their crimes.
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