Current mood:

infuriated

looks like i'm not the only one...
who has noticed our moral cowardice regarding the current slaughter in Gaza by "our" ally Israel. both Israel, Gaza and the US: what will Obama do? by Alexander Cockburn (which has increased his estimation in my book by several orders of magnitude) and Gaza: Don’t be fooled by Israel’s shocking crime document the reality of the situation, vs. the endless whitewashed and lie-filled excuses for coverage in the US press. some of the most informative passages:

On the campaign trail and, indeed, since he reached the Senate in 2005, no politician was more sedulous that Obama in ensuring that the Israel lobby here had no cause for disquiet. On arrival in Washington, he instantly selected Joe Lieberman, known informally as the Senator from Israel, as his mentor. At the annual conference this last summer of the very powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Obama drew criticism from across a broad political spectrum for his grovelling.

"Israel should get whatever it wants and an undivided Jerusalem should be its capital," Obama assured the American Jewish delegates, many of them influential Democrats from across the US. The next day, one of his foreign policy advisors hastily issued a clarification to the effect that Obama believes "Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties" as part of "an agreement that they both can live with".

i.e.: if you're expecting Obama to demonstrate some sincerity to opposing unjust wars (like ours in Iraq), don't hold your breath or you'll die of asphyxiation. he already demonstrated and continues to demonstrate his lack of a spine by failing to join the rest of the civilized world in condemning Israel's. the above also makes clear either his lack of sincerity or lack of neutrality regarding the middle east, as well as his contempt for honesty. his advisers' pathetic back-peddling being an example of the kind of soft-soaping/lying it seems we can expect for the next four years.

On the left, professor Noam Chomsky remarked recently: "With Obama, Israel and less than two per cent of the American population is now in full control of the American government."

It's certainly true that the minute the new Obama administration makes any move, however tentative, deemed 'anti-Israel' by the massed legions of the Israel lobby - stretching from Vice President Joe Biden's office, through Obama's own Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to about 98 per cent of the US Congress, the major newspapers and TV networks, the think tanks in Washington, the big Democratic Party funders - political mayhem will break loose. The White House will see its prime political enterprise, the economic recovery programme, immediately held hostage.

yes, as i realized when i saw the seal of our state department, the government of this country is basically a proxy for Israel via religious bias. i've previously chided Obama for rather stupidly leaving Lieberman in a position to side-track any efforts Israel disagrees with, but from his quote earlier he doesn't care and planned to slavishly obey their will anyway.

For months Israel besieged Gaza, starving its civilian inhabitants of essential supplies with almost no effective international reproach. It's hard to shoot dramatic photographs of an empty medicine bottle, but easy to film a bombed out girl's dorm or a Palestinian mother weeping over the bodies of her five dead daughters, as featured on the front page of the Washington Post this week.

yep. which will be why Israel and the US will be held in contempt by the rest of the civilized world for their behavior. Israel's behavior and our silence are inexcusable, objectively.

next, some reality on the issue of those rocket attacks Israel keeps using as an excuse for their murderous invasion:

There is no doubt that Hamas's military wing should not be firing rockets anywhere near civilian populations, but Qassam rockets are a negligible military weapon compared to the vast firepower that Israel has unleashed on Gaza since its unilateral withdrawal from the strip in 2005. According to the UN, 11 Israeli civilians died from Qassam rocket attacks between 2004 and 2007. In Gaza, by contrast, more than 300 Palestinians died in 2006 alone, a year in which the IDF fired 14,000 artillery shells into the strip.

this is in addition to the fact that during the duration of the cease-fire, there were *zero* Israeli deaths or serious injuries. further, here's a citation from the UN:

1) Deaths from the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Of those killed in the conflict, 4,228 have been Palestinians, 1,024 Israelis, and 63 foreign citizens. For every person killed, approximately seven were also injured. 3/

As shown in Graph I,the total number of Israelis,both civilians and Israeli Defence Force (IDF) combatants, killed by Palestinian armed groups and individuals, is declining.

In contrast the total number of Palestinians, both civilians and combatants killed by the Israeli security forces or Israeli individuals, remains relatively high. In 2007, for example, for every one Israeli death there were 25 Palestinian deaths compared to 2002 when the ratio was 1:2.5.

so remember these *facts* the next time you encounter (and you will) the "but we're just defending ourselves" bullshit Israel keeps feeding the world (we eat it, the rest of the world is smart enough not to).

some wisdom:

What is taking place in Gaza is a shocking crime. By condoning this assault, Western governments are once again colluding with Israeli atrocities and inviting further atrocities in the future. Israelis may well take a visceral satisfaction as their air force blasts Gaza and their politicians hang tough. For too many Israelis ­ and too many of their supporters ­ Palestinians and Arabs can never be fully "innocent". Even less so when they have had the temerity to elect a "terrorist" government.

Such satisfaction will not last long. Hamas will undoubtedly take its revenge, and Israel will carry out further acts of futile "counter-terrorism". Even as it exposes the fraudulent "peace process" of the last few years, the assault on Gaza will resonate across the Muslim world for decades to come, providing carte blanche to those who believe that if Israel and its supporters can kill with impunity, then so can they.

if Israel thinks things were bad before, they haven't seen anything yet. for every innocent they kill or maim, many future terrorists are created.

in closing, i offer this regarding my prediction of the possibility of Israel getting itself nuked off the map (and us involved in World War 3): Pak for immediate halt to Israeli ground offensive in Gaza. Pakistan, as you probably remember, is a nuclear-enabled nation and unlike us is not firmly glued to Israel's sphincter. my apologies for the obscene reference, but it pales in comparison to the obscenity that is our silence as hundreds of innocents are being butchered by our "ally" with weapons made by our citizens and paid for by our tax dollars. i also found this image, which sums up the situation:



p.s. posting this will do nothing, of course, except that in 100 years or however long it takes for an honest documentary to be made my posting will be one of the quotes of the period that proves not everyone in the US was an endorser of murderous moral bankruptcy.