Sometimes, the truth just hurts. And when it is a just truth, it hurts even more. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the United Nations General Assembly last Friday and pointedly laid the blame for a void of peace in the region at the doorstep of Israel and its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. And rightly, he pointed out that Israel’s unjustified and illegal 50-day assault on the Gaza Strip amounted to genocide against the Palestinian people. And with more than 2,100 dead from the murderous onslaught and thousands more injured and maimed, the Palestinian president was speaking with justification.
However, his words were met with disdain in Washington, where State Department officials panned them as a hate-filled tirade. Really? Let us consider that the recent war was the third bloody incursion into the largely undefended Gaza Strip in the past seven years. And that the Israeli military machine has at its disposal modern weaponry, high-tech missiles and laser-guided bombs, white phosphorous shells and anti-personnel cluster bombs — an entire arsenal that it unleashed on civilians in a landscape where there is nowhere to run and few places to hide. And Washington willingly supplies Israel with this weaponry and offers advanced training on its usage. The corridors of power in the US capital are infested with lobbyists paid for one goal — to maintain the close and all-too-cosy relationship with Israel.
That is why the truth of Abbas’ words hit home.
