War of obliteration has to stop

This was not supposed to take place in the third millennium. How could the civilised world tolerate the killing of innocent children and women in the name of fighting what the Israelis insist on calling "the terrorist Hamas organisation"?

Israel is carrying on what amounts to complete annihilation of the most desolate strip of land on Earth. The Jewish state is turning Gaza's 1.5 million helpless residents into hostages to its killing machine, with no distinction between the resistance fighters and children who are being slaughtered by laser guided missiles while playing football. Even when targeting the Hamas leadership, which seems to enjoy the US approval, is it acceptable to drop one tonne bombs on their homes and obliterate all members of their families and neighbours?

The most terrifying phenomenon is the utter silence of the international community. The US continues to blame the Hamas resistance for the Israeli attacks in response to the firing of a few homemade rockets, which have killed only eight Israelis in 2008 and four since the beginning of the Israeli operation. Washington has not only given the green light to Israel to launch its bloody onslaught against Gaza, but it also condones the butchering of children and women. And on top of that, the Bush administration has the audacity to blame the victims. Doesn't no means no in the US?

What the Israeli onslaught was designed to achieve must have been done so in the past 10 days, and now they are running out of targets. Nevertheless, the Americans continue to give Israel more time to kill - and probably attempt to finish off Hamas by stalling any move by the United Nations to end the war.

Claim

The US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went as far as to claim that "Hamas has held the people of Gaza hostage". She insists the US supports a "durable and sustainable" ceasefire, "but any end to fighting would depend on the willingness of Hamas to stop firing rockets into Israel"! She obviously thinks Hamas got the last American shipment of smart bombs and F-16s.

This twisted logic suggests that we have two equal rivals slugging it out. Israel has massacred more than 450 Palestinians and injured over 2,200 people - more than third of those killed are children and women.

No one in the West seems willing to condemn the disproportional and extremely excessive use of force or even destroying 10 mosques - in a complete disregard to the basic international norms which protects places of worship during conflicts and which deepens the hatred and creates a new generation of enemies.

What an irony! Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, who has been trailing in polls is back in the game - thanks to the war on Gaza - was asked by a reporter 10 years ago what he would do had he been born Palestinian? "I would join a terror organisation," he replied.

The US President-elect Barack Obama is already facing his first challenge, earlier than expected. He has stayed away from the limelight and has not made a direct comment on the conflict. But this will end soon, and he will have to speak up.

However, shame has to be fairly distributed here, starting with us, the Arabs. We continue to exhibit our fragmented and teetering Arab order. We have failed again to stand up to our common enemy. This further weakens the Arab order and render us impotent in the face of any future challenge.

Arab foreign ministers met and deferred the plight of the Palestinians to the UN Security Council, which has failed the Palestinians countless times.

The West is silent. The Americans are taking sides. And the UN is as usual failing to play its role. As such, all of us are accomplices to this crime and our inaction cannot be justified.

Humanitarian crisis

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni brags from Paris about Israeli values, but fails to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The French hosts kept silent as she talked about the "collateral damage", the dozens of children who have been slaughtered in the past 10 days.

As the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006 showed, the massacre in Gaza will further widen the gap between the Arabs and their governments and pit the moderates against the hardliners in the Arab world. The liberals and reform-minded are the losers here. Another point for the radicals.

This ongoing war of obliteration has to stop. Now. A ground invasion will not do what seven days of bloody aerial bombing couldn't. It is time for the world diplomats to tell Israel that enough is enough. All countries in the world should get involved, in particular the US who must also stop from taking sides.

The apathy to the massacre is morally unacceptable. The world cannot afford to appease another aggressor. The UN must move to salvage what is left of its human values and force Israel to halt immediately its war of genocide. All of us will be judged by history which will record that we sat idly and watched on TV how hile the children, the women and the vulnerable were butchered in the 21st century.

Dr Abdullah Al Shayji is Professor of International Relations and the Head of the American Studies Unit - Kuwait University.

"The US continues to blame the Hamas resistance for the Israeli attacks in response to the firing of a few homemade rockets." I would like to know... Is firing a rocket into a town any less of a problem for it being homemade? Is it any less of a threat? Is it somehow less worthy of responding with every weapon at your disposal because it is "homemade"?
J. E. Kepler
Curtice,US
Posted: January 05, 2009, 03:01