West Keeps Distance While Israel Rampages in Gaza

So, no one will lift a finger, no one will breathe a credible word of censure, no one will do anything whatsoever to prevent the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians. (http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-leaders-lie-civilians-die-and-lessons-of-history-are-ignored-1215045.html)

And let us be clear: though every newspaper calls this a war between Israel and ‘Hamas’, it is nothing less than the sanctioned murder of civilians by Israeli soldiers. Showing separate death tolls for ‘Hamas’ and ‘Palestinians’ is a sick ploy, yet it continues in every report. There is no plan for a cease-fire; it is clear now that Israel intends to escalate the conflict as far as it can, to provoke response and call the the feeble retaliation of Gazans justification for a full-on bloodbath.

This is worse than simply allowing Israeli hawks to fly; it is a conspiracy-to-do-nothing which will insure that the worst possible outcome will become inevitable. The London Times adds to the confusion, suggesting that Hamas rockets threaten an Israeli nuclear plant — as though anyone who is not a moron believes a stray rocket will set off a nuclear explosion! (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5430133.ece)

Mugabe yet reigns in Zimbabwe. We have been reminded over and over of Burke’s maxim about evil needing nothing more to succeed then that good people do nothing. I believe we have actually run out of good people. The collective inaction of western world leaders has made them lose their credibility as ‘the good guys’.

In Russia, people are having their heads forcibly turned backwards to the age of Stalin’s iron-fisted powers. Putin has made his decision: we don’t want to become Kennedys. We laugh at Obama’s naïve visions; we know that the future belongs to whoever will take it by force and hold on to it by any means necessary.

To kill a ‘senior Hamas leader’, one bombs a family house, killing, among several others, four of his children. Death toll: 1 Senior Hamas Leader. “Another similar Israeli air attack was launched on the home in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City of Nabil Amrin, a man described by the Israeli military as a « very senior terrorist » from Hamas. Mr Amrin appeared to be absent from the house at the time.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israeli-bomb-strike-kills-senior-hamas-leader-1221112.html) Mosques and private homes are all legitimate targets, because they are ‘Hamas’.

Who has taught the world this cynical lesson, that labeling someone a ‘terrorist’ is sufficient to commit any atrocity against him with impugnity? Yes, George W Bush, whose colossal human-rights failure in Iraq is only matched by his debacle in Afghanistan, and his twin legacies of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo; but it is Israel which has long been the supreme instructor in cynical government: demand the rule of law be scrupulously applied to everyone but yourself, insist on the ‘right to defend yourself’ but use such excessive force that the original attack is obliterated by the response, and cry that you are victims while subjecting the actual victims to an untenable existence which literally forces them to resist – and then treat this resistance as a fresh and ‘outrageous’ attack, which justifies new and more forceful ‘defense’.

But the sword cuts both ways. Will the western powers send troops against Iran at the bidding of Israel? Will there be U.S. allied troops for Syria, for Lebanon, for Israel? Or will they continue to stare dumbly at the destruction when Israel’s arrogant summonses – in the form of reckless provocations of their Arab neighbors – surround them with enemies from whom they cannot be delivered? Will their ‘victim status’ remain in tact if they lash out with a desperate salvo of nuclear weapons?

It won’t be long before we find out.

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