Saturday, July 19, 2008

News from Palestine

Photo: Maria Amin, a six-year-old Palestinian paralysed from the neck down when the car she was travelling in was caught in a missile attack on a leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group in Gaza, is accompanied by her father Hamdi (L) to a hearing at Israel's Supreme Court in Jerusalem July 8, 2008. Amin is fighting an order to move her from a rehabilitation centre in Israel to the occupied West Bank. The Defence Ministry, which has covered Maria's medical expenses and sponsored her father and younger brother to live with her at a Jerusalem hospital, has been seeking since last year to send her to Ramallah's Abu Raya Rehabilitation Centre. REUTERS/Eliana Aponte (JERUSALEM)

Some news from Gaza:

The Israeli Siege

“Medical sources reported that the number of patients who died due to the Israeli siege on the Gaza strip reached 208 as three patients were announced dead on Monday morning.”

Israel Targets Hamas Orphanages

Since the Israeli military officials have figured out that a lot of the support for Hamas comes from their charity work and civilian infrastructure work. So, they decided to shut them down. (Too bad they didn’t decide to compete with Hamas on the humanitarian helpfulness front. That might have actually worked and cost way less money.)

Last week, troops focused their efforts in Nablus, raiding the city hall and confiscating computers. They also stormed into a shopping mall and posted closure notices on the shop windows. A girls' school and a medical centre were shut down in the city, and a charitable association had its computers impounded and documents seized.

This policy, officials say, is meant to deny the Islamic group, which is committed to Israel's destruction, the ability to use these institutions as a pipeline by which money is channelled to finance attacks on the Jewish state. But the main goal of this campaign is to stem Hamas's growing popularity in the West Bank, and ensure it does not seize control of the area as it did in Gaza a year ago, when its forces vanquished the more moderate Fatah movement headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.”

And: “In recent months, the army has also closed down an orphanage, a bakery and other institutions in Hebron, which Israel believes are associated with Hamas.”

Yeap, that’s the Israeli military – getting people around the world to hate them, one girl’s school, orphanage or terminally ill patient at a time. Yeap, that’ll work.

And how come there is no outcry here in the USA? Well, this author has a clue:

American Israel-firsters have long since dropped any pretense of loyalty to the United States and its genuine national interests. They have moved brazenly into the Israel first, last, and always camp. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Norman Podhoretz, Victor Davis Hanson, the Rev. Franklin Graham, Alan Dershowitz, Rudy Giuliani, Douglas Feith, the Rev. Rod Parsley, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Bill Kristol, the Rev. John Hagee, and the thousands of wealthy supporters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) appear to care about the United States only so far as Washington is willing to provide immense, unending funding and the lives of young U.S. service personnel to protect Israel. These individuals and their all-for-Israel journals – Commentary, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal – amount to nothing less than a fifth column intent on involving 300 million Americans in other peoples' religious wars, making them pay and bleed to protect a nation in which the United States has no genuine national security interest at stake.

The Israel-firsters' success is, of course, the stuff of which legends are made. Most recently, for example, we heard President Bush echo Sen. Lieberman's insane and subversive contention that the United States has a "duty" to ensure the fulfilling of God's millennia-old promise to Abraham regarding the creation and survival of Israel. Bush told the Knesset all Americans are ready to endlessly bleed and pay to ensure Israel's security. And where does the president derive authority to make such a commitment in the name of his countrymen? From the Constitution? On the basis of America's dominant religion? From – heaven forbid – a thoughtful, hardheaded analysis of U.S. interests?

No, Bush's pledge was based on none of these. Bush's decision to more deeply involve America in the eternal Arab-Israeli war was based on nothing less than the corruption wrought on the American political system by the Israel-firsters, AIPAC's enormous treasury, and the lamentable but growing influence of America's leading evangelical Protestant preachers.”

Some solutions offered by this author are: end taxpayer funding for the National Endowment for Democracy and other such organizations, do not vote for any candidates who accept AIPAC funding or other Israel-first organization, and pressure normal religious entities to denounce the evangelical preachers who support religious wars on behalf of Israel.

And I try to do my part by pressuring Democrats (elected and not yet elected), buy being informed on what is going on, by reading news reports such as these on The Global Report radio show, by blogging about it, and by deleting comments from anyone who promotes these horrible policies by the Israeli military or politicians.

Oh, and one more thing I do – I follow the Jewish peace movements, both in the USA and in Israel. They are inspiring.

No comments: