To The Bitter End
Unending push and shove can be endured for just so long. It's amazing how perception differs when one looks in from the outside, not directly involved, not being forced to endure terror-inspiring assaults from beyond one's borders. For the country continually under violent assault, things look somewhat different. The threat is extremely here and now, immediate in a way that others looking on from a distance appear unable to adequately evaluate.It is no little thing, no minor irritation, no untidy irrelevance to daily living to exist under the ongoing reality of rockets firing down on a civilian population. With the very obvious intent to destabilize and to instill fear. And just incidentally destroy buildings, and if fortunate enough to hit a living target, cause the death of people trying to go about their normal lives.
Rockets aimed seemingly at random, with the hope they will strike a target. A target of value, say a nursery, a primary school, a supermarket, a farm, a manufacturing outlet, an apartment building. Anything is possible, and in fact, all these targets have, over the years, been hit, one after another. Desperate people are encouraged to build useful shelters to which they must flee with a five-second clearance.
One does not require accuracy and great loss of life. Incidents causing injuries, the occasional death, the destruction of property will do. The community becomes gravely unsettled, fearful, unable to sleep at night, wary of doing anything that might conceivably place them in a position of danger. On the other hand, there is no distinguishing where that place of danger might be, to be avoided; it is, potentially, anywhere and everywhere.
Children are traumatized and fearful, and their parents hardly know how to comfort them. Since they are themselves emotionally unsettled, incapable of finding their own comfort anywhere in the places they call home. Familiar and beloved, but all the same, representing a place of danger, of imminent death falling from an implacable sky, responding to the assault from a sworn enemy. An enemy that the targeted people would just as soon call neighbour, if they could.
And so, finally, after eight years of bearing the brunt of an anger and a violent intent not to be placated by any other means, Israel launched its air attacks on Gaza. Targeting not civilians, but the tens of thousands of Hamas militia members forsworn to erase the State of Israel from the map of the Middle East. In the process, readily sacrificing the safety of Palestinian civilians, men, women and children. In effect, terrorizing their own people for the greater good of provoking Israel to defensive retaliation.
And, in the process, ensuring that their people, the embattled Gazans, appreciate the dedication of Hamas to their well-being. It is, after all, the Israel Defence Forces that rain down death on Palestinian civilians, living in close proximity to Hamas weapons depots and rocket launchers and Hamas headquarters buildings. That Hamas deliberately installed these emplacements deep in their midst is to be overlooked; their defenders are under attack now, and so are the innocents who believe and trust in their defenders.
Alas, even the Islamic University in Gaza - supportive of Hamas to the extent that its laboratories are busily employed to perfect longer-range missiles to rocket into Israel, and its alumni dedicated to the advancement of the Hamas agenda, joining its martyrdom-seeking forces - has been crushed by Israeli bombs. An institute of higher education dedicated to the elevated spiritual ideal of crushing an enemy occupier which itself wishes nothing better than to be left in peace.
Muslim countries from further afield have taken great pains to let the world know their fury at Israel's response to deadly provocation. Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Malaysia firmly condemn Israel's response to Hamas. Public anger in the Arab world is redolent with the kind of hypocrisy that only the blindly righteous are capable of. It is of no moment whatever that the 'victim', Hamas, violently provoked a response. At no time did the Muslim world utter even a quiet word of caution to Hamas, or suggest it cease and desist.
Mahmoud Abbas, momentarily abandoning political caution, expressed his pique with Hamas at its ongoing provocation, but he must answer to the fury of his reluctant followers and those whom the Palestinian Authority represents, in condemning Israel's actions, and warning of the collapse of the rather moribund peace process. "There can be no negotiations while this Israeli aggression is continuing", warns the senior Palestinian negotiator. Really, can that be so?
The United Nations representatives who love to scold Israel about the plight of the Palestinians living in squalid poverty and miserable want, experience a peculiar type of amnesia, in conveniently forgetting that Israel ceded Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005, the result being that anarchy ensued, until Hamas stepped in and eventually brought some order to the area, imposed as a rigid authoritarian mandate, which included an increase in the lobbing of rockets across to Israel.
Lift the message of hate and destruction and what would result would be the opportunity to create an autonomous and forward-looking community which would be empowered to learn how to govern itself, advancing the futures of the nascent country and its population. Somehow, altogether too reasonable and simplistic. The culture of blame, anger and hatred is somehow too valuable to summarily abandon. Think of the loss of face in a tradition that values the rhetoric of belligerence and assault.
The government of Egypt, and specifically Hosni Mubarek, has done what it could to attempt some level of accord, or rest of violence between Hamas and Israel. Earning the wrath of violent Islamists everywhere, particularly the livid leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, who urge the Arab community everywhere to rise up in brotherhood with the Palestinians, and strike down the enemy, calling for a third intifada.
Lebanon particularly is the source of much irate blame and hatred against Israel.
Where Hezbollah has been successful in joining the government, ensuring that the country has become a de facto Islamist state-in-waiting, with its uneasy alliance with Syria. Lebanon, allowing itself to become a vassal-state of Iran, under the thumb of Iran's proxy army of jihadists.
The European Union has pledged to meet to discuss the potential for some manner of workable intervention to halt the process of revenge, avenge, assault, offence and defence. And the Arab League is also set to meet to discuss this new conflict. Their refusal to condemn the attacks against Israel from Gaza has been extremely unhelpful.
Pushed to a hard and bitter place of defence, a country must determine to defend itself to the bitter end.
Labels: Israel, Middle East, Terrorism, Traditions
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, December 30, 2008
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