Atrocities
In Somalia, in Liberia, in Democratic Republic of Congo, in Zimbabwe, in Sudan and elsewhere in Africa the lives of women and children are drear and dread. Hundreds of thousands of women and girl children have been systematically raped as an element of war. The world now recognizes this as a detestable crime, but there is nothing particularly new about it. This was common in the ancient world where vulnerable women were routinely raped. It was done in Europe, by Russians marching into post-WWII Germany.Currently, in Congo and Sudan the rape of women is ongoing and devastating. In Kenya after the 2007 presidential elections marauding mobs went out on rampages to hunt members of the Kikuyu tribe, raping women, killing men and children. In Rwanda Hutus hunted down and murdered hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. Revolutionary China deliberately engineered food shortages resulting in millions of Chinese starving. Just as Soviet Russia had done the same resulting in the starvation of millions of Ukrainians.
New evidence has surfaced that Sri Lanka's military had orders to expedite the executions of Tamil tiger rebels after the civil war succeeded in eradicating the threat of the Tigers in their violently bloody insurgency in the name of a Tamil homeland. Atrocities committed in Bosnia still resonate as a historical misfortune, and there too women were systematically raped as a tool of war. The Cambodian rampage resulting in genocidal outrages against humanity held the world in fascinated thrall.
The abduction of children, both girls and boys, from their homes, to be trained as child soldiers, to kill and to maim, making of children murderous automatons have taken place and continue to, in Congo, Sudan, Uganda, Sierra Leone and other dark parts of the world. There is no lack of dread occurrences throughout the world where vulnerable people are preyed upon by deadly unscrupulous dictators, tyrants and totalitarian governments.
Yet the world's attention turns always - and in the process holds accountable for atrocities said to have been committed - to Israel, a tiny state in a sea of large, hostile countries, attempting desperately to protect its citizens and its presence in the geography of the Middle East. The State of Israel and its people are the continued recipients of attacks by terror groups supported and funded by repressive Arab and Muslim states like Syria and Iran.
It is entirely legal for any country to take necessary steps to ensure its survival when under attack. Yet it appears that only Israel is held to a standard of accountability and behaviour no other countries of the world must labour under. And even while Israel needs no reminders from outside sources that it must heed humanitarian concerns to assuage its own collective conscience, the world stands prepared to believe otherwise.
Consider this: Israel took certain precautions this week before it launched a counter-attack against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Thousands of leaflets were dropped along the Gaza border for the purpose of warning its 1.5-million residents to avoid the border areas. "Anyone who gets close will be in danger" read the leaflet in Arabic. Then, in response to a series of mortar shells and rockets fired from northern Gaza into Israel, the IDF launched its own strikes.
Three of those mortar shells fired from Gaza landed close to the Kerem Shalom crossing, the major passage used by Israel to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. As a result, the Kerem Shalom crossing was closed "until further notice". This is a prime example of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. And now Gazans will suffer more deprivation, while Hamas will accuse Israel of deliberately and with malice creating more suffering for Gazans.
Which the outside world welcomes as the kind of reality they relish, believing only the worst of Israel, and happy to have their impressions of Jewish malefaction as conscienceless oppressors validated, supported by the 'facts'.
Labels: Israel, Middle East, Troublespots
posted by Pieface @ Friday, January 08, 2010
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