A Puzzle Within A Conundrum Inside a Conspiracy
"Seven years ago, Israel withdrew from every square inch of Gaza. Now, Hamas took over the areas we vacated. What did it do? Rather than build a better future for the residents of Gaza, the Hamas leadership, backed by Iran, turned Gaza into a terrorist stronghold.The Arab Spring which became in real time the Islamist Springboard has altered the politics of the Middle East almost beyond recognition. But not quite. What has not changed is that where previously the countries which have undergone change from Islamic/secular-based autocracies are now ruled by Islamist/Sharia-based autocracies. The people in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Libya, in Syria, who thought they could effect change through initial civil disobedience to turn their countries' administrations into humanely balanced democracies saw their revolutions swiftly slip away.
"I'm stressing this because it's important to understand that there is no moral symmetry; there is no moral equivalence between Israel and the terrorist organizations in Gaza. The terrorists are committing a double war crime. They fire at Israeli civilians and they hide behind Palestinian civilians."
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi deploring the "brutal assault" on Gaza by the IDF, recalled his ambassador to Israel. "Cairo will not leave Gaza on its own. Egypt today is not the Egypt of yesterday", he vowed. How many yesterdays? Several years ago, or back to biblical times? In brokering the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas - as though they were in fact equivalents - Mr. Morsi succeeded in bringing acclaim to Egypt from within the Middle East and from the international community.
How he must have relished his position, moderating the situation, palavering with the emir of Qatar, the Prime Minister of Turkey, and America's Secretary of State, all travelling to Cairo to do homage in conferring with and encouraging the new Egyptian President. His own Prime Minister was dispatched to Gaza to help Ismael Haniyeh deliver "a message to the occupation". As far as the Arab and Muslim countries of the Middle East and beyond are concerned Israel unaccountably attacked Gaza, and they will not stand for it.
And they have ample company from the international community. That a million Israelis had their lives disrupted and lived in terror of rockets falling on their communities was simply an accepted fact of life for them, for they represented the "occupier" of a land they had no wish to occupy and had in fact left, discovering soon enough life is never that simple. Amnesty International slammed Israel's assassination of Ahmad al-Jabari, head of Hamas' military wing. Have they ever been known to issue a collective admonition to Hamas and other jihadist groups for attacking Israel?
For in so doing the IDF "has placed civilians in Gaza and southern Israel at grave risk". Even-handedly mentioning the civilians of both Gaza and southern Israel, entirely discounting the fact that civilians in southern Israel were in grave risk before the dispatch of the man who has engineered murderous assaults within Israel on Israeli civilians. Amnesty again claimed to have "gathered evidence" of "indiscriminate attacks ... in densely populated residential areas that will inevitably harm civilians".
The evidence they have "gathered" courtesy of the Hamas narrative, without any independent verification, but quite fitting the model already decided upon. In defending its citizens from ongoing rocket attacks after months of forbearance and eventually warning that it would no longer tolerate those attacks, Israel is now accused by the humanitarian agencies whose work has become a self-sustaining industry, of war crimes.
Israel delivers food, medicines and energy to Gaza. Even during the bombardment from Gaza to border crossings, particularly the one set aside for those daily truckloads of food and medicine deliveries, there were few cessations of those deliveries other than when lives were in direct danger because of the Gaza rockets aiming at the crossing. It is not normal for any country's citizens to live in constant fear of rockets hitting their communities. It is not normal for any country whose citizens are under siege to deliver humanitarian aid on an ongoing basis to the citizens of the assaulting country.
So when a humanitarian group like Oxfam International issues a statement to the effect that Israel was not abiding by "obligations under international law", their determination and legal interpretation of that situation is surprising and questionable. They know they can call on Israel to halt their military operations, but they can offer no solutions to Israel on how otherwise it can deal with the terrorizing assaults on its population. NGOs make it a point to be apolitical lest they endanger their humanitarian status.
The sole exception to this general rule, wherever they set up shop, to separate themselves from any politics in the greater interest of objectively serving people in need in extreme situations, appears to be in reflection of the general consensus that it is fair game to criticize and demand of Israel what they would never do to any other country on Earth. Because they can. Because there will be no repercussions. Because Israel is an easy target.
Because the completely arbitrary and self-defeating standard which Israel is expected to meet is demanded of no other country, and no other country is exposed to quite the same challenges that Israel is confronted with in attempting to live in peace, if not harmony with its resentful neighbours. The UN Durban conference of 2001 set the international standard for isolating and demonizing Israel, and that template is alive and well.
The "anti-racism" agenda where discrimination against Israel, not all that different from hysterical traditional anti-Semitism had its success in normalizing accusations of apartheid and war crimes against one single country still dominates. Paradoxically and reflective of human stupidity, the single country that is perpetually embattled because of its race, and ironically the single population that has been the victim of true genocide.
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Arab League, Communication, Conflict, Culture, Egypt, Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Friday, November 23, 2012
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