We here in the United States have our new president, and the days of "No Drama Obama" are long gone, as he deals with all the Drama Queens in the congress to get a kid to stick his finger in the dike that is just barely holding back the economic mayhem to come. Meanwhile, not too many people are paying attention to the storm that is brewing in the Middle East over Israel's recent unconscionable actions in Gaza, and yet more Trouble with a capital "T" to come.
These upcoming elections have married the worst of militaristic nationalism with politics, and the combination is none other than explosive on a massive scale. The worst aspect of it all is the colossal cynicism. The horrendous attack on the citizens and basic infrastructure of Gaza just before the new U.S. president was to be sworn in, with his very swearing-in day as a deadline for withdrawal, in conjunction with the initiation of hostilities having occurred on the historic event that was election day in the United States, when Israeli troops went into Gaza and riled things up while the rest of the world had their eyes on our Big Day... it is an insult to the Humanity of every peace-loving person on the planet.
Chemical weapons; attacks on known U.N. safe havens, hospitals, and schools; ongoing attacks on farmers; illegal confiscations and detentions of humanitarian aid workers trying to come in by ship through open international waters - the list of atrocities committed in respect to Gaza goes on. And now, it appears that the whole exercise was simply the precursor for an Israeli attack on Iran, a laying down of groundwork, a psychological preparation for the citizens of Israel, a systems test run. For if the enraged Gazans do not stop lobbing what sad little rockets they still have over their imprisonment wall, their only weapons, sad in comparison to Israel's massive military might (only 13 Israelis were killed in the recent violence, compared to 1300 Gazans), well, then, Israel must attack their sad-little-rocket supplier.
Who will stop Israel from continuing down this path? No one has any weight to throw at them, except for the United States of America. Does our special peace envoy, or the State Department, or the Vice President, or even the President have the cojones to stand up to their militaristic momentum? Will any of them do what is necessary to convince Israel that it is they who must take the lead to end this cycle of violence, not any of their perceived or real adversaries? Will the newly elected leaders of Israel, after playing on the emotions of their citizens in the worst way humanly possible, for political gain, find any reason not to escalate the violence?
I am deeply deeply saddened that my paranoia that violence toward Iran would be used as a political play for power seems to be coming true, even as my amazement that the neocons in my own nation's government did not activate this kind of evil ploy before our elections, has been making me wonder if I have been too cynical, after all. But no, I had it right all along, except that it was Israel, the proxy of the United States in the Middle East, who took action, in the form of the horrible attack on Gaza as stepping stone toward Iran, instead of us.
In the name of all of the innocent people of Gaza, who have suffered long and hard under Israel's policies of treating them as other than human beings, I call on all citizens of the United States to at the very least pay attention to Israel in the days that follow, and if the rumblings of war with Iran or more violence toward Gaza prove to amplify instead of diminish, in a world where waves from this kind of mayham come around the globe and affect us in the form of military aid that will be sent to Israel removing funding from our government coffers for availability to help us through our own financial crisis, and the price of gas going up, and any number of other degrees of separation that link us to such world issues, but above all, as caring citizens of the world we live in, we must stand up and stop the madness! There is no excuse for allowing Israel to commit atrocities, or to get away with those that they have committed already in Gaza, and no excuse for remaining silent, like so many Germans did while the Nazi hate machine built itself up and became the monster that it did. Wir sind alle deutschlander.
For reports from inside Gaza and more information on Israel's prevention of aid to Gaza, go to http://www.freegaza.com/
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