Mr. Gassama, this is disheartening... This is no winner in this situation and both Israel and Hamas must be stopped from endangering the lives and peace their people deserve.
The Obama Admin must engage both sides to stop the aggression. Else he risks an ugly failure on his legacy. The region is so dangerous and the anger for the Arab spring may turn into regional war as dictators look for distraction. I pray for peace!!
Demba
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-----Original Message-----
From: "M. Gassama" <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: The Gambia and Related Issues Mailing List <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:26:30
To: <[log in to unmask]>
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Subject: [G_L] FWD: Stop the massacre in Gaza!
Stop the massacre in Gaza!
20 November 2012
The Israeli onslaught against Gaza, now entering its second week, has
killed and maimed hundreds of Palestinian civilians?men, women and
children. A largely defenseless and severely deprived population has
been subjected to unrelenting bombardment from air, land and sea. Much
of the territory?s already dilapidated infrastructure is being reduced
to rubble.
Among the targets are schools, government offices, a building housing
international press in Gaza City and the home of a Gazan grocer, whose
entire family?including four children ranging in age from one to seven,
and four women, one of them 83?were murdered in a missile strike
Sunday.
The Israeli government has authorized the mobilization of 75,000
reservists and massed tanks on the Gaza border in preparation for a
repeat of the 2008-2009 ground invasion that claimed the lives of 1,400
Gazans, the bulk of them civilians.
As these war crimes unfold to the horror of people around the world,
the Israeli leadership, the Obama administration in Washington and the
corporate media all invoke the ?right of self-defense? as justification
for Israel?s aggression.
President Obama sounded this theme Sunday in remarks delivered at a
press conference in Bangkok, Thailand. ?Let?s understand what the
precipitating event here was that?s causing the current crisis, and
that was an ever-escalating number of missiles; they were landing not
just in Israeli territory, but in areas that are populated. And there?s
no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its
citizens from outside its borders. So we are fully supportive of Israel?
s right to defend itself from missiles landing on people?s homes and
workplaces and potentially killing civilians. And we will continue to
support Israel?s right to defend itself.?
As with every crime carried out by US imperialism and its Israeli
ally, the present one in Gaza comes wrapped in lies, cynicism and
hypocrisy.
The claim that Israel launched its latest blitzkrieg in response to an
?ever-escalating number of missiles? is a patent lie. In the entire
year preceding the current carnage in Gaza, not a single Israeli was
killed by a missile from the Palestinian enclave. The days preceding
the Israeli attacks saw articles in the Israeli press noting that,
after a brief spike, precipitated by repeated Israeli incursions into
Gaza and the killing of several civilians, including children, rocket
attacks had subsided.
The Israelis and the Hamas leadership were engaged in Egyptian-
brokered discussions on a long-term ceasefire agreement. The principal
Palestinian intermediary in these talks was Ahmed Jaabari, the leader
of the Hamas military wing. On November 14, within hours of his
receiving a draft of the agreement, he was struck with a Hellfire
missile in a resumption of Israel?s infamous ?targeted killings.?
This extra-judicial execution was carried out as a deliberate
provocation, the opening act of Operation Defense Pillar. It is not a
matter of ?self-defense,? but naked aggression by one of the world?s
most heavily armed nations against one of its most oppressed
populations.
As in every circumstance, Obama rallies to the defense of the
oppressor against the oppressed. He parrots the Israeli regime?s
incessant refrain about ?no country on Earth? tolerating rocket
attacks, but does not bother to ask who on earth would tolerate the
conditions endured by Gazans: 1.7 million people, in their great
majority refugees violently expelled from their homes and land,
confined to the world?s largest open-air prison, subjected to a
blockade that causes untold suffering and hunger, and forced to endure
continuous attacks by the Israel Defense Forces.
The indifference to the loss of Palestinian life, particularly on the
part of the US government and the media, is stunning, though by now
hardly surprising. Obama expressed his hope that Israel would not
launch a ground invasion, warning that it would pose a greater risk of
Israeli fatalities than just continuing to slaughter Gazans with bombs
and missiles.
The present bloodbath in Gaza is unfolding barely 100 miles from the
continuing US-backed civil war in Syria. Yet in Gaza there is virtually
nothing of the media?s feigned sympathy for Syria?s civilian
casualties, exhibited in the service of a colonial-style intervention
for the purpose of regime-change. No one in the West is calling for the
ouster of Netanyahu for killing civilians or advocating the imposition
of no-fly zones or humanitarian corridors in Israel. On the contrary,
Tel Aviv is given an explicit carte blanch to carry out the most
horrific crimes.
The slaughter in Gaza is driven not by some existential threat from
the ineffectual rockets fired from its territory. Rather, Israel?s
motives are to be found both further afield and closer to home.
The attack on Gaza is aimed at preparing a far greater war, involving
both Israel and US imperialism, against Iran. Tel Aviv sees its
aggression as a means of derailing any potential for a negotiated
settlement regarding Iran?s nuclear program, while neutralizing
opposition from Gaza in the event of an attack on Iran.
At the same time, the turn to war is driven by the mounting internal
contradictions plaguing Israel and the entire Zionist project. Many
have noted that this war, like the last, has been launched on the eve
of an Israeli election, with a vote scheduled in January.
It is true that militarism provides a means of dragooning popular
support behind an incumbent government. In Israel?s case, however, it
plays the more essential role of diverting attention from social
conflicts at home.
Israel is today one of the most socially unequal countries on the
planet. A recent report found that fully one-third of Israelis?and 40
percent of the country?s children?are at risk of falling into poverty,
while a tiny elite of multi-millionaires and billionaires monopolizes
an ever-greater share of the wealth.
Social deprivation and inequality have given rise to mass
demonstrations across the country as the Netanyahu government imposes
right-wing and regressive economic and social policies.
The attempt to contain social unrest by recourse to militarism and war
assumes an increasingly fascistic and repulsive character. Thus, Gild
Sharon, the son of Israel?s former prime minister Ariel Sharon, argues
in a Jerusalem Post column, ?We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in
Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans did not stop with Hiroshima?
They hit Nagasaki too. There should be no electricity in Gaza, no
gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing.?
This rant was hardly unique. ?We must blow Gaza back to the Middle
Ages, destroying all the infrastructure including roads and water,?
Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai told the media.
The Zionists justified the creation of Israel?by means of the ethnic
cleansing of nearly one million Palestinians?as a refuge for Jews
against Nazi oppression. Today one hears in this country the echoes of
Hitler and Goebbels.
These fascistic policies will be turned against not only the
Palestinians in the occupied territories, but increasingly against the
working class and the oppressed within Israel itself. This has already
begun with the racist attacks against African immigrants.
The international revulsion over the latest massacre of Palestinians
by the Israeli military, backed by Washington, is undoubtedly shared by
a significant layer of class conscious workers and intellectuals within
Israel itself.
In the final analysis, the only progressive way out of the bloody
crisis in the Middle East lies in the unified mobilization of the
working class, Arab and Jewish alike, in a common struggle against
Zionism, imperialism and the regimes of the Arab bourgeoisie on the
basis of the struggle for a socialist federation of the Middle East.
Bill Van Auken
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