Gaza is a Palestinian territory that is administered by Hamas, the extremist Palestinian resistance group. Hamas is designated as a terrorist group though the truth is they are an extremist resistance group that utilizes terror to drive the Israeli occupying force back. There is no doubt that the methods employed by Hamas are barbaric at best, indiscriminately killing innocent civilians, children women and elderly. However, it is important to note that the Palestinian people have been subjected to a slow genocide by the Israeli Defense Force also. When a more powerful and better equipped aggressor comes by and begins to bulldoze ones family home, burn your crops, drive you out of your country, shoot dead innocent children, women and elderly, one’s mind can no longer see reason and thus resorts to any means necessary to fight back. Both Israelis and Palestinians have a valid, albeit immoral, reason to terrorize and kill each other. The cycle of violence did not start 60 or so odd years ago. The conflict is in the middle east is several millennia old. Lebanon, Palestine and Israel have been the at the center of worldwide conflicts for thousands of years going back to the days of the Sumerians, and maybe even before that, progressing to the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, Greeks, Romans, crusaders, Muslim caliphates, Ottomans, French, English, German, Americans.... the list is very long.
Why has this area existed in a state of conflict for so long? It was, and still is, a strip of land that joins Asia, Africa, and Europe together and is open to the Mediterranean Sea. It is a cross roads of clashing civilizations and destructive armies. This piece of land has been historically, militarily and biblically strategic and has seen far too much conflict over the ages.
Hamas, extremist as it is, insisting on imposing a man made truncated version sharia law, oppressing women, stripping away civil liberties, and enforcing Islamic observance on a population that is already far too oppressed, dehumanized, and destitute. When one lives in dire, dark, and deplorable conditions most of his or her life, would resort to the only source of power that would keep their minds intact; the hope that through religion and faith one may find the peace that he or she covets more than anything else in the world.
Hamas won the Palestinian democratic elections of 2006 fair and square. This victory did not sit well with Israel and the American Bush administration and much of the world’s greatest powers. It did not sit well with them to the extent that they encouraged a split between the Palestinians. So now we have two Palestinian authorities with which Israel fatalistically deals with one side and not the other. Fatalistic because one may not achieve peace by making deals with a faction that does not represent all the Palestinians. What would be the point in making peace with the PA while ignoring Hamas, like the proverbial big pink flying elephant in the room?
The world wanted to see democracy in the Middle East, the west encouraged it. And when the people chose Hamas instead of Fatah, more so because Hamas seemed to be far less corrupted than Fatah, whose members have sold out their people for personal gains, interests, and wealth, its really not hard to understand why the Palestinian people chose an extremist Hamas who "seemed" to be pious and not as corrupted as Fatah, in spite of people's knowledge of Hama's extremism, the west decried the choice of the people and punished them for their democratic choice. How is this a promotion of democracy when by the west?
The majority of Palestinians are not extremists. The majority of Palestinians will not abide and do resist Hamas Islamic laws. But the fact is that as long as there is conflict Hamas will always have supporters. The more Israel tightens its grip on the Palestinians the more people will turn to the one organization that still stands in the way of the more advanced Israeli military.
The electoral win of Hamas angered the Israeli government so much that they placed Gaza, strong hold of Hamas, under blocked and handed power back to the PA in the west bank.
What has the blockade achieved? Nothing good. Gazans have been forced to live under even worse conditions than before, prisoners in their own land, threatened by random death from random attacks. Terrorized. For the Israelis Hamas is a terrorist organization, and rightfully so, but for the Palestinians it is the Israeli Defense Force that is a terrorist organization, and they too are right.
Hamas is not representative of all Palestinians, not even of all Gazans at this point. The Gaza blockade is aimed against Hamas, they say, not the Palestinian people. Yet who suffers the most if not the innocent average Palestinians who just want to live in peace? Who suffers from this blockade if not the children who are missing out on a proper education that would eventually bring them out of the darkness that they live in. Who suffers if not the elderly who have no access to medical treatment and mothers who cry because they cannot feed their starving children. It is the civilians who always suffer in any conflict. Israeli civilians and Palestinian civilians caught in the cross fire between two terrorist groups claiming to be holier than the other and failing to do their duty and protect the innocents.
For me, it is both armed and political sides that are to blame for the plight of both the Israeli and Palestinian innocent civilians. However, let us be fair and recognize that the Israeli military is far better equipped than the rock throwing, homemade rocket launching, and suicide vest Palestinian militants. This is not to say that the “crud” weapons of the Palestinians do not inflict horrors, however, there is no balanced proportion of fire power when Israel is backed up by billions of dollars of military Aid from the US, Israel has one of the strongest lobby groups in the world, Israel has a very powerful propaganda machine, and Israel also benefits from the guilt of the west for the horrible wrongs and crimes don onto the Jewish people for the past 2,000 years that culminated in the Nazi administered holocaust where 6 million innocent human beings, the majority of which where Jewish, where brutally murdered by a racists regime. Sadly the cycle of violence of the thousands of years past has not yet needed though, and now Israel stands precariously close to where Germany did during the third reich, only this time it is the Israeli regime that holds the upper hand. Let’s be frank and call it what it is.
I am not trying to “delegitimize” Israel. I am trying to point out the facts from the fiction of the propaganda machine. I am not in any way saying that the Palestinians militants are in any way blameless. I am just stressing, to put it in biblical terms, that at this point Israel is Goliath, and Palestine is David. The balance of power, wealth, and military rests in the hand of Israel, not Palestine. And though both Israelis and Palestinians are suffering equally because of the conflict, the ratio of Israelis suffering is far less than that of the Palestinians who are suffering.
So in 2007 Israel laid a blockade against Gaza, turning it in to a mass prison camp. However, because of the Internet and the lightening speed and ease of communication in our current times, the Israeli propaganda machine is beginning to falter as the world is beginning to receive news directly from the Palestinians territories, unfiltered by the Israeli propaganda machine.
This is not to say that the Palestinians do not have their own propaganda machine but it is a crude machine and not as effective as the Israeli one.
The world woke up to the plight of the Palestinians, and it is the Palestinians they wish to help, not Hamas, not the PA, but the innocent Palestinian civilians who are suffering the most as a result of this horrible conflict.
Last year, 2010, a flotilla set out to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza with catastrophic results. The Israeli commands sent to stop the flotilla shot dead several activists, in international waters. It was a PR nightmare for an Israeli regime that had become complacent in the wrongful knowledge that they have the Americans and the rest of the world in their pockets. MV Mavi Marmara lost 9 lives in the raid conducted by Israeli military. 9 peaceful activists died. And Israel took a massive PR blow as they were unable to recover their previous PR image of being a tolerant and ethical military.
A year later, 2011, and a new flotilla is on its way to end the Gaza Naval blockade and already the Israeli propaganda machine is at work to avoid a repeat of last year’s disaster. Already the Israeli propaganda machine is spewing out falls stories, like this video of a gay man who was allegedly denied to participate with the flotilla by “extremist” elements. The video turned out to be a Hoax that came from an Israeli government employee. The Israeli propaganda machine was also hard at work to discredit the peaceful flotilla by sending out false roomers that there are extremist elements on board who have expressed the desire to kill IDF soldiers, which is a fallacy. Israel has also attempted to control the flow of information by threatening journalists not to take part or report on the situation, which Netanyahu was forced to back track on due to international pressure. Why would they want a media blackout on the topic if not to act freely with impunity and with no evidence to the country by independent journalists, to discredit the flotilla by planting weapons and thus justifying the use of force against them?
Israel is losing the PR campaign and it is time that the Israeli government made real, tangible peace with the Palestinians. The conflict must come to an end before it is too late and all the region flares up in a conflict without end. Think of the innocent children, women and elderly of Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. Think of all the families that are destitute because of this conflict. Think of all the wrong that had been done against innocent civilians, Lebanese, Israeli, and Palestinian alike. The leaders of our peoples are wrong to commit us to an endless and pointless war when we can, indeed, live in peace and tolerance as long as the religious zealots and the corrupt politicians are put back in place. This is like the chicken and the egg story, Peace will not come from violence, and violence will never achieve peace.
I hope that the Gaza Flotilla succeeds without any nasty incidents. And I hope that peace will be achieved and wiser heads prevail. The people deserve real peace. All the People and not just one faction, group, or nation.
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