An old saw says that the first casualty of war is the truth but reality might be a close second.  It is not just that our governments lie to us it is how they tell us the truth.  Outright lies are often easy to uncover, sending official sources into a frenzy of just straight out denial.  After all an outright lie is a difficult thing to defend in the face of the truth so the simple denial is the sole strategy available unless you can literally kill the messenger which has been known to happen.

This particular IED image carries a 2 fold message in the reality wars.

Take for instance the glitzy NewSpeak for a bomb.  That little word does not convey the correct message.  Every word, every reference must expose a stark difference between us and our foes in a time of war.  We use bombs and we are the good guys so the public must have a different term for a bomb when it is used by the bad guys, i. e. the enemy.  Solution:  Improvised Explosive Device or IED.  Just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it.  Now you know that anything improvised is not official and is just not the tool to use.  The word improvise carries a subliminal message of inferiority.  A legitimate military organization doesn’t improvise materials.  Only some slipshod mom and pop terrorist cell would do that.  I guess if these people want to be taken seriously they need to raise some money and go out and buy an SBED (Store Bought Explosive Device).  That’s what we use and that’s the ticket to legitimacy.

If these criminals and scumbags, to use the military vernacular, would use legitimate weapons manufactured to precise specification to blow up our troops then we would be able to respect them.  They too would become soldiers and cease being criminals and scumbags.  Maybe we would then celebrate their deaths less and gain a perspective on our own casualties.  As it stands now the subhuman Taliban is gleefully dispatched to Allah and each of our casualties is a fallen hero.

Language is used to persuade, to guide the listener subtly or sometimes not so subtly to the speakers position.  It is the pigment on the canvas of understanding, the colour of reality.  If anything should be painted in the words of reality it is war.  How else will we ever break this sad cycle of carnage.  Even bomb is too kind a word.  And Improvised Explosive Device is so sanitized as to be laughable.  How about we call it what it is, a life and limb shredding horror, whether we buy it from a manufacturer listed on the NYSE or cook it up in the basement.

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When is a lie most effective?  Answer:  when most people want to believe it to be true.  Wouldn’t it be great if the world was black and white.  We could always tell the good guys from the bad guys.  But that is not reality.  The world is a grey place.  Shadows of truth swirl in between out-right falsehoods and half-truths.  We can really only rely on our own perceptions and we know that many of them are incorrect.  My father always quoted that old saw that said never believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.  It’s underlying cynicism aside it is a good rule to live by.  I tell my students virtually every day to question, question everything, never accept anything at face value.  When someone tells you something ask yourself who benefits from that understanding or approach to the situation.   If the person defining the situation is the same one who benefits be very suspicious.   

Right now Iran seems to be coming apart at the seams.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed a massive victory in the recent presidential elections which led followers of his opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi to cry foul.  Taking to the streets, opposition protesters alleged massive fraud in the vote count.  A subsequent partial recount increased Ahmadinejad’s lead rather than diminish it which served only to ratchet up emotions on both sides.  The Iranian government, that is the government of Mr. Ahmadinejad, has cracked down fiercely on the protesters.  Several people have been killed and many more injured in street clashes between protesters and riot police.

Barack Obama and the American government deny accusations coming out of Iran that they, along with their ally Great Britain, are behind the protests.  Both the president and vice-president have specifically denied the allegations coming out of Tehran.  Barack Obama went so far as to say the American administration is making a concerted effort not to impact events in Iran even in their comments.  This is a positive change from earlier American administrations who have not hesitated to interfere in the affairs of other states or movements if it benefited American interests.  Barak Obama promised change and look here we have it.  For those of you who believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale you may be interested in.  Obama and Biden dismiss the accusations with a chuckle as if what idiot would believe the United States is behind a popular uprising in a foreign country.  The insinuation is that only a few conspiracy freaks would be dumb enough to believe the accusations coming from Mr Ahmadinejad and Mr. Khamenei. 

The United States has overthrown more than 50 governments since the end of World War II, most of them democracies.  (Dictatorships are more efficient to deal with when it comes to the bidding of great powers.)  The Kennedy administration was active here in Canada in the downfall of John Diefenbaker although Dief didn’t help his own cause any.  (If they are prepared to interfere in the political affairs of their neighbour and one of their closest allies is there any limit to what they might do?)  More than 3500 people have died in terrorist attacks against the island of Cuba since the revolution came to power in 1959, all funded and logistically supported by the government of the United States.  The Bush administration lied in order to violate the United Nations Charter and pursue an aggressive war against a sovereign member of that organization.  The invasions of Nicaraugua, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Granada; the support of the Contras, the Kosovo Liberation Army, and the Mujahadeen; installation of brutal dictators like Mobutu in Congo, the Somozas in Nicaraugua, Marcos in the Phillipines, and the Shah in Iran; fomenting coups in Chile, Guatemala, and Venezuela;  that is the backdrop to the present administration’s denials of involvement in the Iranian protests.  The list goes on.  I have not even scratched the surface of covert and not so covert American interference in the affairs of others around the world.  How can any reasonable person believe that the United States is not involved in the protests given their track record and the obvious benefits to America if Mr. Ahmadinejad were to be swept from power. The question is not whether they are involved but to what degree and when did the involvement begin.  Were they behind Mousavi from the start or are they just being opportunists?  At what level is the United States active in the protests?  These are questions that may never be answered. 

We all decry the brutality of the crackdown on the protesters.  No one should have to put their life on the line to speak their mind.  So why was there not the same outrage over the treatment of protesters in Britain during the G20 talks?  After all London police murdered an innocent man who was not even part of the protests.  He was simply a news vendor trying to get home after work.  With the addition of the killing of a beautiful young Iranian women, outrage in the West escalated against Iran.  That in itself should scream to us.  Why were the earlier deaths of protesters mere statistics, a passing reference as the political questions were examined in news reporting?  I guess it only matters when beautiful people die.  They are the only ones who have a real future full of promise.  The less attractive only have disappointment to look forward to in this world of image mongering.  The young woman (Neda Agha Soltan) purportedly uttered an heroic phrase just before leaving that day according to a self-described fiance.   Something about staying home giving victory to the regime.  Real people usually don’t make grandiose statements when parting from a loved one regardless of events happening around them.  I would suspect the real conversation was be careful and avoid the protests and her response was something like I’ll be careful, don’t worry.  But that doesn’t make good copy in a newsroom.  That doesn’t sell papers.  Nor do rather ordinary looking plain people.  When the news of Neda’s death appeared I couldn’t help remembering another beautiful young women, with a voice like a song bird that could melt the hardest heart.  During the first Gulf War daddy Bush was trying to get Congress to appropriate money for his ‘liberation’of Kuwait.  The girl appeared before the Senate Armed Forces Committee to give testimony of the brutality of invading Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait City.  When she had finished telling those grizzled Senators how infants at the hospital had been thrown to the floor so that their incubators could be looted back to Baghdad, there was not a dry eye in the place.  Even old Strom Thurman had a tear glistening at the corner of his eye.  At the time I was skeptical about the popularity of incubators as loot but people just called me cynical.  Several months later the story broke that the young girl had not been in Kuwait City during the invasion and the entire episode about the incubators had been the concoction of Hill and Knowlton, the public relations firm.  In democracies wars and all political events have to be sold like soap powder. 

The question for all of us is what are we being sold today.  We know that the United States government is lying about their involvement in the protests in Iran.  We know that their accomplices in the mass media are selling us a point of view that may or may not have any or some legitimacy.  What apportion of guilt should be born by the Iranian government and what apportion belongs to our governments, that it to say us because we constantly tell the world that we govern ourselves.  All we are left with is our own capacity to reason and analyze, to never believe anything we hear and only half what we see and make our own judgements.  Our society and our leaders discourage us from independent thought and dismiss us as fools if we dare to question them.  Who benefits from that if we comply?  Think about it.  All I can say is ‘Fools of the World, Unite.  You have nothing to lose but your complacency.’  Our age is one of great uncertainty, impregnated with fear and possibility.  Complacency is not an option, nor is falling into the trap of lies which has become our political system.  Don’t let your abhorrence of the crackdown in Iran be used for partisan goals you may not support. 

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After renaming a highway and a full court press by high command and the government to label each and every fallen Canadian soldier in Afghanistan a hero, in the end the Canadian military has shown they are just another parcel to be delivered.  If it is more convenient or economic to jostle them to and fro for three hours to unload baggage and another 117 soldiers, so be it.  The body of Karine Blais was returned to Canada Thursday but was forced to make a stopover in Ottawa before being delivered to her final destination, CFB Trenton, Ontario (for my American readers, Trenton is Canada’s Dover).  Many are outraged at this turn of events.  Those of us who have had friends and relatives in the Canadian military just smile.  Getting a flight home was always a problem and the fear of getting bumped by some officer or his dog anywhere along the line a constant fear.  At least she wasn’t put on a baggage cart with other luggage to switch planes as one report suggests happened in Rochester, New York with a returning American coffin.   Of course they are not heroes in the United States.  America has far too many casualties to do the whole hero thing for every one. 

But only the Canadian army could screw up public relations to this level.  First there is the waste of taxpayer dollars to convince us that Afghanistan is a great and noble cause.  I guess this incident means that plan is history.   It gets worse.  This was a female soldier which adds to the public relations fiasco.   But wait there is more, she was French serving with the Royal 22nd (Van Doos).    I can’t wait to see reaction in the French sovereigntist press.  Who is in charge of propaganda at National Defence Headquarters, Gilligan?  In its imperious ineptitude, they have managed to offend just about every group one can think of.  I am surprised they didn’t wait until it was a Black French woman with autism to pull this boner.  I mean let’s piss everyone off at once and get it over with. 

Don’t forget taxpayers.  The part of this story that has raised no comment as yet that I can find is that the governor-general and minister of defense met the coffin at CFB Trenton.  Hold on.  Think about this.  The coffin was on the ground for three hours in Ottawa.  Ottawa is where the governor-general lives and the minister of defense works (and lives while he is working, if he works, I don’t know).  So, let me get this straight.  The minister and governor-general and the coffin all travelled at taxpayers expense to Trenton for what exactly, a photo-op?  Did they all travel together?  You can drive from Ottawa to Trenton in less than 3 hours maybe one of them could have made room in the back seat.  Why do they even have to be there?  Maybe the prime minister should be there too.  Hell bring the whole freaking parliament.  They love nothing better than a free trip.  Here’s a thought.  Take the coffin home, to the family.  Shouldn’t they be the priority not protocol?  Do we need an official “Death Camp”?

Military observers (cheerleaders) commented to news outlets that it was a minor controversy being blown out of proportion.  I tend to agree.  It was an insensitive decision but in overall terms the coverage in the mainstream press is probably causing more grief to the family than the incident itself.  Military observers are worried though about their little traditions and customs being broken such as failure to lower the flags while the plane was on the ground in Ottawa.  If it was me in the coffin they could shove the flag where the sun don’t shine for all I would care.  Actually when I die the flags over municipal buildings in my town will be lowered to half mast because I once served on city council.   Honestly, if they forget I couldn’t care less.  I would imagine the whole dead thing will be bothering me more at that moment. 

Where I differ from the hotties with the olive drab pompoms is, if you make out that she was a hero, you can’t say this is a minor controversy.  Heroes are a special category of people or sandwiches if you come from New York.  Therefore this would be by definition a serious controversy.  But she wasn’t a hero.  She was a young woman with her whole life before her who died under a foreign sky for geopolitical reasons she never fully understood.  This is a tragedy; not the fall of Agamemnon.  Calling her a hero implies her death was necessary; it served a greater good.  That may assuage the consciences of the political masters who threw her life on the dust heap of history.  But it will never fill the empty chair at family gatherings or give her parents grandchildren.  Maybe if Canadians would come to grips with that we might have fewer tragedies and the Canadian military would have fewer opportunities to trip over its own braid.

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Israel has announced a unilateral ceasefire in the Gaza invasion in a hope too deflect international criticism.  From U. S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband the move is being hailed as a response to the unequivocal pressure of the Western powers.  Interesting, I don’t recall any pressure unequivocal or otherwise coming from the Great Powers.  The criticism has come almost exclusively from ordinary people and human rights organizations.  Hamas has rejected the ceasefire and vows to continue the fight until not one Israeli soldier remains in Palestinian territory and all borders are reopened.  This is already being used to show that Hamas is unreasonable and therefore the initial attack by Israel was justified. 

I am glad if one day or one hour goes by without someone dying.  However I understand Hamas’ reluctance to accept the ceasefire.  Israel has seized large portions of Gaza territory.  Its troops remain entrenched and ready to resume the attack at any moment.  No plan of withdrawal or normalization accompanies this move by the Israeli government.  Nor has Israel announced any process to address these issues.  So what we have here is a territory that has been invaded and occupied being told to stop resisting the occupation in exchange for their lives.  Israel says “We will stop illegally murdering more of your citizens, if you allow us to retain the benefit we received from the ones we have already murdered.”   What is the difference between this situation and the fall of France in 1940 when the puppet government of Vichy was allowed to survive temporarily?  Frenchmen did not lay down their arms then and Palestinians have no incentive to lay down their arms now.

This is not peace.  It is not a real ceasefire.  It is just a lull in the killing.  Whether Hamas capitulates or not, the destruction of the Palestinian nation will continue until not one Palestinian is left.  That is the goal.  It has been for the past 60 years and it will continue.

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In a 14-0 vote, with the United States abstaining, the Security Council has passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.  There will be those for whom this will be seen as an important and positive step but what does it mean for the reality of the situation in Gaza?  Israel has ignored scores of previous resolutions when they contradict Israeli government policy.  Usually Security Council resolutions have some clout because they hold the potential of consequences.  Resolutions concerning Israel have no such potential.  America abstained which is their way of acknowledging that there little buddy has been bad and allowing the international community to shake their collective finger at the naughty child.  But if a subsequent resolution were to impose serious consequences on Israel, America will exercise its veto power, if it cannot first persuade enough of the other members to withdraw the resolution first. 

One begins to see the problem here not as Israel but as the United States.  And what do we do about the most powerful military power on the planet with the number one economy.  The conventional wisdom seems to be nothing.  But how much longer can we allow America to undermine the health and civility of this planet?  How much longer can we sit back and not scream out enough?  America has led the campaign to deny the effects of global warming and undermine attempts at dealing with it.  America has invaded a sovereign state without the sanction of the international community and in a second case used its influence to trick and cajole that community into sanctioning another invasion on false premises.  America has overthrown dozens of legitimate governments, many of them democracies, and replaced them with dictatorships or sham democracies committed to carrying out American interests.  America is funding and supplying the holocaust in Gaza.  It is time to stand up and say ‘the Emperor has no clothes.’  The myth of America in no way resembles the reality of America. 

The rest of the world needs to stand up and be counted once and for all.  The United States is not a global hegemon.  While it would take a concerted effort by other powers to face down America in a diplomatic showdown, it is not impossible.  It needs only the political will to do so. 

The U.N. Security Council should mean something.  The very existence of the veto vote should be re-examined.  There needs to be automatic sanctions attached to any Security Council resolution.  Now is the time to replace the roar of cannon with the reasoned voice of debate. 

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As the crisis worsens in Gaza and the death toll rises, one has to begin to wonder what broader consequences the situation might hold.  Yesterday a rally condemning the attacks was held in Kandahar City in Afghanistan, the focal point of the Canadian mission in that country.  Condemnation was not limited to Israel alone.  The United States and NATO were both criticized.  Demonstrators compared the Israeli actions in Gaza with NATO bombings of Taliban positions which have also resulted in the death of civilians.  It is to be expected that a sense of resentment will rise across the Muslim world as the crisis in Gaza unfolds.  Regions already destabilized by war and occupation such as Iraq and Afghanistan will likely display the first signs of anti-western violence.  Western troops, identified as supporters of Israel, are likely to increasingly become targets of opportunity. 

The longer Gaza is under siege and more Palestinians, particularly civilians, die, the broader the effects will be felt.  George Bush asked ‘why do they hate us?’  Are we really that simple?  The entire ‘War on Terror’ has been a recruiting tool for militants and has undermined any hope of a peaceful or successful resolution of the problems.  The West, twiddling its thumbs and launching platitudes in the media about the sanctity of human life, has sent a clear message to the Muslim world and to Palestinians in particular:  ‘You are on your own.’  The United States has firmly stated in act and word that Israeli deaths matter; Palestinian deaths do not.  Well if they didn’t hate us before they damn well should now. 

What should be of great concern to us is that the support of the murders in Gaza are being done in our name.  I am murdering Palestinians through my government’s support of Israel and I don’t want to.  Like me most of you who read this know that we do not really govern ourselves.   We need to admit to ourselves that our democracy is a sham and admit to the world that what the United States and its allies, including Canada, are exporting to the developing world is not democracy but capitalist exploitation.  It is the new colonialism.  If any of you are in doubt on this you need only look to Hamas.  When elections were held in the Palestinian territories Hamas won a clear victory in a clean and fair election according to international observers.  But Hamas was not the government that the United States and Israel had chosen for the Palestinians to elect and so Hamas was immediately denounced, vilified and through the collaboration of Mahmoud Abbas prevented from governing.  Israel and the United States then created an internal Palestinian civil war backing Abbas to try to eliminate Hamas.  While the attempt did not fully succeed, it has created even greater suffering for the Palestinian people. 

 As long as peoples around the world believe the myth that we govern ourselves, they will hate us because of what they perceive as our callous brutality toward them.  Our governments by their actions and their lies about democracy are endangering each and every one of us.  Most of us who followed international affairs knew that September 11 was coming.  We didn’t know exactly when or where or how.  But we knew that a major terrorist attack on the continental United States was inevitable.  Many of us, myself included, were surprised that the kill count was not higher for we had expected a biological or chemical attack.  By our failure to understand the problems and deal with them in an effective way we are guaranteeing that it will happen again and this time perhaps it will be worse.  If we are going to murder innocent people and deny the right to exist to whole populations; if we are going to condone mass murder or even genocide by our failure to effectively confront it; if we are going to say that this person because of this identifier is more important than that person because of that identifier; then we sew the seeds of sorrow and grief for all humankind.

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CNN has finally found out about the ‘ticking tunnel’ raid two months ago.  This was the breach of the ceasefire by the Israeli government that led to retaliation by Hamas.  Rick Sanchez had to have staff research the raid to verify that it happened.  When they came back with the answer, yes, he is shocked.  He goes so far as to suggest that maybe culpability is not so clear.  What this means in plain English is that the egregious nature of Israel’s disregard for humanity has reached such heights that a major supporter is forced to admit incompetence.  How else can it be explained.  The raid was reported at the time it happened, which Sanchez admits.  Therefore CNN is incompetent.  It makes me think back to my previous post ‘Heralds of Interesting Times’ and ask again is it bias or stupidity.  God help us all in a world where straight teeth and a square jaw are more important qualifications for a news anchor than intelligence. 

You may have noticed that I have added some links on my sidebar under the Palestine category and also under News recently pertaining to the Middle East.  I hope you will check out some of these.  Stay informed.  Do what you can do to help.  Counterbalancing the weight of disinformation coming out of the mainstream media is more important that donating but give if you can to those links that ask.  Make sure your friends, family and political leaders know where you stand.  Make ‘Never again!’  a real commitment.

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As I write this safe and sound in my nice little suburban home, having just signed another online petition calling for an end to the horror in Gaza, I begin to question what I have accomplished in over 40 years of calling for peace and understanding among the peoples of the world.  Who besides me wants it?  Surely not anyone in power as they continue to ignore, mouthing pre written sanctimonious statements about the value of human life and DO nothing. 

Five girls from one family were killed over the weekend when a mosque near their home was targeted.  They were sleeping together in one room.  How many Canadian families do you know that talk about five children sleeping in one room as normal?  There were actually seven but two survived, but for how long with an acute shortage of medical supplies.  The other aspect of the story that seems to be taken for granted is the fact that a mosque was a target of an Israeli air strike.  Now I know the rational Israel is using here.  They will argue that radical Imams are calling upon their followers to rise up in Jihad.  Mosques are not just religious centers but centers of resistance and terrorism.  Interesting enough the Germans used similar rationalizations for their destruction of synagogues.  The Israeli government learned a lot of lessons from the Nazis.  There I have done it.  I have stepped over the line.  Now comes the onslaught.  I am an anti-Semite.  I hate Jews.  But is that what I said just now?  No.  I said the Israeli government, not Jews, had learned lessons in repression, not only of Palestinian Arabs but of any Israeli Jew that disagrees with them.  Ask activists with B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group about the harassment they experience because they protest the human rights violations of their government.  They are attacked by official sources as self-hating Jews. 

Israel is not Judaism and Judaism is not Israel.  Judaism is a religion, Israel is a state.  Until that concept is clearly rooted in the international psyche nothing will be done to end the bloodshed until Israel has succeeded in wiping every Palestinian from the face of the earth.  Actually you might say they already have.  One argument advanced by the Israeli government is that there is no such thing as a Palestinian.  Palestine is not a nation.  Arabs in the West Bank are Jordanians.  The Nazis used this tack with certain Slavic groups to justify their murder.  Better yet the late Golda Meir, former prime minister of Israel claimed that when the Jews arrived in Palestine there were not people on the land at all.  It was unoccupied.  So if these non-existent people were to disappear no one would notice.  The path to genocide begins first with an attack on identity. 

The international community sits back and refuses to act perhaps out of some misplaced sense of collective guilt, perhaps from self-interested agendas and perhaps partly out of fear.  Remember that Israel is the sixth largest nuclear power.   Israel continues to officially deny possessing nuclear weapons but their existence is the worst kept secret in the world.  Regardless of the reason, how long can we sit back and allow this atrocity to continue before our eyes.  The mainstream news media is never more biased than with reporting on middle eastern issues.  If one relies on the major American networks or the BBC for information it would be understandable to see Israel as the victim in this.  Again a tactic used by the Nazis against Jews.  Nazi propogandists repeatedly drummed the mantra into the German people that the Jews were controlling the economy and conspiring with foreign powers to destroy Germany.  The justification for Kristallnacht was the assassination of the German ambassador in Paris by a Jew.  Goebbels disseminated the idea that this was part of a greater conspiracy to bring down the German government and cause a war rather than the act of a frustrated individual.  Anyone who blindly believes the press is courting disaster.  Media is ALWAYS controlled by the politically powerful in a society and serves whatever agenda they pursue. 

The facts:

1. In the last seven years only 17 Israelis have been killed by rocket fire.  In the first day of this new pogrom in Gaza approximately 200 Palestinians died.  The number is now around 375 mostly civilians contrary to the CNN report I watched tonight which claims that most of the dead are Hamas fighters.  So five little girls sleeping in their own home are a threat to Israel, I guess. 
2. The initial attacks on Saturday, December 27th were timed to coincidence with schools letting out.  The streets were full of children and the police stations and training facilities that were prime targets were close to schools.  This can only be interpreted as an attempt to kill children.  Again this is reminiscent of the Nazi behaviour.  The Nazis paid special attention to Jewish children in the Holocaust.  The best method to annihilate an entire race or class of people is to destroy their future. 
3. Israel was first to break the ceasefire.  Ehud Barack stating publicly that Israel is no longer interested in a ceasefire leaves me incredulous as the evidence shows they never have been interested in one.  Wanton, unjustified intrusions into Gaza occurred repeatedly without Hamas responding in defense until the murder of six Hamas leaders and the attack on a tunnel complex supplying Gaza.  Israel wanted Hamas to respond for fear if they continued to unilaterally hold to the ceasefire they would achieve a moral victory.  This would further undermine the position of Israel’s puppet, Mahmoud Abbas.  Abbas and his government are equivalent to the Jewish Councils in the Ghettos. 
4. Police stations and training facilities, water wells, mosques and public officials were the prime targets of the Israeli invasion.  Interestingly the Israelis do not seem interested in rocket sites.  But this invasion was never about rockets attacking Israel.  There are many possible reasons for the attack at this time.  One that came immediately to my mind was the Israeli elections.  Kadima, lagging in the polls behind Benyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, hopes to undermine Likud’s chief criticism that Kadima is soft on the Palestinian issue. 
5. Gaza has been subjected to an inhuman siege which have reduced it to the world’s largest concentration camp.  Everything is in short supply; food, fuel, water, medical supplies.  Those shortages now contribute to the suffering caused by this latest attack.  How many of the wounded will be able to survive is questionable and the death toll will only rise. 

Candidate Obama, now President-Elect Obama, said in his visit to Israel earlier this year:

“If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing,” 

Well what would he do if his daughters were lying in the morgue instead of those five Palestinian girls?  Would he be so quick to condemn Hamas and blame them for the problem?  Hamas acted lawfully in defending the people of Gaza against an aggressor.  The international condemnation of Israel is muted by American support.  But the international community is a paper tiger.  It does not want to confront Israel.  If the United Nations stood for something the following should happen:

1. Israel’s membership in the UN should be immediately suspended as they have flagrantly violated the UN Charter, are currently in violation of some 80 odd Security Council resolutions (for perspective Saddam Hussein was maybe in violation of six or seven before his country was invaded and he was hanged for crimes against humanity), and also in violation of their commitments under the Geneva Conventions.
2. All trade and foreign aid coming into Israel should be immediately halted.  Israel’s assets abroad should be seized and frozen.  Israeli government officials found outside of Israel should be arrested and held for investigation by the International Criminal Court. 
3. Humanitarian aid should be injected into Gaza as quickly as possible, even if this means a military confrontation with Israel.  Along with this an international force should enter Gaza to protect civilians from genocide.
4. All of this will require the courage of the other powers of the world to stand up to the United States. 

 If this all sounds extreme it is.  But we are facing a moral choice.  If we do not act, as we did not in Germany, as we did not in Rwanda, and as we are not in Congo currently, then the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is meaningless.  The Nuremburg and Tokyo trials were a waste of time.  The tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rwanda should be stopped.  The choice is to do something or to do nothing.  So whether I have accomplished anything in my life or not, I will probably never know but since I continue, I must continue to try.

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I have been a Phil Ochs fans for as long as I can remember.  I admit to deriving pleasure from how young people on YouTube are resurrecting his lyric to shine light on the current political malaise.  Phil’s words are as timely today as when they were written.  For that my pleasure is tinged with guilt.  Phil committed suicide in 1976 because he said no one was listening.  So please listen.  Please internalize the message this time and let’s end all this madness before one more child dies.

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Horrors illustrating the depth of human depravity and villiany seem to be a matter of course as we move into this new millenium.  Even the beacon of democracy and freedom, the United States engages in ‘extraordinary rendition’ and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’.  Wonderful euphemisms for acceptable torture techniques in the former and sending prisoners somewhere else for unacceptable torture techniques in the case of the latter.  What odd phrasing we have had to internalize in these times when we can differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable torture.  I come from a world where no torture was acceptable and I want to go back there. 

Daily we hear accounts coming to us from Congo, Georgia, Darfur, Palestine and the list goes on.  Scarcely a region of the world is without its own special nightmare.  At Nuremberg and Tokyo the perpetrators of the crimes of World War Two were brought to account for their decisions and actions.  It was easy then.  They had been vanquished and we held their collective fate in our hands.  Then it was about seeking justice through the use of a court.  Today it is more complex.  There are no white knights in shining armour claiming victory for god and the right.  Actually there never were. 

Many of today’s conflicts more closely resemble the wars of medieval Europe than the 2 world wars.  Feudal warlords with private armies roaming freely creating mayhem wherever they go.  Instant states built on ethnic homogeneity leave out the possibility of peace.  The solutions become more complex along with the conflicts.  The line is blurred between criminal and victim.  Hell, it is obfuscated.  In the former Yugoslavia the Serbs were villianized for good reason but our simplistic approach of assuming that the other ethnic groups were mere victims has created more suffering as our ‘friends,’ particularly the Kosovar Albanians, have used the umbrella of our protection for ethnic cleansing and worse of the remaining Serbs in Kosovo.  In Rwanda the criminals were clearly marked ethnically; Hutu evil, Tutsi good; Hutu criminal, Tutsi victim.  But has that solved anything.  How many of us here in the West understand the history of the situation in the Great Lakes region of Africa.  Hell how many of us really understand Africa at all or have even tried.  So called ‘African’ Americans like Oprah Winfrey meddle in the continent.  What they forget is that first and foremost they are Americans, not Africans.  Transplanting American values and demeaning African civilizations as primitive and backward is not helping Africans.  But this is grist for another article. 

One method of dealing with these conflicts, pioneered by South Africa in the years following the dismantling of the apartheid system, is the truth and reconciliation commission.  Unlike a court, no sanction is applied to perpetrators other than the social stygma of standing before the world an admitted murderer, rapist, child abuser.  For truth you receive reconciliation.  It is a noble thought reminiscent in some ways of the confessional.  Except in this case it is not god that is giving absolution but the society in hopes of putting the past behind them and moving forward.  In the short term it seems to have worked well in South Africa.  But it is less than two decades since the apartheid system came down.  More time is needed before we celebrate the success of this approach.  And are there limits?  Are there some things that are so atrocious, so repugnant that even confession should not absolve the perpetrator from legal sanction?  Take the case of Milton Blahyi in Liberia who admitted before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission dealing with that troubled country’s civil war that he had engaged in human sacrifice.  Children would be sacrificed, their heart removed and then cut up and consumed.  Yes eaten.  He also owned to the deaths of approximately 20,000 people by soldiers under his command.  Should he just walk away?  If ever there was an atrocity this is it. 

How do we deal with cases like this and the many similar ones?  The goal of the truth and reconciliation process is to create a new beginning for a lasting peace.  If that goal is achieved, allowing men like Blahyi to walk free will be worth it.  We can rationalize that those who perished so brutally are martyrs to freedom and peace.  If the process fails we may only have created more fuel for hatred by confirming what had only been believed.  We must wait and see is the only answer for now but it feels so inadequate.

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