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.

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. 

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.

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.

Netanyahu’s partners are even more scary than he.  A leading rabbi in the Shas Party in a recent sermon called teachers in secular schools “asses” and said they taught only foolishness.  He said that they knew nothing and only taught things like history and nonsense about world nations.  And you can guess what portfolio in a Netanyahu coalition cabinet the Shas Party wants.  That’s right, education.

Some of the players within Likud itself are threats to humanity.  Former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon is suggesting the assassination of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stop Iran’s nuclear program.  He believes strongly in Jewish colonization of the West Bank and Gaza, opposing any form of autonomy or self-government for the Palestinians.  He has also been warned not to travel in several Western European countries as he has been identified internationally as a war criminal and may face arrest.  The pièce de résistance is Moshe Feiglin.  Some Israelis have compared him to Adolph Hitler.  Feiglin calls for all out genocidal ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories and a holy war against Islam, the goal of which would be the annihilation of all 1.5 billion Muslims. 

A backdrop to this is the recent Israeli Defense establishment paper calling for preparations for a military strike against Iran if the U. S. and Iran negotiate a deal.  Israel will not tolerate Iran moving forward on nuclear development, even if it is arguably for domestic purposes.  The IAEA has said Iran is not currently capable of producing a weapon but may be within 1 to 2 years. 

None of this bodes well for peace in the Middle East any time soon.  The new president of the United States will have some difficult decisions to make.  Advising him will be his White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who in Gulf War 1 volunteered for the Israeli Defense Force rather than fighting with U. S. forces.  During that time Benyamin Netanyahu was also prime minister of Israel.  Caught in the middle once more are the Palestinian people.  Left with little or no hope as the most powerful state on earth supports an enemy bound to their eternal subjugation at best and their obliteration at worst.  I wonder how any of us would react in such a position.