Saturday, January 10, 2009

US Silence as the Violence Escalates

News that the United States abstained in the recent UN Security Council vote to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza is unsurprising given the strength of the Israeli position within the Bush Administration, but it should also be remembered that that very non-vote was a bright green light for the Israelis to ramp up their military efforts in Gaza, even as the suffering amongst innocent Palestinians grows by the day. As Andrew Sullivan points out today:
The chance of the PA [Palestinian Authority] establishing some post-war stability in Gaza certainly seems more remote. And the emergence of a poetntial terrorist training and recruiting ground in a failed and radicalized society in Gaza all the likelier. Friends and supporters of Israel should worry about this.
We should all worry about this. It's a reminder what blind ideological ambition gets us (remember those calls for democracy in the Middle East? That got us Hamas as the authority in the Gaza strip in the first place, tearing open our blatant hypocrisy for the world to see in our reaction), but more than that, the growing cost of war is everyday strengthening Hamas' post-invasion position, justifying their use of terrorism against the brutal Israeli oppressors.

I have sympathy for Israel and it's efforts. A country coming under constant rocket fire has an obligation to protect it's people. But here we see the damaging psychosis of modern war: as we move to suppress the violence with overwhelming force, we only breed more of it.

It all sounds strangely detached till you consider the lost children of the Samounis family and countless others who's deep and horrible wounds will only fester into radicalism once more.

Solving this crisis requires the moral resolve to push back against the justifiable anger of so many constituencies tangled in this quagmire and to point to the only real solution: creating infrastructure, opportunity and secular education to the people of Gaza and like regions throughout the developing and destroyed world.

Only then might we all emerge from the shadows of these bloody decades.


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2 comments:

Strategicus said...

it appears that the bombay attacks and gaza flare up are a conspiracy by necons and zionists to destabilise and derail obama even before he isn in office.give him such a bad situation that he is completely bogged down and stuck irrevocably in a deadly geopolitical quagmire.

all planned to discredit one man who has the potential to change history.

agha h amin

brad4d said...

from the place where I wonder what this leaving leader (BUSH) imposed on U.S...allows me to see Gaza as a wound the leaders won't stop scratching... the head won't allow the body to heal..and seems willing to sacrifice the whole skin (care system)..what can WE say to emotional paradox?
The Obama talent is to find points of agreement by suggestion, without telling the defensive (belligerent) what to do!