De Israelische Terreur 542

The truth about those Hamas rockets
By Dennis Rahkonen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Five years ago, the Bush administration lied about weapons of mass
destruction to dupe us into supporting an illegal, immoral invasion of
Iraq.

A few days ago, Israel trotted out only an infinitesimally more credible
excuse -- the Hamas rockets case -- as justification for its own murderous
shock and awe in Gaza, a long-planned campaign perniciously aimed at
ousting a “regime” that came to power via popular, democratic vote.

Yes, such rockets exist, but they’re little more than slingshots against
Israel’s incredible military might, and they’re used out of desperation
by Palestinians who’ve never been accorded the democratic space within
which to gain redress of their eminently just grievances.

Israeli apologists have presented absurd propaganda about those devices.

We’ve been asked, for instance, what would we do if rockets were being
launched on our homes in New York or Texas, from Canada or Mexico?

The proper answer is that, if those two nations had been unlawfully
occupied or embargoed by the United States for 60 years of relentless
oppression and repression, and if all attempts at peaceful change had been
forcefully prevented or scuttled by the U.S., then such attacks would be an
understandable, indeed a justifiable attempt at gaining intolerably
deferred liberty.

Our appropriate response wouldn’t be to bomb the hell out of the nearest
Canadian or Mexican city, but to collectively look into mirrors and
earnestly ask ourselves, “What have we done wrong to incur their
wrath?”

And then act to correct the situation.

Conscientious Israelis acknowledge that the Hamas rockets rationale is
fraudulent. For instance, Jerusalem Post writer Larry Derfner has noted,
“We don’t want to see how people in Gaza are living, we block it out of
our minds -- which, I suppose, is natural for a society at war, but which
also keeps that war going longer than it might if we would recognize that
Gaza is getting so much the worst of it.

“The [Palestinian] Kassam [rockets] have terrorized the 25,000 people in
Sderot and its environs, but have caused very, very few deaths or serious
wounds. By contrast, Israel has terrorized 1.5 million Gazans, locked them
inside their awfully narrow borders, throttled their economy, and killed
and seriously wounded thousands of them . . .

“This is crazy. Israel is the superpower of the Middle East, but because
we still think we’re the Jews of Europe in the 1930s, or the Israelites
under Pharaoh, we spend a lot more time fighting our enemies than we might
if we looked at the whole picture, not just our half of it . . .”

As Gazan hospitals and morgues fill beyond capacity because of an ongoing
air assault that cruelly began at precisely the hour when countless
children were heading home from school, we’re expected to believe that
small craters mostly in empty Israeli fields constitute this terrible
episode’s chief sin.'
Lees verder: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4186.shtml