Gaza: Stop the Bloodshed--End the Occupation
In the wake of Israel's escalating bombardment of Gaza, and this latest violence against Palestinians which has been condemned by many in the Israeli press, and media, The New York Times reported late Sunday:
"At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, women wailed as they searched for relatives among bodies that lay strewn on the hospital floor. One doctor said that given the dearth of facilities, not much could be done for the seriously wounded, and that it was 'better to be brought in dead.'"
Obviously, the media, in the U.S., have dropped the ball on Gaza. What's going on there should never have happened in the first place, let alone percolate to the point of explosion, and it would end quickly were it not for American compliance, as well as the absence of investigative journalism. The Israeli press have been more vocal in opposition to militarist aggression by its government. The press, in this country, have been effectively sup-pressed, and co-opted.
This is no longer about who is right and who is wrong. It is no longer a question of who struck whom first any more than what is going on now in Gaza is about the moral culpability, or political viability, of Hamas.
The ongoing occupation, and decimation, of Gaza defies reason, and forces one to ask whether there can be any justification for wholesale slaughter that is going on there. There is only one solution, and that involves compromise. All who think of themselves as human beings are also victims of this violence.
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About Jayne
My full name is Jayne Lyn Stahl.
Widely published poet, and essayist---Huffington Post blogger, with screenplay, "Shakespeare & Company," that tells the story of Sylvia Beach's struggle to publish James Joyce's "Ulysses," currently in development.
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Connections
Causes Jayne Stahl Supports
Free Speech, human rights, and abolition of the death penalty.
Jayne’s Favorite Books
"Crime and Punishment," Fyodor Dostoyevsky "Ulysses," James Joyce "Dead Souls," Gogol "The Trial," Franz Kafka "Thus Spake Zarathustra," Friedrich Nietzsche "...
At the moment, I have
At the moment, I have neither the strength nor fortitude to craft yet another reply in response to your concerns- which are quite similar to Ugo Mattei's "Plunder Blog!" that was posted earlier today; so please bear with me if I just copy & paste my replies to his blog, in the hope that they will suffice...
Do YOU know that the appalling conditions under which the Gazans are forced to live could have been entirely eliminated by a donation of just a miniscule fraction of the obscene oil-generated riches possessed by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Quatar, and the United Arab Emirates- but that they prefer to cynically and heartlessly let their Palestinian brethren live in squalor in order to blacken Israel's reputation? And what about the fact that for years and years- Yassar Arafat looted the international aid meant for his countrymen to the tune of some eight billion dollars- which his widow, living a life of sumptuous luxury in Paris, was ultimately forced to give back part of (leaving her with "only" a billion or two of that plundered international aid)?
Do YOU know that Israel happens to be, together with the USA, one of THE most humanitarian countries on the planet, and that- should they at any time so desire- have the military might to completely flatten and destroy every single inch of Gaza with their air force alone- but that they instead resort to surgical-strikes as a last resort, after seeing their citizens being bombarded day after day by Kassam rockets in direct contravention to each and every "cease-fire" agreement?
Do YOU know that the reason Gazan civilians are sometime killed in these surgical strikes is because their soldiers calculatingly mingle amongst their women and children- hoping for just such "collateral damage" in order to plaster it all over the news (unlike civilian deaths in Israel, which routinely get only the briefest and most cursory of exposure)?
Do YOU know that, for this same exact reason, they also routinely fire their Kassam rockets from the roofs of hospitals, schools and mosques- hoping that Israel will retaliate by blowing them up, and thus "proving" to the world once again that the Jews are even worse than the vilest of Nazis?
Do YOU know that the only reason there have been comparatively so few casualties over the years is that Israel actually warns the Palestinians before blowing up buildings- so that they'll have plenty of time to evacuate beforehand. This latest incursion is the first time they have not done so, because they are desperate to stop the rockets which are terrorizing their civilians- and that is the reason they've managed to target, and kill, some 300 Gazan soldiers in their surgical strikes. Can you imagine how many Gazan soldiers/civilians the Israeli air force could have killed had they so desired? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? A million?! To say, as you do, that "they launch an attack at the very moment in which kids were getting out of school" is not only untrue, but simply too ridiculous for words. And yet, there are sure to be a number of people- perhaps even a great number of people- who will believe your words. Because a great number of people prefer to remain "silent, silent, silent"- rather than take a stand.
War, any war, is a tragic thing- and in a "perfect world" (HAH!), opposing sides would simply meet like gentlemen around a table in order to work out their differences in a non-violent, civilized manner. But, unfortunately, we do not live in a "perfect world"- never have, and probably never will. And so, like it or not, the only way to settle certain conflicts is at the point of a gun. The modern state of Israel was, in fact, (re-)born from the crematorium ashes of the concentration camp ovens. And it's understandable, to me at least, that the (mostly Jordanian) Arabs living in what was then called the "territory of Palestine" were angry and upset at the 1948 international mandate for a (tiny) Jewish state- so that the hollow-eyed, shell-shocked disposessed survivors of the holocaust would at least be able to have a small corner of real-estate where they wouldn't have to worry ever again about being fed into ovens. Because it was the Germans and Austrians who stoked those ovens with Jewish cordwood, and not those Jordanian/Palestinian Arabs- it's a sick cosmic "joke" of Epic proportions that both Arabs and Jews are still killing each other sixty years later in what has proven to be a never-ending epilogue to that original European conflict.
While Abbas and the Palestinians living in the West Bank would welcome peace with Israel- the radical Islamic Hamas-ruled Gaza has catagorically refused every single gesture for peace offered by (a desperate) Israel; and demands "total surrender" in the form of total capitulations to ALL their demands as a precondition to even recognize the "right" of Israelis to exist. I'm afraid that this constant daily barrage of Kassam rockets- which never even ceased, but was only somewhat reduced, all throughout the "cease-fire", has now finally proven to be too much for even the Israelis to bear any longer.
Will there be innocent victims on both sides of the border? Unfortunately, yes. Because, when all is said and done, we are most definitely not living in a "perfect" world...