Obama's silence on Gaza

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/dec/31obama-silence-on-gaza-angers-arabs.htm

"Obama silence on Gaza angers Arabs"

Maybe all that aloha over Xmas made him forget who he is. Obama can try to hide behind the excuse of "one president at a time" all he wants, but we all know the world is looking to him for real leadership when Bush is obviously one foot out the door (and a staunch Israel partisan anyway). What Obama says may carry more weight than the Pope or UN Sec. Gen. right now. One president at a time? You don't have to be president to speak out against an injustice. You don't have to be president to do the right thing. He spoke out against the Iraq War when he was a lowly state senator, didn't he? And it helped get him to Washington! He spoke out against Rev. Wright's extreme comments, but only when he needed to. He and Biden had a 3-page pdf document on their campaign website professing their strong support for Israel. I don't think anyone will challenge that stance (especially with Hillary as his SoS nominee) if he dares to call a spade a spade on Gaza. Or is he still wary of being mislabeled as an Arab-Muslim? Well I don't care what faith you practice or where your parents came from, but you can't run from the obvious. Women and kids who pose no threat to Israel and never committed a crime in their lives are being maimed and killed by Israeli weapons, just because they have the horrible misfortune of living where they live. It's true that he's not the POTUS. He's not in a position to conjure up and implement a magical solution that has eluded the last 8 presidents. He doesn't even have to denounce Israeli aggression, but at least show some concern for the dead - on both sides. We've heard Obama's inspiring speeches for months now, though unfortunately his silence this week is speaking even larger volumes to Muslims who had the audacity to be hopeful.

Obama's November victory gave the US an ounce of goodwill in the angry Muslim World, and it would be a shame if it's squandered due to his Gaza indifference. Or maybe he doesn't care that civilians die in the name of an ally's "self defense", like all the other presidents before him. In the words of Bill Clinton's SoS Madelaine Albright regarding the thousands of Iraqi children who died as a result of US-imposed trade sanctions, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it" (60 Minutes, 1996). Maybe I'm being premature here and Obama's people will broker a breakthrough settlement in 2009, but I doubt it. Only a full-fledged occupation has a chance of stopping the rockets (but at what political cost, and do they even have the manpower?), so in that case maybe Israel should have never pulled out of Gaza in 2005. The Palestinians won't just forgive the murder of 400+ of their people. Even the pro-Fatah people in the West Bank are enraged and clashing with Israeli police.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98931442&ft=1&f=1001

So the IDF is now bombing residences and mosques just because they are supposedly storing "weapons". But where does it end? What if a building contains 5 rockets and 50 school kids? Is it still a valid target? What about 50 rockets and Gilad Shalit (the kidnapped Israeli soldier)? He took an oath and is prepared to give up his life for his country. Would they sacrifice him to stop those rockets from potentially harming other Israelis? Where do you draw the line? Why not bomb Palestinian maternity wards too, since some of those infants might grow up to fight for Hamas? I'm not sure that they thought this all through when they decided to proceed down this treacherous path.

How much collective punishment is acceptable for self defense? The one major Jewish uprising against the Nazis during WWII took place in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. They got a hold of some small arms and put up a valiant month-long resistance against the Nazis, who were planning on shipping all the ghetto residents to Treblinka. So in response to this "security threat", German troops fought their way in and even gave the starving, outgunned, and outnumbered Jews a chance to surrender. They bravely declined, so the Germans razed the ghetto, killing over 10,000 (either from direct combat or the conflagration that ensued). The survivors were sent to the camps.

Armed resistance against foreign aggression/occupation is permissible in the rules of modern warfare. Whether you call it resistance or terrorism is purely political semantics. So if we honor the Warsaw Jews who dared to resist their Nazi oppressors, then it's only fair that Israelis accept some resistance due to their oppressive policies. And if the violent Nazi crackdown on the Jewish rebellion was morally and legally unacceptable, then the wanton bombing in Gaza (even in the name of security) is also reprehensible. Yes, we can argue 'till the cows come home about how Hamas is a terror group and not legitimate resistance, namely because they call for the destruction of Israel. But didn't the Jewish resistance also want the destruction of the Third Reich? Though debating all that nationalistic rhetoric about an enemy's destruction probably won't get us anywhere. Yes it's true that the Nazis wanted to exterminate the Jews (or at least deport them from Europe), but if the Israelis have cut off most food, fuel, and medical shipments to Gaza for a year (the poorest place on Earth outside of Africa and Afghanistan), isn't that genocidal too?

By no means am I equating the two regimes, but instead merely showing some similarities in the rationale behind their security practices. Bottom line: a lot of Israel's victim rhetoric falls flat, because they have chosen to enact some controversial policies that surrender the moral high ground (if they ever had it in the first place). And it's scary that the President of the US can't even wrap his head around that or publicly admit it.