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The deafening silence of the lamb
Posted: Friday, April 5, 2002
By A. Heru
Arab and European leaders, with all their military power, have shown the entire world they are unable to act against the wishes of the U.S. With simple diplomatic protest, they allow Israel to murder and destroy Palestinians and their property. Where is this Arab solidarity? Why do they invest billions in their military?
Israel, a rogue state, has been allowed to amass and use weapons of mass destruction and this has been tolerated in spite of widespread condemnations. Leaders with military might have been satisfied to simply condemn the onslaught while Israel continues its rampage on a people who does not even have an army.
Israel is in breach of many UN conventions and resolutions and that has contributed to the situation being the way it is today.
This onslaught is not only about retaliation for suicide bombings. As history shows, Israel and the U.S. refused to allow the Palestinians their own state as called for in UN resolutions. Israel, aided and abetted by the U.S. continues to build settlements in the Palestinian region while trying to expand its borders. The maps presented by Israel are distorted so that some time in the future they may claim more land than was granted. Israel is presently trying to bolster its military and it finds no better way to show the U.S. and Britain that it is in need of military development and expansion than by provoking Arabs.
Palestinians are refugees in their recognized country while the U.S. finances Israel's bullying tactics to protect their energy interest in the 'Middle East'.
Countries like Israel, the U.S. and UK are now using preemptive strikes as a principle of self-defense. This is their basis for wanting to attack Iraq and they are using Iraq's history to legitimize their position. The way they conveniently and selectively use history to attack other nations is not recognized in any law as no law takes the position that once someone or a nation commits a crime they are doomed to repeat it. If that were the case then African and Asian nations should take preemptive strikes against all European nations, especially America that has committed crimes of invasions, Slavery, subversions and destruction to many nations. These leading nations with a history of abuses have all amassed weapons of mass destruction. Are they to be trusted with those weapons? Their present actions answer the question.
Would the International community support a call for sanctioning the U.S. and Britain or even bombing them because of their history and the fact that they have repeated the abuses and are likely to so do again in Iraq? These arrogant misleaders sit in their offices and calculate how many innocent persons may be killed and this is casually summed up as collateral damage.
I doubt many nations are courageous enough to take a tough stance against the U.S. and UK., but they should. In these leading nations haste to condemn others they rarely reflect on themselves. The public is never encouraged to examine their abuses that are the cause of most world conflicts.
I must add that the mainstream media has contributed to the sorry state many nations find themselves in. They have done much to distract people from examining the roots of most conflicts and in so doing the cycles of violence are portrayed as the savagery of undeveloped, third world peoples while the aggressions of the U.S. and its allies are portrayed as liberating exercises.
People who are uninformed or misinformed cannot make responsible decisions, take a stance and force their governments to act appropriately.
The mainstream media have also contributed to the present bloodbath in Palestine through their bias reporting. Public opinions, perceptions and tolerances are being shaped by the way they report and distort the news. Very often Israeli attacks are called retaliations while Palestinian retaliations are called attacks. The Palestinian retaliations are often portrayed in the most gruesome manner, while the extreme brutalities of Israel attacks are rarely ever shown. As a matter of fact, Israel blocks the media from examining her brutalities and some of these media houses are still contented to accept and broadcast the Israeli accounts of what damage is being down.
As explained on FAIR.org, "The term "retaliation" suggests a defensive stance undertaken in response to someone else's aggression. It also lays responsibility for the cycle of violence at the doorstep of the party being "retaliated" against, since they presumably initiated the conflict."
It is interesting to note that more than 300 Israelis and 1,200 Palestinians have been killed since the current Intifada began in September 2000.
The U.S. have invaded and destroyed other countries for far less. Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader, was dragged to the International court to face trial for war crimes after the U.S. and other European nations bombed the hell out of that country.
They bombed Iraq for invading Kuwaiti and are bent on bombing Iraq again for what they claim is Iraq's intention to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Blair and Bush imposed sanctions on Mugabe of Zimbabwe for what they claimed was a rigged election.
Yet today they only pay lip service in the face of Israel's ongoing onslaught on Palestinians whom Bush now blames for the attack. The victim is now being blamed for resisting occupation.
The response from Arab nations so far is pathetic, to put it mildly, as they call meetings to voice concern about the killing of Palestinians. Saudi Arabia is even stopping their people from protesting this carnage. Many European nations have condemned the attacks but they have not taken tangible steps to isolate and force Israel to abide by all the U.N. conventions.
Israel has learned well from Hitler's tactics and many Europeans are allowing Israel to do to others what it resisted from Hitler.
The United States and Britain have allowed Israel, an illegal state, to amass weapons of mass destruction including nuclear weapons. But these leading nations have also abused their weapons of mass destruction. Who is to make them pay for their excesses?
This must be the year of the bully!
The veil has been lifted on racism and hypocrisy. The veil has also been lifted on those Arab leaders who plunder their countries' resources and invest billions in their military, yet in the face of the attacks on people they do nothing. The military arsenal at these leaders disposal is to protect their weak leadership from the wrath of their own people, to parade to show-off their affluence to fellow Arabs and to protect their personal loot. This power is not to protect the rights of people.
These arrogant and coward misleaders in the U.S., UK and Arab states are sides of the same coin, and we must never forget this.
Israel must pay for its crimes against humanity and for imposing on a people the very treatment for which they condemned Hitler. They may not be leading thousands to the gas chambers all at once but their slow and systematic killings and torture is meant to kill people and the spirits of people for generations. The ongoing suppression and oppression of the Palestinians is genocide and Israel must be made to pay for its crimes against humanity.
We must act in spite of the deafening silence of the lamb.
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