Again, it is with digust that I read the headlines. Unsatisfied with committing genocide in the name of ‘security’ against the Palestinian — the bastard children of the Arab peoples — Israel has set its eyes upon Lebanon.
I have no sympathy for Hizbullah as it is supported by Iran and Syria, but again Israel is practicing collective punishment.
The Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, justified his country’s response as necessary. After all, Israeli military actions in Lebanon are a response to the capturing of 2 Israeli soldiers and the slaughter of 8 others during a cross-border raid by Hizbullah. The ambassador went on to describe the militant group as “merely the finger on the bloodstained and long-reaching arms of Syria and Iran”.
But then why is Israel bombing civilian areas? Why is its campaign not limited to Hizbullah strongholds? How does bombing Beirut’s internationa airport hurt Hizbullah? How does blowing up roads and bridges weaken Hizbullah? How does blockading the nation of Lebanon and essentially reducing it to a Gaza-like state help resolve the ‘conflict’?
Israel is a tyrannical nation-state that may do as it pleases for it need not respond to anyone. The UN is worthless, a bureaucratic mess that is unable to do anything but launch condemnations. And even these are tepid and worthless. No condemnation can justify the continuing genocide in Darfur! To condemn is not to act, it is to stall.
Why was Serbia bombed after its actions in Kosovo? And why is Israel not being bombed, since it is doing the same thing: genocide.
The fact is, American foreign policy is horribly biased. Israel is allowed to do as it pleases simply because America, the sole hyper-power, allows it to. We are enamored with Israel: it is described as the single democratic state in the Middle East.
If we actually cared about democracy, why do we support dictatorships that oppress their people? Why do we allow a legitimately elected government as is Hamas in Palestine, to be held hostage by Israel? We don’t really care about democracy.
Israel is not America’s friend. America has no friends: it has interests. And Israel hurts our interests. It is the American tax payer that finances the military state that Israel is to-day. It is our money that allows its economy to go on — otherwise, it would have collapsed.
To wit: we are subsidizing genocide. And not only genocide, but dictatorships because we are under the impression that it serves our best interests.
Is America to be described in history books as the Roman Empire is, i.e., the embodiment of justice, when in fact Rome was quite the opposite — a war-mongering state that rather than civilizing (the adjective used to justify Roman actions) was destroying civilizations. I hope not.
And to all this, what does America have to say? The American President “promised Lebanon’s prime minister, Fouad Siniora, he would press Israel to spare innocent lives,” according to the Guardian.
What sort of response is this? The French President called the Israeli response ‘completely disproportionate’ while calling Hizbullah ‘irresponsible’. Of course, there is not much the French can do on the global stage. But what is the excuse for suth a trite and tepid response from America?
Indifference. By allowing Israel (which we literally arm) to seek and destroy innocent civilians, America only corroborates the already held opinion of the US in the Middle East. How is this to our advantage? How does destroying our image in the Middle Eastr — further — help us in Iraq? Already, according to the New York Times, the radical Shi’ite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has said “that Iraqis will not ‘sit by with folded hands’ while Israel struck at Lebanon, signaling a possible increase in attacks from his mercurial militia, the Mahdi Army.”
America needs to ask itself: what does it hold more dear, our Constitution, or the Bible. I fear the latter is in all honesty what is cherished by our society the most, after all, what other reason is there for the proscription of basic human rights and civil rights to homosexuals in America?
Israeli aggression against Lebanon is prosaically described by Jan Egeland, the UN’s top humanitarian official:
“You are supposed to do something to the armed group. You are not supposed to hurt the children of people who have nothing to do with this.”
In effect, this is what Israel is doing. The beast has shown its teeth and fangs. What a sad world we live in.