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The action of an American towards - Muslimah - 01-06-2009
Bismillah
as salam alykom
The following is an email I received from an American co worker who lives in Cairo, this is how he analysied the situation and took action. I wonder how Johndoe sees this person for supporting Gaza??
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Israel's airstrikes on the Gaza Strip
To:
Friends and colleagues:
I am moved to email you about an issue that has been difficult to address openly in the United States.
Suddenly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at its worst point in 40 years. But the coming of a new administration in the United States means we can change the way the U.S. interacts with all the players in that conflict, which is still the thorny core of America's broken relationship with the Middle East.
In recent years, the U.S. has allowed one player to do pretty much whatever it wants over there.
Each one of us can contribute to the solution by calling or emailing our representatives and telling them it's time for the U.S. to press the players to make peace, not just back one side.
It is time to stop throwing up our hands and saying, "It will always be like this! Those people just can't get along." That's an excuse. It's a political problem, and there is a political solution waiting. A complicated and time-consuming one. It's time to stop allowing one player to use the quick and simple approach of overwhelming force.
It is time to raise our voices and demand an end to the Israeli military's pummeling of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government says it is retaliating against the Gaza Strip for missile strikes allowed or abetted by the militant political party Hamas in violation of a ceasefire. But these airstrikes are not a reasonable act of self-defense against faceless "terror." Not even close.
Let's add it up. Below:
1. The harm of Hamas' missiles fired at Israel
2. The scope of Israel's retaliation
3. Number of deaths on both sides in recent years
4. Who broke the truce?
5. The damage from Israel's ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip
6. Are the Israeli airstrikes a proportionate reaction?
7. Is it impossible to negotiate with Hamas?
8. Will the airstrikes bring Israel peace?
9. How can an individual affect this situation?
1. The harm of Hamas' missiles fired at Israel
As described by the American Jewish newspaper Forward, Dec. 24, 2008, http://www.forward.com/articles/14794/
"Living near Gaza can be a traumatic experience. Over the past six years, thousands of rockets and mortar rounds have been launched across the border into Israel. On a bad day, every few hours there is a bang, or a number of bangs. One does not know where the next rocket will land. ... Israelis are once again confronted with the question of how to bring quiet to their border with Gaza For all the thousands of Qassam rockets that have fallen on Sderot and other communities, relatively few Israelis have died as a result. Indeed, only 16 people have been killed by rockets and mortar fire from Gaza into Israel. In part, the low rate of Israeli fatalities is due to the primitive nature of the rockets simple metal tubes with fins soldered to them, small warheads and no guidance mechanism whatsoever. In part, it is due to the countermeasures taken by the Israeli army, which have grown increasingly effective."
Dec. 30, 2008, AFP: "Since Saturday, Gaza militants have fired more than 250 rockets and mortar rounds into Israel, killing four people and wounding two dozen more."
2. The scope of Israel's retaliation
From the wire service Agence France Presse, Dec. 30, 2008:
"the campaign has killed at least 345 Palestinians and wounded more than 1,550, Gaza medics said. ... At least 57 civilians, including 21 children, have been killed in the Israeli bombardment, a UN spokesman said."
3. Deaths on both sides in recent years
Killings in the Gaza Strip and Israel, October 2000 through November 2008
Excludes killings in the West Bank
In the Gaza Strip
In Israel
Total in Gaza + Israel
Gaza Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces
2,990
30*
3,020
Gaza Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians
4
0
4
Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians
39
490**
529
Israeli security force personnel killed by Palestinians
97
90**
187
Source: http://www.btselem.org/english/Statistics/Casualties.asp *7 other killed Palestinians were West Bank or Gaza, undetermined. **Includes killings by West Bank Palestinians
4. Who broke the truce?
9 December 2008, Statement of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights on Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Richard Falk:
http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf...B2?opendocument
"It should be noted that the situation worsened in recent days due to the breakdown of a truce between Hamas and Israel that had been observed for several months by both sides. The truce was maintained by Hamas despite the failure of Israel to fulfill its obligation under the agreement to improve the living conditions of the people of Gaza. The recent upsurge of violence occurred after an Israeli incursion that killed several alleged Palestinian militants within Gaza. It is a criminal violation of international law for elements of Hamas or anyone else to fire rockets at Israeli towns regardless of provocation, but such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel's imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the UN or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people."
Opposing viewpoint: Jonathan Spyer, columnist, The Guardian (UK), Dec. 29, 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...a-hamas-israel1 :
"A Hamas official [believed that] Hamas-controlled Gaza had far more leeway to act as it wished vis-a-vis Israel ... because the experience of the Lebanon war of 2006 meant Israel now feared confrontation, and would seek to accommodate, in return for a short period of renewed quiet. This perception led Hamas recklessly to permit an increase in rocket fireon the western Negev as the end of the lull [ceasefire] approached ... believ[ing] that, in so doing, it could force a renewed ceasefire with better terms upon a weakened Israel. The improved terms would include opened crossings and an extension of the ceasefire to include Hamas on the West Bank.
"The current Israeli campaign is therefore aimed ... at correcting th[at] perception [and] to demonstrate to Hamas that its own willingness to throw away the lives of its fighters in combat, and the lives of Palestinian civilians among whom it places ordnance, does not confer an unanswerable strategic advantage. With Hamas under pressure, the intention is that the rulers of Gaza will agree to a renewed ceasefire less advantageous to themselves."
5. The damage from Israel's ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip
Sara Roy in the latest London Review of Books http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/roy_01_.html
"On 5 November the Israeli government sealed all the ways into and out of Gaza. Food, medicine, fuel, parts for water and sanitation systems, fertiliser, plastic sheeting, phones ... are no longer getting through in sufficient quantities or at all.
"According to Oxfam ... in November ... an average of 4.6 [food] trucks per day entered the strip compared to an average of 123 in October ... and 564 in December 2005. [uNRWA, t]he UN Relief and Works Agency ... feeds approximately 750,000 people in Gaza, and requires 15 trucks of food daily to do so. Between 5 and 30 November, only 23 trucks arrived, around 6 per cent of the total needed ...
"The majority of commercial bakeries in Gaza ... have had to close because they have run out of cooking gas. People are using any fuel they can find to cook with. ... Shortages of gas and animal feed have forced commercial [poultry] producers to smother hundreds of thousands of chicks. By April, according to the FAO, there will be no poultry there at all: 70 per cent of Gazans rely on chicken as a major source of protein....
"Banks, suffering from Israeli restrictions on the transfer of banknotes into the territory were forced to close on 4 December. ... UNRWA suspended its cash assistance programme to the most needy. It also ceased production of textbooks because there is no paper, ink or glue in Gaza. This will affect 200,000 students returning to school in the new year. ...
"On 13 November production at Gaza's only power station was suspended and the turbines shut down because it had run out of industrial diesel. ... About a hundred spare parts ordered for the turbines have been sitting in the port of Ashdod in Israel for the last eight months, waiting for the Israeli authorities to let them through customs. Now Israel has started to auction these parts because they have been in customs for more than 45 days....
"By mid-December Gaza City and the north of Gaza had access to water only six hours every three days.
"How can keeping food and medicine from the people of Gaza protect the people of Israel? How can the impoverishment and suffering of Gaza's children more than 50 per cent of the population benefit anyone? International law as well as human decency demands their protection."
Chris Hedges, Pulitzer-winning former New York Times reporter, Dec. 15, 2008:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200812...ainst_humanity/
"Israel's siege [long-term closure] of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem's refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw. ...
"Gaza now spends 12 hours a day without power, which can be a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. There are few drugs and little medicine, including no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. Hospitals have generators but often lack fuel. Medical equipment, including one of Gaza's three CT scanners, has been destroyed by power surges and fluctuations. Medical staff cannot control the temperature of incubators for newborns. And Israel has revoked most exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have died. Of the 230 Gazans estimated to have died last year because they were denied proper medical care, several spent their final hours at Israeli crossing points where they were refused entry into Israel. The statistics gathered on childrenhalf of Gaza's population is under the age of 17are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth..."
Dec. 9, 2008, Statement of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights on Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Richard Falk:
"Israel maintains its Gaza siege in its full fury, allowing only barely enough food and fuel to enter to stave off mass famine and disease. Such a policy of collective punishment, initiated by Israel to punish Gazans for political developments within the Gaza strip, constitutes a continuing flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
"... Some governments of the world are complicit by continuing their support politically and economically for Israel's punitive approach. ... 'This is a humanitarian crisis deliberately imposed by political actors.'"
6. Are the Israeli airstrikes a proportionate reaction?
Commentary, "The neighborhood bully strikes again" by Gideon Levy, columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050459.html :
"On July 16, 2006, four days after the start of the Second Lebanon War, I wrote: 'Every neighborhood has one, a loud-mouthed bully who shouldn't be provoked into anger... Not that the bully's not right - someone did harm him. But the reaction, what a reaction!' Two and a half years later, these words repeat themselves, to our horror, with chilling precision. Within the span of a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, the [israeli Defense Forces] sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years .... Israel's violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom. ... In its foolishness, Hamas brought this on itself and on its people, but this does not excuse Israel's overreaction."
7. Is it impossible to negotiate with Hamas?
Gideon Levy of Haaretz, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050459.html :
"Israel did not exhaust the diplomatic processes before embarking yesterday on another dreadful campaign of killing and ruin. The Qassams that rained down on the communities near Gaza turned intolerable, even though they did not sow death. But the response to them needs to be fundamentally different: diplomatic efforts to restore the cease-fire - the same one that was initially breached, one should remember, by Israel when it unnecessarily bombed a tunnel - and then, if those efforts fail,a measured, gradual military response."
Tom Segev, another columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "Trying to 'teach Hamas a lesson' is fundamentally wrong," Dec. 29, 2008, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050706.html :
"Hamas is not a terrorist organization holding Gaza residents hostage: It is a religious nationalist movement, and a majority of Gaza residents believe in its path. ...
"Most dangerous of all is the cliche that there is no one to talk to. That has never been true. There are even ways to talk with Hamas, and Israel has something to offer the organization. Ending the siege of Gaza and allowing freedom of movement between Gaza and the West Bank could rehabilitate life in the Strip."
8. Will the airstrikes bring Israel peace?
Jonathan Spyer, the Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...a-hamas-israel1 :
[Maybe, If Israel avoids a protracted ground war, and if Egypt keeps its border with Gaza shut.] "Success in war is partly measured by forcing your enemy to fight the war you want him to fight, rather than the war he wants to fight. ... With Hamas sealed in, the intention is that the rulers of Gaza will be brought to a point of acceding to Israel's terms. This will be achieved, it is hoped, without the need for an all-out invasion of Gaza, although some limited ground action remains a possibility. Seen in larger geopolitical terms, this outcome would represent a significant victory for pro-western states in the region. And a corresponding setback for the regional alliance led by Iran of which Hamas-controlled Gaza forms a part."
Columnist Gideon Levy of Haaretz, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050459.html :
[No.] "... [W]e are dealing with a wretched, battered strip of land, most of whose population consists of the children of refugees who have endured inhumane tribulations. For two and a half years, they have been caged and ostracized by the whole world. The line of thinking that states that through war we will gain new allies in the Strip; that abusing the population and killing its sons will sear this into their consciousness; and that a military operation would suffice in toppling an entrenched regime and thus replace it with another one friendlier to us is no more than lunacy.
"Hezbollah was not weakened as a result of the Second Lebanon War; to the contrary. Hamas will not be weakened due to the Gaza war; to the contrary. In a short time, after the parade of corpses and wounded ends, we will arrive at a fresh cease-fire, as occurred after Lebanon, exactly like the one that could have been forged without this superfluous war."
Chris Hedges, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200812...ainst_humanity/ :
[No.] "The use of terror and hunger to break a hostile population is one of the oldest forms of warfare. I watched the Bosnian Serbs employ the same tactic in Sarajevo. Those who orchestrate such sieges do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said they wanted to be a 'martyr'?"
Tom Segev, Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050706.html :
"Israel is striking at the Palestinians to 'teach them a lesson.' That is a basic assumption that has accompanied the Zionist enterprise since its inception: We are the representatives of progress and enlightenment, sophisticated rationality and morality, while the Arabs are a primitive, violent rabble, ignorant children who must be educated and taught wisdom - via, of course, the carrot-and-stick method, just as the drover does with his donkey.
"The bombing of Gaza is also supposed to 'liquidate the Hamas regime,' in line with another assumption ... that it is possible to impose a 'moderate' leadership on the Palestinians, one that will abandon their national aspirations...
"Israel has also always believed that causing suffering to Palestinian civilians would make them rebel against their national leaders. This assumption has proven wrong over and over. ... [T]he Gaza Strip [has] been subjected to a lengthy siege that destroyed an entire generation's chances of living lives worth living.
"n the Land of Israel, no military operation has ever advanced dialogue with the Palestinians."
9. How can I act?
From Jewish Voices for Peace, http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/publish...tsoutgaza.shtml :
Donate to the Palestinian Medical Relief Society Clinic.
Send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper.
Sign a ceasefire petition initiated by Palestinians and Israelis who have jointly demonstrated against the siege of Gaza.
Contact the White House at +1-202-456-1111 or comments@whitehouse.gov. Contact the U.S. State Department at +1-202-647-6575. Contact your representative and senators in Congress at +1-202-224-3121.