Sacrifices To The Deities Of Geo-Politics
By Fazal M. Kamal
23 July, 2014
Countercurrents.org
“This makes you wonder what kind of world we are living in!” exclaimed an exasperated and astounded Dutch relative of one of the victims of the Malaysia Airlines calamity. Given the extant circumstances, from Ukraine to Palestine, not to mention Syria, Iraq, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Nigeria and some others, many people would certainly like to wish that one day soon the entire population of the world would wake up and discover that it was only a nightmare. The reality, however, is that predators have been let loose across planet Earth, and as often happens, there’s precious little the powers that be can do to end the marauders on a dime.
If Russia is culpable because of the vicious actions of Ukrainian separatists who brought down flight MH17 killing almost 300 people, the United States must also accept complicity in the deaths of thousands of Palestinians as Israel nonchalantly rained down an assortment of ammunitions on the unarmed and helpless Gazans who have been corralled into a sliver of land after most of them were driven out of their homes. Neither Russia nor Israel appears to have any regard for national sovereignty or territorial integrity of countries. Evidently, in the stratospheric environment of geo-politics the demise of some thousands or even hundreds of thousands is merely the necessary sacrifice to the malevolent deities of power.
Here’s a piece of information that may partly explain the sordid violence unleashed on Gaza: “The attack on Gaza comes by Saudi Royal Appointment. This royal warrant is nothing less than an open secret in Israel, and both former and serving defense officials are relaxed when they talk about it. Former Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz surprised the presenter on Channel 10 by saying Israel had to specify a role for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the demilitarization of Hamas. Asked what he meant by that, he added that Saudi and Emirati funds should be used to rebuild Gaza after Hamas had been defanged.” (David Hearst, Middle East Eye)
Hearst goes on to quote Amos Gilad, the director of the Israeli defense ministry's policy and political-military relations department: "Everything is underground, nothing is public. But our security cooperation with Egypt and the Gulf states is unique. This is the best period of security and diplomatic relations with the Arab." David Hearst adds: “Mossad and Saudi intelligence officials meet regularly: The two sides conferred when the former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi was about to be deposed in Egypt and they are hand in glove on Iran, both in preparing for an Israel strike over Saudi airspace and in sabotaging the existing nuclear program. There has even been a well sourced claim that the Saudis are financing most of Israel's very expensive campaign against Iran.”
Hearst tellingly concludes his commentary by stating, “Peace would indeed be welcome to everyone, not least Gaza at the moment. The means by which Israel's allies in Saudi Arabia and Egypt are going about achieving it, by encouraging Israel to deal Hamas a crippling blow, calls into question what is really going on here. …This Saudi-Israeli alliance is forged in blood, Palestinian blood….” Venting a different sentiment Azza Sami of the semi-official Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, commenting on the Israeli massacre of Palestinians said, "Thank you Netanyahu and may God give us more [people] like you to destroy Hamas!" Obviously no further clarification is required about the comment made earlier in this article that the deaths of thousands are the necessary sacrifice to the deities in the world of power and geo-political influence. For pragmatic world leaders terms like conscience, morality, ethics or even humanity are comprehensively devoid of any meaning or relevance.
Meanwhile though, some positive developments appear to have been made regarding possible inquiry into the shooting down of the Malaysian aircraft with promises of access of the investigators to the site of the catastrophe as well as to the bodies of the victims and other materials relevant to the investigation. And while President Obama, presently ensnared in the tentacles of volatile situations in various parts of the globe, has been pressing for a ceasefire in Palestine, the complications in that arena (partly underlined in David Hearst’s report above) make it unlikely that a cessation of Israeli homicidal hostilities is imminent. In any case the ground reality is that hundreds of Palestinians are already dead, thousands have been wounded and dozens of homes have been destroyed while many thousands have been rendered homeless, thanks to the courage of Israeli soldiers who have been exhibiting their bravura for decades by maiming and killing rock-throwing young people whose families have lost relatives and/or homes to Israeli occupation.
In the whole process at least two fundamental elements are ignored. Due to the persistent extermination of Palestinians the probability of radicalization of the youth in the occupied territories keeps growing. Definitely, this possibility isn’t unknown to those who are operating in that area, either in plain view or from behind the drapes. On the other side there’s increasing brutalization of large segments of the Israeli population as hatred for the repressed people continues to increase. In a report in the Guardian Harriet Sherwood writes, “As the sun begins to sink over the Mediterranean, groups of Israelis gather each evening on hilltops close to the Gaza border to cheer, whoop and whistle as bombs rain down on people in a warzone hell a few miles away. Old sofas, garden chairs, battered car seats and upturned crates provide seating for the spectators. On one hilltop, a swing has been attached to the branches of a pine tree, allowing its occupant to sway gently in the breeze. Some bring bottles of beer or soft drinks and snacks.”
She adds, “On Saturday, a group of men huddle around a shisha pipe. Nearly all hold up smartphones to record the explosions or to pose grinning, perhaps with thumbs up, for selfies against a backdrop of black smoke.…An atmosphere of an anticipatory excitement grows as dusk falls, in the expectation that Hamas militants will increase rocket fire after breaking their Ramadan fast, and the Israeli military will respond with force. The thud of shellfire, flash of an explosion and pall of smoke are greeted with exclamations of approval. ‘What a beauty,’ says one appreciative spectator.” If this isn’t stomach churning, how else can it described? That ordinary citizens of a country whose leaders have persistently and incrementally enhanced its people’s animosity against the very people they have shooed away from their hearth should now be cheering the deaths of a traumatized people cannot be surprising anymore; but it certainly should be a matter of profound disquiet.
In the ultimate analysis, as Robert Fisk writes in The Independent, “It’s about land. The Israelis of Sederot are coming under rocket fire from the Palestinians of Gaza and now the Palestinians are getting their comeuppance. Sure. But wait, how come all those Palestinians---all 1.5 million---are crammed into Gaza in the first place? Well, their families once lived, didn’t they, in what is now called Israel? And got chucked out – or fled for their lives – when the Israeli state was created…. [T]he people who lived in Sederot in early 1948 were not Israelis, but Palestinian Arabs. Their village was called Huj. Nor were they enemies of Israel. Two years earlier, these same Arabs had actually hidden Jewish Haganah fighters from the British Army. But when the Israeli army turned up at Huj on 31 May 1948, they expelled all the Arab villagers---to the Gaza Strip! … David Ben Gurion (Israel’s first Prime Minister) called it an ‘unjust and unjustified action’….The Palestinians of Huj were never allowed back. And today, well over 6,000 descendants of the Palestinians from Huj---now Sederot---live in the squalor of Gaza, among the ‘terrorists’ Israel is claiming to destroy and who are shooting at what was Huj. Interesting story.”
The writer has been a media professional, in print and online newspapers as editor and commentator, and in public affairs, for over forty years.
Comments are moderated