Diplomacy of Madness: Baal Habayit Histageya
By Mustafa Khan
24 April, 2009
Countercurrents.org
The second week of April 2009 was very crucial in international diplomacy as far as the United States is concerned and its so called “war on terror”. The arena was of course Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was nowhere but here that the US should have been working all the time. But President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair had taken the world for a ride when they ordered invasion of Iraq in the name of fighting terror. That changed the focus away from the real epicenter of terrorism. The shift to Iraq might have been for two reasons, oil and/or Israeli interest in the Middle East. Wrecking one more forward Arab country would serve both the interests. In fact it was simply not connected in any way with the 9/11 as such. It may have been oil, after all. There was also tacit belief that the United States was complicit in genocide in certain places and yet it would next day appear in the UN speaking against genocide. In other words the US and its ally Israel would carry on their genocidal policy in some way or another while the world is concerned with the political upheavals elsewhere. This is what Samantha Power also held but had to leave the Obama election campaign because of her frank opinion about Hillary Clinton.
Since then the US has again figured in the context of genocide in a report of the Amnesty International. A full week before Israel again invaded Gaza on 27th December, George W Bush sanctioned a parting gift of 14, 000 tons of military ammunition including phosphorus filled in 989 containers. The German chartered ship Wehr Elbe sailed from the US on December 20, 2008. The Greek protestors against the Gaza invasion did not allow it to dock in the Greek port and so it straightway went to the Israeli port of Ashdod forty km from Gaza and finished unloading on March 22. President Barack Obama was in office for two months during which he could have halted the delivery but he did nothing because he could do nothing, thanks to the stranglehold of the Jewish lobby. Therefore the contention of Samantha Power proved to be valid. If genocide is “a problem from hell” the Gazans have had it.
It was one of the major grouses for which Mohammad Atta and his fellow fedayeen struck on 9/11. Instead of going full steam against al Qaeda based in Afghanistan the Bush administration diverted their war efforts against Iraq and the result is there for anyone to see. Obama got a fresh mandate to end the war in Iraq. He has now declared a time limit for withdrawal but is also anxious to find out exit strategy from Afghanistan and seems to be embroiled in what has happened in Pakistan during his early days in office. In the meantime he has also espoused the cause of repairing relations with Muslim countries around the globe. Equally worrisome at the same time is the economic meltdown in the US.
Gaza mocks at the failure of the US policy both in terms of fighting terror and genocide. What happened in Gaza was nothing but that. But what is grueling is that it was the US government which provided Israel with weapons and logistical support to carry on the military operation undeterred by what the consequences would be. Against the smokescreen of either the Bush administration ordering a surgical strike against Iranian nuclear plant in its last months in office or letting Israel do it, the US seems to have colluded with its ally for the Gaza aggression. Twenty four days before the new president is inducted the Israelis started their onslaught on a Saturday [their Sabbath day] when the streets of Gaza were ripe for maximum casualty and halted just two days before he assumes office. This shrewd preplanning cannot be without actual connivance of the US establishment. The complicity in all the Israeli action of the US is universally acknowledged despite the claptrap of the self righteous and self justifying attitude of the Israelis and the ‘understanding’ the US administrations show usually chorused after every aggression.
That the Israelis are bent on genocide is illustrated on daily basis yet the US government does not feel any remorse on how its faithful ally behaves. On
Friday April 17 2009 Besham Ibrahim was brutally killed by the IDF. He was part of a peaceful demonstration by unarmed civilians at the borders. He shouted that they were unarmed. The Israeli soldier shot a tear gas canister right into his chest leading to his death. The soldier asked him if he wanted more shooting. There was no stone throwing at the time. This is all caught on camera.
Gaza consisting of eight refugee camps populated by 1.5 million Palestinians displaced from their land of birth through the merciless creation of the Jewish state of Israel still steals the limelight of the world attention. However the world seems even now to be helpless to redress wrongs done to Palestinians in the past, present and the continuing the same into the future.
Although the Palestinians are more secular than their fellow Muslims around the world but they are clubbed together in the amorphous entity of “the other.” The focus on the Talibans and other extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan and their violence is exaggerated to the extent that that crowds out the serious violation of human rights in places like Gaza. Even the Israeli soldiers have been seeped through this undeniable truth and hence they have the slogan “the boss has lost it.” It is mad to kill civilians on such a large scale and it seems also mad to keep on firing rockets into the air when they actually do not damage anything or kill anybody and yet the retribution of it is so disastrous. And reports of people like Lorenzo Cremonesi that nothing really happened in Gaza are the yowl of the mad.
What more of it than George Mitchell visiting the Middle East three times without setting foot in Gaza and Hillary Clinton the new Secretary of State articulating the inarticulate taciturnity of her boss on the issue, Richard Holbrook the diplomat traveling in the army jet of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff Mullen who acts out more diplomatic maneuvers than the diplomat himself.
The most interesting part of all this would be if the Israelis go the whole hog and make full invasion of the Gaza strip every time a rocket is fired from there. If they retaliate with comprehensive invasion and reoccupation of Gaza everytime a Qassem is fire at them they would be really rational and their act based on ratiocination.
Mustafa Khan
Malegaon, Maharashtra
http://commonalty.blogspot.com/
