Last Friday, the U.S. Senate voted support for Israel to attack Gaza. S. Res. 10 says “A resolution recognizing the right of Israel to defend itself against attacks from Gaza and reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel in its battle with Hamas, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.” Virtually the same resolution passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Senate resolution passed with 31 cosponsors and a unanimous vote. “Jan 8, 2009: Submitted in the Senate, considered, and agreed to without amendment and with a preamble by Unanimous Consent.” (Entire vote text: S. Res. 10, 11th Congress)
They sure didn’t ‘consider’ that for long. Harry Reid and a few others gave lofty speeches of eternal loyalty to Israel, as did those in Congress (as you can see in the video above). The special relationship and the other unspoken reasons for supporting our military outpost in the Middle East known as Israel were accepted without apparent debate or question. People in Congress must wake up in the morning believing this stuff is part of the Constitution. (Fake) Article 2, section 41b. of the Constitution: “Israel is our special ally. Defend them at all costs, even risking the security of the U.S., even if they target civilians and commit war crimes. ” Some members of our House did abstain from voting from their version of the bill (H.Res. 34) and five even had the cojones to vote Nay — Maxine Waters, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, and two others.
Forgetting for a moment that slaughtering people does not advance any peace process, what does this resolution say to the world? It says that our government feels that killing Palestinians in Gaza is perfectly OK, with the excuse that poor Israel is just “defending itself”. It tells the world our Congress is either ignorant or hoping the public is. It shows them to be hopelessly biased for whatever horrible thing Israel wants to do next. After all, we support Israel “unconditionally”. (Think of the implications of that. ) Congress obviously feels that the mention of peace at the end of it lets them off the hook, in their minds. It’s obvious to many people that this war, just now escalating into full-blown urban warfare as “Phase III”, is not meant to advance peace, but kill more people.
For anyone in Congress who may be reading this, let’s look at a simple chronology of events. This was the situation in early 2008:
Gaza’s rocket attacks on Israel in 2008 (according to a report on CNN International last Friday):
January 2008 –241
February –257
March–196
April–145
. . . .and then came the six-month cease fire. That changed things. The rocket attacks went down to one in September and one in October. On November 4th, Israel decided to kill a few militants, to further advance peace, of course. (See “Hamas fires rockets after Israel kills six in Gaza“). Six people were killed. Israel ended the cease fire with it’s attacks. Killing people will do that. So here are the rocket attacks from Hamas at the end of 2008:
September — 1
October — 1
November– 125
. . . . then Israel starts all-out war;
December–361 rocket attacks.
There seems to be a direct corollary between Israel’s actions that broke the ceasefire and number of rockets fired from Gaza. Eureka, I think we have rediscovered cause and effect! According to a few outspoken ICRC spokespeople, Israel has breached many international laws and committed war crimes since their initial attacks on November 4th (and before that, as many people know). From :
“So why don’t our leaders level with us about the true aim of this incursion? said Akiva Elder in Tel Aviv’s Ha’artetz. Defense Minister Ehud Barak says he was forced to send troops into Gaza this week because all other efforts to halt the rain of rockets into Israel had failed. But Barak had ignored a cease-fire offer from Hamas, and he told the soldeirs that their mission was to “dismantle the civil infrastructure of the only organization challenging the rule of Mahmoud Abbas,” the Palestinian president.
In other words, Barak wants to wipe out Hamas so he can deal with Abbas’ more moderate Fatah faction. But the strategy is fatally flawed. Even if Hamas should somehow be destroyed, Gaza will remain a haven for terrorists. As civilian casualties mount, “the hatred Israel is sowing in the territories” will fuel extremism for years to come.”
One ray of light in this matter is not our knee-jerk Israel/War supporting Congress, but getting a new president. Will it help? Former President Jimmy Carter told CNN International last week that a day before the 5-president meeting involving Obama, Carter and Obama spent over an hour meeting. He said they spent over half that time discussing the Middle East, and though he was not going to tell us what was discussed, the suggestion was that they talked about Palestine and Israel. For historical reference, Carter threw in the fact that he went to Jerusalem for talks and Hamas was willing to stop the rockets months ago, but it wanted more aid. Their people were starving. They wanted, according to Carter, “food and water”. Israel said no way–they would be willing to go back to only 15% of previous food aid, and that just wasn’t going to work out for Gazans. So, the people of Gaza needed the tunnels, not only for weapons but for the basics of life. Food, water and medicine. If those things had been provided, Carter said, the attacks would have been completely unnecessary.
The best part of what Carter said was that after his talks with Obama he got assurances that Obama was going to be a president who addresses peace in the Middle East right away. Obama will not wait like Bush and Clinton did until their last year in office to attempt to get really involved, he will pursue peace right away. I hope Carter is right about that.
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