U.S backed Israeli aggression on Gaza is self-defeating

By Talha Mujaddidi in Pakistan. Axis of Logic
Dec 30, 2008, 21:31

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In summer 2006 we saw Israeli forces pound South Lebanon under the pretext of destroying Hezbollah infrastructure and dislocating them from the area near Israeli border. That resulted in a stalemate after one month of fighting and resulted in hundreds of innocent civilian deaths in Lebanon. Now once again on the New Year’s Day of the Islamic (Lunar) calendar Israel attacked Gaza under the pretext of dismantling Hamas.

When Hamas was founded, it was seen as a threat to Yasser Arafat’s PLO. Over time PLO and its military wing Al-Fatah became proxies of U.S and Israel. When this happened people turned their attention towards Hamas. When elections were held in Palestine people voted for Hamas. As reported by Washington Post that Hamas claimed 76 of the 132 parliamentary seats in 2006. This was unacceptable to U.S and Israel. So now we have this horrific operation against Hamas.

Israel says that it is not against the people of Palestine but against Hamas but how does it expect that the Muslim world will buy this slogan? Maybe they don’t care about the Muslim world and why should they? When the corrupt leaders of the Muslim world remain muted at the Israeli atrocities in Gaza, why should the rest of the world be any different. The belligerent support of U.S for Israel has resulted in hatred for the U.S. throughout the Muslim world. Only the corrupt leaders of the Muslim world still maintain cozy feelings for the U.S leadership. Israel is a nation that was formed under the pretext of terrorist attacks against civilians. Irgun was a terrorist group that was founded by prominent Israeli leaders in 1930’s. According to John M. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of bestselling book ‘The Israel Lobby’:

“It was the infamous Irgun, a militant Zionist group, who in the late 1937 introduced into Palestine the now-familiar practice of placing bombs in buses and large crowds. Between 1944 and 1947, several Zionist organizations used terrorist attacks to drive the British from Palestine and took the lives of many innocent civilians along the way. Israeli terrorists also murdered the UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, because they opposed his proposal to internationalize Jerusalem.”

Israel has maintained its terrorist nature throughout its history, deliberately targeting civilians. The U.S, UN and the rest of the world is watching as the carnage unfolds in Gaza. The U.S bias towards Israel is dangerously ugly. Perhaps U.S should explain as to why it must sell F-16’s, gunship apache helicopters, and other sophisticated weaponry to a country that has used it repeatedly against unarmed civilians including women and children. Renowned British writer Tariq Ali thinks that this campaign is to make sure that elections is Israel are won by hardliners:

“The dead Palestinians are little more than election fodder in a cynical contest between the Right and the Far Right in Israel. Washington and its EU allies, perfectly aware that Gaza was about to be assaulted, as in the case of Lebanon a few years, sit back and watch.”

Why must Israel deliberately hit targets in densely populated area? In his essay, Jewish Terrorism, Ghali Hassan, writing for Axis of Logic addresses this question,

“In order to inflict terror and maximum civilian casualties, the Israeli attacks begun during traffic police graduation ceremony and just as thousands of Palestinian school children were coming home from schools. Vital civilian infrastructures, including hospitals, mosques, houses, schools and universities, including women dormitories have been destroyed.”

This is not new. This has been happening in Palestine for the past few decades. Israel can attack civilian populations in Lebanon, Gaza or other parts of Palestine because it knows that it can get away with it. The U.S got away with invading Iraq under the fake pretext of weapons of mass destruction. When President Bush goes on American media and tells the U.S. nation that the "Islamic extremists and terrorists" hate us because they hate our freedom; they hate our democracy; they hate our way of life; these statements are nothing but complete divergence from the ground realities. Ground reality is that the Muslim world is sick and tired of Anglo-American interference and military adventurism in their backyards. I mentioned in my last article that colonization and neo-colonization of the Muslim world has been going on for the past century. The real causes of terrorism are not the misleading slogans that CNN, BBC or Fox News uses freely in their headline news. Robert Pape, University of Chicago professor of political science correctly stated:

“Beneath the religious rhetoric with which (such terror) is perpetrated, it occurs largely in the service of secular aims. Suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation rather than a product of Islamic fundamentalism. Though it speaks of Americans as infidels, Al-Qaeda is less concerned with converting us to Islam than removing us from Arab and Muslim lands.”

As I have said before, U.S. support for Israel is seen as something evil in the Muslim world. Muslims around the world see helpless Palestinians getting bombed by U.S made F-16’s and other weaponry. These acts by Israel and U.S itself are the root cause of hatred against U.S and its allies in the Muslim world. The other biggest problem is that U.S government talks about bringing democracy to the Muslim world but at the same time it is happily supporting brutal dictators throughout the Muslim world. There are no backed Islamic countries where U.S has allowed free elections to take place. This might seem to be and exaggeration for some of the readers; nevertheles, it is a fact, the harsh reality. Stephen Kinzer’s book “Overthrown” is an eye opener for the people of U.S. and it should be mandatory text in public schools in the U.S. The U.S population needs to realize that constant wars by U.S, U.K, and Israel in Muslim world will only fuel more hatred and anger in the Muslim world against them. This is no way to successfully fight a war against terror. What the west is calling a "war on terror" is in reality, a war against Islam and Muslims.

If the U.S continues down this path, the time will soon come when people in different Muslim countries will revolt against their own corrupt governments, most of which are either dictators or kings. The last thing U.S will tolerate is a free and fair election in Islamic world because it will only bring hardliner nationalist parties into power who will neither allow the U.S to maintain military bases in their countries nor let IMF control their economies.

Read more essays by Talha Mujaddidi

Playing with Fire in Pakistan

From Musharraf to Zardari

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