TRAGEDY OF GAZA IS UNPARALLELED IN ITS DIVISIVENESS OF HUMANITY: The Gaza strip is 1.4 million people. Approximately half males, and half females, and a large number of them youths and children. The world does not seem to understand, nor does it seem capable yet, of understanding and entering into an honest, fact based, discussion and resolution of the situation in Gaza. The media continues to be full of lies and deceptions.
Israel could have made peace with Palestine, by improving the conditions of life for Palestinians, ending its provocations. Nevertheless, the hardness of heart there, is such that there is a failure to grant even a semblance of humanity to the targets of the Israeli attack. Dehumanization of the target is a consistent and prevalent tactic of the brutalities of war. It largely tends to determine the means and effects of military action. Israel has chosen to continue to dehumanize, deprive, and now to blatantly and indiscriminately to kill and destroy. Not only to destroy, but to destroy a region where infrastructure is poor at best, and the destruction is so much more deadly than it would be in most anywhere else. We can easily comprehend now how any dialogue for peace has become “empty words”, drowned out by violent actions. There are those who will deem Israel’s assault on Gaza as unforgivable and irreconcilable. Even though numbers of casualties are comparatively small (only thousands as of yet), in comparison to other conflicts, the tragedy has no political parallel in recent history. It decisively puts one religion completely against another in deadly and total, essentially irrevocable, confrontation. We must remember that casualties will rise rapidly as the action progresses and even if it stops immediately. Lack of infrastructure and the poverty of the people are factors in the severity of illness and death that inevitably follow. It is very doubtful that international organizations can mobilize effective and rapid enough response to save tens of thousands who will likely suffer and die as the secondary and tertiary effects of conflict begin to take hold over the region. First the wounded, then the general population due to disease, without even mentioning the severity of psychological trauma. We must remember that muslims gained control of the area in 637 AD, under Amr-ibn-al-s, when a Byzantine garrison and the Jewish community in Gaza city, defended against a muslim attack. We must remember that the great grandfather of the muslim Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) is believed buried there, where a mosque was built upon his grave. The significance of this is that there is reason to think that Israel has a covert agenda to push muslims out of Gaza, to regain it, back to the pre 637 condition of being a Jewish city. Of course it is not possible in any practical sense, but the motivation for pushing muslims out of the Gaza strip seems to have deep, very dark, roots in the history of the region. So too, the Byzantine garrison seems to connect with Europe and America in a way that is unsettling, as to what motivates the irrational support for Israel’s continued provocations and attack. History tends to cause such strange recurrences of the same. It rarely forgets, but subsequent generations follow rather blindly and unquestioningly where that history tends to lead them. Usually it leads to tragedy. Israel had captured control of Gaza after 1967, when the six day war took place. It was 1987 when the first Intifada occurred. Muslim organized resistance to Jewish occupation. The Jewish “garrison” withdrew in 2005. It had conceded Jericho, on the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority in 1994. What is noteworthy is that there is no corridor provided for connection between Gaza and the West Bank. Israel controls the geography between the two, cutting off and isolating one from the other. More than half of the extremely dense population of Gaza is refugees. That is more than half a million people. 95% of the commerce and industries of Gaza were closed down by Israeli closure of Gaza and the Gaza strip. 75% of the people of Gaza are destitute, and totally dependent upon charity for survival. Israel keeps interfering with and cutting off that provision of necessities. After 2005 muslims from Gaza were no longer permitted to work in Israel, worsening the desparate situation. Neither could they cross readily to the West Bank to connect with their own Palestinian people. Gaza became a concentration camp of destitute refugees, denied any possible hope for economic development or even the gaining of the means for survival. Prisoners of Israel and international charity from international relief organizations. We must remember that for every 1 dead there are approximately ten or more injured. So 400 dead means 4000 wounded. Most with no hope for any real and effective medical care. We know that Israel counts nearly every adult male as being a combatant. That is the way it potentially is with the Israeli army and that is the way it is judged as being in regard to Gaza. No doubt some women are counted as combatants also. The Israeli army does include women. The same standards are applied to counting the casualties on the other side as one’s own. So we have a distortion of casualty statistics. The number of non combatants killed and wounded is greatly distorted by how military membership in the region is accounted. There are many more civilian, non combatant,. casualties than Israel is willing to admit. Similarly there are more children, women, the old and infirm, and non combatant males in jeopardy from the action, if not already wounded and in danger of dying. Once we understand the severity of the growing toll of casualties, and the outright lies surrounding the statistics, we begin to understand why prior avenues of diplomacy will not suffice. The world community is now being measured by nearly one half of its membership, as to where it stands in relation to the tragedy. It is considered a test of that community and its values that has and will have a resounding echo in all of eternity. We must remember that while the conflict is ongoing most of 1.4 million people have no supplies of necessities. Aid organizations do not deliver and cannot usually deliver into a region under aggressive military attack. This fact is part of Israel’s strategy against the entire population of Gaza. 1.4 million are under deadly medieval style siege. If any sense of real humanity still exists in this world then it must act decisively and immediately in regard to the tragedy of the Gaza strip and Gaza City. Civilization cannot really survive the inhumanity that continues to occur in that region of our troubled world. Humanity as a whole risks being plunged into a despair of nothing left other than destruction, violence and deaths, when it fails to enforce reasonable peace and to remedy the deprivations and oppressions that provoked and brought about the type of illegal, unacceptable, action that is now devastating a people and a part of our world that was already on the brink of total annihilation by destitution, deprivation, and being kept in constant terror. Robert Morpheal --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "World-thread" group. To post to this group, send email to world-thread@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to world-thread+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/world-thread?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
