Ralph Nadar: The Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering That Candidates and Congress Ignore
Whenever America enters it's election cycle it's always interesting to watch how matters which interest the public are rarely allowed to be on the agenda as the right wing media machine focuses on such trite matters as whether or not John McCain is "a flip flopper" or whether or not "the boring Al Gore" really claimed that he invented "the internets."
On the subject of Israel and the US's relationship with the rest of the Middle East there is always a predictable silence, punctured only by the day - and there is always one such day in every election cycle - when the candidates fall over each other in proving how pro-Israeli they are.
What there never is, Heaven forfend, is any genuine discussion about US foreign policy regarding the Middle East and whether the US's habit of blindly following the Likud line at all times, helps or hinders their relationships with other nations.
That discussion is so toxic that it simply never happens.
Which is why Ralph Nadar's entry into the election promises at least to raise issues which the rest of the candidates will spend all their time ignoring.
He writes today in Counter Punch of the misery being inflicted on the people of Gaza:
According to The Nation magazine, the great Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, reports that the primitive rockets from Gaza, have taken thirteen Israeli lives in the past four years, while Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the occupied territories in the past two years alone. Almost half of them were civilians, including some 200 children.There's nothing new in any of this, readers of this blog have been aware of what's going on in Gaza for a very long time; what's astonishing is that this argument has been brought up by a presidential nominee during an election cycle.
The Israeli government is barring most of the trucks from entering Gaza to feed the nearly one million Palestinians depending on international relief, from groups such as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The loss of life from crumbling health care facilities, disastrous electricity cutoffs, gross malnutrition and contaminated drinking water from broken public water systems does not get totaled. These are the children and their civilian adult relatives who expire in a silent violence of suffering that 98 percent of Congress avoids mentioning while extending billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel annually. UNRWA says “we are seeing evidence of the stunting of children, their growth is slowing.” Cancer patients are deprived of their chemotherapy, kidney patients are cut off from dialysis treatments and premature babies cannot receive blood-clotting medications.
The misery, mortality and morbidity worsens day by day. Here is how the commissioner-general of UNRWA sums it up, “Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and-some would say-encouragement of the international community.”
Amidst the swirl of hard-liners on both sides and in both Democratic and Republican parties, consider the latest poll (February 27, 2008) of Israelis in the highly respected newspaper—Haaretz: “Sixty-four percent of Israelis say the government must hold direct talks with the Hamas government in Gaza toward a cease-fire and the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit. Less that one-third (28 percent) still opposes such talks. An increasing number of public figures, including senior officers in the Israeli Defense Forces’ reserves have expressed similar positions on talks with Hamas.”
Watch how none of the other nominees will engage with him other than to state that "Israel has the right to defend herself" or some other tosh straight out of the Likud handbook. The fact that Gaza is being "intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution" is certainly not something which I expect any of the other candidates to spend any time at all on.
And they certainly, as they proclaim Hamas to the personification of evil, won't be lingering on this point:
Hamas, which was created with the support of Israel and the U.S. government years ago to counter the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), has repeatedly offered cease-fire proposals. The Israeli prime minister rejected them, notwithstanding “a growing number of politicians and security offices who are calling for Israel to accept a cease-fire,” according to Middle East specialist, professor Steve Niva.The fact that Hamas is an Israeli invention has been airbrushed from the US narrative of the Middle East just as surely as any offer of a ceasefire is dismissed out of hand.
The AIPAC view of the Middle East is the only currency on offer during an American election cycle, despite the fact that 64% of Israelis - you know, the people that the missiles are actually falling on - want their government to negotiate with Hamas. Supporting Israel is apparently best defined by refusing to give the Israeli populace what they want. Just as supporting the troops means having a willingness to place them in maximum danger when no mortal threat exists to the nation.
It happens every four years in the US. Common sense and any genuine attempt to solve the modern world's longest military occupation - one that does more harm to the US's reputation than anything else - is simply swept from the table to be replaced by sloganeering and hand on heart pledges to protect the nation which is engaging in the longest illegal military occupation in modern history. It's as depressing as it is utterly predictable.
Nadar does well to raise the subject, but there's no way that any of the other candidates will join him in discussing anything which is considered so toxic.
They'll spend their time talking about Barack's oratory and whether or not he's manly enough for the Commander in Chief role. Heaven forfend that they should actually talk about making peace. Now that would be ridiculous....
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