Israel Brutalizes Palestine As No One Cares
by Charles Coughlin
Don’t hold your breath waiting for our polticians or president to strongly condemn the wholesale massive strike launched by the Israelis over the last few days. You’ll sooner turn blue than hear anyone in the Bush regime chastise Israel for over-reacting.
Palestinian radicals apparently kidnapped an Israeli soldier in an effort to get an exchange for Palestinian women and children in Israeli prisons. The rational, sane thing for the Israelis would have been to admit that the Palestinians got the edge on them for once and trade the prisoners for the Israeli. They could have done this quietly and never admitted that they made a “trade.” Not only did the Israelis refuse a rational low-key approach, they launched what can only be described as a massive miltary strike against Palestine. Three major bridges and an electric power station were destroyed in an attempt to punish Palestinians as a whole. It is supposed to be “illegal” to destroy civilian infrastructure during a war, but Israeli has accumulated a long list of UN resolutions against it, despite fawning support from the US government.
We have endlessly heard tough-talking neocons saying “We won’t make deals with terrorists.” But the truth is everyone does. To not make a deal with terrorists (or rebels) will often condemn captured soldiers to death. Perhaps George Bush is too cheap to pay ransom for the occasional soldier who gets captured. After all, the death of the captured soldier may increase support for the war so what does Bush care about the soldier’s life? The Palestinians have had most of their country stolen from them and are resorting to “terrorism” to get it back (or to prevent more of it being stolen). The American patriots who dumped British tea into Boston Harbor were probably considered “terrorists” by the original oppressive King George.
One news article reports “The motives behind the invasion of Gaza comprise more than just securing the release of a kidnapped Israeli soldier… Ignoring international — including American — calls for a diplomatic solution to the latest Israeli- Palestinian crisis following the abduction of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian guerillas earlier this week, dozens of Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers rolled into Gaza before dawn Wednesday. At the time of going to press the Israeli army had penetrated several kilometres into southern Gaza and taken over the former Gaza airport, thoroughly bulldozed and destroyed by the Israeli army long before last year’s redeployment from the Strip. Backed with armored vehicles and tanks, Israeli soldiers were also deployed in northern Gaza, training their guns towards Beit Hanon and Beit Lahya. The invasion was preceded by the Israeli air force’s bombing of three bridges in central Gaza, originally built through a grant from the European movement.”
The same article continues “The operation, dubbed ‘Summer Rain’, was launched after Palestinian guerillas refused to release an Israeli soldier captured during a daring operation against an Israeli army outpost inside Israeli territory, not far from the Israeli border settlement of Karen Shalom. Two Israeli soldiers and two guerillas were killed in the lightening attack. But what has infuriated the Israeli political and military establishment most is the abduction of the soldier, a 19-year-old corporal, the son of a French immigrant, by the remaining six guerillas who took him into Gaza, hoping to swap him for Palestinian children and women interned in Israeli jails and detention camps.”