An Alternate Witness

I haven't been so engaged in current events recently, but this recent development really excites me.

Living in Jordan, right along the flight path between Israel and Iran, I have been watching the developments between those two countries and the U.S. with a great deal of trepidation. While U.S. rhetoric has softened just enough during the Obama administration to keep me from real panic, I have still been worried about the future of this region.

That's why it's so exciting to me to see a third party, Turkey and Brazil, step in and take a mediating role. One a majority Muslim nation and traditional ally of Iran for centuries, the other a historical sympathizer to the Non-Aligned Movement of which Iran is a part, and both on the U.N. Security Council, these two countries are uniquely poised to appeal to Iran's political interests without making it look like Iran is bowing to the Great Satan.

As for Kinzer's claim that "Clinton, however, may not have been on the same political page as the White House," reflecting "Clinton's continuing isolation from the inner-circle of American foreign policymaking on crucial world issues," I don't see it that way at all. I think more than just Brazil and Turkey are playing "good cop, bad cop" as Kinzer suggests. That Sec. Clinton would come out publicly doubtful of Turkey and Brazil's chances of success, while Pres. Obama is encouraging Turkey behind the scenes, reflects a classic "good cop, bad cop" ploy on America's part, too, only in this case the U.S. is the bad cop, and Turkey and Brazil are the good cops. After all, the compromise that's been agreed to was first proposed by the U.S., but accepting the proposal from Muslim Turkey and Non-Aligned Brazil allows Iran to save just enough face to keep things relatively quiet on the domestic front. That can only be good for everyone.

There's good reason that this documentary has won so many awards. I wish I'd had this film to show to my students at nerd camp. I showed them "Iron Wall" and it was good, but this has a much larger scope, historically and geographically, and it's a powerful reminder of why we as Americans, perhaps more than anyone, can't ignore this issue:

I want to applaud National Public Radio (www.npr.org) for airing a series this week called Israel's Barrier. It reassures me once again that this is a news outlet truly interested in balanced coverage of both sides of the stories they cover. I remember a commentary in the Jordan Times back in 2006 criticizing NPR's coverage of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war as being biased in favor of Israelis. This was when I realized that most of NPR's anchors are Jews, proud to say so on air, but it's also when I recognized that many of their leading producers have Muslim names. About the same time, I also heard that NPR was the only American news agency not cutting their reporting staff in Iraq. I have since listened to NPR with a very critical ear, but I have to say, I think they come down pretty hard on Israel, while being quite critical of Hamas and the PLO as well. All in all, for Arab issues as well as other topics, I think NPR is doing a pretty good job of bringing balanced coverage of the Middle East to American listeners (tho, admittedly, to the kind of listeners who are already less likely to be afraid of "them A-raaabs!").

Israel's military condemned soldiers for wearing T-shirts of a pregnant woman in a rifle's cross-hairs with the slogan "1 Shot 2 Kills," and another of a gun-toting child with the words, "The smaller they are, the harder it is."

--Matti Friedman, Associated Press

I can't say that I'm surprised, and there are many reasons for my reaction. As I said over and over again in defense of American soldiers after the Abu Ghraib incident, in a war zone, a soldier has to learn how to de-humanize his enemy, or else he can't do what a soldier has to do in war. I have to think that this would be even more the case for a young Israeli soldier, who has to serve in the military regardless of his opinions on the IDF, unless he's willing to face a year of solitary confinement in jail. I'd like to say that I would, in that position, have the moral fortitude to be a refusenik, but the fact is that I'm not in that position, and I'll never know how I would respond. I do know that, despite my moral fortitude, I can be taken in and brainwashed as easily as the next guy, even if Rotary Youth Exchange brainwashing (not better, not worse, just different! peace one friendship at a time!) is pretty benign in comparison! What both Israelis and Palestinians have endured over the last 60 years is frankly beyond my comprehension, and I just know that it must make it that much easier for each side to demonize the other!

Nor am I saying that the bad taste in cartoons is one-sided, either! My pro-Israel friends will surely point out that

Hamas-controlled media consistently glorify attacks on Israelis, and cartoons in Palestinian newspapers frequently use anti-Semitic images of Jews as hook-nosed, black-hatted characters.

Hamas also mocked Israeli suffering, staging a play about its capture of an Israeli soldier in which it makes fun of the serviceman crying for his mother and father.

But in light of recent reporting by the United Nations, I find this kind of talk on Israel's part to be, at best, disingenuous, and at worse, pure hypocrisy:

On Monday, the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, defended his troops.

"I tell you that this is a moral and ideological army. I have no doubt that exceptional events will be dealt with," Ashkenazi told new recruits. Gaza "is a complex atmosphere that includes civilians, and we took every measure possible to reduce harm to the innocent."

Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups fire rockets from heavily populated areas, and Israel says Hamas is to blame for the civilian deaths because it leaves the military no choice but to attack them there.

U.N. human rights experts said Monday that Israeli soldiers used an 11-year-old Palestinian as a human shield during the Gaza offensive. The military ordered the boy on Jan. 15 to walk in front of soldiers being fired on in a Gaza neighborhood and enter buildings before them, said Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. secretary-general's envoy for protecting children in armed conflict.

Israeli army spokesman Capt. Elie Isaacson denied the military used human shields, saying "morals and high ethical standards are paramount" in the army. [all emphasis mine]

Reuters has provided more examples of UN claims as to how Israel violated human rights and international law in their Hannukah offensive last year:

In one [incident], [the Sri Lankan human rights lawyer] said, Israeli soldiers shot a father after ordering him out of his house and then opened fire into the room where the rest of the family was sheltering, wounding the mother and three brothers and killing a fourth.

My hat goes off, as well, to UN special rapporteur Richard Falk, who was banned from entering Gaza previous to the Hannukah offensive because of what Israel perceived as an anti-Semitic bias, but who continues to call for

an independent experts group to probe possible war crimes by Israel and Hamas. [He] also suggested that the U.N. Security Council set up an ad hoc criminal tribunal.

Waltz with Bashir is an animated Israeli docu-drama, nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2009 and winner of many other awards. On the surface, it is a film about a former IDF soldier's attemts to reconstruct his memories of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre in Beirut in 1982. Much to my surprise, however, it was actually the post-Modern pastiche of time that appealed to me most about this film. Generally speaking, I hate post-Modernism (even though it makes my Goucher Girls flinch when I say so), but this film used the techniques of post-Modernism to great effect. In particular, the juxtaposition of times and genres mimicked the way the mind recalls repressed memories in response to unexpected stimuli like an old song, the casual comment of a friend, or an image seen on the news.

As much as this is a film about the 1982 Lebanon-Israel War, I had a feeling very early on in the film that this was also about the 2006 Lebanon-Israel War. It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I feel like the 2006 War awakened in Israel some old wounds dating back to the 80s, and that it also energized the peace movement generally. I would like to think that this movie, Waltz With Bashir, reflects a shift in Israeli culture that is becoming increasingly aware of the toll that the endless conflict with its neighbors is having on the Israeli psyche.

But it's probably just wishful thinking from the eternal optimist!

It started with Taylor Mali. I wanted to go back and hear "Like Lilly Like Wilson Like," to relive that moment where he says,

And the eighth-grade mind is a beautiful thing;
Like a new-born baby's face, you can often see it
change before your very eyes.

I can't believe I'm saying this, Mr. Mali,
but I think I'd like to switch sides.

And I want to tell her to do more than just believe it,
but to enjoy it!
That changing your mind is one of the best ways
of finding out whether or not you still have one.
Or even that minds are like parachutes,
that it doesn't matter what you pack
them with so long as they open
at the right time.
O God, Lilly, I want to say
you make me feel like a teacher,
and who could ask to feel more than that?

Before I knew it, I was on YouTube, watching Taylor Mali pontificate on "Miracle Workers":



YouTube is addicting, it's no secret, and I got sucked in, watching Taylor Mali work his magic on the first episode of Def Poetry Jam with one of my favorite spoken word pieces, "What Teachers Make":



What can I say? I'm a teacher at heart! But once I was listening to Def Poetry, I was reminded of some of the more weighty poets that I love who have appeared on Def Poetry. I actually saw Amir Sulaiman for the first time at Indiana University - Bloomington at an event hosted as part of Muslim History Month by the Muslim Students Association, where he put 9/11 in perspective with "Danger":



But when it comes to putting 9/11 in perspective, no one has more lyrically expressed a perspective quite like hers better than Suheir Hammad in "First Writing Since":



Please, lose yourself in Def Poetry and other such spoken word on the Internet. I can spend hours listening to this kind of thing!

In these days of bloodshed, blockade and brutality, and in this time of happiness, honored promises and hope, I offer the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his 1964 Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeing to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sunctuary to those who would not accept segregation....

I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.

"And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid."

I still believe that we shall overcome.

Let us recall that it was his hope that drove Rev. King, his hope and that of those who believed him that ultimately triumphed over centuries of oppression, even genocide, of the black man, and his hope that allowed Barack Obama to be where he is today. Since the beginning of Senator Obama's campaign for president, the slogan "Audacity of Hope" was derided as an empty phrase meant to obscure a lack of focus, a dearth of policy. But we believed in him; he made us hopeful after 8 long years of secrecy and deception. If Dr. King could speak of hope in the face of all the violence that still faced the people whose champion he was, then we should be able to retain that audacity of hope that has inspired us thus far. President Obama is only in his first week of office; let's not judge him yet!

There's such a Catch-22 in all this conversation here in the Middle East about President Obama's character, intentions and potential actions. People are asking each other if President Obama really wants change in the Middle East, whether he really is the idealistic humanist democrat that his words portray him as, and how much the people who voted for him really care about his Middle East policy. I am also hearing and reading a lot of debate as to whether President Obama will rise above domestic concerns (read: the economy) and American self-interest (read: AIPAC) to engage his administration in the politics of the Middle East, if so, will the Congress support or impede him in such an endeavor, and can the United States even accomplish the peace, freedoms and prosperity that Arabs hope Obama will bring to their region. Many people here are optimistic, like the newest Jordanian blogger I'm following, The Arab Observer. Others are less trusting of rhetoric, including my friend Kinzi and many who responded to the Observer's opinion.

There's certainly plenty of debate as to how much power the American government has over the issue of Israel/Palestine, or of democratic and human rights reform anywhere in the region. Certainly the United States pumps plenty of money into controversial regimes in the region, starting with Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, but definitely not ending there! If America cut off the tap, would that weaken oppressive regimes enough to be overthrown by the will of the people? If so, would the United States extend the same humanitarian aid to a regime that had overthrown America's former allies?

There's no doubt that foreign aid is needed in Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. If the US Agency for International Development (USAID) were to suddenly stop all its programs in part or all of the region, humanitarian crisis would surely follow. Saudi Arabia and Iran may have the oil resources to provide some sort of substitute for USAID, but would they extend that aid? If so, what strings would be attached, and how would people in the Middle East or beyond react? Judging by the reaction to Iran's support of Hamas and Hezbollah, which do provide extensive and vital social services in the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon, I think the reaction of the Western powers would be far from desirable.

On the American side, there are plenty who question why we should help people in the Middle East who don't seem to want to help themselves. Of course, Black Iris made an eloquent argument in the post "Somewhere Near the Israeli Embassy In Amman...." for why it is so difficult for people in this region to press for change and reform from within. On the other hand, change and reform will never be successful if they are imposed entirely from without.

The whole debate reminds me of an amazing experience I had as an undergraduate at tiny Goucher College in Baltimore. Professor Emeritus Froehlicher, who had a dramatic life that included working for the resistance to the Nazis, and then coordinating the translators and interpreters at the Nuremberg Trials, convened a group of professors, most from the Modern Languages Dept, and me and my former roommmate. We each read the opinion pages of newspapers in different languages, and convened to share what we had found. One French professor invited the Johns Hopkins University professor who was teaching her Arabic to bring us the Arab perspective, and he showed us magazine after magazine calling for America to bring an end to Egypt's and the region's woes. America, he said, was the only country with the political, economic, military and cultural power to effect real change in the Middle East, and if Americans really believed in their founding principles, how could they not save the Middle East? He had to leave early, but it's the rest of the conversation that has really stuck with me.

Prof. Froehlicher had grown up under the Nazis. Most of the other teachers in the room had grown up behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Russia. They started describing how they had felt the same way about America. If America really wanted to cover the world in democracy and freedom, why weren't they doing anything? Why wasn't the United States using its superpowers to tear down that wall, to fix their problems in the Soviet states and satellites?

But what really brought down the Berlin Wall, and ultimately the Iron Curtain? It wasn't American democracy and power. It wasn't American President John F Kennedy saying, "Ich bin ein Berliner," or Pres. Ronald Reagan saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Perhaps America and its presidents served as an inspiration, or as that vital ray of hope, but in the end, it was the people behind the Wall, behind the Curtain who brought it down. It was the grassroots resistance movements of the Polish Spring, the Velvet Revolution, and the Catholic Church. It was the ordinary East German citizens who chose to believe a bureaucratic error and converged peacefully on the wall. It was the lowly East German borderguards who made the humanitarian choice to disobey their standing orders to shoot anyone trying to cross that border. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, America may well have facilitated the collapse of the Soviet Union, but nothing America did directly caused it.

I hope that people in the Middle East take inspiration from Barack Obama, as Americans are doing, and do find the audacity to hope. But it is incumbent upon us all to remember that hope alone will never be enough. It is our responsibility, as Mahatma Ghandi said, to be the change we want to see in the world. It's not enough to believe in change; you have to work for it.

Feast of the Sacrifice and no sacrifice
No money nor goats
Yet each one a sacrifice
Hurting
Hurting from hunger and thirst
Hurting from fear and belittlement
And sacrificing soul and property

Feast of the Sacrifice and each one
Is Ishmael
Beneath the hand of the Greater
The sacrifice smaller and weaker
Watching the weapons
And hurting
Hurting from lack of power
And lack of voice
And lack of help
Not self-help
Nor the help of friends

Feast of the Sacrifice and each one
Ishmael without Gabriel
Where is Gabriel?
Where is the messenger?
Where is the voice of the Just
Telling the sacrificer:
Stop!
The intention suffices.
The symbol of your intention suffices.

Christmas without Nativity
Without gifts or blessing
But with destruction
Christmas, and the gifts
They are destruction
And destruction of houses and wealth
That is temporary destruction
Yet the destruction of families and childhood
And feelings of safety and hope
That is eternal destruction
And it's destroying the future
The future of individuals
As well as the nation's.

Christmas is birthing
Fear and despair
And anger and hatred
In the hearts of the children
The children of Palestine
And the children of Israel

Hannukah without light
Neither light nor oil
Nor the light of hope
No light in the temple
Nor light in the church
Nor light in the mosque
Not the hope of safety
Nor of justice
Nor of peace
Nor of aid
Not on the holy days
Nor on normal days

Of course, like all translations, it sounds far better in the Arabic in which I originally wrote it; more internal cohesion and repetition, more obvious religious allusions. But someone was bound to ask for a translation, so here it is.

You should read the full article on SabbahBlog, but here's your teaser, from Chris Hedges:

This attack is the final Israeli push to extinguish a Palestinian state and crush or expel the Palestinian people. The images of dead Palestinian children, lined up as if asleep on the floor of the main hospital in Gaza, are a metaphor for the future. Israel will, from now on, speak to the Palestinians in the language of death. And the language of death is all the Palestinians will be able to speak back. The slaughter-let's stop pretending this is a war-is empowering an array of radical Islamists inside and outside of Gaza. It is ominously demolishing the shaky foundations of the corrupt secular Arab regimes on Israel's borders, from Egypt to Jordan to Syria to Lebanon. It is about creating a new Middle East, one ruled by enraged Islamic radicals.

....

I called [Yuri] Avnery at his home in Israel. He is Israel's conscience. Avnery was born in Germany. He moved to Palestine as a young boy with his parents. He left school at the age of 14 and a year later joined the underground paramilitary group known as the Irgun. Four years afterward, disgusted with its use of violence, he walked away from the clandestine organization, which carried out armed attacks on British occupation authorities and Arabs. "You can't talk to me about terrorism, I was a terrorist," he says when confronted with his persistent calls for peace with the Palestinians. Avnery was a fighter in the Samson's Foxes commando unit during the 1948 war. He wrote the elite unit's anthem. He became, after the war, a force for left-wing politics in Israel and one of the country's most prominent journalists, running the alternative HaOlam HaZeh magazine. He served in the Israeli Knesset. During the 1982 siege of Beirut he met, in open defiance of Israeli law, with PLO leader Yasser Arafat. He has joined Arab protesters in Israel the past few days and denounces what he calls Israel's "instinct of using force" with the Palestinians and the "moral insanity" of the attack on Gaza. Avnery, now 85, was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in 1975 by an Israeli opponent, and in 2006 the right-wing activist Baruch Marzel called on the Israeli military to carry out a targeted assassination of Avnery.

"The state of Israel, like any other state," Avnery said, "cannot tolerate having its citizens shelled, bombed or rocketed, but there has been no thought as to how to solve the problem through political means or to analyze where this phenomenon has come from, what has caused it. Israelis, as a whole, cannot put themselves in the shoes of others. We are too self-centered. We cannot stand in the shoes of Palestinians or Arabs to ask how we would react in the same situation. Sometimes, very rarely, it happens. Years ago when Ehud Barak was asked how he would behave if were a Palestinian, he said, ‘I would join a terrorist organization.' If you do not understand Hamas, if you do not understand why Hamas does what it does, if you don't understand Palestinians, you take recourse in brute force."

The public debate about the Gaza attack engages in the absurd pretense that it is Israel, not the Palestinians, whose security and dignity are being threatened. This blind defense of Israeli brutality toward the Palestinians betrays the memory of those killed in other genocides, from the Holocaust to Cambodia to Rwanda to Bosnia. The lesson of the Holocaust is not that Jews are special. It is not that Jews are unique. It is not that Jews are eternal victims. The lesson of the Holocaust is that when you have the capacity to halt genocide, and you do not-no matter who carries out that genocide or who it is directed against-you are culpable. And we are very culpable. The F-16 jet fighters, the Apache attack helicopters, the 250-pound "smart" GBU-39 bombs are all part of the annual $2.4 billion in military aid the U.S. gives to Israel. Palestinians are being slaughtered with American-made weapons. They are being slaughtered by an Israeli military we lavishly bankroll. But perhaps our callous indifference to human suffering is to be expected. We, after all, kill women and children on an even vaster scale in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bloody hands of Israel mirror our own.

....

"Hamas will win the war, no matter what happens," Avnery said. "They will be considered by hundreds of millions of Arabs heroes who have recovered the dignity and pride of Arab nations. If at the end of the war they are still standing in Gaza this will be a huge victory for them, to hold out against this huge Israeli army and firepower will be an incredible achievement. They will gain even more than Hezbollah did during the last war."

Chris Hedges, who writes a weekly column for Truthdig that is published every Monday, is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and a Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University, and spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Hedges, who has reported from more than 50 countries, worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, where he spent fifteen years. He is the author of the best selling “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,” which draws on his experiences in various conflicts to describe the patterns and behavior of nations and individuals in wartime. The book, a finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, was described by Abraham Verghese, who reviewed the book for The New York Times, as “...a brilliant, thoughtful, timely and unsettling book whose greatest merit is that it will rattle jingoists, pacifists, moralists, nihilists, politicians and professional soldiers equally.” Hedges ... speaks Arabic and spent seven years in the Middle East, most of them as the Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times.

It's only amusing because it's true....

[translated from original Spanish source] - via fpp.co.uk January 11, 2008

NOTE the twelve golden and infallible truths that the media are obligated to adopt:

1. In the Middle East, the Arabs always attack first and Israel always defends itself. This defense is called 'retaliation'.

2. Neither Arabs, Palestinians nor Lebanese have the right to kill civilians. This is 'terrorism'.

3. Israel has the right to kill civilians. This is called 'legitimate defense'.

4. When Israel massively kills civilians, the Western Powers ask to her do it with courtesy or politeness. This is called 'reaction of the international community'.

5. Neither Palestinians nor Lebanese have the right to capture Israeli soldiers inside military installations with sentry and combat positions. This has to be called 'kidnapping of defenceless civilians'.

6. Israel has the right to kidnap as many Palestinians or Lebanese as they wish and at any time or place. Their present figures are about 10,000 imprisoned, 300 of whom are children and one thousand women. They do not need any evidence about their culpability. Israel has the right to detain such kidnapped prisoners indefinitely, even if they are people democratically elected by Palestinians. This is called 'imprisonment of terrorists'.

7. Whenever the word 'Hizbollah' is mentioned, it is compulsory to add in the same phrase 'supported and financed by Syria and Iran'.

8. When 'Israel' is mentioned it is absolutely forbidden to add 'supported and financed by the United States'. This could give the impression that the conflict is uneven and that Israel's existence of is not after all at risk.

9. In any statement about Israel, any mention of the following phrases is to be avoided: 'occupied territories', 'UN resolutions', 'Human Rights violations' or 'Geneva Convention'.

10. Palestinians, as well as Lebanese, always are 'cowards' hiding behind a civil population that dislike them. If they sleep in military accommodation with their families, this has a name: 'cowardice'. Israel is entitled to annihilate with bombs and missiles such barracks where they sleep. This is to be called a 'surgical, high-precision action'.

11. Israelis speak English, French, Spanish or Portuguese better than the Arabs. That is why they deserve to be interviewed more frequently and have better opportunities to explain to the audience at large the above rules, from 1 to 10. This is called 'media neutrality'.

12. Any person in disagreement with the above rules is to be branded a 'highly dangerous anti-Semitic terrorist'.

Last Thursday, The Economist offered a historical analysis of the current conflict in Gaza that strikes me as not only cool and collected, but also as relatively even-handed. "The Hundred Years' War in Palestine" criticizes the common complaint by Israelis that Palestinians are unwilling to compromise:

The fact that the Arabs rejected the UN’s partition plan of 60 years ago has long given ideological comfort to Israel and its supporters. Abba Eban, an Israeli foreign minister, quipped that the Palestinians “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. Israel’s story is that the Arabs have muffed at least four chances to have a Palestinian state. They could have said yes to partition in 1947. They could have made peace after the war of 1947-48. They had another chance after Israel routed its neighbours in 1967 (“We are just waiting for a telephone call,” said Moshe Dayan, Israel’s hero of that war). They had yet another in 2000 when Ehud Barak, now Israel’s defence minister and then its prime minister, offered the Palestinians a state at Bill Clinton’s fateful summit at Camp David.

This story of Israeli acceptance and Arab rejection is not just a yarn convenient to Israel’s supporters. It is worth remembering that it was not until 1988, a full 40 years after Israel’s birth, that Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) renounced its goal of liberating the whole of Palestine from the river to the sea. All the same, the truth is much more shaded than the Israeli account allows. There have been missed opportunities, and long periods of rejection, on Israel’s part, too.

Instead, The Economist argues that both sides have missed opportunities, and gives fair descriptions why these were well-considered and supportable positions on both sides in their historical contexts.

The Economist then goes on to explain how things have changed in recent years.

One far-seeing Zionist, Vladimir Jabotinsky, predicted in the 1930s not only that the Arabs would oppose the swamping of Palestine with Jewish immigrants but also that “if we were Arabs, we would not accept it either”. In order to survive, the Jews would have to build an “iron wall” of military power until the Arabs accepted their state’s permanence. And this came to pass. Only after several costly wars did Egypt and later the PLO conclude that, since Israel could not be vanquished, they had better cut a deal. In Beirut in 2002 all the Arab states followed suit, offering Israel normal relations in return for its withdrawal from all the occupied territories, an opening which Israel was foolish to neglect.

The depressing thing about the rise of Hamas and the decline of the Fatah wing of the PLO is that it reverses this decades-long trend. Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian elections of 2006 had many causes, including a reputation for honesty. Its victory did not prove that Palestinians had been bewitched by Islamist militancy or come to believe again in liberating all of Palestine by force. But if you take seriously what Hamas says in its charter, Hamas itself does believe this. So does Hizbullah, Lebanon’s “Party of God”; and so does a rising and soon perhaps nuclear-armed Iran. Some analysts take heart from Hamas’s offer of a 30-year truce if Israel returns to its 1967 borders. But it has never offered permanent recognition.

The article also sets the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into its global context, noting that they two sides are not acting independently, and never have been:

For too long the conflict in Palestine was a hostage to the cold war. America was once neutral: it was Eisenhower who forced Israel out of Gaza (and Britain out of Egypt) after Suez. But America later recruited Israel as an ally, and this suited the Israelis just fine. It gave them the support of a superpower whilst relieving them of a duty to resolve the quarrel with the Palestinians, even though their own long-term well-being must surely depend on solving that conflict.

It may be no coincidence that some of the most promising peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians took place soon after the cold war ended. But now a new sort of geopolitical confrontation stalks the region, one that sets America against Iran, and the Islamist movements Iran supports against the Arab regimes in America’s camp. With Hamas inside Iran’s tent and Fatah in America’s, the Palestinians are now facing a paralysing schism.

This is the conclusion of the writers at The Economist, and I find it a very compelling one:

Taking Hamas down a peg is one thing. But even in the event of Israel “winning” in Gaza, a hundred years of war suggest that the Palestinians cannot be silenced by brute force. Hamas will survive, and with it that strain in Arab thinking which says that a Jewish state does not belong in the Middle East. To counter that view, Israel must show not only that it is too strong to be swept away but also that it is willing to give up the land—the West Bank, not just Gaza—where the promised Palestinian state must stand. Unless it starts doing that convincingly, at a minimum by freezing new settlement, it is Palestine’s zealots who will flourish and its peacemakers who will fall back into silence. All of Israel’s friends, including Barack Obama, should be telling it this.

From the Facebook Group One Million Strong Calling Obama To Support an Immediate Ceasefire In Gaza:

“I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington…I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
- Barack Obama (www.barackobama.com)

This is a broad-based, diverse group composed of individuals of different races, creeds, religions, sexual orientations, and walks of life. We have come together to affirm our commitment to fundamental human rights and we call on President-Elect Barack Obama to make good on his campaign promise of ushering in an era of “change we can believe in.”

President-Elect Obama inspired America by reminding us that the ideals of life, liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness can only be realized by one if enjoyed by all – not just in the United States, but across the world. The Gaza Strip is facing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions which has been clearly documented by reputed international observers such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Save the Children, Oxfam, and Amnesty International. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to call on President-Elect Obama to lend his inspiring support to worldwide calls for an immediate ceasefire, and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip. In doing so, President-Elect Obama will stand alongside human rights advocates and organizations the world over, including leading Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem and Jewish Voices for Peace.

There can be no clearer way for President-Elect Obama to demonstrate his commitment to making real his promise of a new and better era for the world. And there can be no better way for us to make true the promise of democracy than to join together and press President-Elect Obama to act on his beliefs.

Please note: This group is devoted solely to ending the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Therefore, moderators reserve the right to remove any posts that detract from the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and/or are discriminatory or abusive.
Also, in an effort to maintain the security of the group, we will under no circumstances be adding any additional administrators.

The success of this group hinges on you and your efforts. So, please forward widely, invite others to join, and encourage them to do the same!

Voice your opinion, and press President-Elect Obama to take action:
http://change.gov/page/s/yourvision

For background and further information:
1.
International Committee of the Red Cross Press Release
“Gaza: plight of civilians traumatic in 'full-blown humanitarian crisis'”

2.
CNN news report
“Patients lying everywhere”

3.
Amnesty International USA statement on the crisis

4.
Amnesty International Urges U.N. Security Council Not to Fail Civilians Caught in Gaza

5.
BBC reporting from a hospital in Gaza. Interview with European doctor at hospital.

6.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Report on Gaza

7.
Save the Children Launches Major Appeal to Assist Children in Gaza

8.
B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, acts primarily to change Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories and ensure that its government, which rules the Occupied Territories, protects the human rights of residents there and complies with its obligations under international law.

9.
“Jewish Voice for Peace joins millions around the world, including the 1,000 Israelis who protested in the streets of Tel Aviv this weekend, in condemning ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza. We call for an immediate end to attacks on all civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli.”

10.
Israeli offensive puts families’ and aid workers’ lives at risk, Oxfam warns.

While I know that Rashid Khalidi is a controversial figure in the West, and his friendship with Barack Obama was portrayed by many of Israel's supporters as highly undesirable, I think he makes some very valid points in this New York Times Op Ed, and I can't help but find his conclusion compelling:

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming “Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East."

However, I find his title, "What You Don't Know About Gaza," to be presumptive. It's a common thread for academics and those of us expats who are living in the Middle East to assume that Americans are largely ignorant of the truth of things here. Perhaps the most famous example is the Website If Americans Knew. Certainly the conversation we had over Skype the other night with my roommate's friends back in Michigan suggests that Americans are largely ignorant of the reality on the ground here.

On the other hand, the very incidence of that conversation indicated that Americans are searching for answers. This was what impressed me most about Americans when I returned from Jordan the first time in 2005. In the case of my roommate's friends, perhaps these questions were not surprising, coming from students of political science asking about governance and peacemaking issues in the Palestinian Territories. In 2005, I expected my father and my college friends to ask me hard questions about the Arab World, and they have never disappointed that expectation. What shocked me was that everyone had questions about the Arab World, Islam, and the Middle East. I was fielding questions from gas station clerks, from housewives, from friends and family friends who had hardly ever been more than 100 miles from home and had definitely never left the US of A. Not only did they have hundreds of questions, but they really listened to my answers, and didn't assume that they knew what was really going on in the Middle East.

There was then and, I believe, continues to now be a strong sense in the United States that we need to learn more about the Middle East and Islam, that it is an increasingly important influence on our lives. Yes, progress is slow, and yes, the current economic woes in the US will probably slow it further. There are many issues in the world, both domestic and international, and while the Middle East is high on my agenda, I recognize that for many people, there are other priorities. But I think it may be disingenuous to suggest that Americans are ignorant of what Gaza is really like.

Then again, I have my own set of blinders. I'm reminded of the night in November 2000 when my family sat around the dinner table in bewilderment. "I don't know anyone who voted for Bush. Do you known anyone who voted for Bush?"
"No. I don't know anyone who voted for Bush. Do you know anyone who supported Bush?"
And so it went, around the dinner table. We didn't know anyone who wanted a Bush regime. Until finally someone said, "Maybe we just don't know the right people!"

The Israelis aren't letting foreign journalists into the Gaza Strip to cover the incursion, despite widespread agreement that having journalists on the ground in times of war is good for international opinion and justice:

"The barring of outside news organizations from Gaza hampers the flow of unbiased information of vital interest to the entire world. Authorities on all sides should work to allow access by journalists in keeping with the aims of press freedom," said John Daniszewski, the AP's managing editor for international news.

The Israeli government has long banned Israeli journalists from entering Gaza because of fears for their safety, but foreign reporters previously were permitted in, even during times of heavy fighting.

Human Rights Watch urged Israel to open Gaza to journalists and human rights monitors to report on the actions of both sides. "Their presence can discourage abuse by warring parties and help save lives," the New York-based organization said.

There are plenty of theories floating about the blogosphere about why: They don't want the rest of the world to observe their war crimes. They don't want anyone to know that they're mostly guessing at where the militants might be. They're worried about the effects of collateral damage on Israel's image and security. They can't guarantee the safety of the press. They don't believe that foreign media reports objectively on Israel.

It doesn't matter, though. Word still leaks out. The networks are interviewing doctors in Gaza's hospital by phone, or monitoring statistics from the UN. Bloggers around the world are posting images of bloody children. Last night, right here in Jebal Amman's al-Balad Theater, the names of the victims were read by a chorus of actors, in solidarity with the families they've left behind. And, of course, Gaza has its own native journalistic forces, who are getting out pieces like this beautiful elegy of a city by Ibrahim Barzak of the Associated Press.

There are other pictures that haunt me. The Israeli army issued a video of the bombing of the Hamas-run government compound, which it posted on YouTube. In it, I also can see my home being destroyed, and I watch it obsessively.

Even when Israel tries to use the digital age to it advantage, it still works against them.

The Hadi grocery where we once shopped is closed. Food is scarce all over town.

....

Samir, who is 9, told me his family has no water at home and he wanted to bring enough for a bath because he and his brother smell.

That's a problem for most people in Gaza right now.

In my father-in-law's building, residents throw out bags of spoiled food. With no power, refrigerators don't run and fresh food quickly rots.

And if you think that's bad, things are going to get worse, according to the UN.

But then, of course, it's never that easy, as Marty Kaplan so eloquently points out. He highlights exactly my dilemma in this whole issue. Both sides have legitimate arguments, and how can you come down entirely on one side?

What does it say when Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, which is sometimes included in the Axis of Evil, is calling for compromise on American Network TV?

"They are ready [to make a deal]," Al-Assad told CNN's Cal Perry in an exclusive interview. "They were ready, they are ready. Today, the factors have changed so the requirement will change at the same time.

"We cannot talk about the same condition, like what happened a few years ago. Otherwise, we'll keep moving from a cease-fire to another conflict to another breaking of this cease-fire and so on. The more blood you have, the more difficult to talk about peace will be."

Al-Assad met with Sarkozy earlier Tuesday. Sarkozy appealed to Al-Assad for help in bringing about a halt to the conflict in the Middle East -- an Israeli incursion into Gaza after eight days of Israeli airstrikes.

--CNN

Bashar isn't as violent and partisan as his father, Hafiz al-Assad, but he's hardly a pacifist in favor of compromise with Israel. Consider the Golan.

Here's a highly educated, well-travelled Middle Eastern blogger, Cent Uygur, who frequently lambasts both sides. Most recently, he had this to say:

The government of Israel keeps saying their actions in Gaza are justifiable because they are doing it in retaliation for what Hamas has done. Hamas says the same exact thing -- that they are firing the rockets in retaliation for what Israel did in imposing a blockade and bombing their tunnels and leaders. I find both points completely unpersuasive -- yes, including Israel's.

Every day now, I hear someone saying, "What was Israel supposed to do? Hamas keeps firing rockets into their country."

And then Mr. Uygur proceeds to answer that very question with the following well-justified points:

1. Not break the cease-fire in the first place.
2. You are stronger. Don't strike back.
3. Make a peace deal already.

He ends with this:

Finally, let me ask you this personal question to give you a sense of what people mean when they say Israel is acting disproportionately. Let's say you're walking down the street in your local town and you hear gun fire. You have a vague suspicion that someone is firing at you from a nearby school, would you firebomb the school just in case?

You know what the answer to that question is, if you're a decent human being. No way. You might be scared out of your mind. You might be afraid for your life. But you are not going to throw a bomb into a school full of children just in case (especially when you're not even sure that's where the shots are coming from). You would be called a psychopath if you did. But today, we hear excuses like, "Hey, that's what happens in wars." Maybe, that's why it is incumbent upon us to try a little harder to avoid them. So that we don't all act like psychopaths when they start.

It's not just Arabs and Turks who are speaking out about Israel's actions in Gaza. The statements of Israeli academic Avi Shlaim have been classified thusly by The Guardian:

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions

In his own words, he said:

On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

That's from a self-identified Israeli loyalist. It only illustrates what I have heard from Jordanians and expats alike at least half a dozen times a day: "What does Israel think they're accomplishing? This isn't just bad for Gaza and the Palestinians. This is bad for Israel!"

I put all these out there because these men say precisely what I want to say, but with far more clarity. Many thanks to the friends who pointed these articles out to me by posting them to Facebook.

And I leave you with this level-headed, eloquent interview with my hero, Queen Noor:

I'm so glad that Megan posted this article to Facebook:

SDEROT, Israel -- Mohammed Abu Hassanin may be a young boy, but he's old enough to know he's scared of the attacks being launched by Israel in Gaza.

"When the Jews bomb us when we are asleep, [Hassanin] says 'We get scared,' " a translator says. Hassanin is one boy from Gaza speaking frankly to an anchor on Hamas TV about the attacks, which have gone on for 10 days.

Children like him have accounted for one-third of the casualties at Gaza's main hospital, foreign doctors say. And now Hamas and their media are making them the face of the attacks.

The children have seen terrible images of tragedy: their friends injured or killed and bloodied bodies in the streets.

They are images Hassanin says he will never forget. He'll keep them stored away until he's old enough to do something about it.

"When we will grow up, we will bomb them back," a CNN translator quoted the boy saying on Hamas TV.

It's a sentiment psychiatrists in Gaza say could be responsible for a frightening future--that the violence children are witnessing will sow the seeds for future violence.
Watch how Arab media is covering the crisis »

Story Highlights:

• Boy on Hamas TV: "When we will grow up, we will bomb them back"
• Tearful girl: "Maybe my sister could die some day, I don't know. I am afraid"
• Psychiatrists say seeing destruction firsthand can create violence in the future
• One psychiatrist said earlier children witnessing violence grew into extremists

I'm glad of this story, because it's about time I saw a story about the kids on a major Western network like CNN. This is my bugbear in all conflicts. Children of conflict are haunted by what happens to them in the fray. Some are able to take those experiences and use them to inspire lives of greatness, of service, of positive leadership. But they won't all be able to channel their experiences constructively.

Children can be very resilient, it's true. I've seen it. But they're also still forming their worldviews, their psyches, and their futures. What kind of future are these children forming?:

Israel Defense Forces tank fire killed at least 30 Palestinians at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, UN officials and medical sources and at two hospitals said.

Two tank shells exploded outside the Gaza school, spraying shrapnel on people inside and outside the building, where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge from fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants. In addition to the dead, several dozen people were wounded, the officials said.

Medical officials said all the dead were either people sheltering in the school or local residents.

An Israeli sources said that militants barricaded in the school had opened fire on IDF soldiers.

This is neither a pro-Israeli or a pro-Palestinian post. I'm appalled that Israelis would fire on a school, but I'm also appalled that the Palestinian militants would take refuge in a school and expect either that the Israelis wouldn't attack, or that the deaths and injuries of those children would make anyone more sympathetic to their cause!

No, this is like every divorce my parents walked their friends through. They were constantly accused of taking the wrong divorcing parent's side in the mess, and my parents always had the same answer: "We're not on your side, we're on the side of the kids!" That's where I stand. So I'll say it again:

I'm on the side of the kids. All the kids. Everywhere. No child should have to suffer bombings, trauma, hunger, poverty, treatable illness or death when it could possibly be avoided, regardless of where that child happened to be born.

Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

--Albert Einstein

We are witnessing right now what BBC World is calling the worst attack on Gaza in the history of the conflict in terms of casualties, not even a week after the end of a 6 month truce.

UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk has this to say:

Against this background, it is especially painful for me, as an American Jew, to feel compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel through a reliance on such an inflammatory metaphor as 'holocaust'...

...and has even gone so far as to use the word "genocide."
In fact, I can't begin to put this in words as well as he, Sabbahblog and others are doing, but I do want to contribute my two gersh/cents.

I don't dispute Israel's right to defend its citizens. This was part of my dilemma over the 2006 Lebanon War, because there was an immediate threat to innocent Israeli lives, and it was legitimately hard to distinguish purely military targets. The population density in the Gaza Strip makes it even harder to distinguish military targets, which is precisely why, after the publicity beating Israel got after the 2006 Lebanon War, I should think they would want to be more careful about civilian casualties. One Israeli was killed, so the only appropriate response was to kill 350 Gazans and injure over 1000 more? Come on, Ms. Livni!

If "the people of Gaza do not deserve to suffer" for what Hamas does, as PM Olmert said in today's press conference, where is the proof of that? It's not suffering to be under a strangling blockade of even basic food and medical supplies since June 2007? It's not suffering to never know when Israeli planes, tanks or troops will attack?

Ehud Barak said the IDF only "... attacked only targets that are part of the Hamas organizations [and will] make an effort in order to avoid any unnecessary inconveniences to the people of Gaza." Is that why they bombed a university? It's not an "unnecessary inconvenience" to allow no food, water or electricity over the border for weeks at a time?

And what, exactly, is all of this supposed to accomplish? Does Israel really think that cutting off aid and basic necessities and raining down bombs on the Gaza Strip will make Palestinians more sympathetic to Israel? Do they really think that by killing hundreds of Gazans, this will make them stop retaliating on Israeli citizens? This is the very epitomy of what Albert Einstein was talking about when he defined stupidity!

Though I have to give Israel kudos for their timing. What with the Christmas season, the global economic woes, and the US administration in transition, hardly anyone is paying serious attention to what's going on over here. This much, at least, shows definite cunning!

I try, in this blog, to be eloquent, to say things that are well considered and meaningful, but I just feel so frustrated and impotent today. I did take some food donations to Books@Cafe today to be sent to Gaza. Apparently, only Jordanians are being allowed into the Gaza Strip to deliver aid. I guess Israel is worried about what the UN and Red Crescent might have to say about the conditions of people there. Certainly Israel displayed their unhappiness with the comments of Richard Falk which I mentioned above when they denied him entry to the Gaza Strip.

There was some talk on BBC today about the lessons UIsrael has learned from the 2006 Lebanon War, and I can think of a couple they failed to mention. Apparently Israel learned that there's nothing the international community is ready or able to do to actually stop Israel's actions. I feel, too, like they've taken a page from George W. Bush, who legitimized the Pre-Emptive Strike Doctrine that, for lack of a better word, completely fucked up Iraq, and now seems to be allowing Israel to do the same to the Gaza Strip.

I'm no Juan Cole or Richard Falk; I know that the words I put here won't reach many people or make much difference, especially as disjointed and incoherent as this rant is, but I feel compelled to publish something, anything to express my outrage and frustration.

THE LIGHTS are out in Gaza again and few are paying attention. The 1.5 million Palestinians living in the densely populated strip are being collectively punished once more, while Israel attempts to strangle the Hamas government. The UN agency that feeds hundreds of thousands of people is unable to get supplies in because the border is closed, and a plea from UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has been ignored.

Ignoring the Plight in Gaza
by Yousef Munayyer in the Boston Globe

This article was posted to Facebook by my friend Jennifer, whom I met when she was teaching me Arabic in the Peace Corps, whose wedding to a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer I attended in Amman, in his village of Rajaf near Petra, and in Kansas City, Missouri (the only one other than his family to attend all three). She worked on the Obama campaign (though she was instructed to tell voters she was Spanish or Italian, not Arab), changed her Facebook name to Jennifer "Hussein" Walsh in protest of the anti-Muslim slurs hurled at Obama, and said of this article, "Somebody is writing about this." Too often, for those of us who are concerned about the situation in Gaza, it seems that no one does write about this.

Like Mr. Munayyer, I wonder why Israel believes that continuing the blockade of Gaza will change anything within Gaza or any of the Palestinian Territories.

After Hamas was democratically elected, sanctions followed and the grip began to tighten on the Gaza Strip. Fuel supplies ran short, malnutrition rose, and Gaza's only power plant could not be relied on to provide electricity. Store shelves were often empty of food, and many who were already impoverished were now struggling even more.

And what, if anything, has been gained by all this? If the objective was to diminish public support for the Hamas government, it is hardly working.

Some public-opinion polling of Palestinians has consistently showed that Hamas remains as popular today as it was before it was elected. Some polls also indicate that Hamas garners its highest approval ratings when the collective measures against the Gaza Strip have been most punitive.

But aside from the fact that the Israeli policy of collective punishment, and world complacency to it, is counterproductive, there is a greater problem with this policy: It is morally reprehensible.

In 1949, when Soviets had surrounded Berlin and were ready to choke a war-torn population into submission, the Western world refused to stand silent. In the boldest move in the history of the Cold War, the United States spearheaded an airlift of food and supplies to Berlin, flying in the face of Soviet oppression, confident the Soviets would not fire upon humanitarian aid.

Where, one has to wonder, is that moral courage now?

I am not asking President Bush or President-elect Obama to declare "Ana Ghazawi," the Palestinian equivalent of "Ich bin ein Berliner." Rather, the United States should strongly state to Israel that this failed policy is only hurting innocent civilians and is making Israel and the United States look terrible in the process. While Hamas must moderate its positions if it is to be considered a legitimate political player, this policy has failed to change Hamas.

The collective punishment in Gaza has left a deep and troubling scar on America's image in the world and has hindered our ability to maneuver politically in the region. If we are truly living in a new era, and change has come, let us hope it will come for the innocent civilians in Gaza too.

Yousef Munayyer is a policy analyst for the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Reading this article reminded me of the truly terrible situation I saw on the BBC and meant to write about during the week of Eid. The second week in December was the most important holiday on the Islamic calendar, the Feast of the Sacrifice (Eid al-Adha), commemorating Ibrahim's (Abraham's) willingness to submit to the will of God and sacrifice his first-born son Ishmael (Isaac in Judeo-Christian tradition). It is traditionally a time for family, feasting and sacrificing one's own sheep to God, in imitation of the ram which the angel told Ibrahim at the last minute would be an acceptable substitute for Ishmael.

Merely finding the food to feed one's family in Gaza has been a challenge for many years, as the border is frequently closed, and so deliveries are sporadic and uncertain. From time to time, the UN, Red Cross and other international bodies step in to demand that Israel allow food and basic necessities into Gaza, but it is not consistent. There are also, reportedly, networks of tunnels allowing the smuggling of food and necessities into Gaza. In the days leading up to Eid al-Adha, in fact, live sheep were being smuggled through those tunnels for the holiday festivities.

However, this year there was a new challenge for Gazans. Israel blocked banks from transporting bills and coins into the Gaza Strip in the days leading up to Eid. On the last Thursday before Eid, banks and ATMs were forced to close, because they didn't have the bills to pay the paychecks that were to be issued that day. Banks were then closed for the whole next week for the holiday. This meant that people not only didn't have the money to buy sheep for sacrifice, but that they didn't even have the means to purchase even basic food items for 10 days.

The Gaza Strip is in serious danger of a complete economic collapse into a barter economy, but one in which there isn't even anything to barter for!

Yes, Hamas has supported and probably still supports so-called terrorist ideology and actions, but why is that? When a people under military blockade have no vote, no voice, no hope, no food, no money, and not even anything to barter with, what other choice do they have?

Maybe President-elect Obama will never say it, but I will: "Ana Ghazawiya!"