Picture this: A Zionist fanatic, the sort who cuts down the ancient olive trees of Palestinian farmers in the Occupied West Bank, who poisons wells and scrawls blasphemous graffiti on the walls of mosques, this fanatic goes with some friends to the Gaza border and fires off some crude rockets toward Gaza city, causing, as it turns out, loud explosions but no injuries. Within a few days of the attack, the Israeli chief of staff is being driven from his home to his office, when a massive bomb explodes beside the vehicle and blows it and him to pieces. It is a murderously effective, but outrageously disproportionate response by Hamas to the fanatic Zionist's little attack. Moreover ten other Israelis are killed the same day, in some 20 further assaults elsewhere in Israel. Among the dead and injured are children and a pregnant woman. How would the Israeli public, let alone the Netanyahu government react? More importantly, what would be the international reaction to this attack, not least in the corridors of power in Washington? Would the State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, say merely: “We encourage the Hamas leadership to continue to take every effort to avoid civilian casualties”? Would the British Foreign Office announce: “We continue to call on all sides to exercise restraint to prevent a dangerous escalation that would be in no one's interests”? The answer, of course, is that no such mealy-mouthed language would be employed. Instead, there would be unstinting condemnation of these murderous attacks, which claimed the lives of innocent civilians, as well as a distinguished servant of the Israeli state. Yet the very same mildly-scolding words of Mark Toner and of the British Foreign Office were actually voiced in response to Israel's attacks Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, which assassinated Ahmed Said Khalil Al-Jaabari. Naturally the Hamas reaction yesterday, a barrage of rockets which killed three people in the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Malachi, is, unlike the Israeli strikes, being branded as terrorism and totally unacceptable. What are ordinary Palestinians to think when the world can buy such a one-sided and totally skewed interpretation of what is really happening on the ground? How much despair must the people of Gaza feel when after 90 minutes of closed session, the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council, the body to which the international community should rightly look to give a lead, were only able to issue a communique stating that the meeting had taken place? The escalating violence between Hamas and the Israelis is a cause of deep concern. The death of innocent civilians, on both sides, is deplorable. But it is entirely wrong to cast Israel as the victim and the Palestinians as the aggressor. The rocket attacks from Gaza need to be seen against the continuing campaign of targeted assassinations and random murder, carried out by Israel among the people of the Gaza Strip. Besieged by the Israelis, who will not even allow shipping to bring in much needed aid and construction material, cut off economically and physically from the outside world, the Palestinians are prisoners in their own country. If the situation were reversed, if it were Israelis condemned to this wretched half-life in the Gaza ghetto, the international outcry would be deafening and the loudest roaring would be coming from Washington. But when it comes to the Palestinians, there is hardly a murmur. Where is your re-set button for US Middle East policy, President Obama?
