What would the international community do if Hamas launched massive airstrikes against Israel, marched deep into Tel Aviv or, shelled a UN-run school building, used as a refugee camp, leaving many Israeli children dead and many more injured? What if the Israeli people had been punished by seizure and blockade simply because they had chosen a far right party or a hard-line politician in a fair and free election? What would the so-called free nations be saying had Hamas leaders, in an effort to appeal to voters, decided to continue their large offensive against Israeli civilians despite the international calls for a cease-fire? What if the media all over the world had depicted a handful of Israeli children crying over the bodies of their dead mothers? There is much irony in this analogy, but the truth is that Israel has long been excused for every terrible atrocity it has perpetrated and continues to perpetrate. Such double standards and twisted positions that the key powers in the world are embracing nowadays are fueling the already anti-West sentiments not only in Arab and Muslim countries but also across the entire world. Israel, according to the Western hypocritical standards, is always above the law. Throughout the past 60 years, Israel has constantly been violating the international law and the rules and principles of nations which govern the relations of nations with each other. Take the Geneva Convention for protecting civilians in times of war as an example. Israel has committed serious war crimes by deliberately targeting civilians throughout its wars with the Arabs. So the evidence which cites Israel as being in violation of international law or human rights is enormous. Ignoring a UN-adopted resolution and international calls for an immediate end to its recent aggression on Gaza, the Israelis are continuing their bloody operation which, until now, has claimed the lives of more than 800 innocent Palestinians (nearly all of them civilians) and injured more than 3000. Stories of deliberate killings of civilians, targeting schools and indiscriminately shelling Palestinian towns in the Gaza Strip are compelling evidence of Israel's disdain and contempt for the well-crafted principles of international law. The chief objective of the current operation, as is clear from Israeli behavior so far, is to eradicate the people of Gaza entirely. A UN-filed report has found that since the Israeli aggression on Gaza late last month, as many as 42 percent of the overall Palestinian dead are women and children. In one heartbreaking incident, the Israeli war machine shelled a UN-run school in which hundreds of Palestinians were seeking shelter. As many as 33 innocent people, most of them women and children, were immediately killed in a cowardly and barbaric act that indicates that the Israeli army is deliberately targeting every living creature in Gaza. The UN report has concluded that “there is no safe space in the Gaza Strip – no safe haven, no bomb shelters and the borders are closed and civilians have no place to flee.” In a similar incident, Israeli forces evacuated many Palestinian civilians to a house in the Zaitoun district. Shortly after, the house was shelled and more than 100 civilians were instantly killed. On the diplomatic front, Israel has expressed its disdain for a UN-adopted resolution that calls for an immediate ceasefire. Hours after the United Nations passed the resolution that calls for an end to the fighting, a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and creating passages for humanitarian aid to people there, a spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted as saying that “the UN decision is not practical and is unworkable.” Despite the loss of lives in this aggression, there have been numerous rational voices heard from here and there that have condemned the Israeli barbarism in Gaza during the past 16 days. A top Vatican official likened what the Israelis are doing in Gaza with what the Nazis' did during the Second World War. “Gaza”, said Cardinal Renato Martino, “resembles a big concentration camp.” Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has called the Israeli army “a coward army.” His government has expelled the Israeli ambassador from Caracas in protest against what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza nowadays. Across the Arab and Muslim world, the show of solidarity with the Palestinians has never reached such a height as it has during this crisis. Just after the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, thousands of protesters took to the streets, apparently shocked by the heartbreaking footage of Palestinian victims, to protest the brutality of the aggressor and the lack of response of the international community, which would have been totally different had the perpetrator not been Israel. __
