The Israeli carnage in Gaza must stop

The Israeli carnage in Gaza must stop


DeFacto
Liamy MacNally

Will Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, walk behind his son’s coffin in Jerusalem? Will Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal, walk behind the coffin of his daughter in Gaza? Both have condemned hundreds of families to walk in funeral corteges, many of them parents, laying their 296 dead children (UNICEF figures) to rest.
All were innocent children caught in the crossfire of hatred and political incompetence. Weasel words from all sides attempt to justify their inhuman behaviour. America, thinking it is everybody’s friend, poisons John Kerry’s attempts to drip water on a blazing fire while it replenishes Israeli weapons behind his back. Obamacare, Gaza style.
It’s bizarre how families of warring leaders do not suffer casualties. The figures tell the usual story. At the time of going to print, more than 1,700 Palestinians, 63 Israeli soldiers and three civilians had died. Most of the Palestinians were civilians, many of them women, children and the elderly. Over 450,000 people have been displaced. War does not discriminate, neither does the Israeli Government nor its American supporter.
The ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus claimed that truth is the first casualty of war. He didn’t count on the Israeli Government. Their first casualties seemingly, are always women and children. Then they lie about why they carried out their heinous action. Even UN compounds are not safe from the voracious killing machines of the Israeli Government.
It is easy to be critical of the dastardly actions of the Israeli Government. They portray a savagery unknown to the world of modern democracy, to which Israel claims to be part of. So many of us have turned off televisions and radios of late when Israeli Government spokespersons came on. They tried to justify war crimes. There is no other term for what they are doing to an innocent Palestinian population.
This is not an apologia for Hamas, who portray such cowardice by firing rockets indiscriminately at innocent Israelis and often use their own people as shields when doing so. The Hamas cowards and the Israeli Government bullies is a deadly blend. The only cry is that of the innocents, on both sides. For those of us who love Israel, the home of our spiritual ancestors, this latest war by the current Government is a retrograde step, plunging humanity back to its savage past.
Moses’ ‘eye for eye and tooth for tooth’ was a forward step for a people who repaid a small wrong with a greater wrong. Moses attempted to bring balance to a warped mind set. The current war brings us back to those times. For the Israeli Government to adopt an ‘eye for an eye’ today would be progress.    
We know the horrific suffering Jewish people had to suffer throughout their history. What was perpetrated upon them blights all our history. These types of actions were condemned when the Jews suffered the Shoah.
One has to ask why the Israeli Government is adopting the same killing tactics against the Palestinians that were once perpetrated against the Jews. If such treatment is wrong against Jews it is also wrong against Palestinians.
What does Israel expect while it still enforces a blockade against the Gaza Strip, it is an area 25 miles long and less than seven miles wide at the widest point, and has a population of 1.82million? Israel controls its airspace and territorial waters even if Hamas was democratically elected.
Strange how the deaths of so many Palestinians can elicit such a lack of response from a spineless EU and a silent Irish Government, who abstained in a recent UN vote.
Meanwhile, the Hamas leader is safely cocooned in Qatar while his Israeli nemesis is safe in Jerusalem. In between women and children bear the brunt of these men’s war lust.
They will have to talk. The indiscriminate killing must stop. For years to come mothers, fathers and siblings of children in Palestine and soldiers in Israel will visit their graves and wonder why they died. How many more graves must be filled before sleepwalking western leaders wake up?