BY 2006, the US led coalition had overthrown the regime of Saddam Hussein but in doing so they had unleashed unprecedented anarchy and bloodshed throughout Iraq. We were told that the continued occupation of that rich oil state was justified by the need to establish democracy there. Yet, in the same year of 2006, and not so very far away, when Hamas went to the polls in their efforts to embrace democracy and reject violence and won 75 seats out of 118 in 10 district elections in Gaza, (judged free and fair by Jimmy Carter) they were snubbed and rejected by both Bush and Blair, the very leaders who justified the massive instability and bloodshed they had caused in Iraq by the need to introduce democracy in Iraq. How hypocritical can you get?
Dr. Mads Gilbert, a UN Observer who was present in Gaza during the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza strip in 2008-9 noted the following in April 2012: “I’m sad to say from my visit to Gaza earlier this year, the situation is now more dire than ever. The Israeli siege effectively prohibits the rebuilding of Gaza, the import of concrete, of window panes, and the availability of travel care for the population.”
In June 2012, Dr. Gilbert continues: “As a result of the Israeli siege there has been widespread development of anemia among women and children due to malnutrition as a result of siege and poverty. Stunting, where a child is more than two standard deviations shorter than normal is sharply on the rise. In 2006 around 13.5 percent of children were stunted. In 2009, 31.4 percent under the age of 5 were stunted. The stunting of one in every three Palestinian children in Gaza affects both their physical growth and also their brain development and ability to learn. It’s the direct result of malnutrition.”
Dr. Gilbert further explains: “This is not caused by drought or natural disaster but by a deliberate man-made lack of food and water imposed, planned and executed in the most detailed way by the Israeli government.”
Surely this is what the Nazis did to the Jewish children in Auschwitz? How can the European and other Western leaders continue to turn a blind eye to the atrocities being committed on a daily basis by the Zionist thugs now governing Israel on the basis that this is the best way they can make atonement for the role played by their governments in the Jewish holocaust of the1940s?
The current inhuman treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza by the Zionists, both in the Middle East and outside of it is wholly unacceptable by the standards of international law. It is time for the European leaders to get off the fence and accept their share of the international community’s responsibility and act to arrest the situation in Gaza from becoming more critical.
At the very least the EU nations have a moral duty to boycott goods from Israel and suspend all EU trade concessions to Israel pending Israel’s ending of the blockade of Gaza and the free movement of goods, parts and personnel that are required to regenerate the Gazan economy, to optimally feed the people of Gaza, radically increase employment within the Gaza strip itself, and to rebuild its destroyed infrastructure.
The current leaders of Israel are filled with the same racialist hatred against the Palestinians as filled the hearts and minds of the Nazi leaders who orchestrated the Jewish holocaust. Their continued efforts to justify their international crimes and terrorism against the Palestinians in defiance of UN Resolutions by playing the holocaust card should no longer be tolerated by the international community. In fact the more certain European countries appeased Nazi policies that facilitated the Jewish holocaust in Germany of the 1940s, the more those countries should now reject and oppose the Nazi-like policies being implemented by the so-called democratic government of Israel against the Palestinians at this time.
— This article is exclusive to Arab News.
The international scandal of Gaza in 2012
