During a summit held in Iran last Friday, Arab foreign ministers jointly rounded on Israel for upping its aggressive tactics against the Palestinian people. They further expressed sadness at the international community's virtual silence while blasting members of the UN Security Council for their reluctance to pass a resolution condemning Israel's crimes.
They're absolutely right as the only exceptions to this massive display of mealy-mouthed cowardice besides Arabs have been the Swiss, the Italians, the EU, Iran and Malaysia.
Surprisingly, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, has emerged from his diplomatic shell to demand immediate access to the Gaza Strip for UN employees and supplies of essential aid.
At the other end of the moral spectrum is the US and France, nations which on Saturday blocked a draft UN Resolution condemning Israel's recent military incursion into Gaza that has taken the lives of more than 50 Palestinians, including young children.
Washington's biased stance is predictable but what on earth has happened to France since those days in 2003 when it stood strong against the US invasion of Iraq?
Did the sight of US senators pouring French wines into the gutter cause them so much pain that they now prefer to trash their morals instead?
Compared to Israel's campaign of terror, ostensibly waged to free one of its soldiers captured by the Palestinian resistance, Hamas is beginning to sound levelheaded and fairly benign.
Eager to end the bloodshed, Hamas proposed a cease-fire but instead of negotiations Israel has chosen to ratchet up its cruel onslaught.
Earlier, Hamas had signaled its readiness to recognize Israel under the so-called "Prisoners' Plan" and only decided to break its yearlong unilateral cease-fire when Israel resumed its illegal policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders.
This, by the way, is a policy that is shamefully supported by 82 percent of all Israelis according to a Ma'ariv newspaper poll.
Think about it! Not only does the Israeli government murder and threaten to murder members of the democratically elected Palestinian government, more than three-quarters of Israel's population believe cold-blooded state-sanctioned murder is kosher. These attitudes really do beggar belief and if they were expressed by any other nation except Israel, there would be a massive coordinated global outcry.
Yet Israel consistently gets away with breaking the law, mostly due to Washington's support and protection, but also because its detractors are fearful of being labeled with the old canard of "anti-Semitism".
Happily this faux charge could not be directed at the 300 prominent members of Britain's Jewry, including the playwright Harold Pinter, who appended their names to a July 7 full-page advertisement in the Times blasting the Israeli government.
"We watch with horror the collective punishment of the people of Gaza," read the first paragraph of the ad. "Everything reasonable must be done to secure Corporal Gilad Shalit's safe release but nothing Israel is doing contributes to that aim. Instead, it is using its enormous superior military might to terrorize an entire people."
Quoting one of Israel's most worthy columnists Gideon Levy, the ad goes on to say this. "Gilad Shalit has become a pawn in the Israeli government's ongoing battle to topple the democratically-elected government of the Palestinians."
This sentiment is echoed among the Palestinian leadership and on the streets. Shalit is not a civilian, he's a soldier and, as such, can be considered fair game when Israel has bombarded Gaza more than 700 times during the year since its withdrawal. Moreover, there are numerous precedents for prisoner exchanges between Israel and its foes, as Shalit's own father, desperate for the return of his son, has pointed out to no avail.
Today Gaza's 1.5 million residents are abandoned to the dark, many of them without running water or fuel for generators. Food and medicines are also in short supply. Israel's tanks may have withdrawn, for now, but its missiles and bombs never cease to rain down.
What have these people done to deserve decades steeped in misery? They are the ones subsisting under a heavy-handed occupation. They are the ones trapped in an open-air prison with no rights over their own borders, coastlines or skies. They are the ones who are helpless to quell their children's cries when Israeli fighter jets break the sound barrier or to screen their eyes from the sight of mangled blood limbs strewn over the streets where they play.
Why are Western leaders intent on behaving like the three wise monkeys - see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil - when it comes to Israel? Where is the voice of Tony Blair, the man who claimed credit for edging George W. Bush toward support of a mirage called "the road map"?
During last week's Prime Minister's Question Time in the House of Commons, Blair indicated that he did not agree that Israel's aggression was "in breach of international law and constitutes collective punishment that the international community should condemn and bring to an end as soon as possible".
This is surely incredible taking into account the fact that Blair was formerly called to the bar, while his wife is currently a human rights barrister. If he's unsure that the bombing of power stations and the cutting off of water and food supplies do not constitute collective punishment then I would respectfully suggest he studies the Fourth Geneva Convention for starters.
Dirty politics has replaced the rule of law along with human decency and compassion. Blair doesn't want to offend his Texan pal, who, in turn, has promised to stand shoulder to shoulder with Tel Aviv come what may.
Sad to say, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may get the last laugh. For all his flowery posturing, the downfall of Hamas followed by US approval of his unilateral convergence plan - as, of course, he has "no partner for peace" - is worth more to him than the life of Gilad Shalit or any number of Palestinian women and children.
Make no mistake. Israel, the most puissant military power in the region, puts pieces of land over peace. It doesn't fear Hamas or homemade rockets that usually fall into the dust.
Its greatest fear is the emergence of a credible Palestinian peacemaker, when the international community will force it back to "the road map". And that, my friends, is the grubby bottom line.
