Rights group Amnesty International says U.S. response to Gaza 'lopsided'
By Reuters (1/2/2009)
Human rights group Amnesty International on Friday accused the United States of having a "lopsided" response to the crisis in Gaza and told the top U.S. diplomat to press all sides to reach an immediate cease-fire.
In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, Amnesty's U.S. branch said the U.S. government must not ignore
Israel's "disproportionate response" against Gaza and policies the group said
had brought Hamas-ruled Gaza to the brink of "humanitarian disaster."
"Amnesty International USA is particularly dismayed at the lopsided response by
the U.S. government to the recent violence and its lackadaisical efforts to
ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza," the group told Rice in the letter,
which was released to the media by Amnesty.
Amnesty said it was also deeply concerned by weaponry and military equipment
supplied to Israel by Washington that the group said had been used in recent
strikes on densely populated residential areas in Gaza.
"The United States must suspend the transfer of weapons to Israel immediately
and conduct an investigation into whether U.S. weapons were used to commit human
rights abuses," said Amnesty.
The United States came under heavy criticism during Israel's 2006 war with
Lebanon for supplying cluster bombs to Israel that were used in the conflict.
The United Nations estimates that Israel dropped a few million cluster bombs on
Lebanon. Hundreds of thousands of those bomblets failed to explode and have
continued to maim and kill after that war's end.
Amnesty also urged the United States to put pressure on Israel to open border
crossings into Gaza to human rights workers and journalists and to allow
humanitarian aid through.
A U.S. State Department official who requested anonymity rejected claims that
the U.S. response had been pro-Israeli or lopsided.
Asked about claims Israel was using disproportionate force, he said: "The use of
force is based on military objectives. Israel has never claimed that this is
vengeance. They are looking to end Hamas' ability to attack Israel."
Israel launched an air campaign a week ago against Gaza in retaliation for
rocket.
If you (or I) were Palestinian
By Yossi Sarid (1/2/2009)
This week I spoke with my students about the
Gaza war, in the context of a class on national security. One student, who had
expressed rather conservative, accepted opinions - that is opinions tending
slightly to the right - succeeded in surprising me. Without any provocation on
my part, he opened his heart and confessed: "If I were a young Palestinian," he
said, "I'd fight the Jews fiercely, even by means of terror. Anyone who says
anything different is telling you lies."
His remarks sounded familiar - I had already heard them before. Suddenly I
remembered: About 10 years ago they were uttered by our defense minister, Ehud
Barak. Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy had asked him then, as a candidate for
prime minister, what he would do had he been born Palestinian and Barak replied
frankly: "I would join a terror organization."
This is not my own answer; terrorism by individuals or organizations or states
is always aimed at exacting casualties in a civilian population that has not
drawn any blood. Not only is terror blind - consuming both the saint and the
sinner - it also expands the circle of the hot-headed, whose blood rises to
their brains: Our blood is on their heads, their blood is on our heads. And when
an account of the blood of the innocent is opened, who can pay it in full, and
when?
I hate all the terrorists in the world,
whatever the purpose of their struggle. However, I support every active civil
revolt against any occupation, and Israel too is among the despicable occupiers.
Such revolt is both more just and more effective, and it does not extinguish
one's spark of humanity. And perhaps I'm just too much of an old codger to be a
terrorist.
But, and pay attention to this but, if a normative young person has a
spontaneous answer that is different from mine, and that answer also escaped the
mouth of an Israeli lieutenant general, then every individual must see himself
as though his son is running with the wrong crowd. If things were the other way
around, our son-whom-we-loved would be a damned terrorist, almost certainly,
because he is of the third and fourth generation of refugeehood and oppression,
and whence cometh salvation? He has nothing to lose but his chains.
Whereas we, his mother and father, would be weeping for the departing son
because he will never return to see the land of his birth and us, except in his
photograph on the wall as a shahid, a martyr. Would we detain him before he
carries out his plan? Would we be able to hold him back if we wanted to? Would
we not understand what he is feeling? What Ehud Barak understood in his day -
would that be impossible for us to understand?
Young people who have no future will easily give up their future, which they
can't see on the horizon. Their past as guttersnipes and their present as cursed
unemployed idlers lock the opening to their hope: Their death is better than
their life, and their death is even better than our life, as their oppressors -
that is how they feel. From the day they are born to the day they leave this
earth, they see their land ahead, to which they will not come as free people.
There are no good and bad peoples; there are only leaderships that behave
responsibly or insanely. And now we are fighting those whom a goodly number of
us would be like, had we been in their place for 41 and a half years.