More Blood being Spilled in the Streets of Gaza and Baghdad... for what?

Something told me that Saddam's guilty verdict was just another tactic to divert media attention. I mulled that over when I considered the relative calm in Iraq. However, when my eyes turned back to Palestine, I was shocked to see what had happened. Apparently, Palestinians are in an uproar, not because of Fatah or Hamas, but because of the Israeli army. And this uproar was caused by... a massacre. And this just came in after Saddam's verdict, did it not? Well, apparently, 18 civilians were killed in an indiscriminate shelling attack on the Gazan town of Beit Hanun (Al Jazeera). What's even more enraging is that the casualty count

included seven children and four women who all died when Israeli tanks fired on their home as they were sleeping on Wednesday morning.

Get that: more than HALF of the civilian casualties were innocent women and children. It is clear-cut, however, that the other casualties most likely involved dead men as well who were most likely innocent. Another thing: the attack occurred on Wednesday morning, not evening or afternoon. What angered me further was that not only was a home hit, but also this:



A mosque. And not just any mosque, but one of the oldest mosques in Gaza. If it were a church or a synagogue, I would have been equally angered: hitting a place of worship, or those who worship, is not prescribed in Islamic war ethic. Here's another image that had me at the edge of my seat:



Imagine if it were the pic of the ruins of a synagogue in Israeli town, and the boy was holding a Torah or some other religious scripture. I'm pretty sure that it would have been all over the front page. This is not to insult Judaism, but to highlight the hypocrisy of far-right Israeli propagandists.

The situation in Gaza is looking very grim, in this most densely populated corner of the Earth where people are dying almost daily from indiscriminate shelling and tank fire. This is not to condone terrorism, for I condemn it, but this is mainly to highlight the condemning of actions, not people because they are people. If anything, Gaza is becoming a prison, and one could hardly imagine the daily bombardment that these people try to evade and survive through. The security of the Palestinian people is being put at risk, while that of Israel is faltering. While it could be argued that Israelis are living in relatively more security, one must not forget that security is a multilateral issue: there is absolutely no justification for driving one populace into fear while keeping another one secure at its expense.

Yet, from the way I see it, the massacre is definitely going to incite a "response", if not a retaliation. Fatah's Abdul-Hakim Awwad made it clear that, while taking an "eye for an eye" approach,

"There will be no security in Ashkelon, no security in Tel Aviv or Haifa, until our people in Beit Hanoun are secured."

The statement here implies that security should be multilateral, but what he claimed that as long as Palestinian security is being undermined, Israel's security won't be left unscathed. This approach is at best cyclic: it won't stop unless those Israelis who are responsible for disturbing the peace are brought to justice... but, seriously, justice these days has become all too polarized and unilateral when it's preached by any one person... well, almost, considering the notion that justice should be universal, for if it is not, then justice itself loses its meaning. And it most certainly didn't lost its meaning...

...yet. If we are to allow those who call for the killing of more innocents, and more "incursions", all of which are unilateral in nature, speak their piece and drum the voices of those who want a fair justice for all, then there will be more violence and more blood spilt, while those who have committed injustices will get away with more blood on their hands. While Israeli and Palestinian terrorists exchange fire, more innocents are dying. There is no way that we can excuse the killing of innocents on one side for the sake of what the "other side" did. All civilian deaths are intentionally brought about: you either fire the Goddamned shot or you don't, whether it be a bullet, a rocket or a shell.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, things are definitely not looking so bright. Baghdad has become a haven for city-states: if anything, more people are dying because of this farcical war that the Coalition instigated; the number was in fact estimated at around 100's each day! Al Jazeera claims that

Friday's civilian death toll was little changed from previous days. The UN estimates about 100 Iraqis die in violence each day, while Iraq's health minister on Thursday estimated 150,000 civilians had been killed in the war - about three times previously accepted estimates of 45,000-50,000.

At least 33 bodies were found, most the victims of roving sectarian death squads that usually torture their victims before shooting them. Among the latest victims was a Sunni imam, Akram Jassim, 60, gunned down at the front entrance to his mosque in Mosul, 360km northwest of Baghdad, said Brigader Abdul Kerim al-Jubori, a spokesman for the provincial police.

However, as usual,

The US commander in Iraq has castigated both Iran and Syria, Iraq's neighbours east and west, for trying to undermine the American effort to stabilise the country.

This is not surprising: the neocon Coalition never accepts responsibility for screwing up Iraq, so instead, they point at sitting scapegoats like Iran and Syria, who both have done absolutely nothing regarding the Iraq war.

Yet, even sadder than this is the confirmation of what was deemed to be in fact a false sense of security not only replacing liberty, but suppressing it. According to Dahr Jamail, the so-called "Facilities Protection Service" turned out to be tools of the Coalition regime in Iraq. The Global Security.org intel regarding the FPS, as it is called, is sketchy at best. We learn that

The Facilities Protection Service wroks for all ministries and governmental agencies, but its standards are set and enforced by the Ministry of Interior. It can also be privately hired. The FPS is tasked with the fixed site protection of Ministerial, Governmental, or private buildings, facilities and personnel. The FPS includes Oil, Electricity Police and Port Security.

Check that: the Ministry of Interior, the same ministry that is being accused of facilitating these death squads. If Dahr Jamail's account was bad, Harith al-Fahd, former Iraqi army general, has an even more damning account:

" "All the forces formed were actually militias, not organised forces, because they were formed according to rations given to each party in power."

To be honest, the word "rations" actually took me aback even more than "militias", which any ragtag army would be made of. But the idea that these militias are spread out over different parties, they have different allegiances, and thus would be more likely to spread violence. The problem is that many politicians and puppets, Sunni and Shia, in the Iraqi government are too busy with their own feudal motives to even consider any sort of reconciliation or cessation to violence.



...and the occupation. They and their Coalition cronies like Zalmay Khalilzad (God guide him to the light, for he (Zalmay) has been misguided by this neoconservative regime of America and is seeking discord between his Muslim brothers) are distinguishing Iraqis as Sunnites, Shiites, Chaldeans, Jews, Kurds, et al. They don't work on Iraq itself, but rather on ripping it apart from the inside by pitting factions against each other, all the while tightening their hold on the capital. What kind of freedom is this that the Iraqis are being dealt with? If that's freedom in Bush's bubble world, then I don't want it, and neither would any other sane person want it either. The big fallacy of "priceless freedom" means nothing to those who don't have homes or any hope for that matter. If anything, as Dahr Jamail put it, the departure of Bechtel's contingent from Iraq removed the illusion that Bush is up to any sort of good or that there seriously will be a rebuilding. Ahmed al-Ani, a worker in a major Iraqi construction contracting company, said to IPS,

"They charged huge sums of money for the contracts they signed, then they sold them to smaller companies who resold them again to small inexperienced Iraqi contractors. These inexperienced contractors then had to execute the works badly because of the very low prices they get, and the lack of experience."

But Malik al-Nazzal, an Iraqi political analyst, had another thing on his mind.

"I see the beginning of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. It started with Bechtel and Haliburton's propaganda, and might end with their escape from the field. They came with Bremer and introduced themselves as heroes and saviours who would bring prosperity to Iraq, but all they did was market U.S. propaganda."

A U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be good: perhaps the Iraqi politicians in power could actually cooperate and rebuild Iraq when they remove all sorts of illusions from themselves. But why they came in the first place befuddles me: if they seriously were marketing neocon propaganda, then I shouldn't be too surprised, should I? After all, the Coalition was there for the oil, and not to mention the installation of puppets in their war on Iraq.

I'm getting sick of it already. The war on Iraq and Palestine should stop if there would be a total cessation of all violence. The Coalition should withdraw from Iraq, or give way to a NATO force in order to clean up the mess and help rebuild the country. Palestine shouldn't be shelled everyday. Palestinians as much as any other people have the right to live in their land in peace and security with their neighbors, Arab and Israeli (what should be done regarding this issue will be discussed later). The outright hypocrisy of it all? The Israeli and American governments ignore their own terrorism against innocent Iraqis and Palestinians, and both seek to sow discord amongst them... "politically". Well, to be brash, screw politics. Iraqi Sunnites, Shiites and Kurds, etc. are ALL Iraqis, and all Palestinians are Palestinians, whether they lick the shoes of Fatah or wave the flags of Hamas. Is this justice? Is this peace? We all want peace, justice and security in this world, no matter who, what, or where we are. We can't live on like this. But I hate to say that things will not get better anytime soon...

Salaam, from Saracen

Critical Update: Blogger Sabbah has published a video of images from Beit Hanoun (thanks, by the way!) ...



Disturbing, yes? I hate to see images like this, but I thought I'd publish this video on my blog to spread the message to those who think that the Israeli army has "moral superiority". Fact is, the idea of people defending such actions openly makes them all the more immoral. But then again, all murderers and terrorists are.