Gaza is mentioned, simply because news is news. But after the report little in my country changes on perception. Where is the creativity, the imagination to see through propaganda to actual human lives? I have often remained silent out of frustration. Why can't we see through the lies? Just as the Native American population was caricatured as the brute and barbaric threat to free movement and settlement in a land that was by all rights their own, so the Palestinians have been casted as the war-loving invaders in a land they have called home for generations.
18 dead the other day and finally they get some compassion after a week long invasion by the Israeli military. All the former deaths had the name "militant" attached so surely there is no need for sorrow. If Just War be our claim for legitimacy to the Israeli "defense", surely a warning sign must go out for the grossly indiscriminate and disproportional violence reigning down on the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Collective punishment (via aerial assault, invasion, snipers, sonic booms over Palestinian cities, etc) either intentional or non are clear signs that this ongoing campaign is not only unjust but clearly ineffective. It is a common tendencies of terrorized populations to become only increasingly militant in their desperation to combat the daily onslaught of their people. A fighter in Gaza though equally destructive to peace, must be seen as a reciprocated response to what has been the demolition of not only Palestinian lands, but also of the population itself.
We cannot be so naive as to grant the Gaza withdrawl as a peaceful concession. In a quite contrary reality it has been a means of more effectively crippling the Palestinian people with a clear front line. Without random settlements to fortify, the IDF is lessening the strain of their military positioning by drawing back to a line they can push in and out of at a whim. And no easier way to mask reckless massacres than under the guise of "militant" targeting operations.
Iraq is America's present concern and with due purpose, but the lack of any progressive voice on the issue of Palestine, and many other issues in American politics is reason to find little change resulting from the recent American elections. Perhaps I am little too left for you my reader and the rest of America. But it might be possible to see with an open mind that there is more to the world than America;that our interests are not always the best interests. And that so long as we as the dominant world power do not acknowledge the problems caused by our actions in the name of securing an unsustainable way of living, we will doom ourselves to a destiny of terror.
Might liberty and justice be something we strive for not only in our personal lives but as a community; recognizing that we as clumsly and often nearsighted people will benefit more when we acknowledge the presence of a greater community shaped for better or worse by our individual and communal action. Hope I don't come off as political. I'm just hoping for the best in us all. I have a lot to learn about how to best encourage that, but you can help me.