TARIQ A. AL-MAEENA
The month of Ramadan has witnessed another barbaric assault on the people of Gaza. Israeli Defense Forces have been relentlessly targeting and attacking the hapless civilians for whom sustenance has become a living hell in the past decade and more. The Israeli army began a full scale military operation against Gaza on July 8, with air and naval bombardments. On the pretext of avenging the death of three Israeli settlers, Israel is raining down death indiscriminately from the skies above.
The administration of President Barack Obama has been noticeably muted in this latest incursion by the rogue nation. This silence has added to the growing frustration and anger in the Arab world over Obama’s failure to back up the pledge he made in Cairo several years ago to “personally pursue a two-state solution with all the patience and dedication that the task requires” and to alleviate what he called “the continuing humanitarian crisis” in Gaza.
The impotence of the US administration to halt such prolonged and continued state-sponsored terrorism by Israel was immediately complemented by leading US media outlets which deal in denials or half-truths. The US public is being fed the fare that this series of attacks by Israel is in response to rocket attacks, when nothing could be further from the truth.
As a holocaust rains on the people of Gaza, columns and analysis in many of the major papers are more concerned with ensuring that the general public is screened from the barbaric assaults that continue daily.
In a leading US publication, this heinous crime against the innocent residents of Gaza was simply brushed off as a “public relations nightmare for Israel”, while another cautioned that “the criticism of Israel over the attack offered a propaganda coup to Israel’s foes, particularly the Hamas group that holds sway in Gaza.”
Notwithstanding the fact that the dangerous and aggressive land-grabbing Israeli regime continues to violate international law and moral principles regionally, the US media quickly shifted their targets to more mundane issues.
Perhaps a learned American summed it up well when he said: “Another day and another day without any media coverage of US government response to the bombardment of Gaza. The American public is barely informed that anything is happening there right now and is informed about no official government stand on the issue. Not even any partisan rhetoric praising or condemning it. We have silence and entertainment on AOL and CNN. I don’t even look at the prime networks, but I expect they are the same. Actually I got curious. NBC’s #2 top story for the day - Israel fires back in increased attacks from militants.”
Israeli authorities continue to violate Palestinians basic human rights with increasingly aggressive policies against the presence of the Palestinian people in Gaza, Jerusalem and elsewhere. The increase of settlement activities, demolition of Palestinian homes and the ejection of Palestinian families from their own houses, deportation and the confiscation of ID cards continue in occupied territories. Israel has successfully partitioned off Palestinian land into small parcels and enclaves, surrounding them with illegal settlements. Yet the world looks on and does nothing.
Today, there is a mass murder going on right before our very eyes in defiance of all international norms and conventions. We cannot simply blink such atrocities away as we would a bad nightmare. The children of Auschwitz and Dachau have learned their lessons well. And they have been actively engaging in Nazi-like practices against the people of Palestine. And yet such crimes remain unreported in most US media.
Meanwhile, many in the US and elsewhere attempt to portray Iran as the biggest threat to the region. Try telling that to the surviving families of the victims falling to a murderous and indiscriminate Israeli assault.
— The author can be reached at talmaeena@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter @talmaeena
