The arrogance of power [Archives:2006/961/Opinion]

The horrific latest violence that has erupted last week in Gaza and in Iraq only goes to show that unilateral possession of power at the international and regional levels only underscores the danger that can come with such hegemony. Here we have the “decorated” State of Israel releasing all its powerful weapons against a helpless civilian population that is already suffering the most miserable conditions of being totally besieged without recourse to any relief from any outside force that might have some mercy still to dish out on these helpless Gazians. It is not enough that Israel has frozen any possible economic activity to allow these helpless Palestinians to eke out some sort of subsistence living. They have no access to the outside world. They have no access to clean water. They have no access to any readily available aid that could come to them from their fellow Arabs, or other many still kind people in the international community. Now the Israeli “Defense” Forces, which have been on the offensive since the date of the establishment of the State of Israel, unleashes all its power to destroy what ever is left of the vital infrastructure that may keep these people on the borderline between death and survival. Yes, the IDF has decided to make use of a minor military disappointment, when its forces were confronted with a legitimate resistance against an illegal occupation that led to the imprisonment of a conscripted Corporal to bring death and destruction to the vast majority of the civilian population of Gaza. With its tanks standing ready to mop up, the Israeli artillery and aircraft shelling of civilians and the unlawful detention of designated political leaders, democratically elected by the Palestinians to hopefully bring them out of this predicament of Israeli occupation, world indifferent, local authority incompetence and many many other ills that seem not to find any cure with anyone holding the helms of authority in the Holy Land. How can the world allow such barbarity to occur?

Yet amidst the world outrage at what is obviously a bad exploitation of a mismatch, let alone exaggerated mass punishment against the helpless majority of innocent civilians, we have the US Ambassador to the United Nations calling Damascus the cause of all this mayhem unleashed by the Israelis for not surrendering Khalid Mash'al, the leader of Hamas. That is not exactly what calling a spade a spade is all about. But then John Bolton is one of the engineers of the biggest flop in American history with the invasion of Iraq. One wonders what John Bolton has to say about the rape and murder of an Iraqi woman along with the three other members of her family, including a child, carried out by the very forces that Bolton and his havoc engineering friends in the Right Wing Establishment that is holding the helms in the United States?

Israel has an unlimited scope to unleash death and destruction to defend itself, says the White House even if it means the annihilation of the Palestinian people. But anyone who dares raise a finger of resistance to the most horrific occupation of all times is a terrorist and murderer in the White House glossary of words, which now even the United States Supreme Court can no longer stomach.

The increasing horrors that this region is being witness to are the engineering fine works of the right wing establishment on behalf of their Israeli friends, who seem to have driven this region into an abyss of violence, for which no clear exit is in sight.

Thank you, Mr. Bolton for your contemptuous appraisal of events in the region. We wish to tell Mr. Bolton that it is American weaponry that is being unleashed against the people of Gaza and not the toys of weapons that Damascus may own. We also wish to tell him that it is the Israeli Mossad that is actively at work fomenting all sorts of violence in Iraq and elsewhere in the region, including Lebanon. Perhaps Mr. Bolton is not aware that a big ring of Mossad agents was captured in Lebanon planning for another major explosion there, after all the previous explosions, the latter of which are becoming less of a mystery now that this ring was captured.

Hassan Al-Haifi has been a Yemeni political economist and journalist for more than 20 years.
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