Over the past coupe of days, I have witnessed a number of various things, which really altered my perception of current world issues. For starters, since late December last year, Israel has been on a ridiculous bombing campaign in the coastal city of Gaza in an attempt to rid the area of Hamas. Hamas is the only democratically elected party in the Middle East that represents the voice of the initial inhabitants of the land (i.e. the Palestinians). Israel believes that Hamas is a terrorist organization and it wishes to annihilate every possible member of the faction regardless of the civilian casualties and mass infrastructure destruction it accomplishes in the process. Hamas, along with a vast majority of the Muslim and orthodox Jewish community worldwide, believe that Israel is an illegal rogue state and does not recognize its existence after its incorporation and establishment in 1967.
The recent spite of exponentially destructive attacks was spurred on by an end of a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel in December where members of the Israeli Defense Force killed three members of Hamas believed to be militants. This then prompted Hamas to fire rockets into the Southern Israeli town of Gaza resulting in a few people being wounded. The end result is where we are at the moment with over 1,000 air raids having taken place over Gaza thus far. The number of casualties in Gaza has reached well over 600 with more than 1,500 people injured. The humanitarian crisis is worsening day by day with restrictions being placed on any likely form of humanitarian aid being allowed into Gaza. Bombs, which have fallen, have obliterated a number of homes, mosques, schools and universities, and continue falling each day. Citizens all over the world are up in arms with the destruction taking place in the Middle East but nothing is being done from an international point of view. Sadly, the overwhelming voice of the people worldwide does not always represent the view of their government resulting in not much constructive and effective criticism of Israel’s actions. There have been an unlimited number of protests and marches throughout the world but the chants, cries, and screams of the masses have fallen on nothing but deaf ears.
America has not surprisingly given their unlimited support for Israel and all which is being done in the Middle East. People all over are questioning the moral and ethical stance of America with the spotlight shifting more from the transitional role of the Bush Administration (now in centre stage) to the role of the president elect Barack Obama who should be taking office as the new president of the United States of America in the next two weeks or so. Historically though, America has never been morally astute and I’m sure it can be fair to say that the decisions of Mr. Obama (if he in fact is even allowed to make them himself) won’t be too far off from the ideology and ethically tainted views that America has already imbedded into the minds of the greater public. So the only thing we, as the average citizen, can do (aside from altering our everyday consumable preferences away from the Israeli labeled products to the non-Israeli ones) is simply listen to the daily Israeli bomb raids and civilian massacres and pray that God restore some form of sanity into the minds of the decision makers of this troubled global community. It’s a sad day for human kind indeed.