Robert Fisk: Why Do They Hate The West So Much, We Will Ask

[laststeamtrain]

Why Do They Hate The West So Much, We Will Ask

By Robert Fisk

January 07, 2009 "The Independent" -- - So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army that believes in "purity of arms". But why should we be surprised?

Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?

What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. "Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties," yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night's butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.

What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I'm afraid, it was. After covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle East – by Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops – I suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting our war against "international terror". The Israelis claim they are fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our security, for our safety, by our standards. And so we are also complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza.

I've reported the excuses the Israeli army has served up in the past for these outrages. Since they may well be reheated in the coming hours, here are some of them: that the Palestinians killed their own refugees, that the Palestinians dug up bodies from cemeteries and planted them in the ruins, that ultimately the Palestinians are to blame because they supported an armed faction, or because armed Palestinians deliberately used the innocent refugees as cover.

The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel's right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel's own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin's government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 – a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border – were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't even apologise.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-do-they-hate-the-west-so-much-we-will-ask-1230046.html

[dipsydoodle]

1. Duly noted

and recommended.

[calimary]

2. Kick!

[Captain Hilts]

3. I understand. But what have Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc. done for them? nt

[Diclotican]

5. MookieWilson

MookieWilson

Nothing, is the short answer.. The longer answer is that Egypt, Saudi-Arabia, Syria Jordan and the rest of the arabic world have been using the Palestinian for what ever they are wort.. And then dumped them when not needed anymore. All the wars who have been taking place since 1948, have been followed by many thousands of exile palestinian to arab land.. WHo had put them into little more than ghettos, where they have had not future hope for a better life.. And where the hatred for Israel have festered as a difficult case of cancer.. Israel have definitely doing their share of the bad stuff, include the 1982 invasion in Lebanon, who was something I would call a horrible act of war. I do not remember to much about that war, because I was just a little boy but I do remember it was on the news..

If the Arabic countries have treated the refugees from the wars better, and not put them into virtual ghettos in the worst places in their own country, might, just might the case would be little more different?. If Syria, Jordan, Egypt, S.A Iraq and the rest of the part, have not USED the Palestinian refugees as a tool against Israel who they until recently believed to bee soon wiped out of the face of the earth. The Iranian President, was not the first to talk about revoke of Israel, he was more or less just the latest of a long list of arabic leader who both public, and more private for many decades have told that they are seeing forward to the time when Israel is goon, and the holly land of Palestine are at arabic hands once again.. Even if it means trowing the "evil jews" out to the sea...

The tragic part of this, is that the 1990s, was a little hope of an better future than the past.. But somehow they all got on the bad foot again, and all what was gained in the 1990s was revoked, and destroyed by the end of the decade.. The Nobel prize, the Oslo accord, signed in Washington DC, where to sworn enemies reluctely shacked hand, and played on stage a they was best of friends.. Pretty good played out Bill;).. All this was dead in the water after Arafat was dead.... And now Israel not even have a common voice at the Palestinian side to work with... The Palestinian President doesn't have power outside the West bank. Gaza is out of his control, and have been that for a long time.. Hamas are in control there, and it looks more and more that, the Palestinian Authority, have just the West Bank to count on, when it came to work with the Israeli.. And that is something that at best can be called a work in progress... A progress who is to often shut down because of the impossible condition who both sides have to live with.. A horrible situation all around...

Diclotican

SOrry my bad english, not my native language

[slipslidingaway]

4. Kick n/t