Gaza Saga

"The neutrality of this article is disputed."

That is labelled on Wikipedia's 2008-2009 Israel-Gaza conflict. Well, how can one be neutral when it involves Israel and Palestine?

I live in Malaysia, an Islamic country where the democracy index is rated as 'flawed democracy'. Therefore it would be predictable that the news that I get, from TV's and newspapers, will all be one-way, pointing the fingers to Israel.

But how can one not blame Israel? The deathtoll until now is 400+ casualties from Israel attacks and only 4 from Hamas rockets. And the deaths by Israeli airstrikes includes civilians, women and children. How can that be considered as "retaliating against terrorist attacks from Hamas"?

I've not been checking on my blog lately, and I realized I got a few comments on my last post, one mentioning on my statement that "I hate to hate the Jews". Yup, I don't want to hate the Jews. They are just another religion, and our Book clearly states the freedom of religion (2:256). Plus, Judaism themselves are very closely related to Islam, the Orthodox Jews practices very much the same practices as we Muslims do (although they would hate the term 'Orthodox' to be associated with them, as if they are moving backwards). I can't hate them. In fact, there's even a Jewish player in Liverpool, happily playing next to a Muslim.

But Zionism is a whole different thing. It is an ideology to create an independent Jewish state of Israel (fine enough) and to occupy Palestinian land and Jerusalem and to control Palestinians' lives. And for decades they've been killing innocent people for fun.

I've watched the crisis over the news (here, the conflict is labeled as "Kekejaman Israel" or "Israel's atrocities") and the papers, all obviously depicting the cruelty of the Israeli attacks. I thought of finding something more neutral, so my easy 'neutral' source is Wikipedia, a foundation to supply knowledge to the whole world with their best efforts of eliminating emotions and biasness, and I totally respect that, that's why they're my number one source of 'neutral' information.

And this is the opening sentence of the article I mentioned earlier:

"The 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, part of the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict, refers to an ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas which began when the Israel Defense Forces launched a series of airstrikes, known as Operation Cast Lead (Hebrew: Mivtza Oferet Yetzukah), against targets in the Gaza Strip, after planning the operation for over six months."

So there you go. There should be no doubt anymore as of who is the real perpertrator.

Hi Security Council, how you guys are doing? Aren't you guys suppose to do something? Yes, of course. Certainly they can assure everyone that they are certainly trying, but they can't do anything. Somebody from the Security Council said that "once again the world has witnessed the dysfunction of the Security Council" and their inability to intervene with such serious bloodshed. Well, why don't you guys do something? It's bad enough for someone like me to 'plant some grapes' at home, but you guys deal with people's lives, you can't just sit around and do nothing.

Well, because someone in the Security Council decided they are smarter than the rest, and therefore they have veto power, which can nullify all other decisions, even majority. United States stated that a ceasefire would cause no good in the conflict, and Hamas would surely not comply to that, and furthermore, Hamas should not be hiding amongst civilians and cause more innocent deaths from the Israeli attacks. Wow! How brilliant! How I (and the rest of the world) have never seen it that way. Israel are not to be blamed for the deaths, it should be Hamas.

America is striving hard to become the most democratic nation in the world and they highly publicize that (although according to the index, they are a distant 18th from being the best, trailing the Scandinavians). They have lots of news channels, ranging from CNN to Fox to Al-Jazeera, giving their people the freedom to choose what are facts and what are lies. I think most of the Americans would know who is the guilty party here. Unfortunately, their representatives in the UN don't. "We don't mind Americans, we love Americans, but we just hate the American foreign policy." We all do.

Meanwhile, they are efforts everywhere to do something. Mahathir, our ex-Prime Minister, is trying hard on his foundation to "criminalize war". That means that raging war can be convicted as a crime and be tried and sentenced. There are countless other foundations and individuals around the world trying to put the responsible people on violations of humanity and war crimes. And some other less significant people try to make themselves significant by marching around the street with placards and stuff. It's good to see people trying to make this world a better place, but although I always wish for the best, I can't see any of these succeeding if the Security Council themselves failed. Security Council is probably the biggest organization that can practically put this massacre to a halt, and let us hope they will find an immediate solution.

For us Muslims, I hate to say this, but we might just be making up numbers. Last night's news showed how the reluctance of the Arab countries in opening their borders to receive Palestinian victims might just be a factor of further suffering of Gaza people (and showed there still is some democracy in this country) and it is sad. I hope the Islamic countries around Palestine would be more helpful and as for us distant Muslim brothers and sisters, we have our prayers (ﺩﻋﺎﺀ) as our weapon. We might not defeat Israel, but at least we can pray for the siege to end immediately, for less suffering for the living, and for better life after death for those deceased. Aamiin.