Cry for Gaza
“It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation, it’s a hell of a pinpoint operation.” U.S. Secretary of John Kerry spoke these words on the telephone to an aide who was presumably informing him about the ongoing, devastating Israeli air and ground assault on Gaza, which has taken a heavy toll in deaths and injuries among Palestinian civilians.
How refreshing, a top U.S. government official for once speaking the truth about the latest example of Netanyahu’s Israel scant regard for Palestinian lives. The only problem is that the Secretary never intended these words to be heard by Netanyahu, the American public, or anyone else. Instead, Kerry’s remarks were captured by a microphone that was left on during a commercial break on a Fox News program in which Secretary Kerry appeared last Sunday.
Kerry’s unintended lapse into sincerity was short-lived. The tragicomic exchange that ensued between Kerry and Fox host Chris Wallace when the latter aired Kerry’s sarcastic private comments is revealing and sad. Wallace, an employee of the network that boasts of being fair and balanced, mocked Kerry by calling his words an “extraordinary moment of diplomacy” and then asked him if he thought Israel had gone too far.
Unlike his off-the-cuff reaction, Kerry’s response begins with the usual hogwash and then turns apologetic: “We support Israel’s right to defend itself. It’s tough. It’s tough to have this kind of operation. I reacted obviously in a way that anybody does with respect to young children and civilians.”
Kerry’s Orwellian exercise in obfuscation makes it sound as if “this kind of operation” is tough … on those who carry it out! Also, the Secretary was not being frank when he said that everybody reacts the same way with respect to casualties among civilians and children. If it were so, Israel would not be using extremely powerful and deadly weapons to pound an extremely small strip of land containing 2.5 million people, the vast majority of them civilians, many of them very young.
The Israelis obviously had to know beforehand the kind of carnage of civilians, including children, that such an operation would inevitably produce. Netanyahu has vehemently defended Israel’s “right” to do exactly what it is doing.
In contrast to the pathetic U.S. response to the tragedy in Gaza as exemplified by Kerry’s performance on Fox, people all over the world have been demonstrating vigorously against the Israeli action. When a family of eighteen is killed in their own home or when children playing soccer on the beach die at the hands of the Israeli military, claims of self-defense or the argument that civilians are killed because Hamas uses them as human shields are widely seen as ridiculous.
The outrage among Palestinians is evidently especially acute and extends to those who are hardly fans of Hamas. On ABC News last Sunday, member of the PLO executive committee Hanan Ashrawi, a moderate and one of the leaders of the main Palestinian opposition to Hamas, “lashed out at Israel today over what she described as ‘“war crimes’” and the ‘“deliberate massacre’” of Palestinian civilians during Israel’s current ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.
‘“This morning, it’s nothing short of a massacre, a deliberate massacre. War crimes committed daily. But now there is a deliberate shelling and bombing and destruction of whole areas, of residential areas.’”
‘“These are war crimes being committed before the world, before the eyes of the whole world and I just can’t understand how people sit back and say [it’s] self-defense. I just can’t take the language, I can’t take the propaganda, I can’t take the mantra that Israel has a right to defend itself. Against whom? Against innocent civilians? More than 80 children have been torn to bits. Is this self-defense?’”
By the times Ashrawi spoke the casualty figures had increased further, with 700 Palestinians killed, including 160 children. And it may be only the beginning; Israel is said to be preparing for a long war.
(Photos of the Gaza War casualties appeared in The New York Times.)
