Israeli attacks in Gaza can't be justified, rationalized

Editor,

There is no excuse for Israel's invasion of Gaza. Past atrocities can neither justify current crimes nor silence the protest against them. Nothing justifies the Israeli carnage in Gaza. Those who attempt to rationalize this slaughter are caught in self-contradictions. Opposition to rocket attacks implies a radical condemnation of this bloodbath. There is no self-defense against the defenseless. The right to self-defense does not sanction mass murder. Occupation, blockade, embargoes, constant military attacks and incursions, targeted killings, the continued robbery and dissection of land, incarceration, and this latest invasion are not "self-defense," but the opposite, the incineration (with white phosphorous) of a concentration camp reminiscent of the onslaught against the Warsaw Ghetto.

Israel's re-instigation of Bush's "Shock & Awe" campaign with modern U.S. weaponry does not defend Israel, but puts its very existence as a Jewish state in question. Any racial-religious definition of nationhood must dehumanize the excluded and uninitiated. The declaration of the un-chosen as lesser human beings justifies their cleansing from their homeland. If the sanctity of the Jewish state trumps everything - every UN resolution, the Geneva Conventions, the Declaration of Human Rights - then Israel's oppression and aggression denies the Palestinian people the right to exist as a people. Armed to her teeth, Israel uses the millions of souls who perished in the Holocaust as cover to justify her own crimes against humanity itself reminiscent of the horrific past. As soon as impartial Justice raises her voice against this injustice she is vilified with empty accusations of anti-Semitism seeking to repeat the Holocaust.

Like a gang of bloodthirsty cheerleaders Congress has given monstrous applause (backed up by $30 billion of military aid) to the horrific spectacle in Gaza as if this were a sports event staged by butchers to prove to the world how many hapless sheep they can tear into pieces in the shortest of times "without (even) intending" to do so. The feat is a cannibalistic feast: more than 1,000 in Lebanon 2 1/2 years ago, now up to 1,500 or more in Gaza.

While Gaza was burning, this nation celebrated the martyred pacifist Martin Luther King as if remembrance of peace and indifference to war were the same thing. Bush gave a concise definition of terrorism in his last address to the nation ("Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time everywhere") without realizing that he had just indicted himself as the head of a terrorist organization known as his administration. Such hypocrisy is stunning.

Unless Obama breaks radically with this murderous tradition, he will inherit Bush's bloody legacy. If Obama betrays his promise of change, his famous chant will ring hollow in the ears of the world deafened by American bombs exploding in Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. In the outcry over Palestine's plight, over the misery of the Iraqi and Afghani people, its real message will then be "Yes we can" - we can be fooled again into another "nightmare" of the American Dream (Malcolm X).

Against this delusion we must assert the following: God looks at this world through the eyes of its victims. The killing and murder of any innocent individual is "disproportionate." It is unacceptable and must be outlawed.

Joachim L. Oberst

UNM instructor