Poetic Justice

The Palestinian death toll is up to 500. Yet, the offensive continues. Sadly, the UN Security Council found itself unable to even issue a statement calling for a ceasefire with usual suspect, US, blocking such a move. The reason for the veto by US was because “the U.S. believed that there was no immediate prospect that Hamas militants would cease their rocket attacks against Israel”. (Implicit from that is that US viewed Hamas as being responsible for the present conflict.)

The present “disfunctionality of the Security Council”, to use Miguel D’escoto Brockmann’s diplomatic choice of words, once again begs the question why select members of the UN are permitted to possess veto powers which impairs the UN from functioning in an effective and democratic manner.¹ This may have played some part in stultifying any genuine efforts to resolve the decades old conflict.

Israel/Palestine has had many, many “installments” and each having its own causes. The causes for the present one has been retraced by Adam Sheets and can be read here.²

It may also be helpful to consider other viewpoints to the issue. See:

• Vic Alhadeff’s op-ed on the ABC News website in favour of Israel’s actions. Vic is the CEO of the New South Wales (Australia) Jewish Board of Deputies
• Michael Brull’s response to Vic’s op-ed. Michael is one of the bloggers at Independent Australian Jewish Voices an “association” principally “concerned about the narrow range of opinion and fact that is available in the mainstream media on Israel/Palestine and also with the uncritical stance of the leadership of the organized Jewish community”.

Having said all of the above, it just seems that there is a lot of unnecessary debate about whether Israel or Hamas is the cause of the present conflict. The focus should be less about who to blame and more about stopping the loss of lives – Israeli and Palestinian.

In the interim, as a consequence of the blockade enforced upon it, Palestinians needs aid. If you are not sure where to channel your donations, try this Palestinian NGO.

1. The veto power when originally granted to the “Big Five” – US, UK, China, Soviet and France – during UN’s formative years reflected the realities at the time, where without it, the “Big Five” would not have considered joining the United Nations. ((See more particularly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_veto_power [↩]
2. There are also some highly recommended books to read on this issue - Noam Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, Robert Fisk’s Pity the Nation and Zeev Maoz’s Defending the Holyland. [↩]