How thoroughly magnanimous:
Israel...opened its border with Gaza to allow nearly 300 Palestinians with foreign passports to flee.
Many of the evacuees were foreign-born women married to Palestinians and their children. Spouses who did not hold foreign citizenship were not allowed out.
One of them had an all-too-typical tale to tell of the Israeli terrorism of those who remain imprisoned:
"There is no water, no electricity, no medicine. It's hard to survive. Gaza is destroyed," Jawaher Haggi, a 14-year-old Palestinian American, said after crossing into Israel. She said her uncle was killed in an airstrike when he tried to pick up medicine for her cancer-stricken father, who later died of his illness.
Tzipi Livni claims "There is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip." I guess she hasn't talked to Jawaher Haggi about her uncle and father. The equally disgusting Condoleezza Rice talks about how Hamas has "held the people of Gaza hostage." No comment from her on what Israel is doing to the people of Gaza.
And while we're on the subject of "disgusting," there's Mahmoud Abbas. If silence is complicity, how much worse is silencing, and how much worse still is silencing of some of the oppressed by others?
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian police violently cracked down on protests organized by their rivals in Hamas throughout the West Bank on Friday as rallies against Israeli air strikes in Gaza turned into demonstrations against the Palestinian Authority.
Police of Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority pounced on demonstrators protesting seven days of heavy Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip targeting the militant Hamas movement.
Security forces particularly focused on anyone carrying Hamas' green flags.
Do you think George and Condi and Barack (Obama, not Ehud) will have anything to say about this affront to "democracy" in the Middle East? Yeah, me neither.
Back in the U.S. (or rather, in Lebanon, but referring to the U.S.), there's the much-maligned (on this site) Cynthia McKinney, who risked her life to help the people of Gaza. She has this to say in a very important article about the Israeli ramming of the Dignity on its way to Gaza with emergency medical supplies:
"President-elect Obama roared like a mighty lion onto the political scene, but now he is as silent as a lamb in the face of the death and destruction that is happening in Gaza. As we approach the birthday celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. let us remember what Dr. King said:"
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- Cynthia McKinney,
Numerous other important articles on Gaza today at CounterPunch.
Reprinted from Left I on the News