A State without Mercy  
by William A. Cook

Nothing in the past 60 years revealed the true face of Israel to the world at large (and perhaps to the Lord above) as its illegal invasion of Lebanon. Never before has the Israeli government allowed the world to witness the depth of its brutal aggression as it defied international law with its collective punishment of the innocent. At no time in the past has Israel lost control of the flow of information allowed into or out of Israel and the occupied territories until it abandoned its borders and invaded Lebanon. That mistake ripped away the veil of “victim hood” that the Israeli propaganda machine had constructed around the tiny, beleaguered state beset with fanatics intent on erasing it “from the map” and suicide bombers that threatened death in the streets.

For a full month the world watched as Israel let loose the enormous power of its military might on small towns, on cities, on roads and bridges, on electric power plants and water supply stations, on ports and ships, on oil tanks and beaches, and on the innocent who fled by car, truck, and foot. The condemnation from the world communities appeared universal, until one turned to America. Here our representatives crawled before AIPAC begging them to pen a resolution that would show our absolute commitment to the devastation being wrought on the Lebanese.

Fortunately, our representatives do not represent the American people any more than our main stream media represents what the people of the United States feel regarding the state without mercy, the reprehensible state of Israel. Indeed, the Jewish state of Israel does not represent the Jews of America. Listen to what Jews with a conscience say to the state of Israel: “There is no Jewish safety, nor claims to justice, reason, or equity, beyond Jewish commitment to the unconditional safety and liberation of the peoples of Palestine, Lebanon and the other Arab and Muslim countries currently under attack by Israel, the U.S. and its allies.” Real Jews, those committed to the morals that give strength to Judaism, demand of Israel that “(1) it stop its brutal siege on Gaza and on Lebanon and call for an unconditional cease fire; (2) it stop expansion of the Israeli Wall of Separation, dismantle the completed sections, and completely withdraw from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem; (3) the United States support the United Nations resolutions demanding that Israel uphold international law and support the sanctions against Israel necessary to enforce these resolutions; (4) the United States end military and economic aid to Israel; (5) that Israel support reparations for the Palestinian and Lebanese people for the death and destruction they have suffered and for the aid towards the rebuilding of their countries.” (Petition for U.S. Jewish Solidarity with Muslims and Arab Peoples).

Once the state of Israel realized that its mask of “victim hood” had been lifted and that the world had turned against its atrocities, it quickly accepted intervention by the UN. But its belligerence and defiance of the United Nations and international law continues, most brutally in the millions of unexploded cluster bombs left for the displaced people of Lebanon when they returned home and with the ever present war planes that invade Lebanese air space daily. Now the TV cameras are gone. The world no longer watches the wanton slaughter. Yet Israel has not abandoned its slaughter in Palestine; it’s now into the fourth month, hidden behind the prison walls erected by Israel to keep the cameras out and the people in.

No one sees inside Gaza; no TV anchor man or woman goes to Gaza to show the world what true terror is; nothing seeps through the locked gates that strangle the people inside; nothing reveals to the outside world that Israel and the U.S. are systematically and silently starving over a million people who suffer intense malnutrition; no statistics reveal the rate of unemployment that devastates a people unable to send its produce out or bring goods in; no information tells the world that Israel prevents medical supplies from reaching the people, that hospitals operate on generators only, that medical staff have been murdered, that access to care has been curbed; no one explains to the world the crippling impact this imprisonment has on the minds and souls of children who live in constant fear beneath the boots of an occupying army; no one talks about this calculated genocide behind walls as impenetrable as those at Auschwitz-Birkenau. No one is witness to this nation without mercy.

Inside Palestine there is a group that monitors the abominations committed on behalf of the Jewish state by the IDF, the Palestine Center for Human Rights. Consider just a handful of the statistics they have gathered that are relevant to the siege of Gaza. For the past four months the state of Israel has wrecked havoc on the people of Gaza killing over 320, roughly one third the number Israel slaughtered in Lebanon, including about 60 children, an abomination in any language. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed. As this sixth year of the Israeli occupation of Palestine comes to an end, the IDF killed 3859 Palestinians, 3069 of them civilians (79%). In this last year, Israel killed 504 Palestinians, 398 civilians and 93 children (23%). In targeted killings, Israeli language for assassinations, 376 died, 209 civilians not targeted, including 71 children. Roughly 80% of those killed by Israelis are civilians (PCHR Reports).

Why mention such statistics: Americans never see them, their Congress is immune to them, and the United Nations is powerless to act since the United States, the power behind Israel, vetoes any action raised against this state that has no mercy. I mention these facts for two reasons, to mark the most recent and evident atrocity executed by the state of Israel against the people of Palestine, especially those trapped in the prison of Gaza, and to protest the absence of debate about the perils to the United States brought about by our Congress and the Executive branch’s absolute support for the state of Israel as it carries out untold illegal acts of collective punishment on the people of Palestine.

Let’s put it plainly: Israel is the real “axis of evil,” the primary cause that has brought forth on the United States the terror it fears, as the 9/11 Commission understood but did not report. This government of the Bush administration, working with a Congress that capitulates to the desires of the American Israeli Political Action Committee, not only supports but encourages the outrages committed by this state without mercy. Perhaps we should not be surprised by this, after all this Congress on September 28th passed the Military Commissions Act which, like the laws existing in Israel, “codifies racial and political discrimination, legalizes kidnaping and torture of those the government deems its political enemies, and eliminates habeas corpus – the ancient precept that prevents the police from arresting and holding without cause – a basic protection common to all modern legal systems, and one that dates to the Magna Carta.” (“America’s Nuremberg Laws,” Ted Rall, Commondreams 10/12/06)