DOUBLE TALK

A Reuters photograph showing Palestinains celebrating the mass murder of Jews in Jerusalem.

Aid groups including Oxfam, Amnesty International, Save the Children and Care International UK have prepared a report on the dire humanitarian situation facing the people in Gaza. According to a report by Tim Butcher in today's Age (Gaza's ordeal 'its worst in 40 years'), the groups say that the crisis is "man made, completely avoidable, and with the necessary political will, can be reversed." I agree with them on this point. I disagree strongly with them on the identity of the man who "made" the crisis.

This bevy of aid groups is so bigoted against the Israelis that they simply can't see the forest for the rest of the greenery, most of which was removed from Gaza by the Palestinians after they left in 2005. At the time, the infrastructure set up by the Israelis maintained 21 Jewish settlements and its greenhouses and not only sustained 9,000 settlers but employed 50,000 Palestinians. This was all destroyed by the locals in the days and weeks after Israel left the area; much of it was dismantled and taken away to be sold by scavengers for scrap. Not a single Jew was left but Oxfam, Amnesty International, Save the Children and Care International UK are ignoring the facts on the ground and taking a highly political and warped stance in accepting the fiction of a continuing Israeli occupation.

The reality is and must be that the "man made" part of the equation lies largely in the hands of those who control Gaza. Butcher identifies them in his article; Hamas which he says "runs Gaza" but which flies in the face of international obligations made by the Palestinians to disarm terrorists.

Yet, in spite of all that, a director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen has the effrontery to describe Israel as "the occupying power in Gaza" and to heap obligations upon it which rightfully belong to Palestinian rulers of Gaza. Her double talk is particularly galling because she knows as does the rest of the world, that all it takes to end this crisis is for Hamas to issue the order for the various terrorist militias (including its own armed wing) to stop attacking civilian targets with missile fire into neighbouring Israeli towns.

To compound the situation, the aid groups' report lies about the humanitarian assistance being provided by the Israelis by simply ignoring it and turning its head away about the attacks on convoys by Palestinians at the crossings when bringing such aid into Gaza.

The aid groups are critical of Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza into Israel but they don't appear to care too much about the human rights of those who live under these attacks. Writing in today's Herald Sun, Alan Howe fills the void created by much of the mainstream media's reporting on this situation in Code word for hate.

It is becoming fashionable to suggest that the crisis could be solved by Israel and Hamas talking to each other and working out a lasting ceasefire. I have some misgivings about how such a strategy might work (see the final sentence from this sympathetic Reuters puff piece on a Hamas fighter), but wonder why these aid groups don't intercede on behalf of the poor, suffering Gazans and suggest to Hamas that they alleviate their plight by simply stopping the missile fire into Israel's populated areas.

Instead, they issue a report that heaps most of the blame on the Jewish State and hands Hamas a propaganda victory and a free pass to continue using its own people as pawns to further the cause of destroying Israel. In doing so, these groups have forfeited the right to claim they are working in the cause of humanity.