Saturday, December 27, 2008

Yes, let’s all address the urgent humanitarian needs of the innocent people of Gaza. What a good idea!


Israel has been bombing Gaza since this morning, with no regard for the safety of civilians, launching air strikes, for example, on crowded cities just as schools were letting out.


It is the bloodiest assault on Gaza since the 1967 war, with at least 200 dead so far. This bombing campaign is in “retaliation” (remember, Israel’s actions are always responses to the wickedness of others) for a series of rocket attacks that killed, um, no Israelis.


Here is the response issued by Condi Rice, verbatim:

The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza. The ceasefire should be restored immediately. The United States calls on all concerned to address the urgent humanitarian needs of the innocent people of Gaza.

You’ll note the absence of a call for Israel to “address” the urgent humanitarian needs of the innocent people of Gaza by not creating those urgent humanitarian needs through bombs and blockades (blockades which will, by the way, prevent anyone from responding to Condi’s call to address the urgent etc).


And Barack Obama, in his first failure of international leadership, had a spokesmodel say that he was “closely monitoring global events.” It is, literally, the very least he can do.


The spokesmodel also muttered something about there being only one president at a time, which evidently precludes Obama from responding publicly to this slaughter as a, you know, human being.



Dave Barry’s review of 2008.

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