New Year in Gaza, like the old

Seeing that it is still early in 2009, time to write my first post for the year. I know, I know, you've all been missing me badly, but as Benjamin Franklin once said, he that can have patience, can have what he will. Anyhow my esteemed readers, best wishes for the New Year. May this turn around the sun bring you & your loved ones inner peace and all the happiness you can handle.

It is however with sadness that I choose the topic for this year’s opening post, but as I write these lines, sitting at my computer, fully aware that I am witnessing today’s Nazis committing mass murder in our day, I can’t shake the feeling that by joining the line of bloggers expressing their grief about the casualties the Israeli dictatorship is raking up in Palestinian lands, I am wasting my and your time. Neither me writing this post nor you reading it will bring back the hundreds of innocent human lives lost so far in the latest episode of this seemingly never-ending drama. The same accounts for the fade of the survivors.

What a sorry affair this conflict around Palestine/Israel has become. It’s a game of Middle Eastern regional power politics being played, with Palestinian and Israeli civilians the pawns ordained to do the bleeding. Just by looking at the time-span this dispute has been allowed to go on for, we get an indication on how disingenuous and two-faced most parties involved really are.

Hamas, in a sense not unlike the Afghani Taliban, has become the genie that can’t be put back in the bottle. Palestine’s Islamic resistance movement, founded in the late eighties by Sheik Yassin, was initially welcomed if not cultivated and fed by US and Israeli clandestine services and their associated puppet regimes in the region. The idea was to help breed an inter-Palestinian rival to USrael’s public enemy number one at the time, Arafat’s PLO. Divide and conquer, tried, trusted, works every time.

Just like the many Arab dictatorships need Zionist Israel to provide the diversion needed to keep their own citizens under control, does Israel need Hamas and Fatah’s existence, their sporadic suicide bombs and mortar attacks. Without them, without the constant fighting, they’d have no more excuse to continue the illegal land grab they are engaged in, and are getting away with under the cover of war.

Instead of de-escalating the situation, Israel does the exact opposite – confining over a million Palestinian people to a penal ghetto, starving the locked up population of humanitarian aid and life’s basics – and then acts shocked when the ghetto inmates fling low-grade rockets at them, crying crocodiles tears and snivelling about the odd Israeli victim.

Israel is doing what it is for the same reason a dog licks its balls, because it can. They feel an itch and know that no-one cares enough to stop them. Israeli analysts have been studying the Palestinian resistance for more than half a century and by now have surely figured out that any military counter-insurgency measures against an opponent that actually lives in the warzone, is like punching your fist into a bucket of water - the moment you pull it out its back to how it was. My bet is that Israel's strategists know full well that the bloodshed will not bring about the end of Hamas, quite contrary, if anything their current onslaught will increase the groups popularity amongst the huddled up masses in Gaza’s basements. So why, if not to feed the flames, this gruesome Israeli military incursion?

Throughout all of this drama, Palestinians pretty much were, and are now, on their own. Their brothers in Egypt & the Arab league can’t come to the rescue, too convenient is the ever festering status of Palestine for Mubarak and his fellow totalitarian Arab leaders.

European powers, as always displaying no backbone when it comes down to standing up for the oppressed, are no hopers too. Merkel and her unconditional support for the Israeli murder spree is the prime example for what Palestinians can expect from the EU. Hollow words and a few shekels to rebuild the destroyed infrastructure - Israel needs new targets for future bombing raids.

And then there is Obama, already a write off, an AIPAC sleeper who got activated; his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who felt himself so obligated that he had to serve his time in the Israeli Oppression Force and whose father it seems was a member of the Jewish terror group Irgun, forget the US admin, bastards the lot of them.

All Obama had to do was come out of his ivory tower and tell the Israeli leadership that if they continue with their atrocious war crimes against defenseless civilians, it will spell the end of any US weapons and logistics support. Not a single bomb would have been dropped on Gaza. He didn't, and hence carries some responsibility for the deaths and injuries inflicted on the Palestinian civilians.

One thing is for sure, and after 40 years of Israel’s continued illegal occupation of Palestinian land one can be fairly certain, the ruling elites across the world will not lift a finger to bring this conflict to an end. They will do what they do best, squabble amongst them in some fancy conference room, only to emerge with a declaration that nothing can be done, calling on both sides to be more friendly to each other. The slow but steady theft of Palestinian land will continue, and so will the suffering.

Should you be so inclined, please contribute to Gaza’s aid.

Bigot Heaven? Staying at Haven!

The following line is the marketing slogan of a hostel in Alice Springs:

Haven backpackers is Alice Springs newest backpackers resort, stylish, funky, super clean and with the most friendly welcome possible.

They forgot to add "If you are not Aboriginal, that is." Coz if you are an Indigenous person, and another guest doesn't like your skin color, you are out. No friendly welcome, but a stylish "Fuck Off" is what you'll get. Because super clean means white. How much more funky could it get?

This from Auntie on what went down in the Alice:

An Alice Springs backpacker hostel may face legal action after it turned away a group of Indigenous people because of their skin colour.

The 16 women and children had travelled 300 kilometres from Yuendumu to Alice Springs to train as lifeguards for their community's new swimming pool.

They checked into the Haven Backpackers resort, but a short time later the manager told them that guests already staying there had complained of being scared.

The group included several young mothers and a three-month-old baby. Most were young leaders, chosen specially for their standing in the Yuendumu community.

The resort manager told Bethany Langdon from the Yuendumu Young Leaders program the group would have to leave.

"The manager came out and told me that we weren't suitable to stay there," she told ABC1's Lateline program.

"They said, because you're Aboriginal, other tourists were making complaints that they were scared of us.

"I felt like I wanted to cry, because it made me feel like I wasn't an Australian."

My heart goes out to Bethany and her fellow Traditional Owners who have to endure the deep rooted racism that is still well and truly alive in Oz. I can only imagine the alienation these people must feel - up and down the nation. Let's not kid ourselves, this was by no means a one-off episode. A very well informed source when it comes to racism is of the following opinion:

The Territory's anti-discrimination commissioner Tony Fitzgerald says it's not an isolated incident, but most never get investigated because people don't feel comfortable enough to report them.

A sad affair indeed. In the end the Australian Prime Minister can say sorry as much as he wants to, as long as large sections of the community and businesses keep discriminating against Indigenous folks, his well meant words will be nothing more than window dressing.