Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Who Needs Gas?

This news story is firing all over the wires as you point your browsers to GYTIAPW, dear readers, and it scares me to death. Let's make Derrida proud and do a bit of deconstructing:

Under a plan proposed by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Israel would disrupt electrical supplies, reduce fuel shipments to a bare minimum to run hospital generators, and choke off shipments of goods to allow only essential food and medicine to enter Gaza. In addition, it will continue military operations "against terror organizations."
Disrupting electrical supplies, fuel shipments, and food/medicine, huh? Let's set aside for a moment the ever-present horror of how what Israel says is going through checkpoints never actually does. Even assuming that Israel allows "the minimum" of these things into Gaza, it still sounds eerily to me like something I've read about elsewhere. But never fear, Gazans! It's not all bad:
The ministers, however, voted not to disrupt the water supply to Gaza, the home of 1.4 million Palestinians.
Oh, how gracious of you, Israel. Especially considering that Gaza already suffers from a massive water crisis. I guess you cannot disrupt what does not exist.

Finally, let's talk about this textbook example of what would get you a Weekly Dave, had I not already handed it out this week:
An Israeli government statement said, "The Hamas organization is a terror organization that seized control of the Gaza Strip and turned into a hostile area. This organization carries out hostile actions against the state of Israel and its citizens and are responsible for this activity."
I just want to remind readers that Hamas was democratically elected. But even barring that for a moment, the comment about Gaza's citizens being responsible for Gaza's actions, while standard rhetoric for Israel, simply proves my point. So at this point, I will claim QED.

This is just further proof that Israel's actions, both in Gaza and the West Bank, constitute massive human rights violations. This latest move is, I say again, collective punishment. We need to organize and fight it, before there's no Gaza left.