Monday, February 2, 2009

Those who seek justice do so in vain

Some nations – and some leaders – are beyond the reach of the law

By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
The Independent

"So that's that then, is it? Gaza is done and dusted? Very satisfying, I'm sure, for the Israeli leadership and their devoted allies at the BBC. But not so fast. For the one and a half million traumatised and wounded souls in that small strip, unendurable agony goes on. The very earth they stand on burns and cracks. And I am not here indulging a writer's tendency to hyperbole or neat metaphor.

Up to 60 per cent of the best farmland in Gaza has been systematically destroyed, livestock too. Christine van Nieuwenhuyse, a director at the World Food Programme, says this deliberately blighted land "may not be exploitable again". The lemon trees and noisy chickens must have been hiding Hamas rockets. Israel is also keeping some of the remaining arable land beyond the reach of the Palestinians who own it by making it into a buffer zone. Almost all the infrastructure has been flattened too. The resulting perpetual humiliation and dependency, one assumes, is part of Israel's strategic plan......

But why pick only on Israel? Western nations, including Britain, supply some of the killing machines used on children in Gaza. The US and UK have never been hauled through any independent judiciary to explain their lies spun to justify the war on Iraq, or the cluster bombs dropped on civilians, the massacres in Fallujah, the million dead and many more who are born deformed......."

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