Beyond The Broken Spectrum

At the risk of sounding horribly bias on the situation, I feel I need to interject and point out a possibility in the Israeli-Hamas conflict. There have been many incidents of civilians being killed and aid workers coming under fire, all of which has been blamed on Israel. While I do believe Israel is responsible for most of the the civilian deaths, I believe Hamas is responsible for many as well, and not in the way that many of us would generally be led to believe.

While it is true that Hamas does hide among civilians and use them as human shields, it is ultimately Israel’s fault for any civilians that are killed by Israeli fire, even though Hamas is to blame as well. However I believe there is more to this than meets the eye. With many incidents being reported, Israel has denied being responsible for some of the incidents where civilians or aid workers have come under fire.

Hamas is a very powerful grass roots movement that has the power of propaganda on their side. With everyone up in arms over this conflict, calling for a ceasefire, Israel and Hamas are being scrutinized by everyone. Israel is being looked at even harder though since they are considered a regional power and Hamas is ultimately a terrorist group. This gives Hamas a great edge because anything negative coming from this conflict will likely be blamed on Israel. Since Israel has denied involvement in some incidents, I think I can safely say that they will probably own up to most, if not all of the damage that they do. I’m not sure the Israelis really care about what the rest of the world thinks about them right now, as long as the US is standing behind them.

This leads me to believe that Hamas has been involved in part of the civilian casualties and the UN supply truck being hit, killing two aid workers and wounding another. Hamas has everything to gain from this happening, as it puts even more scrutiny and pressure on Israel to back off. Hamas seems to have no problem killing civilians, evident from their random rocket fire into Israel. It is very probable that Hamas was involved in these incidents and I believe we will see more if there is not a cease fire soon.

Israel has not allowed the press into Gaza since the conflict began so reporting from Gaza has been scarce, with most information coming from civilian independent sources who have taken pictures and made video of the situation surrounding them. So far there has been no indication of when the press will be allowed in. This is not acceptable in a democratic society, where a free press is heralded. Israel should let reporters go into Gaza on their own accord and be allowed to freely report the news.

The situation is looking very bleak for the 1.4 million people of Gaza, as 2/3’s of the population have no electricity and half have no water. Things could very well get a lot worse before they get better as it seems this conflict has no end in sight. The cease fires drawn up so far are not nearly good enough to end the fighting and I believe the Israelis may end up going completely in to fully take out Hamas. If Israel does go any further, then they will need to step up their efforts to protect and help civilians in the territory, possibly by setting up designated safe zones and actively distributing aid to civilians along side aid workers. They are just as much a part of the cause of all this grief as Hamas is, so every effort should be made to help the civilians who they have caused distress to.

Related posts:

1. Federal Government Nation’s Largest Employer With more than 1.8 million civilian employees, the Federal...
2. After denying infant coverage, insurer says they will cover ‘heavy’ babies Rocky Mountain Health Plans, a Colorado health insurer, announced in...
3. Man appears free of HIV after stem cell transplant A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Return To Main Page

Learn About Progressive Libertarianism

Saturday, January 10th, 2009 at 5:20 pm • Editor's Picks, International Issues • RSS 2.0 feed • leave a response or trackback