In the name of humanity, what is Israel doing?

This is a question British Channel 4 news posed to Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister in a recent interview after Israel prevented the International Red Cross from accessing injured Gazans for 3 days (Regev's interview starts around minute 9).

What is Israel doing...the amount of destruction Israel has wielded upon Gaza is incomprehensible, and forever unjustifiable. And yet, people continue to justify it. Regev struggled to repeat over and over to the reporter that his soldiers were fighting a difficult war. This is true. A war of tanks and bombs and artillary against a people whose sole objective is to live, exist, physically endure is very difficult. Closed-eared people dogmatically argue that Hamas openly calls for the destruction of Israel in its charter. Yes, it does. And Israel's actions openly, actively work to destroy Palestinian society and advancement. Israel denies sick Palestinians medical visas to recieve the healthcare they need; denies students travel visas to attend universities abroad, trapping them inside of Gaza and wasting their scholarship; humiliates Palestinians through the daily experience of checkpoints; closes up Gazas borders so that Palestinians are literally starving; IDF soldiers shoot at peace protests in the West Bank; Israel demolishes homes in illegal acts of collective punishment; deports Palestinians; jails and detains Palestinians without trial; assassinates military leaders, without trial; uses torture, physical and psychological, on Palestinian detainees; and bombs the Gaza Strip.

Israel's bombs have a captive audience. There is nowhere to run to in Gaza. And those that do run are killed anyways. Hamas' charter may speak words of destruction, but Israel's government carries out acts of destruction on an unbelievable scale. Each morning for the past 2 weeks I have woken up immediately panicking about what horrible and gruesome and REAL image will greet me when my internet browser opens to The Guardian. And each day I am met with either billows of smoke sailing upwards from some bombed out building, or the picture of a child covered in blood-- indiscernable whether dead or half alive. I sponsor a nine year old girl in Gaza City named Nahid, and at every picture of dead children I pause, trying to figure out of the doll-like image is her. She is deaf, so she is at least spared the psychological terror of 14 days of bombs dropping. Although she can still feel the tremors from them I'm sure.

And Regev struggles to find words to justify his government's actions. He says they will launch an investigation of inquiry....there I laughed. The number of times Israel has launched an inquiry into an inhumane act is uncountable...the ones I remember now off the top of my head are Rachel Corrie's murder, Tom Hurndell's murder, when an IDF soldier shot a 10 year old girl in the stomach on her way to school at close range (and I think that was only "investigated" because of the particularly gruesome images of her with her guts spilling out), Israel's bombing a van full of Lebanese-Canadians escaping the south in 2006, the recent bombing of the UN school in Gaza, and now the obstruction of IRC staff to reach injured Palestinians. The investigations department of the IDF must be quite busy. And these investigations are carried out to placate international outrage, and it is appeased by these hollow actions. And then people forget. Until the next atrocity.

A ceasefire has been approved by the UN Security Council, with the US abstaining from the vote. Remain impartial-- never to even slightly condemn Israe's inhumanity. Now we wait for the ceasefire to be actually implemented. The implementation will mean a lessening in the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza. Israel will stop raining bombs down on Gaza. Children won't be blown up. Parents won't be crushed to death under rubble. This is good. But this is a bandaid. It is a momentary pause in the ongoing cycles of violence between Israel and the Palestinians. We must go beyond a ceasefire and address the root cause of all the violence in Israel-Palestine-- the festering colonization of Palestinian land ("occupation" is by definition a short term occurence, and after 42 years of "occupation" in which Israel has drastically changed the demographics of the West Bank and Gaza, I think the term colonization is more appropriate, and falls more in line with Israel's hegemonic, expansionist, racist ideals than is "occupation"). The Israeli government knows, deep down, what it must do. Olmert recently admitted the need to relinquish all the West Bank land to Palestinians in an interview with an Israeli newspaper (on his way out the door). And yet, it is not done, because that would somehow admit some sort of "defeat". And so more land is appropriated, and more children are killed.

The grimness of the Gaza reality, for me, is only tempered by the unbelievable amount of emails, facebook messages, and comments of support I have gotten from people I haven't spoke to in years. The number of people who have written to say they are DISGUSTED with what is happening, HORRIFIED by Israel's actions. The number of people who have sent messages of solidarity, love, and support is truly touching. It helps me believe that there is still humanity. There are voices of outrage. And when I get tired, which I am a lot, they help rejuvinate me. An American friend of mine just IMed me. We had been planning for months that to celebrate our Sagittarius birthdays we were going to treat ourselves to a Broadway musical and have a proper New York night out...but she wrote to ask, instead of spending the money on broadway musicals, would I mind if she gave the money to help Gaza instead? would that be ok? I teared up when I saw her request. It was so selfless, so sweet. So hopeful to me...it is incredibly touching to know that someone is actually giving up something she has been looking forward to, a real treat, to give money to a people far, far away. Someone whose life is not directly connected to Israel/Palestine. It is a beautiful gesture. It gave me a real sense of hope that people are taking this to heart. People unconnected to Gaza are going out of their way to help. That there is still some common link of humanity that links the world. That Heart still trumps Tanks. And so I ask, again and again and again and again-- to those who proudly present Martin Luther King's immortal words that "an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" on t-shirts, facebook profiles, magnets...live these words, don't let them just adorn your space...embrace the challenge of Gandhi to "be the change you wish to see in the world." Because words are words are words are hollow without action...

I know people have been struggling to remember the beauty in the world when we are so overloaded with images and actions of baseness. But it's there. I think it's just not always drawn to our attention all the time. But people are helping, we are all trying, together. And this is hope.

the world is not respectable;
it is mortal, tormented, confused,
deluded forever; but it is shot
through with beauty, with love,
with glints of courage and laughter;
and in these, the spirit blooms...
--george santayana