Matt McCarten: Sickening silence by the West on Gaza tragedy makes us all complicit

Doesn't the deafening silence by the West, including New Zealand, over the unfolding tragedy in the Gaza Strip seem so breathtakingly hypocritical? Most of us support Israel's right to exist and rightly hope that the young Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, kidnapped last week, is released unharmed. But surely Israel cannot expect us to believe for a minute that their military response has anything to do with releasing the young soldier, but everything to do with taking out the elected Hamas Government.

How else do you explain the missile attack on the office of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh last Monday? After obliterating the prime minister's office, the Israeli military issued a statement claiming that bombing his office was intended to "secure the safe return" of their kidnapped soldier. Oh, please!

The mainstream media don't serve us well when they promote only the Western view. Shalit's kidnapping happened during a raid on an Israeli military base at a key border crossing between Israel and Gaza. Shalit's base was where regular Israeli artillery shelling of Gaza was organised. Isn't it amazing that we hear about the infrequent symbolic and largely harmless mortar attacks but not about Israel's more regular lethal artillery attacks? Israel would have us believe that Hamas carried out the kidnapping. But responsibility is actually claimed by the Popular Resistance Committees, apparently in response to Israel's assassination a month ago of their founder. Their head was also the director-general of the interior ministry of the Palestinian Authority. The PRC are demanding the release of hundreds of Palestinian children and women from Israeli jails whom they claim are imprisoned on concocted charges based on false confessions extracted by torture.

"Is it not astonishing," said a leading Middle East commentator, "that the entire world knows the name and face of the Israeli soldier, while the hundreds of Palestinian children held in Israel's dungeons, not to mention 10,000 adult prisoners, thousands held without charge and trial, abducted from their homes in the middle of the night by Israeli occupation forces, remain nameless and faceless before a silent world?"

You can see his point. Of course, the Israeli Government claims it won't be "held to ransom by terrorists" and launched its "Summer Rain" campaign to release the hapless hostage. The apparent rescue operation involves massive attack helicopters and fighter jets against the civilians of Gaza Strip. Three bridges linking up the 1.3 million people who live in Gaza have so far been destroyed on the pretext of preventing the kidnappers from moving their hostage. But in a particularly vindictive action, Israeli jets also bombed Gaza's only power plant, leaving half the people without water and two-thirds without electricity. The message to the Palestinian people was that they are to be punished collectively. Presumably, the strategy is to turn the population against Hamas. But according to Time magazine, it seems to be having the opposite effect.

The Israeli military forces have also "arrested" a third of the Palestinian Cabinet, including the finance minister and the parliamentary speaker. This week, an Israeli Government spokesperson said it had drawn up an assassination list of government leaders, including the Prime Minister, if Shalit is not released. Can you imagine anything more outrageous than one state threatening to assassinate the elected leaders of another state?

The silence of the "international community" is sickening. Whenever armed resistance by Palestinians occurs, Western leaders line up to condemn terrorism. Yet when violence is carried out by Israeli military forces, these events are considered "unfortunate incidents". That was the description given to the Israeli shelling of a family picnicking on a Gaza beach last month. Some Western reports even bought the absurd spin that the family's murder was possibly the result of a mine planted by Hamas.

A White House spokesperson stated: "While Washington urges Israel to ensure innocent civilians are not harmed, the hostage-taking and the attacks by Hamas last weekend have precipitated the current events in Gaza. Israel has the right to defend itself and the lives of its citizens."

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, in just three weeks leading up to Shalit's kidnapping, 27 Palestinians were killed by the army and 59 were wounded, including 30 children; 300 Palestinians were also arrested and imprisoned.

But this isn't all. The deliberate and calculated destruction of Palestinian property, the economic strangulation of the Occupied Territories, the ongoing construction of Israel's apartheid wall and the psychological terror inflicted by military raids and checkpoints are all done to cower Palestinians into submissive silence.

The New York Times recently reported the analysis of Ali Jarbawi, a professor at the Palestinian Birzeit University, of the real reasons for the current Israeli operation: "The kidnapped soldier matters but was also a pretext for the Israelis, who also have a score to settle with Hamas. Israel wants a compliant Palestinian Authority." This latest Israeli assault is part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the ability of the elected Hamas Government to resist settling the "Palestine-Israel conflict" (as the dispossession of Palestinians is banally labelled) on Israel's terms.

Our silence makes us complicit.