Monday, October 12, 2009

Obama, US media ignore Palestinian suffering

John S. Hancock, Concord Monitor, Oct 12, 2009



The United Nations reports that the lives of the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, over half of whom are children, remain seriously threatened by severe shortages of essential supplies of food, drinkable water and medicine because of Israel’s devastating blockade. President Jimmy Carter who recently visited Gaza said that the Israelis are perpetrating a “terrible human rights crime” in Gaza.

Israel, despite the nearly total cessation of Qassam rocketfire, sadistically refuses to even ease its illegal and immoral blockade of Gaza. The Obama administration has, inexcusably, taken no action over the past eight months toward alleviating the plight of Gaza’s people. In fact, President Obama is effectively protecting suspected Israeli war criminals by preventing the United Nation’s Goldstone Report from being referred to the World Criminal Court.

The Goldstone Report and other investigations exposed extensive Israeli war crimes committed against a defenseless civilian population in Gaza during Israel’s invasion last December and January. Obama’s promise made before the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 23 that “the murder of innocent men, women and children will never be tolerated” apparently doesn’t apply when Palestinians are murdered by Israeli soldiers.

The American media’s abysmal coverage of what’s occurred in Gaza and on the West Bank under Israel’s unjust occupation is indicative of both anti-Arab racism and a complete lack of journalistic integrity. The Monitor’s own silence regarding these crucial issues and events of worldwide importance is mystifying. Whatever happened to its professed concern with “saving the children of war in Gaza?”

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