Post Gaza

Last Sunday, Addeana came out of the room, and with some relief in her voice said "Mama, the Israelis are leaving Gaza...". With some apprehension, and slight joyous disbelief Julie said "are you sure?" It surprised me that Addeana took notice of the war, but I guess I underestimated her, or maybe the obscene lack of morality in this particular invasion has permeated into our lives more than I have anticipated.

In the aftermath the numbers arise, more than 1300 lives were lost, more than 500 of them women and children. The cost of the damage is more than $400 million some estimates it. But how can you put a cost on loss of humanity.

Lets step back from our guarded relief and examined what has happened... Why did the Israelis invade Gaza.

a) The official reason is to eradicate Hamas, so as to protect Israel from the rocket fire into Israeli territory. If this was the reason, was the invasion a success? From the beginning, nobody believed that Hamas could be eradicated in this manner. Now as the invasion is over, as the troops pull out, they obviously did not acheive this goal. I doubt very much that this could be the reason.

b) The second reason is to "educate" Hamas. In the war with Lebanon recently, when they were trying to rid of Hisbollah, it was reported that the Israelis "lost" that war. This was the first defeat of the modern Israeli army. But did they really lose, or did they acheive their goal. Their goal was to undermine the support that Hizbollah has from the people and the silent tolerance that the Lebanese government has for the Hisbollah. Did they acheive this? So it could be that the invasion of Gaza was to undermine the support that the people have for the Hamas. To teach the government of Palestine and people of Palestine that if they dont stop the Hamas then the cost to them will be an Israeli invasion. That the 1300 plus people lost their lives because there is support for the Hamas, to teach them a lesson.

c) The third reason could be a distraction, to distract the people of Israel from some internal issues and galvanise them, or to distract the world from the economic crisis that looms over the whole world today.

d) The last could be simple revenge, an eye for an eye.

None of the reasons above give Israelis moral high ground yet they still pursued their course of action, there is still no logic to it and it is a matter of time before the rockets start again as one thing is for sure, the war has ignited more hatred for the Israelis than before, definitely in Palestine if not, then a larger amount of people in the world.

What have we done as we sit watching our televisions, or reading of the horrors of the invasion, looking for pictures on the net to convince ourselves or to get more proof that this is an atrocity? The protests and demonstrations occured around the world. We talk among ourselves. Osama Bin Laden used this as an opportunity to further his cause to call for the Muslims to fight, but who appointed him leader of the Muslim world anyway. We showed our anger from our posts in the net, from our letters to magazines and newspapers. Has it had any effect on the scheme of things. Maybe it did, some of us may feel contented that we have done something, and some carry on with our lives with the possible guilt of saying... "thank God it is not happening to me..."

This particular invasion may be over, but when will it happen again. The overall scheme of things have not changed from before and after the invasion so I doubt that this is the end of it. Do we then wait till it happens again and start our protests yet again, or is there anything we can do to continue our protests and prevent it from happening again. What could we do?

Could a boycott of products of Jewish owned companies work? There are many websites that list down Jewish owned or friendly companies. The difficulty is that it is racism to boycott these companies as they are Jewish owned but not necessarily supporting the Israeli cause. To say all Jews should pay the price for the invasion is almost equivalent to saying that all muslims are terrorist and should pay the price for "Islamic driven" terrorist attacks in this world.

Could we plan what to do next? We have always said we are not united and not strong enough in this world to make a difference. But is that true or is that an idea we have implanted in our minds. What if every single person who opposes the invasion, in the whole world, stop work completely and stand outside our houses and stop work until something is being done. What standstill it will bring to the world and unfortunately chaos too. But what is that compared to the chaos of the people of Palestine. It will mean a big sacrifice on our part, and great risk but if done in unity and only in complete unity, it will also mean a big impact.