President Bush's last drops of Palestinian blood

Malaysiakini columnist Josh Hong has just written Middle East: a bleak year ahead?

Josh is one of my faves. He wrote eruditely about his conversation with an Indon artist matey. Quoting his artist friend, he penned:

"Without the backing of the US, the Israelis could not have come thus far". And he went on to play Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ in the wind’. He may be a ‘secular’ Muslim, but it would still be inhumane for a secularist – and anyone else - to tolerate indiscriminate killings on this scale.

His humanity led him to express “…it would still be inhumane for a secularist – and anyone else - to tolerate indiscriminate killings on this scale …” with the emphasis on his succinctly true but sad key phrase “…indiscriminate killings on this scale …”, which lamentably many Malaysians have yet to comprehend.

With the ‘open cheque book’ blessing of the USA, Israel has gone on a wanton slaughter of Palestinians. And to ensure the Israelis may be fully satiated in its Gazaan blood bath, the USA on Saturday veto-ed a UN Security Council resolution “…calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel and expressing concern at the escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas.”

The one-sided conflict with an Israeli military armed to the teeth with the latest American air, naval and ground weaponry has brought to the surface a few truths that we already know of but at last see with abysmal dismay.

One – The West has remained generally silent in complicity with Israel and the USA. Those with some elements of perhaps Christian conscience, like Australian PM Kevin Rudd, have urged a ceasefire but only after making the mandatory/obligatory call for Hamas militants to stop firing rockets into southern Israel.

The Judean and Yankee Overlords have to be mollified that the appeal for a ceasfire had taken into full recognition that the ‘fault’ for the conflict has all along been Hamas’, but never that of the Israelis who stole and keep stealing Palestinian land.

Two – the Arab nations have in general been cringing, with no intention of upsetting generous Uncle Sam, or in the case of Saudi Arabia and some Gulf States, US 'protection'.

In typical Middle Eastern fashion, they wring their hands, aiyoyo in Arabic, pet their hooded falcons (the hoods seem to be over their bloody eyes rather than the birds’) and made meaningless noises. Major failures have been the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the rich Gulf States.

This is a salutory lesson for Malaysian Muslims who seem to have a cultural cringe towards, and a blind admiration for all things Arab, that is, if they still haven't yet realized the miserly Scrooge-like lack of compassion of the Arab States (especially the rich ones like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia) towards their so-called SE Asian Muslim brethren who were victims of the post 2004 tsunami.

So much of Islamic brotherood, and now you needn't wonder why the Palestinians continue getting shafted despite the Arab numbers and money.

Three – whilst the Arab governments bersandiwara with their pseudo-concerns, the Arab and even the Turkish people have been in furious uproar over the scale of brutalities unmatched in modern conflict, save in the last Israeli malicious bombardment of Lebanon.

But what did these people do? They held protest rallies, burned effigies, stamped on US and Israeli flags, maybe even fired a few hundred rounds of bullets in the air, all of which have been f* useless and most certainly totally ineffective in influencing the Israelis or Americans.

In other words they indulged in dramatic but useless gestures.

They should instead force the hands of their governments into taking real actions, like (in the case of Egypt and Jordan and Morocco) breaking off diplomatic relations with Israel, boycotting Israeli goods (eg. the Arab boycott of Danish dairy products during the Prophet Mohamed caricature provocation was damn effective which shook up the Danes), ...

... minimising diplomatic, cultural, sporting and academic/educational ties with the Zionist State and USA and Britain ...

... and where possible, boycotting US and British goods.

But we may trust the Saudis, Egyptian, Moroccan and Jordanian governments to resist that. However, the Arab people must focus and apply pressure on their political centre instead of jumping up and down uselessly like clowns.

On the home front, Dr Mahathir has urged us to boycott US goods and currency.

He said that world governments would not support the move as many are petrified of the wrath of the USA, but the people could play their part to save Palestine, by for example, taking just wee manageable actions such as not consuming US-branded soft drinks.

I can predict what will happen.

Most (not all) Malaysian Muslims would support the Palestinians without really understanding why, other than that fellow Muslims are being persecuted by non-Muslims (in the case of Gaza, Israelis).

But after a while, they’ll be back to Macca’s, KFC's and cokes.

On the other hand, most of them would ignore the terrorist attacks on Mumbai or avoid condemning the Bali bombings.

Then, most (not all) Malaysian non-Muslims won’t give a damn sh*t about what’s happening in Gaza; a few might even have said those Palestinians deserve it, and echoed the Israelis’ propaganda that if children were killed, that happened only because Hamas used them as human shields.

Isn’t it just f* sad that Malaysia has too few people like Josh Hong.

Some religious nuts may even argue the conflicts in the Middle East for the last 60 years showed that the Israeli YWVH is all powerfully present, though of course He was prominently absent during the Holocaust and the two Diasporas.

But as Bush spills his last official litres of Palestinian blood, I see very little hope for the Palestinians even with Barack Obama assuming the US presidency.

Obama has been overcompensating for those snide remarks about his personal Muslim connections ... by appointing a neocon Zionist like Rahm Emanuel as his White House Chief of Staff.

That is his Achilles heel which I have no doubt the neocons and Zionists will exploit to the hilt.

At best I see him tiptoeing most carefully through the Jewish/Christian Right's tulips, at least during his first term.