US government abets neo-Nazis in human rights abuse

Over at Malaysiakini foreign press corner, I read the BBC reporting Egypt watches Gaza traffic go on.

This relates to my previous posts The Great Escape - from Nazi brutalities and Nazi type group punishment versus liberty.

Then I had written of how the Israeli government instituted oppressive 'group punishments' on innocent Gaza Palestinians a la Gestapo/SS atrocities. Apart from bulldozing down houses belonging to families of suspected insurgents or shooting/bombing/rocketing indiscriminately at civilian Palestinian population, the Israelis have sealed off Gaza, which in reality is an Israeli prison for Palestinians, the largest prison in the world.

In short, the Israelis are doing exactly what the Nazis did to their forefathers, punishing the innocents for the actions of insurgents, because they are either incapable of catching the guilty or just plain too arrogantly lazy to do the hard yards. I wonder what the souls of those murdered in the Holocaust would say to their descendants and fellow Jews behaving like Nazi war criminals?

So the Gaza Palestinians, suffering from acute hunger, cold (it’s bloody winter there) and lack of medicine, broke out of that prison into Egypt to source the vital necessities to sustain lives.

Regrettably some pro Israeli people/bloggers have been disseminating articles to trivialize the death-threatening situation the Palestinians was facing, which had forced them to break out of their death concentration camp into Egypt. For example, I received such an article where those terrible blindly pro-Zionist people had claimed the Palestinians went into Egypt to buy televisions. They should be ashamed of themselves for stooping so low as to promote Israeli rightwing propaganda.

Initially there were reports of Egyptian police attempting to stop the Palestinians, using the world-famous Malaysian FRU tactics. I asked myself why would the Egyptians do that when they know damn well the Israeli oppression in Gaza? Besides as BBC had reported, such an action “… would enflame domestic and Arab public opinion and severely undermine Egypt's credibility as a regional leader and peacemaker.”

Then I read this - [words below in different coloured highlights are mine, added to give context, emphasis or bring up to date]:

Al Jazeera's Amr El-Kahky said: "[Egyptian] Security forces aim to seal two of the three crossings ... one will stay open, but will direct one way traffic - out of Egypt.

"Tension seems to be rising ... because the prospect of the borders closing again, and the Palestinians going back into the so-called prison that is Gaza, is very frightening for them."

He said: "The government took heavy criticism from the West over the border opening.

"The United States congress has already suspended $100 million of aid to Egypt due to the border breach."

David Chater, reporting from Jerusalem, said he believed the [attempted] closure was a result of Washington putting pressure on Egypt.

He said: "Hosni Mubarak [the president], says that the crossing will be closed today

"He has come under pressure as to how he dealt with this situation, and I think that the attempt to push the Palestinians back into Gaza is a direct response to US pressure in particular."

Fortunately and perhaps because the threat of adverse domestic public pressure was far greater than the thirty pieces of ... US$100 million for Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian government has backtracked from closing the border openings. The BBC reported:

... the governor of the Egyptian border province of North Sinai said that Egypt would continue allowing Palestinians to come across the border, and that it would help them stock up on supplies.

He said the security forces had been instructed to facilitate the Palestinians' passage and that he was co-ordinating with ministers in Cairo to have fresh stocks of commodities sent to the border area.

The BBC's Heba Saleh, in Cairo, says it is clear that Egypt is now making a virtue of necessity.

... Cairo knows that any use of force against the Palestinians would come at a very high cost.
It would enflame domestic and Arab public opinion and severely undermine Egypt's credibility as a regional leader and peacemaker, our correspondent says.

But, as we can see, the Bush Administration and US Congress, in its attempt to twist the arm of the Egyptian government are supporting the neo-Nazis in punishing innocent Palestinian civilians through oppressive deprivation of victuals and the basic means for those Gaza Palestinians to survive a winter period.

And this is a government who year after year has the brazen nerve and shameless effrontery to talk down to the rest of the world about human rights?