War criminals

It doesn’t come as a surprise that the US government is the primary ally of Israel.

For decades, the US government has been financing Israel’s aggression against the Palestinian people. In fact, Israel is the biggest recipient of US military aid, getting $3 billion annually.

Both governments have no respect for international opinion. Despite a United Nations Security Council’s resolution demanding an “immediate, durable” ceasefire leading to the “full withdrawal” of Israeli forces from Gaza, Israel has insisted on its ways.

Such bullheadedness of Israel is supported by the US government, explicitly expressed when the US blocked the said UN resolution. It must be remembered that the US also shun the UN when it launched a preemptive strike against Iraq in 2003.

Both have been misleading the public to justify illegal and inhuman occupation. The US had Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as an excuse, which, years after the start of the war, has been widely discredited. Saddam, the non-US ally, was killed and the US set up a puppet regime in Iraq.

Israel blames the democratically-elected Hamas for its aerial bombing and ground invasion of Gaza. US President George W. Bush justified Israel’s attack by branding the Hamas regime as a ‘terrorist group supported by Iran and Syria.’

Worse, the US military-industrial-media complex has been peddling their lies.

Both the US and Israel have committed war crimes, including genocide.

US’ “smart bomb” were so “precise” they hit residential areas. The Iraqi Health Minister said that there were 150,000 Iraqi civilians killed from March 2003 to November 2006. Also part of what the US called “collateral damage” in its war on Iraq are the 2,835 American troops killed during the same period.

Since the Israel army launched aerial bombing on Gaza on December 27 and moved into the Palestinian territory on January 3, almost 800 Palestinians, including 220 children have been killed. About 3,100 have been wounded.

The latest atrocities of Israel are but part of its long record of aggression against the Palestinian people. Since 1948, Palestine has been under Israeli occupation. Today, half of the Palestinian people are refugees abroad while one-third of the population has become refugees in their own land. At least 1.4 million Palestinians are living in areas confiscated by Israel.

Before 1948, 93.4 percent of those who live in Palestine are Palestinians and 6.6 percent are Jewish. By 1967, Israel occupied 79 percent of the land.

The Palestinian people have long been fighting for their right to land and their right to self-determination.

The US tolerates and funds Israel’s barbaric acts for its own interests. Just as in Iraq and even Afghanistan, it is the greed for oil that cause the shedding of innocent blood in Palestine. There is natural gas in Gaza, and an oil pipeline planned to pass through the strip.

The International League for People’s Struggle, an international anti-imperialist group, cannot be more precise when it said, “The US has used Israel as the bridgehead of US imperialist hegemony in the Middle East and as the platform for threatening and blackmailing countries in the region, making them military and political clients and controlling the oil resources.”

US President-elect Barack Obama’s deafening silence on Israel’s attacks is a sign of continuing US support for a war criminal like itself.

In the meantime, both the US and Israel will continue to face armed resistance of the peoples they oppress.