German Chancellor Merkel defends Israeli onslaught on Gaza

German Chancellor Merkel defends Israeli onslaught on Gaza
By Dietmar
Henning
2 January 2009 German
Chancellor Angela Merkel has given her full backing to the murderous
attack launched by Israel on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. On Monday,
government spokesman Thomas Steg said that Merkel, in a telephone call
to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, declared that the responsibility
for the war lay "clearly and exclusively" with Hamas. "The
chancellor attaches importance to the fact that in evaluating the
situation in the Middle East there should be no mistaking or forgetting
the chain of cause and effect," Steg said. Merkel is of the opinion, he
continued, that Israel has the right to protect its population and
defend its national territory. While millions of people all over
the world have been shocked and horrified by the Israeli military
machine's bombardment of defenseless Palestinian civilians, Merkel did
not issue a word of regret for the suffering of Israel's victims.
Instead, she remarked cynically that she presumed the Israeli
government was doing everything it could to avoid civilian casualties.
According
to Israeli sources, on the first day of the offensive its military
dropped no less than 100 tons of bombs on a densely populated area
approximately 40 kilometers by 10 kilometers and home to 1.5 million
people. The first attack took place during daylight, at a time when
many Palestinians, including school children, were conducting everyday
business. Merkel went on to demand that Hamas "immediately and
permanently" stop its rocket attacks on Israeli territory. Not a single
Israeli had been killed by the primitive Kassam rockets fired by Hamas
in recent weeks, while repeated provocations by the Israeli military
over the same period had killed many Palestinians. According to
eyewitness reports, the situation in the Gaza Strip has becomes
increasingly desperate. At the start of the Israeli bombardment,
Spiegel Online
reported on the difficulties in treating the thousands of injured,
writing, "In the Schifa hospital in Gaza the injured are being treated
on the floor because no more stretchers or beds are free." The report
quoted Raed al-Arini of the hospital administration: "The hospital has
a bed capacity of 585, but we have 700 injured here." Contrary
to the declarations of the German chancellor, the Israeli offensive is
not aimed at the protection of Israeli territory or its population. The
purpose of the "shock and awe" campaign against Gaza is to overthrow
the Hamas government. This policy of "regime change" is the very policy
conducted by the US in Iraq. When Merkel speaks of cause and effect,
she completely distorts the historical facts. Since
1967, Israel has defied all relevant United Nations resolutions and,
contrary to international law, either occupied or imposed siege
conditions on the Gaza Strip. In 1967, the strip of land was inhabited
by 380,000 people, half of whom were Palestinian refugees from Israel.
Today, approximately 1.5 million live in the Gaza Strip, more than two
thirds of whom are either refugees or their descendants. In 2005
the Israelis withdrew their troops, and some right-wing settlers also
had to leave the area. But Israel kept control of the air space, the
territorial waters and the border crossings. This makes the entire Gaza
Strip into little more than a huge prison camp. Since the
victory by Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian electionsâ€"elections hailed by
the US and the European Union before the result was known as an
important "democratic change"â€"the US and Israel have worked to force
Hamas from power in Gaza. When all its attempts failed, Israel
imposed a blockade, preventing supplies of food, medicine, drinking
water and electricity to the Gaza Strip and provoking a humanitarian
disaster. Three quarters of the population depend on food assistance
and 80 percent live below the poverty level. Some 90 percent of
factories in Gaza were forced to close down last year. Whenever
the Israeli government considers it necessary, it closes the border
crossings and bombards the Palestinian areas. In the past eight years
the Israeli military has killed nearly 5,000 Palestinians. What
the German government terms the "criminal activity" of Hamas is, in
fact, its efforts to counter this desperate situation. However, the
Islamic Hamas movement has no real perspective to counter the Israeli
offensive. The firing of Kassam rockets on Israel and the dispatch of
desperate young Palestinians to carry out suicide missions are aimed at
pressuring Israel to return to the negotiating table in order to secure
a lifting of sanctions. In 2003, Merkel, in her function as
chairman of the Christian Democratic Union, unconditionally threw her
weight behind the US in the Iraq war. She supported the illegal US
invasion at that time and since then, as chancellor, has supported the
CIA practices of kidnapping and tortureâ€"all in the name of the
"anti-terror" struggle. Her full support for Israeli war crimes
in Gaza is consistent with this record of complicity with US
imperialism and its chief ally Israel in the Middle
East.http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/merk-j02.shtml

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