Letter to FT: Gaza gamble, 5 jan 2009

The FT
5 January 2009

Re: A dangerous gamble in Gaza
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e56ac646-da93-11dd-8c28-000077b07658.html

Sir,

I salute the FT for an eye-poppin’ editorial with eyes wide open to the logic of political, public relations, and human elements from plural perspectives of Israel’s ferocious attacks on the population of Gaza.

I thank you for a constructive map of realities and the contexts creating them and I honor your courage for striding into the fray and taking flak for this editorial. Keep your flak-jackets on and your pens in launch position.

Your points could be a pop song: disproportionate bombardment, election outflanking, politico-military credibility, assassinating veteran leaders, preventing journalists, blaming in “war on terror”, blockade and occupation, less than a half-truth. All true.

Indeed “Palestinians had the temerity to elect Hamas” and are now collecting the punishment for it as a genus of voters. But indeed, just surviving means winning. And let us remember that it was Hamas who stopped the suicide attacks on Israel, when no other entity could, including the mighty Israeli military.

A BBC journalist asked PM Brown why would Israel stop. It’s a good question. Will the prospect of “a blackened reputation” be persuasive? One can hope, but Israeli musician Gilead Atzmon points out the ugly political truth that, for the candidates in the upcoming election: “The carnage in Gaza probably seems like a small price to pay for, what could be, a brilliant career.”

Meanwhile here in the provincial Hyde Park heartland launching a parallel career, a small group demonstrated in front of the mute Obama’s home yesterday, giving voice to break the silence on “children being pulled like broken dolls from the ruins of their homes”.

Sincerely,
Annie Higgins

Photo
The attached photo, from a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Syria shortly after Sheikh Ahmad Yasin’s assassination, illustrates your observation that “…if Israel proposes to cut the heart out of its most implacable Palestinian opponents, it will fail.” This family are not even supporters of Hamas.