Chris Ryecart

US President Barack Obama sounded convincing enough when discussing issues of the US economy at the beginning of his press conference on Wednesday, but sadly when it came to the Middle East he might have been living on another planet. After his speech in Cairo, he has done little to turn his rhetoric into concrete actions, and his failure to blame the Israeli government of Prime Minister Netanyahu for sabotaging each and every effort made by John Kerry to make Israel accountable for recognizing and implementing a viable Palestinian state shows just how much he has become the puppet of the fascist regime in Israel.
Of course, it little occurred to Obama that the reason why over 1,900 Palestinian civilians have recently been killed in Gaza is that he failed to condemn Israel for transforming what was a civilian crime on the West Bank into a full blown war of punishment and vengeance against the defenceless and unprotected people of Gaza.
The idea that instead of bringing the murderers of the 3 teenagers to justice in the courts, Israel was entitled to exact retribution against over a million Palestinian civilians, wholly unconnected to their murder, by bombing them and destroying their houses, schools, water supplies, power plants and hospitals etc., is utterly barbaric and not worthy of a nation like the US that aspires to be a role model for the rule of law to the rest of the world.
Does Obama think that the Israeli operation in Gaza which he so brainlessly sanctioned will do anything to prevent the re-occurrence of future kidnappings of Israelis by Palestinians? Because if the answer is no, which would seem to be the case, then over 1,900 innocent Palestinian civilians have died for nothing.
You talk to your enemies, not to your friends, if you want to make peace. Yet all President Obama kept telling us Wednesday night was how much he was keeping in close contact with Netanayahu and the Israeli military advisers.
And why did President Obama, and his secretary of state, who seems equally out of his depths in this conflict, not support Hamas when it proposed a cease-fire solution with Israel in exchange for Israel ending its siege and blockade of the Gaza strip. That would have saved hundreds of Palestinian lives and by not supporting it the US showed its double standard. At the end of the day people of Gaza have as much right to live their lives free from a blockade of their borders as do the Israelis have the right to live their lives free from the fear of missiles coming over their borders. The siege of Gaza has been ongoing since 2007 and President Obama had done nothing to reverse it prior to the latest round of hostilities since he took office. The rejection of this demand can only mean that Israel wants to continue the blockade and therefore remain in a permanent state of war with Hamas.
It should be evident to President Obama and his administration that the motive for the Israeli war was completely divorced from the events, which triggered it off. There was a threat to the security of three Israeli settlers, not to the whole people of Israel and the death of those three young settlers, as abhorrent as it was, was no justification for the subsequent war crimes inflicted on the people of Gaza with the blessing of the United States.
Why should Russian President Putin face sanctions from the West for his actions in Crimea if Prime Minister Netanayahu, having rejected US peace negotiations with the Palestinians to end the illegal occupation of the West Bank and to implement a long overdue two state-solution faces no sanctions? Why should Netanayahu receive a $5 billion aid package from the US which is used by his government to wipe the Palestinians off the map and to commit war crimes in the Palestinian territories that are far greater than those committed by President Putin in the Crimea and East Ukraine ?
Can anyone seriously doubt the security of Israel with its Iron Dome, its state of the art military machine and its nuclear weapons, all financed by the US? Isn’t it time for the US to start paying attention to and investing in the security of the Palestinians and to stop pretending that without the moral, diplomatic, economic and financial intervention and pressure of the US the formation of a viable Palestinian state can be materialized?

Courtesy Arabnews