Silence is not golden

I recently saw the news that Israel had used air-strikes on Palestine and had killed over 200 people.

There were discussions about this on the forums and all over the place, but what was also being discussed was the fact that President Elect Obama had remained silent.

He apparently at the time of those postings had not come out and commented. To say that this was disappointing would be an understatement. Some of the comments were things like, is this the change he promised us? Another poster was like, I knew we could not trust him, another was more hopeful and thought maybe he was just waiting to say something. I personally don't know what the truth is, personally I am just going to wait and see.

I can tell you however a few things that I have been seeing lately. After Obama pulled that shirt off stunt, some of the people more than ever, have been expecting their Camelot back. At a time when things are really not looking good, something about Obama reminds these people, and I say these people, because it's not just Americans, it remind and makes many people hopeful. They don't just like him, many of these people, seem to love him.

The other thing about this incident is people are disappointed because they are looking to him for leadership. I know he is only the president elect currently, but that does not seem to matter to many, they are looking to Obama, for guidance and leadership.

The other thing about Obama is he reminds some people of Martin Luther King Jr, but Martin Luther King Jr, knew that "injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere", that's why he could not remains silent about Vietnam. If he had not spoken about Vietnam, they might have let him live, but he did not remain silent, he knew that "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy", and thus he spoke up and spoke out, and the people loved him for it, and many are again expecting a similar type of leadership.

I just think that if Obama is not going to be that type of leader, he should speak now or forever hold his peace, cause he is just going to end up breaking their hearts, and that's not cool. These people believe in him, and as far as the polls are concerned, he is the most popular President in the last three decades. That says a lot.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6619.shtml

[quote]Israel is "our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy," Obama said, assuring his audience that "we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs." Such advanced multi-billion dollar systems he asserted, would help Israel "deter missile attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza." As if the starved, besieged and traumatized population of Gaza are about to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians.

There was no comfort for the hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza who live in the dark, or the patients who cannot get dialysis, because of what Israeli human rights group B'Tselem termed "one cold, calculated decision, made by Israel's prime minister, defense minister, and IDF chief of staff" last summer to bomb the only power plant in Gaza," a decision that "had nothing to do with the attempts to achieve [the] release [of a captured soldier] nor any other military need." It was a gratuitous war crime, one of many condemned by human rights organizations, against an occupied civilian population who under the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel is obligated to protect. [/quote]

As for me and my opinion. I don't know how to not be outspoken, so let me tell you that I think air-strikes on Palestinians is wrong, it's not nice and I condemn it. I know that Palestine is not always innocent in their actions, but I also know that they are also provoked into taking action and lashing out. The knife cuts both ways, and no party is innocent here. However one party has airplanes, and tanks, and more fire power than a bunch of rockets.

I know many people are saying well then Palestine should sit back, shut up and take it, cause they know they are going to get their butts kicked, but it doesn't work that way. As a target of Gang Stalking and the underdog in a really horrible situation of state oppression, I am in the unique position to be able to sympathise with the underdog.

The same way I consistently hope that my fellow citizens will raise up their voices and condemn what is happening to me and other targets as unjust and do something about it, is the same way I am speaking up and saying that what is happening to these people is unjust.

Two things come to mind. Recently this year Israel closed the borders with Palestine. I found out recently what this meant. This meant that organizations like the Red Cross could not get food and other supplies into the people of Palestine. This also means that no one can leave and no one can enter, that's means you turned them into a prison. A prison where people are starving and dying, and the people can't leave to save themselves, and the people who are trying to get in to help them can not. That is unjust and not nice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSzn7XLLM7c

The other thing I found out recently is that Israel are trying to get the people of Palestine to become snitches. You know how I feel about this. If they can turn those people into snitches, then this global surveillance society is just one step closer. The U.S. has accomplished this in Iraq, and Palestine is one more area where this needs to be accomplished. Apparently
imprisoning and starving people is a good way to do this. Uncool.

[quote]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/04/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast1/print

Israel's secret police pressuring sick Gazans to spy for them, says report·
Treatment only offered to would-be informants

Monday 4 August 2008

Israel's secret police are pressuring Palestinians in Gaza to spy on their community in exchange for urgent medical treatment, according to a report released today by an Israeli human rights organisation.

Physicians for Human Rights says the Shin Bet began interrogating Palestinian patients seeking permission to travel from Gaza to Israel for crucial medical help after Israel blockaded and then declared the tiny territory an enemy entity more than a year ago.

Typically, patients are taken to a small, windowless room, underground, beneath the security terminal at Erez, the only passenger crossing that remains open between Gaza and Israel, where they are questioned by Shin Bet agents for hours, the report says.

Refusal to cooperate often results in the denial of medical treatment. Based on the testimonies of more than 30 Palestinians - 11 of which are published - the report says the Shin Bet is using coercion and extortion to force patients to collaborate.

"They took me through underground passages and made me sit in another waiting room for almost 45 minutes. A man approached me and called me to another room for interrogation. He asked me to sit down and presented himself as Moshe," Bassam al-Wahidi, a Fatah-aligned journalist, said in his affidavit to Physicians for Human Rights.

"After all my responses he said to me: 'I want to talk to you openly when you return from Israel so that you will have an acceptable reputation on the Israeli side. Either you make contact with me and agree to my demands, or you will not get any medical treatment which will cause you to be blind and you will become a burden to your family and friends,'" Wahidi said in his affidavit.
But he said he refused and was forced to return to Gaza without receiving any treatment. Now the 28-year-old, who married a year and a half ago, is completely blind in his right eye and losing the vision in his overstrained left eye.

"I might divorce because I can't stand in front of my wife as a disabled person," Wahidi said .[/quote]

I don't have a problem condemning unjust actions when I see it. I know both parties have been at fault in the past, but this air-strike was unkind and cruel.

As a target of Gang Stalking I am the underdog at times against state oppression, my fellow citizens are used to provoke me, and other Targeted Individuals, if we lash out in public at anytime, it is the target who will be portrayed as the aggressor, and the belligerent one, who is causing all the trouble, but the unseen side of that, the side that is not reported, is that our lives are being messed with and interfered with on a daily bases, in unspeakable ways. Yet if we lash out, we are the aggressors.

The situation in the middle East is not an easy one. I often think, what would King Solomon do if he was alive today, and having to deal with this situation? For those who don't know Solomon was an old testament King, he is famous for helping two women who both claimed a baby was theirs, he decided to see how they would react if he split the baby in half, the real mother said no go ahead and give the baby to the other woman, and the other woman was ok with splitting the baby apart. He is known for his vast wisdom, his leadership, and he was an amazing king, probably one of the best old testament Kings that Israel had. He was a just king, his wisdom endeared him to not only the people of Israel but to those far and wide, even causing the Queen of Sheba to come from her nation to pay him a visit.

I often wonder what such leaders of the past would say about the situations in this time period. What would Martin Luther King Jr say? What would Solomon do? We can only guess in some cases, but we do have leaders in this time period, some of which the people are counting on to make the right decisions for them and others. History will remember this time and the actions or in actions that accompanied it. I would like this time to be remembered as a time of change for
the better, not for it's silence and in actions.