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<h1>America’s Apple Pie and Gaza’s Ice Cream Freezers</h1>
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<p><span style="font-size:14px">August 08, 2014</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.turkeyagenda.com/americas-apple-pie-and-gazas-ice-cream-freezers-986.html">http://www.turkeyagenda.com/americas-apple-pie-and-gazas-ice-cream-freezers-986.html</a><br>
<br>
</span><a
href="http://www.turkeyagenda.com/author/dr-hatem-bazian/"
style="color:#FF0000;">by Dr. HATEM BAZIAN</a></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">A haunting photo coming from
Gaza showing the body of a dead child placed in an ice cream
refrigerator as hospital morgues were overwhelmed with
bodies and ran out of space due to the murderous campaign
unleashed by Israel on the Palestinians in the occupied Gaza
Strip. The stark contrast is so powerful yet symbolic of
Israel’s gallantry and military prowess directed at
children, women and the old in Gaza. It must be so difficult
for Israel’s military to kill children: around 400 of them
in this campaign!</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">Children in every corner are
delighted to run after ice cream trucks and reach into
freezers in neighborhood stores but in Gaza they became the
frozen lifeless inhabitants of a refrigerator intended to
provide much happiness at summer time. Yet, the ice cream
freezers were not the only ones to be used as another
disturbing image showed a vegetable refrigerator in a store
likewise being filled to capacity as the numbers of civilian
dead continued to mount and all existing hospital facilities
were running beyond capacity.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">One can see and examine these
images from a variety of point of views but the
contradiction that I would like to direct our attention is
the one that must be made between America’s continued and
unconditional support to Israel and the death and
destruction permitted and encouraged by the US to be visited
upon the Palestinians. Indeed, if the lifeless image of
children in ice cream display is to be understood correctly
and it should then it must be set as a contrast between
America’s limitless apple pie support for Israel worth more
than $3 billion dollar a year and the cold freezer intended
for the Palestinians, at present in Gaza but also in the
West Bank. America’s financial apple pie is what makes it
possible for Israel to be the bully that it is and to punish
the Palestinians time and time again.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">In this current slaughter,
President Obama, 100 Senators, and 418 Congressmen/women
expressed in no uncertain terms America’s apple pie support
for Netanyahu and Israel’s murderous campaign against the
Occupied Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The expressions of
support is so one sided that Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims
should ask the question on whether the US and America’s
political elites comprehend the impacts of such policies on
the Palestinians and the long term standing of America
across the region.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">The congressional votes included
an expression of support worth an additional $225 millions
emergency funding for the Iron Dome, replacement equipment
and access to America’s pre-positioned armament that will
allow Israel to continue its assault on a captive
population. Indeed, America’s military ice cream and apple
pie sent free to Israel to rain death, destruction and a
freezer space for lifeless Palestinian children. The moral
and ethical are frozen and America’s complicity is visible
to each and every Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and conscious
people around the world. Indeed, the weapons causing
Palestinians pain and suffering are provided free of charge
by Uncle Sam to the Israelis: every bullet, missile, plane,
tank and the Iron dome all come from America. What have the
Palestinians done to America to receive these death gifts!</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">Indeed, the aggression on Gaza
has already surpassed all levels of brutality and cruelty
with the Israeli army unleashing a violent campaign that has
so far resulted in more than 1900 deaths (including more
than 400 children, 300 women and dozens of elderly people),
and more than 9,000 wounded (over 1500 children). In this
campaign, no building, however sacred, was spared: more
than 8,500 homes, 76 mosques, 2 <a
href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gazas-christians-and-muslims-grow-closer-defiance-israeli-attacks-372261379"
target="_blank">churches</a>, and 25 hospitals and health
clinics were destroyed. Ambulances, doctors, nurses and
paramedics, <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israel-presses-attack-16-killed-at-un-school/2014/07/30/4a643588-17a5-11e4-85b6-c1451e622637_story.html"
target="_blank">schools</a>, universities, <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/world/middleeast/israel-gaza.html?_r=0"
target="_blank">UN buildings</a>, libraries, <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israel-presses-attack-16-killed-at-un-school/2014/07/30/4a643588-17a5-11e4-85b6-c1451e622637_story.html"
target="_blank">shelters</a>, food markets, playgrounds,
graveyards were also bombed, in addition to 152 educational
facilities.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">According to Israeli authorities
95 percent of the sixty
declared Israeli fatalities are military, while according to
the UN about <a
href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=48330"
target="_blank">three-quarters of Palestinian casualties
are civilians</a>. Consequently, top UN officials and
human rights groups have conducted <a
href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/15/israelpalestine-unlawful-israeli-airstrikes-kill-civilians%20/t%20_blank"
target="_blank">investigation</a>s and accused Israel of “<a
href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2702485/Israel-investigated-war-crimes-Gaza-UN-says.html"
target="_blank">war crimes</a>,” and even called for
the UN to impose an <a
href="http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/news-item/israelgaza-un-must-impose-arms-embargo-and-mandate-an-international-investigation-as-civilian-death"
target="_blank">arms embargo</a> against Israel.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">The destruction will have a far
reaching impact on the lives of Gaza’s population for years
to come as the already tattered infrastructure have reached
the point of collapse. Yet, what is missing from all the ink
spent on Gaza is a clear linkage between President Obama’s
failure in the peace process and Netanyahu’s march toward
war crimes and Israeli death fields by design. While Gaza is
smoldering as a result of Israel’s unrelenting bombardment;
the real power behind Netanyahu must be located in America
and the “audacity of hope” transformed into death and
destruction by US made weapons and a single voice uniformed
support from Washington political establishment and media
acting as a cheer leading squad for war criminals. The army
is Israel’s but the policy and the power making it happen
belongs to America with both political parties united in
supporting the massacre of the Palestinians in Gaza with
Western media obfuscating the causes and the impacts.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">President Obama arrived at the
White House in 2009 and began a shift in policy on the
failed war in Iraq and Afghanistan and into articulating
America’s soft power in the then celebrated speech in Cairo,
Egypt. The speech in more than one way created an audacity
of hope for the Palestinians with the President calling for
an end to settlement activities and the re-energizing the
dormant peace process. Significant as it maybe, the
President and his foreign policy team were unable (assuming
they had the intention to do so) to bring about any change
on the ground.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">Following the Cairo speech, the
President’s domestic agenda took center stage and most if
not all of the political capital coming form his 2008
elections were spent on winning the healthcare reform. After
the healthcare battle, the democrats were running for cover
and tea party activists with strong pro-Israel leaning as
well as heavy dose of Islamophobia managed to set the terms
of the debate and Palestine was no longer on the President’s
agenda. Furthermore, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and
AIPAC managed to mobilize their congressional and senate
power base and maneuver around the President on the
settlement issue and the peace process itself. This was most
evident when Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress
and demolished in the process President Obama’s agenda on
the peace process resulting in the White House and State
Department complete abandonment of any effort in this
regard.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">The current campaign on Gaza has
to be understood in the broader failure of US policy and the
emboldened Israeli extreme right running the show on the
ground in Gaza and through surrogates in Washington D.C. For
all intensive purposes the Two State solution is dead, since
the Peace Process was allowed to be an occupation by means
of negotiations and in the process permitting Israel to
swallow the West Bank one settlement at a time and one
security zone and bypass road to protect it. The Peace
Process made it possible for Israel to take the West Bank
one piece at a time. In addition, the Palestinian Authority
became the security agency tasked with protecting the
settlement and settlers with US funding and training to this
effect; thus transforming a national project into an
classical colonial structure.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">On the Middle East regional
levels, the US and Europe supported the reemergence of the
despotic, authoritarian and undemocratic regimes rather than
standing for democracy, freedom and dignity of Arabs and
Muslims. The outcome was disasters in Egypt, Libya, Iraq,
Yemen and the on-going fragmentation of Syria as well as
fanning the flames of sectarian Sunni-Shia conflict across
the region. For some in the US, Israel and Arab capitals
this is a much celebrated containment strategy and the
needed pain to “transform” and bring the Middle East into
the modern world; a modern colonial Arab and Muslim world.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">The Israeli attack on Gaza made
it clear that the new order to be born in the region is the
old one but with new faces managing the same post-colonial
structures. Certainly, the Palestinians in Gaza were able to
resist Israeli attacks and withstood a massive military
assault but as the days counted it became clear that this
was more than just Israel settling accounts with Hamas. In
reality, this was a regional and global alliance against the
Palestinian resistance with the hoped for plan to end their
defiance and move toward a new alignment centered on further
fomentation of Shia-Sunni confrontation with Israel becoming
a key ally in this phase. Removing Palestine as a point of
tension would facilitate a smoother transition into a new
and improved post-colonial regional conflict pitting Sunni
and Shia against one another for the next 50 years. Killing
each other, selling oil to fund their wars and buying
Western made weapons to do it: the business of war is
business and keeping the wheels of the military industrial
complex running at a high speed.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">Palestine has always served as a
unifying force with the ability of disrupting such regional
plans and it is this capacity that sets at the heart of the
current assault supported by all the major regional and
global powers. The ice cream refrigerator for the children
in Gaza is symbolic of the attempts directed at freezing the
future prospects of the Arab and Muslim world and with it
the continued support for despotic regimes and the Israeli
colonial structure. America’s apple pie is set at the wrong
side of history and all the resources used to prop-up
Israel’s death machine will only delay the inevitable:
freedom, liberty, dignity for the Palestinians and an end to
the despotic post-colonial structures in the region. The
shift is already underway and the time to join the
Palestinian freedom train is today.</span></p>
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