Gaza: A Lack of Willpower

Sickening.


The first word that comes to mind when I continue to hear news concerning the debacle unfolding in the Gaza Strip. The seeds of a global war are being sown in the Levant in the opening days of this New Year. By and large the public is powerless to stop it. Across the world calls have been made by protestors, media, public figures, and governments, but the parties responsible for what many consider to be crimes against humanity refuse to cease fire. The powers that be refuse to stand up to them.


The United Nations is crippled by the American veto. The United States Congress is hypnotized by the rhetoric and reasons of the Israeli lobby. Nobody else dares to step into the vacuum and bear the burden of geopolitical responsibility. Meanwhile, the weeds of hatred grow and strangle the voices of judgment and justice across the world. If this conflict is allowed to continue to play out in the status quo, if Israel is allowed to continue to irresponsibly undermine world peace, outrageously abandon human rights, and egregiously abuse its military superiority in the region, then extremists will once again take matters into their own hands and terror will reign.


Israel has taken advantage of the plight of the Jews and the sympathy of the West for far too long. The world’s patience is growing thin, and the game of finger pointing wherein any accuser of Israeli belligerence is immediately labeled an anti-Semite and marginalized will end abruptly in a shower of blood and fire. Even Israeli domestic media is crying for an end to the conflict. The internet, perhaps the only means for an increasingly marginalized global population to express itself, is ablaze with content. Videos of Israeli news anchors receiving telephone calls from friends in Gaza under fire, slideshows drawing frighteningly vivid parallels between the occupation of Gaza and Nazi Germany, photo albums of UN missions in ruins, slain children, and their distraught mothers screaming in emotional agony.


The world knows, but there is no action.


This is indeed a summary of the disease of this generation of political leaders: a lack of willpower to do what is necessary.


The Israeli war machine must be leashed.


If the United Nations, led by the United States, does not fill the void, there is no doubt that some other less responsible, less moral, more careless actor will step forward. The Middle East is awash with Islamic fundamentalists, religious extremists who are not afraid to do what is necessary and will go so far as to sacrifice their lives.


The all-too-recent memory of September 11th is evidence enough to this. Decades of American meddling in the Middle East culminated in a single act of frustration and anger. Unfortunately, America’s ruling elite seem not to have received the correct message. Unfortunately, the world’s sheriff, tattered and smeared after eight years of costly mistakes, seems content to stand aside and let this rancorous beast of inhumanity run free in Gaza.