OBAMA IS A DISAPPOINMENT

Jan 04, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

I have little confidence in Barack Obama. Even if I could ignore his Cabinet choices, I am
still confounded by his deafening silence in the face of the slaughter that is now taking place in Gaza.

How can anyone who holds himself out to represent change be so indifferent, as Obama has been over the past few days, to what is taking place in Gaza where hundreds of innocent lives are being obliterated by the Israeli bombers.

Bharrat Jagdeo in endorsing Obama said that he believed that Obama would make a difference to the situation in the Middle East since he would have a more enlightened policy to that region.

The proof of the pudding is now in the eating. Obama’s silence is as enlightening as American policy under his leadership will become towards the problems of that region.

The PPP has long been a supporter of the Palestinian cause. I commend ‘The Donald’ for coming out in opposition to what is taking place in Gaza. But is it not that the government formed by the PPP has remained, like Obama, silent?

What are they afraid of? The Americans? Or do they not know that it is an obligation of statehood to hold positions on these unfolding international events.

Bharrat Jagdeo should now join his party, the PPP, in condemning the Israeli attack on Gaza and should immediately end all relations with the murderous state of Israel.

Guyana should have absolutely nothing to do with Israel. It was wrong in the first place for Guyana to have established diplomatic ties with that nation, and it should undo that mistake immediately.

Guyana cannot have relations with a state which has imposed itself on the territory of others and which is seeking now to obliterate the people of Palestine.

Of course if you listen to the western press, you would have a completely different picture of what is taking place. The bias of the western press towards the Zionist State is unbelievable. Whenever there is suicide bombing in Israel, the major US networks break their normal programming to report for hours on the situation, even if it is a handful of persons that were injured or killed. Whenever there are rocket attacks against Israel, there is coverage given by the western media.

I saw no interruption of programming to report on the slaughter that is taking place in Gaza and I ask why. Are these children of a lesser god?

What I notice is a great deal of justification for Israel’s actions. Listening to the major networks, you would actually be tempted to believe that this ongoing operation which has killed hundreds of Palestinians, including innocent children sitting in their living rooms, was an act of self-defence.

This is what the propaganda machinery of the Israelis and the West would want us to believe. The Israelis claim that the initial attack was in response to the frequent rocket attacks by Hamas, which as we know, killed no one.

Yet in the first attack launched by the American-supported Israeli army, using American-made missiles and American-purchased jet fighters, over three hundred Palestinians, most of whom are eking out a living in the embargoed Gaza strip, were killed.

Even if one could believe the Israeli war propaganda about acting in self-defence, an excuse so willingly repeated by the western media, how does one account for the disproportionate response by the Israeli army? To rocket fire that killed no one, you killed over three hundred in the first day of the attacks?

And what can justify the continued slaughter of the Palestinians ever since? Well, according to Israel, they are out to destroy Hamas. This means that they are out to commit genocide, because Hamas is not a fringe group. Hamas forms part of the government in Palestine and is deeply rooted in the Palestinian people.

But why if this is an attack on Hamas are non-military targets being attacked? Why bomb a university simply because it is tied to Hamas? Why kill innocent women and children?

There has been a great deal of speculation as to what is behind these attacks. The predominant view is that it is tied to the forthcoming elections in Israel.

Thus innocent children must be bombed in order to secure an election victory. And the Americans are extremely silent. And those cowardly Arab governments awash in oil riches also show indifference.

So why then should we expect Obama to take a more enlightened stance? Well there are many people who thought that he would represent change. He does not.

If you just look at who he has surrounded himself with, it will be clear that there is not going to be any major policy shift in relation to both Cuba and the Middle East under Obama. I have no hope in Obama. He has become a disappointment even before he has taken the oath of office.