Article: Bush's two biggest con games: Iraq's Shock & Awe and Gaza's Shock & Awe

Well I don't really have time to write on this subject because I'm too busy right now with my own Shock & Awe. Last February, I asked the U.S. Department of Defense to give me my money back when they let me down regarding an embed in Iraq -- and they refused. So I took them to small claims court for breach of implied contract. And now I myself am being bombarded with legal documents by the Justice Department. "In-coming! Watch out!"

The Feds' latest effort arrived today by FedEx. "Defendant prays that...judgment be rendered in favor of the Defendant for its costs of suit incurred...." Now they want ME to pay for THEIR untold thousands of dollars of litigation costs. That's malicious persecution! All I want is my $1,780 back. Humph.

So I don't really have time to write about how George W. Bush lied to the American people about that phony Niger yellow-cake and those nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam Hussein was supposedly in league with Al Qaeda. George Bush out-and-out LIED to us. And then the creep went on to kill a million Iraqis and he STILL isn't in jail.

And now, under Bush's orders and with his consent, Israel has been given billions of dollars of all kinds of terrible weapons -- jet fighters, cluster bombs, phosphorus gas, depleted uranium ammunition, tanks, missiles, nuclear devices, the list goes on forever -- so that Bush's neo-con counterparts in Israel can stage their own Shock & Awe in Gaza.

We were conned into believing that Iraq's nightmare Shock & Awe was justified. And now we are being conned into believing that the unbelievably horrific Shock & Awe in Gaza is justified too.

Just you watch. Five years from now, long after all the bodies of dead women and children have been buried in Gaza just like they have been long ago buried in Iraq, America will finally learn the truth about Gaza -- that the Israeli neo-cons deliberately broke the ceasefire so that they too could have an excuse to reign down death from the skies upon innocent civilians -- just like George W. Bush did to Iraq. And American newspapers will once again cry out about how they had all been MISLED.

Misled my foot!

New York Times, do your homework! Washington Post, check your facts. Or the next big con job that the neo-cons attempt to pull off might be something like another Katrina -- or another 9-11.

But I digress. I gotta get back to preparing for my trial -- it's on Friday January 9, 2009, at the Berkeley Courthouse, 2120 Martin Luther King Jr Way, Department 202 at 1:45 pm. See you there.

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Susan Abulhawa also makes the comparison between Gaza and Warsaw -- and does it much better than me. Gaza is Warsaw in slow motion. It took Israeli "leaders" 60 years to accomplish what the SS did in only four years -- but the outcome is still the same.
Abulhawa also gives us a warning -- that just as the Nazis ultimately caused the Stern Gang to be created, so Bush and Olmert will be responsible if new terrorist gangs are created in Gaza.
Palestinians Will Never Forget, By susan abulhawa
How can anyone watching Gaza burn escape the bitter realization that history repeats itself? Many have compared Israel 's treatment of Palestinians to Apartheid South Africa . But not in their cruelest hour did the Apartheid regime wreak such wanton murder and destruction. Let us stop mincing words. What is happening to Palestinians now whispers of Warsaw and Lodz .

Schools, universities, mosques, police stations, homes, water treatment plants, factories, and anything that supports civil society, including the only mental health clinic in Gaza , have been blown to rubble from planes that rain death from clear skies without any resistance, because Palestinians have no opposing air force. Nor do they have an army or navy. No mechanized armor or heavy weaponry. Thanks to Israel , they haven't even had continuous electricity or fuel for the past two years. Or food and medicine. Israel 's siege and blockade of Gaza has prevented the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza , including the import of the most basic goods necessary for survival.

A recent study by the Red Cross showed that 46 percent of Gazan children suffer from anemia. Malnutrition affects 75 percent of Gaza 's population, half of whom are under the age of 17. There has been widespread deafness among children due to Israel 's intentional and frequent sonic booms from low overflights. An alarming number have stunted growth and serious mental disorders due lack of food. The only way they have been able to survive thus far has been due to the tunnels that smuggle food and goods from Egypt .

Half of Gazan children under 12 have lost their "will to live." Can anyone fathom the kind of oppression that leads small children en mass to lose their will to live?

This is what Israel has done to Gaza over the past two years. They ghettoized Gaza and turned it into an open air prison - a concentration camp of civilians with no way to earn a living, no way to defend themselves and no place to run from the slaughter bombarding them from air, land, and sea. From the white phosphorous disemboweling young and old alike. Hear eyewitness accounts

But Gazans dared to try to resist with pathetic homemade rockets that, until Israel 's barbaric attack, generally landed in open desert. The rockets were mostly symbolic of resistance, very much like the fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. But who would have called on a ceasefire there, in 1943, for "both parties" to "cease the violence"? Who would have blamed the Ghetto fighters for their ultimate fate? Who would say they had no right to resist? No right to fight back?

Just as Nazis gave Jews only the right to die silently, Israel starves and besieges Palestinians, giving them only that same right. Just as the Warsaw Ghetto was blown to rubble, Gaza is left to burn in an inferno, its hospitals bursting with the puss of death and unspeakable wounds. The entire population of Gaza is terrorized and traumatized. No one is spared the insecurity and fear. Imagine, please, that you are a Gazan.

What have Palestinians done to deserve such a fate? To be endlessly hunted like animals? To have their homes demolished, their ancient history and heritage cast into forgotten space? To languish in refugee camps and slums, while Jews from all corners of the earth flock to fill their confiscated homes and farms? To be tortured, imprisoned, and denied in every conceivable way?

What have we done that leaders will not speak against this massive and cold aggression against our people? With what logic do you call Palestinians terrorists when their streets flow with the blood of their own children? When they have been stripped naked of possessions, dignity and hope?

Why? Because they elected Hamas? Hamas has held power for less than two years. Yet, Palestinians have suffered this kind of slaughter for 61 years. Whether now in Gaza, in 2002 in Jenin, in 1947 and 1948 in Deir Yasin, Balad el-Sha, Yehida, Tantura, and the list goes on. Or 1982 in Sabra and Shatila.

Palestinians are killed as if insects not because of Hamas or Yasser Arafat before them. Not because of Qassasm rockets or hand thrown rocks. Palestinians burn and bleed because they are the non-Jewish natives of that land. There is no other reason. Just like Jews were killed for being Jewish. Palestinians are killed for being the Muslims and Christians who hold historic, legal and even genetic title to that land.

But unlike Jews of Europe, Palestinians are killed slowly over decades. Unlike Israel , Nazi Germany did not establish such an effective global propaganda machine that would demonize its victims and blame them for their own ghastly fate. But most importantly, like the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, Palestinians do not march like mice to their death. In six decades of enduring unspeakable oppression, their will has not been broken. Now is no exception.

Israel , and the United States with its unconditional support, will only succeed in radicalizing a whole new generation of its victims. Of revving world hatred and resentment against this unholy duo.

Palestinians will not forget this, as they have not forgotten the past 60 years. But what will you remember a week or a year or a decade from now, when a Gazan, who stood before the long rows of corpses and vowed vengeance, creates your 9-11? When one of those few million children without a will to live straps on a belt that rips through your daily routine? Will you remember what we did to them?

susan abulhawa is the author of The Scar of David, www.scarofdavid.com