Outrage, Gaza Massacres & Statehood

Left: On September 10, 2008, President of Bolivia, Evo Morales moved to expel the United States ambassador, Philip Goldberg, on the basis that he is persona non grata in Bolivia and was fomenting dissent among Bolivian citizens. President Morales asked the Bolivian foreign minister to send a note to the American legate asking that he leave the country.

Bolivia Breaks Ties With Israel Claiming Gaza Genocide

Bolivian President, Evo Morales, announced Wednesday, January 14, 2009. he was breaking relations with Israel over its invasion of the Gaza Strip and said he will ask the International Criminal Court to bring genocide charges against top Israeli officials.

President Evo Morales' ally Hugo Chavez of Venezuela broke ties with Israel last week.

President Morales told the country's diplomatic corps that the Israeli attack "seriously threatened world peace" and he called for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Cabinet to face criminal charges.

Bolivia's President Morales chided the United Nations' "Insecurity Council" for its "lukewarm" response to the crisis and said the U.N. General Assembly should condemn the invasion.

He also said Israeli President Shimon Peres should be stripped of his Nobel Peace Prize for failing to stop the invasion.

Israel launched the onslaught in Gaza on Dec. 27, seeking to force the ruling Hamas militant group to stop rocket attacks on southern Israel. The offensive has killed more than 940 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, according to Palestinian officials.

Morales and Chavez have worked to cultivate ties to Iran, which supports Hamas. Morales met Tuesday with visiting Iranian officials, who gave him a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thanking Morales for his previously voicing supporting for the Palestinians.

This report glosses over the fact that the US supports Israel financially, militarily and diplomatically while whatever support Hamas gains from Iran remains clandestine. When Hamas won elections in the occupied territories in 2006 Israel with her ally the US and the influential governments in the West boycotted the democratically government. They then proceeded to freeze all aide and eventually all financial transactions to the battered Palestinian municipal government. Palestinian political configurations cannot be called governments because Israel controls the borders, air space and coastal waters; moreover, Israle controls all economic activity of these enclaves. Israel with the consent and complicity with these power wielding white governments proceeded to put Gaza under a strict siege regime.

When this tactic failed to subdue Gaza due to hard currency transfers from benefactors in the Arab world and elsewhere into Gaza and a steady influx of arms and goods through tunnels between Egypt and Gaza the Israel decided to go in with guns blazing to unseat Hamas.

Barack Obama will be inaugurated in just five days time. Hamas must hold on and continue to approve parcels of truce and cease-fire agreements until then so that the US government will be forced to put the issue in the diplomatic center stage. This would avail the greatest opportunity to extract beneficial terms for the Palestinian people. Israel has done so much damage already, killed so many innocents even attacked world bodies and NGOs in its maniacal attacks that any extension of the atrocities will yield diminishing returns to Israel.

Just as the Holocaust was the catalyst for the establishment of the state of Israel so will Gaza become the international political and social force to see through a Palestinian state. The hundreds of people would not have died in vain if this indeed comes about.

Left: President Hugo Chavez addressing the UN General Assembly on Friday, September 16, 2005: But it is also urgent a new international political order. Let us not permit that a few countries try to reinterpret the principles of International Law in order to impose new doctrines such as "pre-emptive warfare." Oh do they threaten us with that pre-emptive war! And what about the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine? We need to ask ourselves. Who is going to protect us? How are they going to protect us?