It's one of the damnedest things I've ever seen images of: before dawn today, Palestinians facing the Egyptian side of the Gaza Strip blasted holes through borderline retention walls and poured into Egypt for food and other supplies. The Egyptian government turned the other cheek and let them come through. The Israeli government on the other Gaza border had cut electricity in the territory amid aggressive military forays throughout the rest of Gaza: to those Palestinians living there, enough was enough.
Above: Like in some science fiction escape from alien invasion, Palestinians pour through a breach in the Gaza Strip boundary wall. (Source: Naaman Omar, Bloomberg News; map source: CIA)
Leading up to today's wild action, the Israeli government had violated a basic tenet of Sun Tzu's Art of War: "To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape." Instead, the Palestinians blasted out their own way of escape. Now the Israelis are complaining that weapons will be smuggled into Gaza amid the turmoil unless Egypt "cracks down" . . .
In 2006, Israel's top leadership violated several other tenets of the art of war when they tried to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon without considering the backlash. I guess with their pals Bush and Cheney still in the White House, reckless behavior is the norm. Most Americans probably don't know that Israeli President Moshe Katsaw was forced to resign his post last year in the face of rape charges. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's approval ratings in Israel are even worse than the Bush-Cheney duo's in the USA -- last year, they dipped to 3% (Source: "Olmert Under Fire," Time, May 3, 2007).
Why are these jerks still running countries? Luckily there's a potential way of escape for many Americans -- the 2008 election cycle. Israelis will have to find their own way out via parliamentary politics. As for the divided Palestinians and Lebanese, who knows what's next?
Today's Rune: Wholeness.
3 comments:
Definitely looks like some post-apocolyptic film.
Oh my goodness!
I used to hope for assassination, but here in the US #2's probably WORSE than #1, so I merely settled with cursing those who were foolish enough to elect them...and then again...
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