15-Nov-12: A tale of two planets

Not Gaza [Image Source]   

Nothing in the post below is meant to convey light-heartedness in the face of death. Human life is precious. Dealing with that preciousness contemptuously is immoral and disgusting. The fact that so many people are guilty of that contempt does not lighten its wrongness in any way.

A Reuters syndicated report, carried by many news channels today, tells us that Hezbollah, the terrorist force sitting on Israel's northern border with its soldiers and its rockets deeply, deeply embedded in Lebanese villages and homes, has denounced Israel’s strikes of the past 24 hours on Gaza, terming them “criminal aggression”.

With no evident sense of shame, irony or its own street-theatre performance, Hezbollah angrily proceeds to call on the Arab states to “stop the genocide”. That's Israeli genocide, presumably of the Gazan nation. 

Egypt's Moslem Brotherhood, spiritual elder brother and mentor of Hamas, takes up the theme and moves beyond name-calling, demanding that there be a ‘Day of Rage’ in Arab capitals tomorrow (Friday). They will surely get their way.

It's hard not to observe that Palestinian Arab rockets have been crashing onto the heads of Israelis for days, weeks, months and years with barely a raised Israeli voice in response. Now that Israel has called off the silly game and taken steps to end those terror attacks from Gaza, it's Israel which is accused of mass killing.

To put this into a quantitative context: the death toll among the Gazans since the start of Israel's Pillars of Defense campaign, has reached 16 people and that's according to Hamas - see a report published in the past hour [source]. As acts of genocide go, some observers would call it a kind of failure.

Meanwhile on another planet far, far away, something considerably closer to genocide is well underway but most observers have lost interest and have turned their gaze elsewhere. CNN reports tonight that 95 people were killed in a variety of ways today (just today) in the catastrophe that is Syria: 46 of them in Damascus and its suburbs; 14 in Homs. 

The overall Syrian talley up to and including today, according to CNN, is an almost incomprehensible 37,387. (For the record, other sources say the number is higher.) Are onlookers calling this an act of genocide? 

And keep in mind that no one is predicting an early end to it. The tragedy of the human losses in Syria is growing steadily from staggering to obscene. And no one is doing anything meaningful to stop it.