Dear George W. Bush---

Cong. Barney Frank said recently that Barack Obama’s declaration that “there is only one president at a time” over-estimated the number. He was referring to the economic crisis. But where are you on the Gaza crisis where the civilian population of Gaza, its civil servants and public facilities are being massacred and destroyed respectively by U.S built F-16s and U.S. built helicopter gunships.




The deliberate suspension of your power to stop this terrorizing of 1.5 million people, mostly refugees, blockaded for months by air, sea and land in their tiny slice of land, is in cowardly contrast to the position taken by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. That year he single handedly stopped the British, French and Israeli aircraft attack against Egypt during the Suez Canal dispute.

Fatalities in Gaza are already over 400 and injuries close to 2000 so far as is known. Total Palestinian civilian casualties are 400 times greater then the casualties incurred by Israelis. But why should anyone be surprised at your blanket support for Israel’s attack given what you have done to a far greater number of civilians in Iraq and now in Afghanistan?

Confirmed visual reports show that Israeli warplanes and warships have destroyed or severely damaged police stations, homes, hospitals, pharmacies, mosques, fishing boats, and a range of public facilities providing electricity and other necessities.

Why should this trouble you at all? It violates international law, including the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter. You too have repeatedly violated international law and committed serious constitutional transgressions.

Then there is the matter of the Israeli government blocking imports of critical medicines, equipment such as dialysis machines, fuel, food, water, spare parts and electricity at varying intensities for almost two years. The depleted UN aid mission there has called this illegal blockade a humanitarian crisis especially devastating to children, the aged and the infirm. Chronic malnutrition among children is rising rapidly. UN rations support eighty percent of this impoverished population.

How do these incontrovertible facts affect you? Do you have any empathy or what you have called Christian charity?

What would a vastly shrunken Texas turned in an encircled Gulag do up against the 4th most powerful military in the world? Would these embattled Texans be spending their time chopping wood?

Gideon Levy, the veteran Israeli columnist for Ha’aretz, called the Israeli attack a “brutal and violent operation” far beyond what was needed for protecting the people in its south. He added: “The diplomatic efforts were just in the beginning, and I believe we could have got to a new truce without this bloodshed…..to send dozens of jets to bomb a total helpless civilian society with hundreds of bombs—just today, they were burying five sisters. I mean, this is unheard of. This cannot go on like this. And this has nothing to do with self-defense or with retaliation even. It went out of proportion, exactly like two-and-a-half years ago in Lebanon.”

Apparently, thousands of Israelis, including some army reservists, who have demonstrated against this destruction of Gaza agree with Mr. Levy. However, their courageous stands have not reached the mass media in the U.S. whose own reporters cannot even get into Gaza due to Israeli prohibitions on the international press.

Your spokespeople are making much ado about the breaking of the six month truce. Who is the occupier? Who is the most powerful military force? Who controls and blocks the necessities of life? Who has sent raiding missions across the border most often? Who has sent artillery shells and missiles at close range into populated areas? Who has refused the repeated comprehensive peace offerings of the Arab countries issued in 2002 if Israel would agree to return to the 1967 borders and agree to the creation of a small independent Palestinian state possessing just twenty two percent of the original Palestine?

The “wildly inaccurate rockets”, as reporters describe them, coming from Hamas and other groups cannot compare with the modern precision armaments and human damage generated from the Israeli side.

There are no rockets coming from the West Bank into Israel. Yet the Israeli government is still sending raiders into that essentially occupied territory, still further entrenching its colonial outposts, still taking water and land and increasing the checkpoints This is going on despite a most amenable West Bank leader, Mahmoud Abbas, whom you have met with at the White House and praised repeatedly. Is it all vague words and no real initiatives with you and your emissary Condoleezza Rice?

Peace was possible, but you provided no leadership, preferring instead to comply with all wishes and demands by the Israeli government—even resupplying it with the still active cluster bombs in south Lebanon during the invasion of that country in 2006.

The arguments about who started the latest hostilities go on and on with Israel always blaming the Palestinians to justify all kinds of violence and harsh treatment against innocent civilians.

From the Palestinian standpoint, you would do well to remember the origins of this conflict which was the dispossession of their lands. To afford you some empathy, recall the oft-quoted comment by the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, who told the Zionist leader, Nahum Goldmann:

“There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis Hitler Auschwitz but was that their [the Palestinians] fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”
Alfred North Whitehead once said: “Duty arises out of the power to alter the course of events.” By that standard, you have shirked mightily your duty over the past eight years to bring peace to both Palestinians and Israelis and more security to a good part of the world.

The least you can do in your remaining days at the White House is adopt a modest profile in courage, and vigorously demand and secure a ceasefire and a solidly based truce. Then your successor, President-elect Obama can inherit something more than the usual self-censoring Washington puppet show that eschews a proper focus on the national interests of the United States.

END.

http://nader.org/index.php?/archives/2092-Letter-to-Bush-on-Gaza-Crisis.html

- Thousands of Israeli troops backed by columns of tanks and helicopter gunships launched a ground offensive in Gaza Saturday night, with officials saying they expected a lengthy fight in the densely populated territory
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090104/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians

There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis Hitler Auschwitz but was that their [the Palestinians] fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”

Right on Nader!!

Bush takes all the blame again while Obama is tactfully SILENT.
Obama can hide behind "we only have one president at a time" until Jan 20. Where is the change we can believe in? How come he isn't in Washingtonm as a senator and as a president elect urging Bush to do something? Where is Clinton? She is noticeably silent too. You can't tell me that if this had happened a few months ago, say near the middle of October, that Obama would have the same silence.

Fanta those Nazi times were terrible indead. they should be a lesson to all. Never be afraid to speak out against an injustice. Something tells me if some people lived in that time they would support the genocide simply because they support a government and others would speak out and get killed at best or sent to a camp at worst. I think you would be the type to stand up at your own personal risk. I salute you!

You too madison!

defeating an enemy force in war with casualties
of course is not genocide even when civilians are used
by hamas as human shields...

bus bombings on the other hand is intentional murder
of civilians as a war crime.

um there is a difference.

That is exactly why cooler heads need to intervene, say the UN or go it alone america. Israel is in no danger of being over run they after all are the only country with nukes in the middle east.

Gideon Levy, the veteran Israeli columnist for Ha’aretz, called the Israeli attack a “brutal and violent operation” far beyond what was needed for protecting the people in its south. He added: “The diplomatic efforts were just in the beginning, and I believe we could have got to a new truce without this bloodshed…..to send dozens of jets to bomb a total helpless civilian society with hundreds of bombs—just today, they were burying five sisters. I mean, this is unheard of. This cannot go on like this. And this has nothing to do with self-defense or with retaliation even. It went out of proportion, exactly like two-and-a-half years ago in Lebanon.”

Apparently, thousands of Israelis, including some army reservists, who have demonstrated against this destruction of Gaza agree with Mr. Levy. However, their courageous stands have not reached the mass media in the U.S. whose own reporters cannot even get into Gaza due to Israeli prohibitions on the international press.
http://nader.org/index.php?/archives/2092-Letter-to-Bush-on-Gaza-Crisis.html

So it is ok for Hamas to ingnore the cease fire and send missiles into Israel?

At least the Israeri's were droping leaflets to let people know they were going to be bombed and give them a chance to get out.

Actually - the fact that he can write this in a mainline
open press israeli newspaper just illustrates the superior quality
of israeli democracy. most on the other hand view
this as a war. and the goal of war is to prevail with as
few casualties on your side as possible as quickly as
possible - to achieve your objective swiftly with minimum
casualties. hamas rocket attacks are getting fewer day by
day. hamas is taking heavy casualties while they are
inexorably losing the ability to launch missiles at israel.
it was a stupid and futile war for hamas from the beginning
but they were not motivated by rationality but by religious
fervor and hatred. now they are paying the price and taking
all other Gazans with them as their hostage shields.

UGH.

the missles were in retaliation forthe Israel blockad of essential item like food, water, medicines etcetc. They turned gaza into an open air gulag.

As of just a few hours ago the United states blocked a UN resolution to end the Israel invasion.A representative said "we don't see any positive reasons to keep Hamas in power".

nonsense. the israelis have to monitor the imports and exports from Gaza to prevent armament smuggling for VERY obvious reasons. they need to monitor travel for the same purposes. humanitarian goods were always permitted.

the only reasons hamas fired missiles into israel are hatred, radical islamic fundamentalism, and political posturing - a show of force. what a waste.

lord its to late to prove you wrong again and again I will dig up the massive suffering for you another time. There is a reasone Isreal will not let in any reportors or humane rights observers eh?

asides from t he fact they are the elected represenatives of the people of gaza. What a discrace and a fraud our country has become

in the end, it makes no difference why hamas sent missiles targeting civilians. the targeting of civilians solely for the purpose of inflicting civilian casualties is not permissible behavior for anyone under any circumstances.

Please they were starveing and dieing due to the blockade and neither one of us can say it was a sanctioned act by hamas to launch these missles in the first place. Did we blame saudi arbai for 911 even though most of the alleged terrorist came from Saidu arabai?

good analogy - PLEASE Hamas repeatedly takes GLOWING PRIDE in any ability they have to launch such attacks! See any news report!

"Hamas has taken claimed responsibility for the (bus bombing, rocket attacks, market bombing, cafe bombing..."



it was al-qaeda (and the taliban in afghanistan who harbored them) who perpetrated these acts of terrorism - they are still at it every chance they get! and, we (all governments of the world) have undertaken the task of eradicating al-qaeda and the radical islamist taliban who harbored and supported them through a ground war to root them out where they hide....ever since...

the Gazans have not been denied humanitarian aid. Hamas was just thwarted as much as possible in importing weapons and exporting bombers. Hamas' fate is that of al-qaeda and the taliban...because they are essentially the same as the taliban and al-qaeda.

LOL... Hillary is too buzy campaigning with bon Jovi to ask for donations to help pay her debt for her prez bid. That's where hillary is. LOL

Yes...Obama doesn't want to get his hands dirty. He'll leave the fights up to Hillary & the rest of the old cronies that should have been voted out in the last election.

I can't wait! LOL It's gonna be fun watching them all squrim their way out of all the lies they told. hahahaha