So what have Gazans got to complain about?
Mark Steel | The Independent 
  
When you read the statements from Israeli and US politicians, and try 
to match them with the pictures of devastation, there seems to be only 
one explanation. They must have one of those conditions, called 
something like ?Visual-Carnage-Responsibility-Back-To-Front-Upside-Down-
Massacre-Disorder?.

For example, Condoleezza Rice, having observed that more than 300 
Gazans were dead, said: ?We are deeply concerned about the escalating 
violence. We strongly condemn the attacks on Israel and hold Hamas 
responsible.?

Someone should ask her to comment on teenage knife-crime, to see if she?
d say: ?I strongly condemn the people who?ve been stabbed, and until 
they abandon their practice of wandering around clutching their sides 
and bleeding, there is no hope for peace.?

The Israeli government suffers terribly from this confusion. They 
probably have adverts on Israeli television in which a man falls off a 
ladder and screams, ?Eeeeugh?, then a voice says, ?Have you caused an 
accident at work in the last 12 months?? and the bloke who pushed him 
gets £3,000.

The gap between the might of Israel?s F-16 bombers and Apache 
helicopters, and the Palestinians? catapulty thing is so ridiculous 
that to try and portray the situation as between two equal sides 
requires the imagination of a children?s story writer.

The reporter on News at Ten said the rockets ?may be ineffective, but 
they are symbolic.? So they might not have weapons but they have got 
symbolism, the canny brutes.

It?s no wonder the Israeli Air Force had to demolish a few housing 
estates, otherwise Hamas might have tried to mock Israel through a 
performance of expressive dance.

The rockets may be unable to kill on the scale of the Israeli Air 
Force, said one spokesman, but they are ?intended to kill?.

Maybe he went on: ?And we have evidence that Hamas supporters have 
dreams, and that in these dreams bad things happen to Israeli citizens, 
they burst, or turn into cactus, or run through Woolworths naked, so it?
s not important whether it can happen, what matters is that they want 
it to happen, so we blew up their university.?

Or there?s the outrage that Hamas has been supported by Iran. Well that?
s just breaking the rules. Because say what you will about the 
Israelis, they get no arms supplies or funding or political support 
from a country that?s more powerful than them, they just go their own 
way and make all their weapons in an arts and crafts workshop in 
Jerusalem.

But mostly the Israelis justify themselves with a disappointing lack of 
imagination, such as the line that they had to destroy an ambulance 
because Hamas cynically put their weapons inside ambulances.

They should be more creative, and say Hamas were planning to aim the 
flashing blue light at Israeli epileptics in an attempt to make them go 
into a fit, get dizzy and wander off into Syria where they would be 
captured. But they prefer a direct approach, such as the statement from 
Ofer Schmerling, an Israeli Civil Defense official who said on Al-
Jazeera, ?I shall play music and celebrate what the Israeli Air Force 
is doing.?

Maybe they could turn it into a huge national festival, with 
decorations and mince pies and shops playing ?I Wish We Could Bomb Gaza 
Every Day?.

In a similar tone Dov Weisglas, Ariel Sharon?s chief of staff, referred 
to the siege of Gaza that preceded this bombing, a siege in which the 
Israelis prevented the population from receiving essential supplies of 
food, medicine, electricity and water, by saying, ?We put them on a 
diet.?

It?s the arrogance of the East End gangster, so it wouldn?t be out of 
character if the Israeli prime minister?s press conference began: ?Oh 
dear or dear. It looks like those Palestinians have had a little, er, 
accident. All their buildings have been knocked down ? they want to be 
more careful, hee hee.?

And almost certainly one of the reasons this is happening now is 
because the government wants to appear hard as it wants to win an 
election. Maybe with typical Israeli frankness they?ll show a party 
political broadcast in which Ehud Olmert says, ?This is why I think you 
should vote for me?, then shows film of Gaza and yells: ?Wa-hey, that 
bloke in the corner is on FIRE.?

And Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues, and the specially appointed 
Middle East peace envoy, could then all shake their heads and say: 
?Disgraceful. The way he?s flapping around like that could cause 
someone to have a nasty accident.?
 

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