Those who “speak truth to pow­er” by call­ing out injus­tice and demand­ing change are exalt­ed as coura­geous. So what word shall we apply to those with pow­er who speak weasel words instead of acting?

On Mon­day of this week, 28 coun­tries issued a state­ment con­demn­ing the “drip feed­ing of aid and the inhu­mane killing of civil­ians” in Gaza seek­ing food and water.
What, pray tell, would be “humane killing” of human beings whose only crime is try­ing to stay alive?
On Wednes­day, 109 aid agen­cies issued a state­ment not­ing that: “…tons of food, clean water, med­ical sup­plies, shel­ter items and fuel sit untouched with human­i­tar­i­an organ­i­sa­tions blocked from access­ing or deliv­er­ing them” by Israel’s “restric­tions, delays, and frag­men­ta­tion under its total siege…” of Gaza.
The aid agen­cies went on to state that: “The UN-led human­i­tar­i­an sys­tem has not failed, it has been pre­vent­ed from functioning”.
The 28 nations that “con­demned” Israel’s actions in Gaza “warned” that they are “pre­pared to take fur­ther action to sup­port an imme­di­ate cease­fire and a polit­i­cal path­way to secu­ri­ty and peace”.
In 1992, forces from 28 coun­tries, spear­head­ed by U.S, Marines, went into Soma­lia to stop armed mili­tias from intim­i­dat­ing aid agen­cies and steal­ing food meant for civil­ians starv­ing to death in famine caused by drought and civ­il war.
The inter­ven­tion, des­ig­nat­ed “Oper­a­tion Pro­vide Hope”, was prompt­ed in no small mea­sure by the images and report­ing pro­vid­ed by the for­eign press.
Israel does not allow for­eign reporters to enter Gaza.

                         CALL IT WHAT YOU WILL

That is no doubt in large mea­sure because the images and report­ing of what has been done in Gaza that would be pro­duced, would be hard­er for the Israelis to den­i­grate than those of the sui­ci­dal­ly brave Pales­tin­ian jour­nal­ists who live and work there.
The Israeli author­i­ties pre­fer analy­sis and opin­ion by the likes of a New York Times colum­nist who not­ed that the Hamas-run health min­istry death toll of 60,000  does not dis­tin­guish between com­bat­ants and civil­ians,  and then wrote: “In short, the first ques­tion the anti-Israel geno­cide cho­rus needs to answer is: Why isn’t the death count higher?”
No, dis­tin­guished colum­nist, whom one doubts has ever been in a com­bat or a famine zone, the real ques­tion is: Why is the death count so high?
Words defend­ing the inde­fen­si­ble are as craven as those used to avoid con­demn­ing it and not using the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pow­er at your dis­pos­al to take con­crete action.
The “plan” put forth by Israeli Defence Min­is­ter Israel Katz to set up a “human­i­tar­i­an city” to even­tu­al­ly house all Gazans is anoth­er deplorable example.
On avail­able evi­dence, “human­i­tar­i­an and Israeli gov­ern­ment” in the same sen­tence rais­es, or more prop­er­ly low­ers, oxy­moron to a new level.
For­mer Israel Prime Min­is­ter Ehud Olmert char­ac­terised it as a “con­cen­tra­tion camp”.
Mean­while, “Israeli sol­diers fired at a crush of Pales­tini­ans seek­ing food from Israeli-sup­port­ed con­trac­tors, killing an esti­mat­ed 32 people…93 Pales­tini­ans were report­ed killed when Israeli sol­diers opened fire on a melee of civil­ians des­per­ate for sup­plies from a UN food convoy”.
And so it goes, on a dai­ly basis.
If unarmed, starv­ing peo­ple scram­bling over each oth­er for food mer­it live fire, it’s time for Prime Min­is­ter Binyamin Netanyahu to revise the word­ing of his claim that: “The IDF is the most moral army in the world” and “does every­thing to avoid harm­ing non-combatants.” 

                            TERRORISTS BOTH?

Israel accused its crit­ics of “serv­ing the pro­pa­gan­da of Hamas”.
In both its stat­ed aim of destroy­ing Israel and its actions in pur­suit of that cause, Hamas is indis­putably a ter­ror­ist organisation.
At this stage of the Gaza con­flict, the Israeli gov­ern­ment is tee­ter­ing on  — if it has not already fall­en over  — the brink of mer­it­ing the same sobri­quet.
Sec­tion 83.01 of Canada’s Crim­i­nal Code defines ter­ror­ism as an act com­mit­ted “in whole or in part for a polit­i­cal, reli­gious or ide­o­log­i­cal pur­pose, objec­tive or cause…”
In that con­text, crim­i­nal activ­i­ties include “death and bod­i­ly harm with the use of vio­lence; endan­ger­ing a person’s life; risks posed to the health and safe­ty of the pub­lic; sig­nif­i­cant prop­er­ty dam­age; and inter­fer­ence or dis­rup­tion of essen­tial ser­vices, facil­i­ties or systems.”
U.S. law defines ter­ror­ism as activ­i­ties that “involve acts dan­ger­ous to human life that are a vio­la­tion of the crim­i­nal laws of the Unit­ed States or of any State….intended to intim­i­date or coerce a civil­ian population…”
The EU, the Unit­ed King­dom and oth­er nations use sim­i­lar and in some phras­ing, iden­ti­cal language.
David Ben Guri­on, who was by no one’s mea­sure a friend of the Pales­tini­ans, said of the nation whose dec­la­ra­tion of inde­pen­dence he deliv­ered on May 14, 1948: “The State of Israel will prove itself not by mate­r­i­al wealth, not by mil­i­tary might or tech­ni­cal achieve­ment, but by its moral char­ac­ter and human values.”
In both words and deeds Israel and its crit­ics and sup­port­ers, have fall­en far short of show­ing any­thing remote­ly close to dis­play­ing either moral char­ac­ter or human val­ues in Gaza.
Which means the word I was look­ing for in the lede to this post, is any syn­onym you can find for shame­ful. 

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