Over 2.3 million Palestinians exist in what amounts to the open-air prison of Gaza Strip. It has been under quarantine by Israel since 2007, and the target of three military operations of 2009, 2012 and 2014 in which thousands of Palestinians died. Israel is preparing another retaliatory incursion into the territory, sure to be larger in scale than previous ones. What Hamas perpetrated is inexcusable, but neither is the killing of civilians who have nothing to do with the terrorist group. Concentrated aerial bombardment has already killed over 1500 inhabitants including children of the densely populated Strip, which is about the size of the Detroit (138 sq. mi.) Look at the chart:
One of the members of the hard-right government controlling Israel said that Gaza should be "returned to medieval times". A similar callous expression was used by a US official during the Vietnam War, when he said he wanted to 'bomb North Vietnam into the Stone Age'. Israel's brutal concentration and dehumanization of Palestinians since the 1987 Intifada is a root cause of the vicious Hamas breakout. Military destruction of civilian infrastructure, economic oppression, and severe restriction of movement has not solved the problems of Islamic terror or of an independent, viable state of Palestine. Is this seige to be a repeat of the Warsaw Ghetto? Since declaring war Israel has cut off food, water and electricity in Gaza, which action is itself a war crime. The proper role of the United States in this latest violent episode is to restrain its quisling state (over $260 billion in aid since the founding of Israel), provide humanitarian assistance, and prevent a widening of the conflict.