<i>Gaza morale unbroken</i>
With utmost bewilderment I was watching Israeli troops being pulled out of Gaza a few days ago. On their way home, these soldiers didn't forget to take advantage of the photo op by raising theirs finger in victory signs. But what victory are they gloating over? After killing more than a thousand people - of whom more than five hundred were children and women - and destroying schools, mosques and the already dilapidated infrastructure of Gaza with an unprecedented brutality, what kind of victory have they achieved? Any military expedition usually has distinctly set goals before the operation and a failure to achieve those is not considered victory; or it maybe perceived as a moral defeat for the Israeli leadership with all their sophisticated weaponry against the refugees in Gaza. Those refugees had nothing much to lose anyway. Three things Israel tried to achieve; first, to destroy completely Hamas's ability to fire missiles into Israel; second, to strengthen Fattah in the Palestinian territory by weakening Hamas; and, third, to justify the issue of "self defense" before the international community. However, we all know that none of these objectives has been achieved by the Israeli regime. In Israel, intense debate has been going on as to whether this can be called a victory or not. Moreover, Israel has lost its support and moral ground before the international community. In the 1967 war Israel defeated three Arab nations in six days. But it couldn't break the morale of thousands of Gazans in more than three weeks by continuous assault with deadly weapons. Even in the US, its staunch supporter, public opinion has been divided on this issue and there are signs that Americans are waking up from their slumber. For the first time in the US, many Jewish groups have started expressing their anger against the brutality of the Zionist regime openly. Many Jews are concerned now that people may start equating Judaism with Zionism, which already has earned a bad name for many peace-loving Jews around the world.
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