The world's largest prison -- Gaza prison with 1.5 million inmates, many
of them starving, sick and penniless -- is receiving more sympathy and
protest by Israeli citizens, of widely impressive backgrounds, than is
reported in the U.S. press.

In contrast, the humanitarian crisis brought about by Israeli
government blockades that prevent food, medicine, fuel and other
necessities from coming into this tiny enclave through international
relief organizations is received with predictable silence or
callousness by members of Congress, including John McCain, Hillary
Clinton and Barack Obama.

The contrast invites more public attention and discussion.


Israel has militarily occupied Gaza for forty years. It pulled out its
colonials in 2005 but maintained an iron grip on the area -- controlling
all access, including its airspace and territorial waters. Its F-16s
and helicopter gunships regularly shred more and more of the area's
public works, its neighborhoods and inflict collective punishment on
civilians in violation of Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

As the International Red Cross declares, citing treaties establishing
international humanitarian law, "Neither the civilian population as a
whole nor individual civilians may be attacked."

According to The Nation magazine, the great Israeli human rights
organization B'Tselem, reports that the primitive rockets from Gaza,
have taken thirteen Israeli lives in the past four years, while
Israeli forces have killed more than 1000 Palestinians in the occupied
territories in the past two years alone. Almost half of them were
civilians, including some 200 children.

The Israeli government is barring most of the trucks from entering
Gaza to feed the nearly one million Palestinians depending on
international relief, from groups such as the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency (UNRWA). The loss of life from crumbling health care
facilities, disastrous electricity cutoffs, gross malnutrition and
contaminated drinking water from broken public water systems does not
get totaled. These are the children and their civilian adult relatives
who expire in a silent violence of suffering that 98 percent of
Congress avoids mentioning while extending billions of taxpayer
dollars to Israel annually.

UNRWA says "we are seeing evidence of the stunting of children, their
growth is slowing. Cancer patients are deprived of their
chemotherapy, kidney patients are cut off from dialysis treatments and
premature babies cannot receive blood-clotting medications", reports
Professor Saree Makdisi in the February 2, 2008 issue of The Nation.

The misery, mortality and morbidity worsens day by day. Here is how
the commissioner-general of UNRWA sums it up: "Gaza is on the threshold
of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state
of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and-some would
say-encouragement of the international community."

Amidst the swirl of hard-liners on both sides and in both Democratic
and Republican parties, consider the latest poll (February 27, 2008)
of Israelis in the highly respected newspaper Haaretz: "Sixty-four
percent of Israelis say the government must hold direct talks with the
Hamas government in Gaza toward a cease-fire and the release of
captive soldier Gilad Shalit. Less that one-third (28 percent) still
opposes such talks. An increasing number of public figures, including
senior officers in the Israeli Defense Forces' reserves have expressed
similar positions on talks with Hamas."

Hamas, which was created with the support of Israel and the U.S.
government years ago to counter the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO), has repeatedly offered cease-fire proposals.

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