by Andrew Pessin
-Satire-
Israel breathed this morning. There was a quick intake of air, and then a gentle exhalation.
World condemnation was instantaneous.
P.A. President Abbas decried the Israeli attempt to commandeer the Middle East air supply, and demanded a prompt return to the 1967 air distribution which Palestinian leaders had previously violently rejected. Iranian President Ahmadinejad interrupted his weekly call for the destruction of Israel in order to blast the Zionist entity for its blatant oxygen grab and call for its immediate destruction.
Egyptian newspapers detailed the malicious Mossad plot to exhale germs into the air and then spread the poisoned air via high-tech windmills directly into the lungs of Muslim children. Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal announced that in response to the Israeli aggression, Hamas would not let the Red Cross visit captured soldier Gilad Schalit. When it was pointed out that they hadn't allowed such visits in the four years prior to Israel's action, he snorted, "And now you see why!"
Turkey announced it would be withdrawing its ambassador, only to retract that announcement in slight embarrassment when it realized it had already withdrawn him last week, in response to some other Israeli outrage it could no longer quite recall. The United Nations General Assembly, after meeting for an all-night emergency session, called for another all-night emergency session. And the Security Council demanded an immediate impartial investigation, only to backtrack when it was informed that all its available staff were already tied up in ongoing impartial investigations of other Israeli actions.
Indeed, outrage at Israel's action was heard around the globe. People everywhere exclaimed that Israel's aggression was against international law, and then asked for a copy of the newspaper so they could see just what it was, in fact, that Israel had done this time. Others, more intellectually-inclined, asked for some links on "international law," curious to find out, at last, just what was this special code which apparently all non-Israelis had secretly agreed upon. And, of course, there were numerous calls for Israel's leaders to be brought up on charges of war crimes.
Loudest of these were from regimes as diverse as China, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea, which took time off from their busy schedules oppressing Tibetans, Darfur civilians, women and all religious minorities, and their own citizens respectively to make their pronouncements. In fact, Israel's action this time was so offensive that Muslim extremists actually paused from their work installing massive explosives in each others' mosques in order to condemn Israel's attacks on Muslim civilians.
The criticisms could even be heard within Israel itself. "How can Israel call itself a democracy," Haaretz asked in an editorial, "while allowing its Jewish citizens to consume 75% of the air?" Arab-Israeli MKs signed a petition demanding that the Israeli constitution, guaranteeing their right to sit in the Knesset despite their repeated calls for Israel's destruction, should be dissolved, preferably in favor of something more totalitarian. "On this day I am ashamed to be a Jew," proclaimed one prominent left-wing leader, a man who had repeatedly urged all peoples to be proud of their ethnic and religious identities, except for Jews.
Israel initially attempted to respond to these criticisms, but quickly realized that speaking would require it once again to inhale and thus draw upon itself further global ire.
And so, Israel stopped breathing altogether.
This action, clearly aimed to destroy the regional economy and destabilize the entire Middle East, triggered instantaneous worldwide condemnation.
Andrew Pessin
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
1 comment:
Comparing Israeli blockade enforcement with British blockade enforcement.
The Israeli enforcement of its blockade against the Marmara was comparatively innocent when considering the UK attack on the Ship "Exodus, 1947" carrying to Palestine survivors of years in Nazi concentration and labor camps. The UK was enforcing its blockade. The Exodus was attacked by 5 British destroyers and a cruiser in International Waters 17 miles from shore. The British immediately opened fire, threw gas bombs, and rammed the ship from three different directions. The ship ended up looking like a wooden matchbox hit by a hammer. When they boarded the Exodus, they clubbed to death a 24 year old reserve naval officer from Los Angeles named Bill Bernstein; 5 others lay dying on the deck and 126 were wounded. Someone on the dock at Haifa where it landed said that a whole deck was blasted open, its plumbing exposed and staircases shattered, with children running -- their faces tormented by fear. When the refugees left the ship, British soldiers smashed their water bottles and separated the men from the women. Some began screaming because in the Nazi camps separation had meant death. See: Radosh, "A Safe Haven" at p. 233,4.
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