Calls to try Israeli leaders for war crimes for their conduct in the war against the civilian population in Ghazzah are getting louder. The first serious criticisms came from two officials at the United Nations: Migual D’Escoto, President of the General Assembly, and Professor Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Rapporteur for Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Barack Obama’s election on November 4th and his inauguration as the 44th president of the United States on January 20th have led to misplaced optimism even among those who should know better. Obama’s claims to America’s “greatness” because it afforded him — son of a cattle-herder from Africa — the opportunity to rise to the highest office in the land should not mislead anyone.

When Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president of the United States of America in January 1981, Iran and its recent Islamic Revolution was an obsession for the US and all in it. Almost 30 years later, little has changed in that regard.

Israel’s three-week long offensive on the tiny desert patch called Ghazzah has once again revealed the barbaric nature of the zionist state. Showing complete disregard for civilian lives, many of them children, whom they deliberately and repeatedly targeted, the zionists stand exposed as war criminals.

The Israeli Amalek just do not get it. Their military failure in the summer of 2006 against Hizbullah in Lebanon did not register. Their American supplied weapons have gone to their head. And now they are not relearning the lesson they failed to learn inLebanon; and that lesson is: you cannot defeat the up-and-coming Islamic forces of self-determination — Hizbullah in Lebanon,Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine.

By-elections in Malaysia are fought with the same vigor, if not more, as the general election. Why this is so remains a mystery, especially when the ruling party still has a comfortable majority in parliament despite the drubbing it got in the general elections last March.

Political commentators have advanced numerous reasons for Israel’s onslaught on Ghazzah. From the official Israeli line to stop Hamas rocket attacks to Israeli politicians’ need to act tough before next month’s elections to presenting a fait accompli to the incoming US president have all been trotted out.

History has a habit of returning with a vengeance to reveal the behavior of unsavory characters. The Israeli onslaught on Ghazzah launched on December 27 that resulted in the cold-blooded murder of thousands of Palestinians is not the first dastardly crime perpetrated by the zionists.

“The dogs did leave one single part of the poor baby’s body intact,” said a tearful Abu Aukal. “We have seen heart-breaking scenes over the past 18 days. We picked up children whose bodies were torn or burnt, but nothing like this.”

For 18 months my people in Ghazzah have been under siege, incarcerated inside the world’s biggest prison, sealed off from land, air and sea, caged and starved, denied even medication for our sick. After the slow death policy came the bombardment. In this most densely populated of places, nothing has been spared Israel’s warplanes, from government buildings to homes, mosques, hospitals, schools and markets.

The 20-day perseverance that you, the courageous resistance fighters and the people of Ghazzah demonstrated against one of the most atrocious war crimes in the history of the world has hoisted the flag of glory over the head of the Islamic Ummah. You have proven that Muslim hearts filled with confidence in Allah, glorified be His name, and the Day of Judgment, which will not bow to oppression, can create such heroism that will bring the arrogant powers of the world and their well-equipped armies to their knees.

One of the consequences of Israel’s barbaric assault on Ghazzah has been to bring to surface the split in Jewish communities in North America and Europe. The split was always there but pro-Israeli groups consistently managed to monopolize media discourse and successfully blackmailed politicians and journalists to toe the line given to them.

Has the internal rumpus within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) had an impact on South Africa’s foreign policy? Or is it that an Israel gone mad has led Pretoria to re-assess its ties with the former apartheid sanction-busting state?

The arrogant powers’ apparatus, which does not believe in any human principles, wishes to dominate the sensitive Middle East region that has enormous wealth and is situated in a strategic geographical area and enjoys great economic advantages. The way they want to achieve that objective is through the usurper zionist Israel that occupies Palestine.

For three weeks, as the Israelis subjected Gaza to some of the most brutal total warfare seen since the US assault on Falluja in 2003, most of the Muslim world could do little more than watch in shock and horror. After the Israeli ceasefire, as Palestinians adjust to the new reality of life in the devastation left by the Israeli blitzkrieg, it is possible to place the events of the last month or so in some sort of political context.

On Friday 16 January, while Israel continued its brutal slaughter in Ghazzah, less than a thousand miles away, another foreign army was being forced to withdraw its troops from Muslim land it had also illegally occupied. On that day, to the joy of millions Somalia, Ethiopia was forced to pull its troops from Mogadishu, having invaded and occupied it just over two years earlier. Through a close examination of the conflict, one can draw valuable lessons for Hamas and the Muslim world.

Wars are fought on several fronts of which the one in the media is just as important as the shooting war. While the outcome of a shooting war cannot be predicted with certainty despite careful planning and use of the most sophisticated weapons, the media war is often better controlled and managed, especially if the crimes are perpetrated by the US and its surrogate Israel.