Palestine: With friends like these . . .

I have just heard President Bush's pusillanimous statement.

It is no surprise that it makes him close cousin to the Israelis. But what is depressing (apart from its being pure propaganda) is that he claims the USA are better 'friends' to Palestinians than the people of the party they elected.

Of course, we now know all too well that American support of 'democracy' extends only to the kind of democracy that suits their own policies. The Palestinians in Gaza chose Hamas, for entirely understandable reasons—like dismay at venal peculation and corruption—which would have been lauded by the USA had they been more amenable.

But Israel requires an enemy to defeat; America, yet again, is looking for a bogeyman and (after discovering that Hezbollah was no more easy to exterminate than Bin Laden or Fidel Castro and Lebanon no easier to destroy than Cuba) has chosen Hamas.

The danger is that the current administration continues also to harp on its 'Axis of Evil' enemies Syria and Iran. In continually effectively blaming both those countries (with the support of most of the American media) for supposedly maintaining Hamas' ability to show at least some form of defence of the population of Gaza, Bush is effectively telling Israel it may view both those countries as fair targets in its own current terms.

Yet again, as happened with the invasion of Lebanon, the tacit approval of the USA for Israel's actions has been taken as wholehearted support. Yet again, America is allowing Israel to dictate events in the Middle East, apparently blind to the potential consequences.

Countries which use other nations to fight their proxy wars for them, apart from being politically immoral, set fires which burn for generations and destroy hundreds of thousands of people.

It is simply despicable that this President (and so many complacent Americans) should point to the USA's 'humanitarianism' exemplified by further donations to the UN which have no relevance to the Palestinians, which is a salve to a few tender consciences for many disastrous humanitarian catastrophes around the world for which the US's policies and military actions (or political and military failures, like that in Somalia, for example) are responsible.