When war is 'business,' 'peace' is a far cry

ACCORDING to a report just released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), world military expenditures in 2012 totaled $1.75 trillion. It also revealed that, as in all recent decades, the world's biggest military spender by far was the US government, whose expenditures for war and preparations for war amounted to $682 billion -- 39% of the global total. In 2011, the 100 largest contractors sold $410 billion in arms and military services. Just 10 of those companies sold over $208 billion. Based on a list of the top 100 arms-producing and military services companies in 2011 SIPRI  reviewed the 10 companies with the most military sales worldwide. These companies have benefited tremendously from the growth in military spending by the US, which by far has the largest military budget in the world. In 2000, the US defense budget was approximately $312 billion. By 2011, the figure had grown to $712 billion. Arm sales grew alongside general defense spending growth. SIPRI noted that between 2002 and 2011, arms sales among the top 100 companies grew by 51%. So if business of these companies is to continue to grow and thrive, 'war' must go on.

It is distressing and frustrating for many seeing that some of the human tragedies in the crisis ridden countries of the world no longer attract global attention. The decades old Israel-Palestine conflict is unfortunately one of them. Though both Jews and Arab Muslims date their claims to the land back a couple thousand years, the current political conflict began in the early 20th century. Jews fleeing persecution in Europe wanted to establish a national homeland in what was then an Arab and Muslim-majority territory in the British Empire. In 1948, United Nations created the state of Israel in Palestine primarily with the economic and political help of Europe and the United States. It's not as if this piece of land was lying vacant and waiting for Jews to migrate from Europe and other parts of the world to establish permanent settlements. In fact, the land was literally stolen from some 750,000 Arabs who were forced out of their homes. Out of the ashes of 1948 came names such as West Bank and Gaza strip, and these are the Arab enclaves being fought over today.

As of August 3, more than 1,700 Palestinians have been killed, of whom three quarters were civilians including small children. The aggression of Israel is nothing but genocide, but the western countries and their so-called human rights organisations are turning a blind eye to the Israeli act of crimes against humanity. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton repeatedly stressed that Israel was “provoked” by Hamas and their mainstream media has portrayed the Israel-Palestine conflict as a conflict revolving around security and terrorism, with Israel being the victim. So for many people, the conflict is about land and borders between two peoples who have equal claims, not a conflict between an oppressed and oppressor and colonised and coloniser.

While most of the non-Western world is stunned by the indiscriminate viciousness of the Israeli attack, headlines in Western media outlets proclaim “Hamas lays siege on Israel” and “Hamas terrorises Israel” -- as though the over seventeen hundred lives of murdered Palestinians are completely irrelevant and devoid of value. The hypocrisy of Western media cannot hide the fact that they are involved in propaganda, labeling a Palestinian boy as 'terrorist' and an Israeli tank aiming at him as an innocent 'victim.' The Israelis are assumed to be civilised and peaceful, while Palestinians are portrayed as violent barbarians.

For the past several years, rich Western nations have been preaching 'world peace,' but do they really practice what they preach? The statistics show that, by the end of 2008, the US had spent approximately $900 billion in direct costs on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As of June 2011, the total cost of the wars was approximately $3.7 trillion. The combined military expenditure of the 27 EU member states is €194 billion. During a visit to Cairo on July 25 about a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian, US Secretary of State John Kerry may have appeared to be a genuine peacemaker, but behind his measured diplomatic language lies a truth that his country is very much involved in fighting this dirty war on Gaza.

Along with US, European governments indulge in hypocrisy as they continue to indulge in doublespeak in their approach to Middle East conflicts, and the situation in Palestine in particular. Western double standard in Israel and Palestine is an urgent issue that demands immediate attention. These western countries and their HR defenders become very critical of every trifling issue in the third world countries. They do not hesitate to put economic sanctions or other punishments on nations they think are guilty, but where does the conscience of those countries stand today? Why are they silent despite Israeli attacks on the defenseless Palestinians in the Gaza Strip?

Israel has been destroying houses, mosques, schools and hospitals in Gaza. Amid this carnage, we find the US president justifying Israel's crimes against civilians. He considers it to be Israel's right to defend itself. Over the years, Palestinians have seen how they can be murdered in the hundreds and thousands with impunity and in the full glare of the mass media. The whole world knows that Israel is an occupying force that has broken every UN resolution but still has gotten away with breaking every international law and covenant in its treatment of Palestinians. Indeed, the strongest country in the world not only won't punish Israel for its near half-century of tyranny over the Palestinians, it keeps giving it arms while shielding it in the UN.

United States has funneled more than $100 billion in aid to Israel since its formation in 1948, and consistently provides its chief Middle-East ally with up-to-the minute weaponry. Indeed, not only are western governments providing Israel with arms, funds and political cover to sustain its occupation and war, but they are also contributing thousands of military experts and boots on the ground in order to fight a war in Gaza where war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed on an hourly basis. The world has to change first for Israel to change the way it responds. As long as Zionist lobbies remain so powerful and unchallenged and world leaders remain complicit and unprincipled, Israel will be able to ignore international law and human rights, and the plight of Gaza and of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue.

The writer is a businessman.