

ASIA TIMES:The Gaza 'tea party'
DAMASCUS - The Arab world is infuriated by the continued blockade and seizure of Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Anti-Americanism is on the rise, even in capitals that are loyal to the United States, like Amman, Riyadh and Cairo.
"This is the doing of America," most Arabs believe, in harmony with its "war on terror" against Hamas, the military group that has been in control of the Gaza Strip since June 2007. The Americans have decided to wipe out Hamas, via Israel, while the Arab world is watching. That is the feeling in Arab capitals from Casablanca to Baghdad.
Well. Let's see then. HAMAS, the freely elected ..sort of like Jefferson Davis, govt of "Gaza-stan", has decided with the support of the people to engage in a daily policy of bombarding it's neighbor, because they believe that god gave them that land, and not only that, but that as such a gift, no man can negotiate it away in order to create a peace that can't be as long as the sons of apes and pigs are there anyway.The PEOPLE themselves are responsible. This NOT collective punishment it is the conscious result of the war being conducted every day by the freely elected govt of HAMAS on the people INSIDE Israel. This not the result of some rebels acting on their own. It is HAMAS which is bombing Israel every single day, the freely elected representative government of the Palestinian people themselves, not the 'Sons of Liberty'.
For one thing, the Gaza events were a rude awakening for the Arab street, after sugar-coated promises for regional peace were made at the Annapolis "peace" conference in the United States last November. To understand the magnitude of what is currently happening in Gaza, and how it backfires on the reputation of the US throughout the Arab and Muslim world, Americans must look back in history, searching for a certain injustice - done to them - that mirrors what is currently happening to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza who are being collectively punished for being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people.
The Gaza 'tea party'
On December 16, 1773, angry Americans destroyed many crates of tea bricks on British ships in Boston Harbor. This event, known as the Boston Tea Party, helped spark the American Revolution. The British responded with brute force in 1774, issuing what came to be known as "Intolerable Acts", and closing down the port of Boston via blockade, until the East India Company was repaid for the damaged merchandise. Gaza is the Massachusetts of 2008. The "Intolerable Acts" of 1774 are a child's birthday party compared to the "Intolerable Acts" of 2008, committed by Israel. The Crossing of Rafah is the Port of Boston, 234 years later.
Americans objected back then; claiming the law was collective punishment for all of Boston rather than the individuals who had destroyed the tea. Boston was a major port for the people of Massachusetts, and its closure sparked public outcry and an emotional outburst that spread as far as South Carolina.
