International Political Will

As Israeli aggression in Gaza increases in an effort to free Cpl. Gilad Shalit, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier taken prisoner during a Palestinian raid on an Israeli military outpost, western media outlets continue to refer to the incident as a “kidnapping,” an “abduction” or a “hostage situation.”

Yet there has been no reference to the reality the Israeli soldier finds himself in as a prisoner of war. Western governments’ own abuse of definitions has opened the door to a future with none of the guarantees that the Geneva Convention provides to those men and women taken in combat.

Since Sept. 11, the western democracies have been trying to convince their respective countries that they are fighting a “War on Terror.” They have chastised the enemy for using “terrorist” tactics of attacking innocent people and taking civilian lives. Their rhetoric and convenient definitions are pervasive in even the most liberal media, as speeches by politicians intended to whip up a war fervor are treated as newsworthy and reported ad nauseam.

Hamas, the democratically elected government of Palestine, is isolated by powerful western governments, despite Hamas’s observance of a yearlong cease-fire that has simultaneously been ignored by Israel. The United States and others are making every effort to put Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party back in power – to the point of sparking a civil war – despite the majority of Palestinians’ choice to move beyond the inept and largely corrupt government of the late Yasser Arafat.

After weeks of Israeli attacks that have killed Palestinian civilians, Hamas decided to defend itself through a military action that incurred no Israeli civilian casualties. Instead of acknowledging the movement away from typical terrorist tactics, the western world is in shock over the “young Israeli soldier who was kidnapped.” There is no mention that this soldier is actually a prisoner of war.

But perhaps as long as the United States itself is refusing to use such a term by holding hundreds of “detainees” indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay without trial, such a term no longer exists.

When the U.S. refuses to grant internationally approved rights to those taken prisoner during a war and attempts to rewrite the rules of combat, they also grant the enemy the ability to do the same.

To call the Israeli soldier currently being held by Hamas what he really is – a prisoner of war – would be to admit western governments’ own hypocrisy, abuse of power and the violation of human rights that are being perpetrated at this moment in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel-Palestine and, or course, Guantanamo.

If Hamas, and on a larger scale, Palestinians, cannot defend themselves and their land against nearly 40 years of illegal Israeli occupation, aggression, militant rule, dispossession of land and daily violation of human rights by staging a military attack on a military installation – what choice are they left with?

If the War on Terror truly is a fight for freedom and democracy, then the stalwarts of such high ideals must lead by example. Anything less only erodes the principles upon which a true western democracy is founded.

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