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| Israeli occupation: 1948-2008 a history of ethnic cleansing and genocide |
| Comment by Khalid Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem
Just as Israel inaugurated its misbegotten birth with genocidal On Sunday, 27 April, the Israeli "Defense" Forces (a more appropriate appellation would be the Jewish Wehrmacht) murdered a mother and her four children in Beit Hanoun, a northern Gaza suburb. The mother and her kids reportedly were having breakfast when an artillery shell fired from an Israeli Merkava battle-tank hit their home, killing them instantly and mutilating their bodies. The graphic, blood-splattered images of the mutilated children and their mother raised no eyebrows among Israeli leaders and the Zionist-Jewish public opinion. After all, these Nazi-minded and Nazi-hearted Zionists have been doing this for more than sixty years. And the world seems to be coming to terms with these crimes as a fact of life. This is at least how Israel views world reactions to its crimes against the peoples of the Middle East. Anyone familiar with the Zionist way of thinking would tell you that whenever a pornographic carnage is committed by the Israeli occupation army, Israeli leaders don't indulge in soul-searching over the barbarian behavior they engage in. Instead, they just activate their hasbara machine in order to control the resulting public relations damage and help exonerate Israel of any wrong doing before the eyes of the world. Thus, these evil child killers have told us that their victims were killed not by Israeli artillery shells, but rather by Palestinian explosives! Well, didn't these wicked liars claim that Muhammed Durra was killed by Palestinian snipers in order to tarnish Israel's image? This is of course not the first time the Israeli army murders an entire family in order to inflict "shock and awe" on a people as bent on living and surviving as Israel is bent on killing and murdering. Israel's history, after all, has been an uninterrupted concatenation of massacres and war crimes. In fact, one would exaggerate very little by saying that Israel itself is a crime against humanity, and for that matter a continuing crime against humanity. The latest carnage in Gaza didn't occur in isolation. The entire Gaza Strip has been languishing under a harsh blockade that has much in common with the Nazi blockade of the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland in 1943. This is a truth that many people in Europe and North America can't bring themselves to accept, at least openly, because it is not politically correct to do so. Well, does the West need to see a full-fledged holocaust in Palestine in order to cast the holocaust guilt off its shoulders? Must Palestinian children be slaughtered every morning and every evening in order to finally bring about the long-awaited recuperation of Europe from the holocaust complex? As a result of barring the estimated 1.5 million Gaza inhabitants from accessing food, work, medicine and fuel, the vast bulk of the population has been forced into abject poverty and virtual starvation. Ill people who can't find the needed medicine and required medical care in local health facilities, are left to succumb to their illnesses. It is believed that more than 200 innocent Gazan patients have so far died as a direct result of the callous Nazi-like siege. This happens as Israeli officials appearing on western TV screens keep assuring the mostly nonchalant or morally-apathetic western audiences that under no circumstances would Israel allow a "humanitarian crisis" to develop in Gaza. Well, what, apart from lies, do we expect from Zionism, a Godless, satanic ideology based on murder, theft and mendacity? What do we expect from a state that sends its crack soldiers to raid and terrorize orphanages and boarding schools in Hebron in the dead of night? What do we expect from a state that confiscates donated food for orphaned children whose parents had been murdered by the Israeli army…a state that orders its soldiers to raid inventory warehouses and steal shoes, clothes, even underwear, of orphaned children under ten years of age? What do we expect from a state whose soldiers murder 12-year-old school kids, and then verify the kill by emptying 20 more bullets into the small victim's body to make sure that the dead or dying little girl or boy doesn't pose a threat to the security and safety of the heroic soldier? What do we expect from a state whose army bulldozers crush peace activists to death and then tells the world that " the bulldozer driver acted in accordance with outstanding instructions and did nothing wrong." Obviously, a sate as such is a Nazi state par excellence. Well, I know that Israel has produced good scientists and built good hospitals and made impressive achievements in science, technology and other fields. But this doesn't mean much in moral terms. Nazi Germany, too, produced many good scientists, built many good hospitals and made impressive achievements in science and technology. Besides, what is the point of inventing advanced electronic devices and then using the technology in murdering and maiming sleeping children and women and other innocent civilians? Indeed, what is the point of building a prosperous state on a foundation of oppression, mass murder and ethnic cleansing? Israel may appear modern, vigorous and democratic to much of the outside world. But for us, the Palestinians, Israel is and will always be a murderer, a thief and a liar. Israel stole our country away from us, ethnically cleansed our people, destroyed our homes, bulldozed our towns and villages, poisoned our water wells lest we return, and then expelled the bulk of our people to the four corners of the globe…these are the very people Israeli leaders and spokespersons now shamelessly call "terrorists." Yes, Israel is militarily and economically powerful; it has a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons, and pro-Israeli pressure groups control the American government as well as much of the media and show business in the United States. So what? Evil states, like evil people, don not last forever. And Israel will be no exception. |