Tuesday, 29 May 2018
The fear barrier has been crossed in Gaza.
The following article first appearmed in Counterpunch.
Israel’s Premature Celebration: Gazans Have Crossed the Fear Barrier
60 Palestinians were killed in Gaza on May 15, simply for protesting and demanding their Right of Return as guaranteed by international law.
50 more were killed since March 30, the start of the ‘Great March of Return’, which marks Land Day.
Nearly 10,000 have been wounded and maimed in between these two dates.
‘Israel has the right to defend itself’, White House officials announced, paying no heed to the ludicrousness of the statement when understood within the current context of an unequal struggle.
Peaceful protesters were not threatening the existence of Israel; rock throwing kids were not about to overwhelm hundreds of Israeli snipers, who shot, killed and wounded Gaza youngsters with no legal or moral boundary whatsoever.
8-months old, Laila al-Ghandour was one of the 60 who were killed on May 15. She suffocated to death from Israeli teargas. Many, like her, were wounded or killed some distance away from the border. Some were killed for simply being nearby, or for being Palestinian.
Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump, daughter of US President, Donald Trump, ushered in a new era of international relations, when she and her companions unveiled the new US Embassy in Jerusalem.
She was ‘all smiles’ while, at the exact same moment, hundreds of Gazans were being felled at the border. The already dilapidated hospitals have no room for most of the wounded. They bled in hallways awaiting medical attention.
Ivanka has never been to Gaza – and will unlikely ever visit or be welcomed there. Gazans do not register in her moral conscience, if she has any beyond her immediate interests, as people deserving of rights, freedom and dignity.
At the border, many Gaza kids have been coloring their bodies in blue paint, dressing up in homemade costumes to imitate characters from the Hollywood movie, ‘Avatar’. They hoped that, by hiding their brown skin, their plight and suffering could be more relatable to the world.
But when they were shot, their blood gave them away. They were still human, still from Gaza.
The international community has already condemned Trump’s decision to relocate his country’s embassy to Jerusalem, and declared his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital ‘null and void’, but will it go further than mere words?
Will the international community remain trapped between hollow statements and no action? Will they ever truly recognize the humanity of Laila al-Ghandour and all the other children, men and women who died and continue to perish under Gaza’s besieged skies? Will they ever care enough to do something?
The plight of the Palestinians is compounded with the burden of having a useless ‘leadership’. The President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has been busy of late, demanding allegiance from the occupied Palestinians in the West Bank. Large signs and larger banners have been erected everywhere, where families, professional associations, unions and companies have announced, in large font: the “Renewal of Loyalty and Support to President Mahmoud Abbas.”
‘Renewal’? Abbas’ mandate expired in 2009. Besides, is this what Abbas and his Fatah party perceive to be the most urgent matter that needs to be addressed, while his people are being massacred?
Abbas fears that Hamas is using the blood of the Gaza victims to bolster its popularity. Ironically, it is a shared concern with Israeli leaders, the likes of Israeli army spokesman, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus. The latter said that Hamas has won the PR war at the Gaza border by a ‘knockout.’
This propaganda is as false as it is utterly racist; yet, it has persisted for far too long. It proposes that Palestinians and Arabs lack human agency. They are incapable of mobilizing and organizing their collective efforts to demand their long-denied rights. They are only pawns, puppets in the hands of factions, to be sacrificed at the altar of public relations.
It did not dawn on Conricus to note that, perhaps, his army lost the ‘PR war’ because its brutes shot thousands of unarmed civilians who did nothing, aside from gathering at the border demanding an end to their perpetual siege; or that, just maybe, the PR war was lost because Israel’s top leaders announced proudly that Gazans are fair game, since, according to Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, “there are no innocents in Gaza.’
Ivanka will go down in Israel’s history as a hero. But Palestinian Resistance is not fueled or subdued by Ivanka, but by the sacrifices of the Palestinians themselves, and by the blood of Laila al-Ghandour, who was denied even a celebration of her first birthday on God’s besieged earth.
The US government has decisively and blatantly moved to the wrong side of history. As their officials attended parties, galas and celebrations of the Embassy move, whether in Israel or in Washington and elsewhere, Palestinians dug 60 more graves and held 60 more funerals.
The world watched in horror, and even western media failed to hide the full ugly truth from its readers. The two acts – of lavish parties and heartbreaking burials – were beamed all over the world, and the already struggling American reputation sank deeper and deeper.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may have thought he had won. Comforted by his rightwing government and society on the one hand, Trump and his angry UN bully, Nikki Haley, on the other, he feels invulnerable.
But he should rethink his power-driven logic. When Gazan youth stood bare-chested at the border fence, falling one drove after the other, they crossed a fear barrier that no generation of Palestinians has ever crossed. And when people are unafraid, they can never be subdued or defeated.
Monday, 14 May 2018
Nakba
Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day when the Palestinians were deposed of their land and houses which had been theirs for many, many years.. It was where they had put down their roots and generations had handed the keys to their homes from one to another.
When the state of Israel was created Following the 1948 Palestinian exodus, also known as al-Nakba, the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes were not allowed to return following the Lausanne Conference of 1949. After this the Palestinians were essentially left with Gaza and the Left Bank.Since then the Israelis have slowly stolen their remaining land, in contravention of UN resolutions, and built settlements and a huge and monstrous wall has been built by the Israelis dividing Palestinian from Palestinian.
Gaza has become a concentration camp blockaded by the Israelis and the Egyptian military with thousands dying of starvation and lack of medical supplies. Ironically after the history of the Jewish people it is they that are now exterminating the Palestinian people. As Nakba approaches the people of Gaza are protesting, at the border fence, on Palestinian land created by the Israelis, and as they approach the fence are being mowed down in their hundreds from live fire, from the Israeli army who are acting like ruthless terrorists.
Tomorrow is Nakba Day and thousands of protesters have been mown down by Israeli gunmen and the nations of the world, who preach to us about the evils of terrorism and radicalisation, will avert their eyes and do nothing. But we can act as individuals by supporting such organisations as the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund. The Israeli government shames the Jewish people. May you go in peace.
Moments later this amputee was shot dead by Israeli IDF terrorists. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told an emergency meeting of the Security Council that Israel had acted with restraint.
Gaza has become a concentration camp blockaded by the Israelis and the Egyptian military with thousands dying of starvation and lack of medical supplies. Ironically after the history of the Jewish people it is they that are now exterminating the Palestinian people. As Nakba approaches the people of Gaza are protesting, at the border fence, on Palestinian land created by the Israelis, and as they approach the fence are being mowed down in their hundreds from live fire, from the Israeli army who are acting like ruthless terrorists.
Tomorrow is Nakba Day and thousands of protesters have been mown down by Israeli gunmen and the nations of the world, who preach to us about the evils of terrorism and radicalisation, will avert their eyes and do nothing. But we can act as individuals by supporting such organisations as the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund. The Israeli government shames the Jewish people. May you go in peace.
Moments later this amputee was shot dead by Israeli IDF terrorists. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told an emergency meeting of the Security Council that Israel had acted with restraint.
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