Israel ’s deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai issued a terrifying threat early this month to Palestinians in Gaza . He spoke of a “shoah” enveloping Palestinians in Gaza .
Shortly after the Oslo agreement of 1993 when I harbored naïve hopes of an immediately realized peace, I studied Hebrew at an ulpan in Israel . My Hebrew has not thrived over the years, but whether Vilnai intended holocaust or cataclysmic catastrophe, he clearly meant real harm. Perhaps one day, 20 years hence, he will be charged for war crimes for the killing and maiming of Palestinian civilians his military carried out the very next day; his own words a powerful indictment. Until then, I live in fear for my family in Gaza ’s Khan Yunis refugee camp.
In the past three weeks I have taken both my children to Exeter hospitals for emergency treatment. This would probably be impossible today in Gaza with under-equipped hospitals being emptied to provide space for the flood of wounded. I have visited these hospitals in the past and witnessed medical personnel making the awful choice between which patient might be saved and which cannot due to the limited resources. My words, I confess, were of little comfort to those suffering their last moments.
Increasingly, I have wondered what value my words are to the international community. What more can I offer about the theft of my family land 60 years ago, our flight to Gaza , our subjugation here for 40 years under Israeli occupation and imprisonment, and my fervent but fleeting hope for a just peace? When Vilnai calls for a shoah and the newspapers translate it as a catastrophe as if that is acceptable treatment of Palestinians, what are we to think?
I am aware that political leaders in the West are apt to blame the Palestinian victims for their own plight. Perhaps if politicians refuse to comprehend, some of their constituents will listen in their stead. The African National Congress went around American presidents and to the American people to state their case. Ours, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu insisted, is not dissimilar and, indeed, might well be worse.
While Israeli colonizers left Gaza in 2005, Gazans remain imprisoned, unable to trade by sea or air or leave freely for Egypt or the West Bank . Nearly 70 percent of Gaza ’s 1.5 million people have homes and land elsewhere. The refugee camps in Gaza are not home. Home, what is rightfully ours, is now inside modern-day Israel .
When the American presidential candidates jockey for favor among Jewish and Christian voters who support an expansionist Israel they do so by relegating Palestinians to second-class status. Their insistence on Israel as a “Jewish state” ignores the reality that 20 percent of Israel ’s populace is actually Palestinian – imagine calling the United States a white, Christian state. Rhetoric regarding a Jewish state also suggests that my grandmother and mother, who were born on land seized for Israel , are somehow less human than Jews.
My grandmother has lived a long and difficult life, but she saw to it that her children and grandchildren became professionally successful. She is – at least in my mind – the equal of Jews around the world. She is no better, and she is no worse I grieve in her late years as she expresses fear that no proper burial casket will be available to her on account of the sanctions imposed upon us.
For years Hamas, a party for which I did not vote, has called for a long-term cease-fire with Israel . The rocket fire from Gaza , a desperate act of retaliation, would cease in order that the far deadlier Israeli attacks on Palestinians would also come to a halt. Israel has refused. Consequently, we have war and Palestinians in growing numbers are flocking to Hamas on account of its willingness to fight both siege and threats of a shoah.
In this climate, I hold little hope for the visit of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Two years ago she supported continuing Israeli attacks on Lebanon even as most of the world urged an immediate cease-fire. She dubbed Lebanese suffering the birth-pangs of a new Middle East . I expect she will lay the blame on Palestinians this time around too. Such sentiments are woefully out of touch with the sentiments expressed by Palestinians and Arabs around the region who believe Israel is at fault for treating Palestinians as inferior beings not worthy of freedom.
Secretary Rice has every right to criticize Palestinian rockets at Israeli civilians. But it is a profound distortion of reality not to grasp that Israel ’s domination of millions of Palestinians is based on violence and intimidation.
Israel has now threatened to inflict a shoah upon the Palestinians. Will this terrifying language be sufficient to jar the international community to its senses before our region is plunged into still-worse calamities? I suspect not.
I fear for my family and my people. I fear the consequences – and still more the unintended consequences – of turning loose military men who speak easily of inflicting the next shoah.
Monday 24 March 2008
Monday 17 March 2008
We Are Against Wars and Military Occupations
Troops out of Iraq and AfghanistanDon’t attack Iran
End the siege of Gaza
Sunday 16 March 2008
Ilan Pappe: I'm not a traitor
Controversial historian Ilan Pappe left Israel last year after his endorsement of an academic boycott of Israel exposed him and his family to death threats. Now a professor in England, Pappe maintains that a cultural boycott on his homeland is the only way to end the occupation
Ayelet Negev
Last summer, the Pappe family packed its belongings, rented out its spacious house in Israel and moved to Britain. Ever since his support of an academic boycott on Israel's universities became public, historian Ilan Pappe, 54, has felt like public enemy number one. Pappe says he had received death threats by phone almost on a daily basis.
Did it not occur to you that calling for an academic boycott on Israel might incite the public against you?
"I supported the boycott because I believe that without pressure, Israel will not end the occupation. Even before then I reached the conclusion that the peace process enables Israel to stall for time. When in 2003 several international organizations approached me and asked whether I would support the boycott I replied positively.
"I believe that things would change only if Israel receives a strong message that as long as the occupation continues it would not be a legitimate member of the international community, and that until then its academics, doctors and authors would not be welcome. A similar boycott was imposed on South Africa. It took 21 years, but it eventually led to the end of Apartheid."
Do you also call for an economic boycott of Israel?
"I am currently editing a book that compares the situation in Israel to the situation in South Africa, and I'm becoming convinced that there too, the economic boycott was less effective than the cultural one. As the son of German Jews, I know how important it is for our elites to be a part of Europe."
Did you wholeheartedly support the boycott?
"No, you can’t wholeheartedly recommend a boycott of your society, especially when it includes you place of work, the Haifa University… The last thing I enjoy is being the person that holds up a mirror to his society's face and says, 'Look how ugly you are.' Some people like to challenge and incite their neighbors. I'm not like that, I don't write in order to annoy and I certainly don't hate myself, and I also love many people in Israel. I did not commit treason.
"But, I'm a historian, and this is the truth the way I see it: The story of a victim and a victimizer. And the victim is the Palestinians. Without idealizing the Palestinians -victims are not necessarily nice people, but they are still victims."
Pappe claims that his promotion at Haifa University has been blocked due to his political activity. "Provincial Haifa was unwilling to grant me the rank of a professor. I left for England as a doctor and in two days I climbed two ranks and became a faculty professor at the University of Exeter," he states.
However, Haifa University President Aharon Ben-Zeev claims that the university applied only relevant considerations in the question of Pappe's promotion. "We applied the regular criteria according to the university's constitution: Not only the list and quality of publications, but other considerations pertaining to the contribution to the university, teaching and so on," he explained.
Claims of ethnic cleansing
In an article published in the Israeli Mita'am Review for Literature and Radical Thought this week, titled "On the destruction of the Palestinian cities, spring 1948," Pappe maintains that the claim that the Arab residents fled or left their homes willingly during the war is false, and that a policy of "cleansing" the area from Arabs was employed as part of a plan to establish a Jewish-only state.
Pappe made similar claims in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which was published in England in 2006, in which he also presented testimonies of alleged massacres of Palestinians by Jewish soldiers.
These claims have been contested by many historians in Israel and abroad. Dr. Mordechai Bar-On, a research fellow at the Yad Ben-Zvi Institute and a former MK, calls Pappe "a propagandist, not a historian." Bar-On said that "the term ethnic cleansing is a vicious one, because it has never been used prior to the wars in former Yugoslavia. Indeed, there were places where Arab were expelled… but to say that there was an evil plan since the inception of Zionism for a forceful transfer – this is simply wrong and vicious."
However, Pappe insists that allowing the Palestinian refugees to return to Israel is the only thing that could secure peace in the region.
Would you be willing to vacate your home when they return to what used to be their villages near your house in Tivon?
"After years of working with refugees around the world and attending conferences on the right of return, I believe that no such notion exists on the Palestinian side. They want to return while understanding that they will live alongside the Jews. They don't want to expel anyone. What turned me into a great lover of the Palestinians is the will of many among them to share the land with us. Even people in Hamas.
"The reason most of my friends in the territories voted for Hamas wasn't because they didn't want to share the land with the Israelis, but because they thought Hamas would be more effective in the struggle against the occupation."
By using terror?
"They don't consider this to be terror. Fatah and Hamas employ the tools of the weak, because they don't have planes or tanks. They are as violent as the Israelis, no more or less, with only one difference: The difference between the violence of the occupier and the violence of those fighting occupation."
An article you wrote titled "Genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank" was published in the Tehran Times about a month ago. Are you providing the enemy with weapons against us?
"On the contrary, I wish to speak to the people in Iran. A Jordanian newspaper wrote in its editorial a year ago that absurdly, I am Israel's best ambassador in the Arab world, because they say – if such Israelis exist, maybe there's hope for peace with the Jewish state."
Would you like your sons to serve in the army?
"It's their decision, but I preferred it if they didn't. As long as Israel has an occupying army, a rather cruel army, I wouldn’t want them to be part of it… I don't think there is one moral person in the world that supports what Israel stands for. And it pains me to say this. I truly love the country, I would very much like to live in it, but I very much dislike my state. Everything related to its policy against the Palestinians makes me very angry."
Pappe denies being more sensitive to the suffering of Palestinians than to that of Israelis. "I'm shocked when I see the child who lost his leg in Sderot, and I'm shocked when I see a child killed in Gaza. But as long as Israel maintains its stance that the Palestinian issue can be resolved by force, the Palestinian side will respond with force.
"Once we realize that the only way is to relinquish some of out holy ideas, and once the Palestinians give up the idea of nationalism, and once they realize that there needs to be one state here that isn't Jewish nor Palestinian, but a state of all its citizens, like in the US, we will have peace."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3516193,00.html
Ayelet Negev
Last summer, the Pappe family packed its belongings, rented out its spacious house in Israel and moved to Britain. Ever since his support of an academic boycott on Israel's universities became public, historian Ilan Pappe, 54, has felt like public enemy number one. Pappe says he had received death threats by phone almost on a daily basis.
Did it not occur to you that calling for an academic boycott on Israel might incite the public against you?
"I supported the boycott because I believe that without pressure, Israel will not end the occupation. Even before then I reached the conclusion that the peace process enables Israel to stall for time. When in 2003 several international organizations approached me and asked whether I would support the boycott I replied positively.
"I believe that things would change only if Israel receives a strong message that as long as the occupation continues it would not be a legitimate member of the international community, and that until then its academics, doctors and authors would not be welcome. A similar boycott was imposed on South Africa. It took 21 years, but it eventually led to the end of Apartheid."
Do you also call for an economic boycott of Israel?
"I am currently editing a book that compares the situation in Israel to the situation in South Africa, and I'm becoming convinced that there too, the economic boycott was less effective than the cultural one. As the son of German Jews, I know how important it is for our elites to be a part of Europe."
Did you wholeheartedly support the boycott?
"No, you can’t wholeheartedly recommend a boycott of your society, especially when it includes you place of work, the Haifa University… The last thing I enjoy is being the person that holds up a mirror to his society's face and says, 'Look how ugly you are.' Some people like to challenge and incite their neighbors. I'm not like that, I don't write in order to annoy and I certainly don't hate myself, and I also love many people in Israel. I did not commit treason.
"But, I'm a historian, and this is the truth the way I see it: The story of a victim and a victimizer. And the victim is the Palestinians. Without idealizing the Palestinians -victims are not necessarily nice people, but they are still victims."
Pappe claims that his promotion at Haifa University has been blocked due to his political activity. "Provincial Haifa was unwilling to grant me the rank of a professor. I left for England as a doctor and in two days I climbed two ranks and became a faculty professor at the University of Exeter," he states.
However, Haifa University President Aharon Ben-Zeev claims that the university applied only relevant considerations in the question of Pappe's promotion. "We applied the regular criteria according to the university's constitution: Not only the list and quality of publications, but other considerations pertaining to the contribution to the university, teaching and so on," he explained.
Claims of ethnic cleansing
In an article published in the Israeli Mita'am Review for Literature and Radical Thought this week, titled "On the destruction of the Palestinian cities, spring 1948," Pappe maintains that the claim that the Arab residents fled or left their homes willingly during the war is false, and that a policy of "cleansing" the area from Arabs was employed as part of a plan to establish a Jewish-only state.
Pappe made similar claims in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which was published in England in 2006, in which he also presented testimonies of alleged massacres of Palestinians by Jewish soldiers.
These claims have been contested by many historians in Israel and abroad. Dr. Mordechai Bar-On, a research fellow at the Yad Ben-Zvi Institute and a former MK, calls Pappe "a propagandist, not a historian." Bar-On said that "the term ethnic cleansing is a vicious one, because it has never been used prior to the wars in former Yugoslavia. Indeed, there were places where Arab were expelled… but to say that there was an evil plan since the inception of Zionism for a forceful transfer – this is simply wrong and vicious."
However, Pappe insists that allowing the Palestinian refugees to return to Israel is the only thing that could secure peace in the region.
Would you be willing to vacate your home when they return to what used to be their villages near your house in Tivon?
"After years of working with refugees around the world and attending conferences on the right of return, I believe that no such notion exists on the Palestinian side. They want to return while understanding that they will live alongside the Jews. They don't want to expel anyone. What turned me into a great lover of the Palestinians is the will of many among them to share the land with us. Even people in Hamas.
"The reason most of my friends in the territories voted for Hamas wasn't because they didn't want to share the land with the Israelis, but because they thought Hamas would be more effective in the struggle against the occupation."
By using terror?
"They don't consider this to be terror. Fatah and Hamas employ the tools of the weak, because they don't have planes or tanks. They are as violent as the Israelis, no more or less, with only one difference: The difference between the violence of the occupier and the violence of those fighting occupation."
An article you wrote titled "Genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank" was published in the Tehran Times about a month ago. Are you providing the enemy with weapons against us?
"On the contrary, I wish to speak to the people in Iran. A Jordanian newspaper wrote in its editorial a year ago that absurdly, I am Israel's best ambassador in the Arab world, because they say – if such Israelis exist, maybe there's hope for peace with the Jewish state."
Would you like your sons to serve in the army?
"It's their decision, but I preferred it if they didn't. As long as Israel has an occupying army, a rather cruel army, I wouldn’t want them to be part of it… I don't think there is one moral person in the world that supports what Israel stands for. And it pains me to say this. I truly love the country, I would very much like to live in it, but I very much dislike my state. Everything related to its policy against the Palestinians makes me very angry."
Pappe denies being more sensitive to the suffering of Palestinians than to that of Israelis. "I'm shocked when I see the child who lost his leg in Sderot, and I'm shocked when I see a child killed in Gaza. But as long as Israel maintains its stance that the Palestinian issue can be resolved by force, the Palestinian side will respond with force.
"Once we realize that the only way is to relinquish some of out holy ideas, and once the Palestinians give up the idea of nationalism, and once they realize that there needs to be one state here that isn't Jewish nor Palestinian, but a state of all its citizens, like in the US, we will have peace."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3516193,00.html
Friday 7 March 2008
A Recipe for Israelis' Security
This article was published by the EI
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9391.shtml and reprinted by "Occupation magazine"
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=25748
Time and again, it is very obvious that Israel cannot provide its citizens with either actual security or even a sense of security, whether inside or outside the country. This is so despite the fact that it possesses all means of military power and superiority including the nuclear weapons making it the strongest regional power in the Middle East. In fact, despite all its power, Israel lives a continuous security crisis. Despite its power, Israel has been unable to prevent even Palestinian children from picking up stones and throwing them at Israeli tanks and forces. Fares Audah a 12 year old Palestinian boy from Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, was doing just that when he was killed by Israeli bullets in the summer of 2002. Moreover, despite Israel's continuous shelling and bombardment of most of the iron workshops in Gaza, home-made rockets still keep falling on the Israeli town of Sderot. Furthermore, despite all the security measures taken by Israel, Palestinian suicide bombers have repeatedly entered Israeli areas and exploded themselves on buses and in markets.
The question at this juncture, then, is why has Israel been unable to provide security despite all its might. And what is the solution to this complicated problem, one that has become part and parcel of the psychology, the rhetoric and the culture of Israeli society?
In my opinion, the insecurity in which Israel finds itself since its foundation and its citizens' persistent feelings of fear, can be attributed to a variety of reasons. I would like to highlight two of these in particular. The first source of Israeli insecurity lies in the very power possessed by Israel, which engenders the mistaken belief that military superiority can and will solve any problem the country might face. Adopting the logic of power and the heavy handed policies this entails has been a consistent feature of Israeli politics for decades. However, power alone cannot bring security or peace. It is a means or a tool which, on its own, is unfailingly insufficient. Solutions that are forcefully imposed are such that can never attain security, solve political problems or bring a lasting peace. It was only when white South Africans finally realized that their superior armed power could not and would not solve their problems with black South Africans, that the two groups created the opportunity to reach real solutions.
The second source of Israeli insecurity that I wish to focus on here is the weakness of the Arab regimes in the Middle East and their consequent adoption of a strategic "peace process" towards maintaining the status quo of so-called “no war no peace” with Israel. Most of these regimes are not elected and do not represent their people, a fact bearing a direct connection to what we might call the "insecurity"- "dilemma". The choice of "no war no peace" maintained through a strategic "peace process" is a policy of regimes rather one of than peoples, geared towards keeping US support and ensuring the continued flow of foreign aid to the regimes in question. Israel's security, however, lies in the hands of the peoples of the region, not with the regimes. For these peoples, the Palestinian cause is deeply embedded in the past, present and future. Many individuals were imbued with the cause of Palestine from infancy and throughout their lives; it still plays a role in their tears and aspirations and they continue following the tragedies Palestinians live in the Occupied Territories on the satellite channels. Needless to say, they have been deeply affected by the wars in Lebanon and the bloody summer of 2006, by the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla and by many other events that have become part of the typical Arab vision or perception of Israel or Israelis. Arab people see Arab lands still occupied, including the Syrian "Golan" heights and the Lebanese Shaba farms. To the extent that these people continue to feel they are not at peace with Israel, Israelis cannot feel secure.
Given these central reasons for the chronic insecurity of Israeli society, we can map out some guidelines towards solving the "insecurity dilemma". These, I wish to propose, may be a recipe for Israel security.
First, if Israel seeks security for its citizens then a comparable security must be sought and achieved for Palestinians. Palestinian people must be on an equal footing with Israeli people, must have a homeland, must be guaranteed justice, their basic human rights and their dignity. Towards achieving that, Israelis need first to recognize Palestinians as humans with an equal standing, entitled to all the rights that are granted to Israelis. One cannot live in security while imposing a living hell on one's neighbors. Gaza cannot be starved, besieged, cut off from and out of the world, denied the most basic rights and meanwhile send roses to its oppressors. It contradicts the norms of nature for a desperate patient to stay smiling throughout the pain or for an angry starving prisoner to talk calmly and quietly with his jailer. I'm reminded of Socrates’ story about the little mouse that annoyed him for a long time. As he carried it at his hand, studying its tiny size and weakness, the mouse bit his figure and escaped. For a minute, he was astonished to be defeated by such a small creature. However, wisely summing up the situation, he concluded that resistance, no matter how small, is a significant step towards change and a path to a new life. The path towards almost any major change is undoubtedly made up of small attempts like those of Socrates' mouse.
Much like it failed to help Socrates, possessing power has not helped Israel ensure its citizens' security. Ensuring the security for mega-mighty Israel requires a recognition of the other and the other's limited but existent resistance and might. In order for security to prevail for all, military occupation must end and the repressive measures of denial must be repudiated. The unjust and brutal blockade against Gaza's 1.5 million people must end, as must the apartheid regime and the expansionist policies practiced in the West Bank. Just last week Israeli bombardment and repeated invasion of Gaza, resulting in the highest number of causalities for decades, have not achieved a solution to the problems of Sderot. Just as it failed to work this time, it will fail to work again.
Palestinians need to live a normal life like that of others, no more and no less. Their children need to go to schools without being held up at checkpoints or shot along the way. They need to study in a normal environment, in classes that don't number 55 students. They need to realize their right to dream and plan for the future and the future of their children. No reason in the world can justify the fact that Palestinian children are subjected to such harsh lives and forced to endure the humiliation of occupation.
Palestinians are entitled to, and long for, freedom of movement as well as free passage for their products and goods. When they wish to visit their families or when the summer vacation begins, Palestinians like Israelis need to pack their bags and head towards the borders without fear of being either stranded there or turned back, making normal mobility an unattainable dream. They want and deserve respect in airports instead of being held for hours or even days due to being stateless or to the fact that the computer system doesn't recognize their country's name. The sick deserve decent hospitals and competent treatment. They must be transported to the nearest hospital when taken ill, rather than being denied access like Fawziya Abdelalfatah who died last month in the West Bank when Israeli soldiers at El Ghsoun checkpoint refused to let her reach Tulkarem hospital. It is the right of the wounded to be transferred to hospital, rather than being left to bleed to death. And on arrival, the sick and wounded must find the necessary medications at the hospitals, rather than dying due to the shortage in medications.
Palestinians are entitled to dignity both in life and in death. Nowadays, due to Israel's blockade, Gaza is short of raw materials for manufacturing coffins. My grandmother is searching for a coffin for fear that the shortage will prevent her dignified burial in keeping with our religion and culture. All in all, this daily man-made humiliation must end. Palestinians must be recognized and respected as human beings.
Is this unthinkable or abnormal – what the Palestinians are asking? If it is, then it seems that Israel's security problems may never end. For until the Palestinians' basic rights are recognized, I fear that Israel will continue to live in fear and insecurity.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9391.shtml and reprinted by "Occupation magazine"
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=25748
Time and again, it is very obvious that Israel cannot provide its citizens with either actual security or even a sense of security, whether inside or outside the country. This is so despite the fact that it possesses all means of military power and superiority including the nuclear weapons making it the strongest regional power in the Middle East. In fact, despite all its power, Israel lives a continuous security crisis. Despite its power, Israel has been unable to prevent even Palestinian children from picking up stones and throwing them at Israeli tanks and forces. Fares Audah a 12 year old Palestinian boy from Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, was doing just that when he was killed by Israeli bullets in the summer of 2002. Moreover, despite Israel's continuous shelling and bombardment of most of the iron workshops in Gaza, home-made rockets still keep falling on the Israeli town of Sderot. Furthermore, despite all the security measures taken by Israel, Palestinian suicide bombers have repeatedly entered Israeli areas and exploded themselves on buses and in markets.
The question at this juncture, then, is why has Israel been unable to provide security despite all its might. And what is the solution to this complicated problem, one that has become part and parcel of the psychology, the rhetoric and the culture of Israeli society?
In my opinion, the insecurity in which Israel finds itself since its foundation and its citizens' persistent feelings of fear, can be attributed to a variety of reasons. I would like to highlight two of these in particular. The first source of Israeli insecurity lies in the very power possessed by Israel, which engenders the mistaken belief that military superiority can and will solve any problem the country might face. Adopting the logic of power and the heavy handed policies this entails has been a consistent feature of Israeli politics for decades. However, power alone cannot bring security or peace. It is a means or a tool which, on its own, is unfailingly insufficient. Solutions that are forcefully imposed are such that can never attain security, solve political problems or bring a lasting peace. It was only when white South Africans finally realized that their superior armed power could not and would not solve their problems with black South Africans, that the two groups created the opportunity to reach real solutions.
The second source of Israeli insecurity that I wish to focus on here is the weakness of the Arab regimes in the Middle East and their consequent adoption of a strategic "peace process" towards maintaining the status quo of so-called “no war no peace” with Israel. Most of these regimes are not elected and do not represent their people, a fact bearing a direct connection to what we might call the "insecurity"- "dilemma". The choice of "no war no peace" maintained through a strategic "peace process" is a policy of regimes rather one of than peoples, geared towards keeping US support and ensuring the continued flow of foreign aid to the regimes in question. Israel's security, however, lies in the hands of the peoples of the region, not with the regimes. For these peoples, the Palestinian cause is deeply embedded in the past, present and future. Many individuals were imbued with the cause of Palestine from infancy and throughout their lives; it still plays a role in their tears and aspirations and they continue following the tragedies Palestinians live in the Occupied Territories on the satellite channels. Needless to say, they have been deeply affected by the wars in Lebanon and the bloody summer of 2006, by the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla and by many other events that have become part of the typical Arab vision or perception of Israel or Israelis. Arab people see Arab lands still occupied, including the Syrian "Golan" heights and the Lebanese Shaba farms. To the extent that these people continue to feel they are not at peace with Israel, Israelis cannot feel secure.
Given these central reasons for the chronic insecurity of Israeli society, we can map out some guidelines towards solving the "insecurity dilemma". These, I wish to propose, may be a recipe for Israel security.
First, if Israel seeks security for its citizens then a comparable security must be sought and achieved for Palestinians. Palestinian people must be on an equal footing with Israeli people, must have a homeland, must be guaranteed justice, their basic human rights and their dignity. Towards achieving that, Israelis need first to recognize Palestinians as humans with an equal standing, entitled to all the rights that are granted to Israelis. One cannot live in security while imposing a living hell on one's neighbors. Gaza cannot be starved, besieged, cut off from and out of the world, denied the most basic rights and meanwhile send roses to its oppressors. It contradicts the norms of nature for a desperate patient to stay smiling throughout the pain or for an angry starving prisoner to talk calmly and quietly with his jailer. I'm reminded of Socrates’ story about the little mouse that annoyed him for a long time. As he carried it at his hand, studying its tiny size and weakness, the mouse bit his figure and escaped. For a minute, he was astonished to be defeated by such a small creature. However, wisely summing up the situation, he concluded that resistance, no matter how small, is a significant step towards change and a path to a new life. The path towards almost any major change is undoubtedly made up of small attempts like those of Socrates' mouse.
Much like it failed to help Socrates, possessing power has not helped Israel ensure its citizens' security. Ensuring the security for mega-mighty Israel requires a recognition of the other and the other's limited but existent resistance and might. In order for security to prevail for all, military occupation must end and the repressive measures of denial must be repudiated. The unjust and brutal blockade against Gaza's 1.5 million people must end, as must the apartheid regime and the expansionist policies practiced in the West Bank. Just last week Israeli bombardment and repeated invasion of Gaza, resulting in the highest number of causalities for decades, have not achieved a solution to the problems of Sderot. Just as it failed to work this time, it will fail to work again.
Palestinians need to live a normal life like that of others, no more and no less. Their children need to go to schools without being held up at checkpoints or shot along the way. They need to study in a normal environment, in classes that don't number 55 students. They need to realize their right to dream and plan for the future and the future of their children. No reason in the world can justify the fact that Palestinian children are subjected to such harsh lives and forced to endure the humiliation of occupation.
Palestinians are entitled to, and long for, freedom of movement as well as free passage for their products and goods. When they wish to visit their families or when the summer vacation begins, Palestinians like Israelis need to pack their bags and head towards the borders without fear of being either stranded there or turned back, making normal mobility an unattainable dream. They want and deserve respect in airports instead of being held for hours or even days due to being stateless or to the fact that the computer system doesn't recognize their country's name. The sick deserve decent hospitals and competent treatment. They must be transported to the nearest hospital when taken ill, rather than being denied access like Fawziya Abdelalfatah who died last month in the West Bank when Israeli soldiers at El Ghsoun checkpoint refused to let her reach Tulkarem hospital. It is the right of the wounded to be transferred to hospital, rather than being left to bleed to death. And on arrival, the sick and wounded must find the necessary medications at the hospitals, rather than dying due to the shortage in medications.
Palestinians are entitled to dignity both in life and in death. Nowadays, due to Israel's blockade, Gaza is short of raw materials for manufacturing coffins. My grandmother is searching for a coffin for fear that the shortage will prevent her dignified burial in keeping with our religion and culture. All in all, this daily man-made humiliation must end. Palestinians must be recognized and respected as human beings.
Is this unthinkable or abnormal – what the Palestinians are asking? If it is, then it seems that Israel's security problems may never end. For until the Palestinians' basic rights are recognized, I fear that Israel will continue to live in fear and insecurity.
Thursday 6 March 2008
Gaza: a Man Made Disaster
Only hours after the Israeli tanks left north Gaza, the body of medical officer Mahmoud Zaqout was found after being crushed under the tanks several times. The connection with the ambulance driver was disconnected three days ago when he went to evacuate one of the wounded people in eastern Jabalia. It was thought and hoped that he was arrested by the Israeli soldiers. But on Monday, (March 3rd), such hope evaporated when his body was found buried under the sand.
Mahmoud Zaqout was not the only medical personal killed in Gaza last week. Khalil Ezz Eldeen, was another nurse victim and evidence of the brutality of the Israeli terror while another nurse is still in critical conditions at Shifa hospital in Gaza.
The Palestinian health ministry announced that they are functioning under very difficult situation. Approximately 70 kinds of medications has run out. 120 other kind will end in 4 weeks time. Gaza hospitals remain in need of more items, including ventilators and X-ray machines, to properly handle the wounded.
The hospitals are very overcrowded, including the intensive care unit which transferred patients with serious cases to other units in the hospital to bridge the problem of space. Non-urgent surgeries had been cancelled due to power outages. Furthermore, the latest aggresion in Gaza has only further distanced hundreds of patients from treatment. Health sources said that eventually some non-urgent cases would become emergencies if not treated.
In a scathing report, eight British-based rights organizations, including Oxfam, Amnesty and Save the Children stated that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are living through their worst humanitarian crisis since the 1967 war because of the severe restrictions imposed by Israel. In its coverage to that report the Guardian stated that "Movement is all but impossible and supplies of food and water, sewage treatment and basic healthcare can no longer be taken for granted. The economy has collapsed, unemployment is expected to rise to 50%, hospitals are suffering 12-hour power cuts and schools are failing - all creating a "humanitarian implosion."
Moreover, the report groups pointed to the fact that the situation in Gaza is "man-made, completely avoidable, and with the necessary political will can be reversed." such report and figures about the humanitarian situation in Gaza including the health sector is another alert message concerning the devastation caused by the blockade. Moreover, the media coverage to the on going plight of Gaza population, the herrofic news I get from home together with the atrocities and causalities on the ground are all but loud screams of the deteriorated situation.
What else does the world wait for?
Before they used to condemn or denounce the continued of inhuman conditions or call to send a committee to investigate. However it seems that even such shy and weak responses are becoming impossible these days. Such no reaction attitude make Palestinians believe day after day that the so called international community and free world have passed away.
To be continued
Mahmoud Zaqout was not the only medical personal killed in Gaza last week. Khalil Ezz Eldeen, was another nurse victim and evidence of the brutality of the Israeli terror while another nurse is still in critical conditions at Shifa hospital in Gaza.
The Palestinian health ministry announced that they are functioning under very difficult situation. Approximately 70 kinds of medications has run out. 120 other kind will end in 4 weeks time. Gaza hospitals remain in need of more items, including ventilators and X-ray machines, to properly handle the wounded.
The hospitals are very overcrowded, including the intensive care unit which transferred patients with serious cases to other units in the hospital to bridge the problem of space. Non-urgent surgeries had been cancelled due to power outages. Furthermore, the latest aggresion in Gaza has only further distanced hundreds of patients from treatment. Health sources said that eventually some non-urgent cases would become emergencies if not treated.
In a scathing report, eight British-based rights organizations, including Oxfam, Amnesty and Save the Children stated that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are living through their worst humanitarian crisis since the 1967 war because of the severe restrictions imposed by Israel. In its coverage to that report the Guardian stated that "Movement is all but impossible and supplies of food and water, sewage treatment and basic healthcare can no longer be taken for granted. The economy has collapsed, unemployment is expected to rise to 50%, hospitals are suffering 12-hour power cuts and schools are failing - all creating a "humanitarian implosion."
Moreover, the report groups pointed to the fact that the situation in Gaza is "man-made, completely avoidable, and with the necessary political will can be reversed." such report and figures about the humanitarian situation in Gaza including the health sector is another alert message concerning the devastation caused by the blockade. Moreover, the media coverage to the on going plight of Gaza population, the herrofic news I get from home together with the atrocities and causalities on the ground are all but loud screams of the deteriorated situation.
What else does the world wait for?
Before they used to condemn or denounce the continued of inhuman conditions or call to send a committee to investigate. However it seems that even such shy and weak responses are becoming impossible these days. Such no reaction attitude make Palestinians believe day after day that the so called international community and free world have passed away.
To be continued
Wednesday 5 March 2008
Monday 3 March 2008
Gaza and the holocaust
I spent most of Friday and Saturday nights at the emergency unit in Exeter hospital with my daughter; Ghaida aged 12. She had a severe stomach ache. The doctors tried all their best to comfort her, put an end to the pain while trying to discover what the problem was. Different people from different ages were there desperate to this novel help at the night of the weekend where most of the clinics are closed. At that minute my mind flash back to Gaza, to my community and my people who are living the horror of what the Israel’s deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai, called a new holocaust, Shoah.
The dozens of pictures I saw in the news for kids, infants, women, men, old people and families murdered and wounded within the past three days are passing before my eyes. Will it be a holocaust as Vilanai threatens? Does this military man really mean the word? He as all the Israelis supposed to be the last people on earth to say such horrible word being victims to that brutal tragedy.
But the death toll in the past two days alone reached a hundred; the vast majority of whom are civilians. The pictures of Mohammed Nasser Al burai aged 5 months, Abdallah Abed Rabbo 4, Jakleen Abu Shbak 12, Safa Abu Saif 12, Ghada Saleh 16, Attalah family consists of Suad, Abdelrahman, Ibrahim, and Khaled, aged 60, 65, 33 and 30 are keep flashing into my mind. What else can holocaust mean but killing and bombardment civilian population prisoners in their largest open air prison since almost 18 months? What does holocaust mean but denying people rights of movements, medical treatment and basic necessities such as food, water, electricity and fuel?
It is the longest time ever one might have when his own child is in severe pain or in danger. Ghaida was biting the ground from pain while waiting for a taxi. Yet we get her to the hospital at the end. However, today there are several people in Gaza who died in streets with no reach for an ambulance or a taxi because either it is too dangerous to reach their areas or because of the denial of getting to such area. There are people who also died in hospitals from lack of medications. Gaza is living the brutal blockade that paralyzed every angle of life including the health sector. There were no beds and no enough places to receive the wounded. People were treated on the ground. Hospitals stopped receiving pregnant women with delivery status or any other cases as there is no room for them there. There were no pain killers, no enough medications and no good equipments.
My relative, a doctor , told me that there is nothing in hospitals these days that could make it deal properly with the number and type of cases they receive and therefore he wonders why they still call them hospitals. His voice shakes when he told me about his feelings. He said wounded people and their families feel a little bit relieved when they reach a hospital. But for him it is the beginning of the pain, but physiological one this time. Will he be able to treat this wounded and put and end to his suffering or will it be his end. In every crisis, and these days there is crisis every day, while coming to hospital, the work that one day was his dream, he feels that some one strangles him. He puts a foot forward and ten backward.
His words reminded me of my feeling towards my daughter while she is in pain. It is one of the harshest feelings in life to see you own child suffers and cannot offer a help to stop the pain. And for a doctor I definitely imagine how such feelings could be when the problem is daily one, severe one and he stands before it powerless not because of lack in his capabilities but because of shortage of possibilities, a problem is an occupation made problem.
I saw these scenes in Shifa hospital during 2002 and 2003 when I was working with press as a translator in Gaza. I also felt the meaning of my relative words and his feelings while I was stepping among wounded people bodies lied on the ground. Doctors were trying to do their best in a very difficult times. I still rememebr with vivd clarity their words: "this is going to die, hopeless case, so leave it. Lets deal with this one to try to save his life if we can." At that moment, five years ago, I could not stand the words and I collapsed. I could not translate a word. The message was clear to me as well as those dying on the ground. If you are Palestinian then there is no dignity in life nor death. I was catching the hands of those in comma dying or those in last minutes and the blood is everywhere and crying. Searching for words that I couldn’t find. What shall I say in such circumstances? Is this the type of place, words, people you supposed to be or to hear or to see before passing away.
So what else can a word holocaust mean? For me this is the new form holocaust. The holocaust is the physical killing and the spiritual physiological killing of mothers, children, doctors, wounded people and whole population. Whether what so called the international community see what I see or agree to what I say is not an issue any more. If they stand for and understand the pain of one Israeli victim in Sderot, and so far there are very few victims, so why don’t they stand for the mass killing in Gaza. If the killing of one Israeli civilian mean and count for the Israelis and for the world then killing of hundreds would definitely count for us.
Like the vast majority of Palestinians, I won't wonder how the slaughter in Gaza is swallowed by the international community, particularly the Bush administration. In the eyes of the Palestinians and many others in the world including me, the killing in Gaza breaks every norm and law, and contravenes every human right we have ever known. If the Israeli government call it holocaust and world kept silent then from now on Palestinians should declare the death of the international community towards their cause.
The dozens of pictures I saw in the news for kids, infants, women, men, old people and families murdered and wounded within the past three days are passing before my eyes. Will it be a holocaust as Vilanai threatens? Does this military man really mean the word? He as all the Israelis supposed to be the last people on earth to say such horrible word being victims to that brutal tragedy.
But the death toll in the past two days alone reached a hundred; the vast majority of whom are civilians. The pictures of Mohammed Nasser Al burai aged 5 months, Abdallah Abed Rabbo 4, Jakleen Abu Shbak 12, Safa Abu Saif 12, Ghada Saleh 16, Attalah family consists of Suad, Abdelrahman, Ibrahim, and Khaled, aged 60, 65, 33 and 30 are keep flashing into my mind. What else can holocaust mean but killing and bombardment civilian population prisoners in their largest open air prison since almost 18 months? What does holocaust mean but denying people rights of movements, medical treatment and basic necessities such as food, water, electricity and fuel?
It is the longest time ever one might have when his own child is in severe pain or in danger. Ghaida was biting the ground from pain while waiting for a taxi. Yet we get her to the hospital at the end. However, today there are several people in Gaza who died in streets with no reach for an ambulance or a taxi because either it is too dangerous to reach their areas or because of the denial of getting to such area. There are people who also died in hospitals from lack of medications. Gaza is living the brutal blockade that paralyzed every angle of life including the health sector. There were no beds and no enough places to receive the wounded. People were treated on the ground. Hospitals stopped receiving pregnant women with delivery status or any other cases as there is no room for them there. There were no pain killers, no enough medications and no good equipments.
My relative, a doctor , told me that there is nothing in hospitals these days that could make it deal properly with the number and type of cases they receive and therefore he wonders why they still call them hospitals. His voice shakes when he told me about his feelings. He said wounded people and their families feel a little bit relieved when they reach a hospital. But for him it is the beginning of the pain, but physiological one this time. Will he be able to treat this wounded and put and end to his suffering or will it be his end. In every crisis, and these days there is crisis every day, while coming to hospital, the work that one day was his dream, he feels that some one strangles him. He puts a foot forward and ten backward.
His words reminded me of my feeling towards my daughter while she is in pain. It is one of the harshest feelings in life to see you own child suffers and cannot offer a help to stop the pain. And for a doctor I definitely imagine how such feelings could be when the problem is daily one, severe one and he stands before it powerless not because of lack in his capabilities but because of shortage of possibilities, a problem is an occupation made problem.
I saw these scenes in Shifa hospital during 2002 and 2003 when I was working with press as a translator in Gaza. I also felt the meaning of my relative words and his feelings while I was stepping among wounded people bodies lied on the ground. Doctors were trying to do their best in a very difficult times. I still rememebr with vivd clarity their words: "this is going to die, hopeless case, so leave it. Lets deal with this one to try to save his life if we can." At that moment, five years ago, I could not stand the words and I collapsed. I could not translate a word. The message was clear to me as well as those dying on the ground. If you are Palestinian then there is no dignity in life nor death. I was catching the hands of those in comma dying or those in last minutes and the blood is everywhere and crying. Searching for words that I couldn’t find. What shall I say in such circumstances? Is this the type of place, words, people you supposed to be or to hear or to see before passing away.
So what else can a word holocaust mean? For me this is the new form holocaust. The holocaust is the physical killing and the spiritual physiological killing of mothers, children, doctors, wounded people and whole population. Whether what so called the international community see what I see or agree to what I say is not an issue any more. If they stand for and understand the pain of one Israeli victim in Sderot, and so far there are very few victims, so why don’t they stand for the mass killing in Gaza. If the killing of one Israeli civilian mean and count for the Israelis and for the world then killing of hundreds would definitely count for us.
Like the vast majority of Palestinians, I won't wonder how the slaughter in Gaza is swallowed by the international community, particularly the Bush administration. In the eyes of the Palestinians and many others in the world including me, the killing in Gaza breaks every norm and law, and contravenes every human right we have ever known. If the Israeli government call it holocaust and world kept silent then from now on Palestinians should declare the death of the international community towards their cause.
Sunday 2 March 2008
Jews and the Gaza holocaust
Comment byKhalid Amayreh in East Jerusalem
1 March, 2008
In June, 1942, in reprisal for the assassination of the Nazi commander Reinhard Heydrich, the Germans carried out a murderous rampage of murder and terror throughout Czechoslovakia. The small Czech village of Lidice bore the brunt of the German revenge, with the SS killing all the men, deported all women and children and razed the village to the ground.
Similarly, in March 1944, thirty-three German soldiers were killed when members of an Italian resistance group set off a bomb close to a column of German troops who were marching on via Rasella in Rome . Adolph Hitler got furious and ordered that within 24 hours, ten Italians were to be shot for each German soldier that had been killed. Herbert Kappler, the local German commander, quickly compiled a list of 320 civilians who were to be assassinated as vengeance. On March 24, the victims were transported to the Ardeatine caves where they were summarily executed by the SS.
Numerous other ‘pacification operations’ were carried out by the Nazi armies against civilians throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, in which men, women and children were brutally killed to avenge the death of German occupation soldiers by local resistance fighters.
Now what is the difference between these Nazi atrocities and what Israel, the “only democracy in the Middle East” is doing in the Gaza Strip, where “the most moral army in the world” is slaughtering babies as young as six-months’ old? I know that many Jews, especially Zionist Jews, have developed almost instinctive knee- jerk defensive reactions to any comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany. However, the truth must be proclaimed aloud, irrespective of how many Zionists will get angry.
Israel claims that it doesn’t murder innocent civilians deliberately. But this is a big, obscene lie, of which even most Israelis are aware. Mistakes happen a few times, but when the wanton slaughter of children occurs each day and every day of the year, it means it is policy.
In addition, when the number of victims, especially innocent victims, as in Gaza, even intent itself becomes irrelevant.
In the final analysis, murdering knowingly is murdering deliberately, regardless of the prevarication and the verbal juggling.
Hence, Jews around the world, especially those who support Israel, should be willing to bring themselves to recognizing that what their wonderful state is doing to these helpless Palestinians is a virtual holocaust or at least a holocaust in the making.
How else can any honest person relate to these phantasmagoric images that keep coming from Gaza, haunting the conscience of every human being?
True, Israel had not introduced gas chambers in Beit Hanun and Khan Younis or Rafah. But we have F-16s raining down bombs and death on sleeping children and women and innocent civilians.
If Jews who support this satanic entity are not willing to call the spade a spade and recognize a holocaust as a holocaust, then they should be viewed as active accomplices in this wanton rampage of murder and terror.
This is not a war. Calling the current Israeli onslaught on Gaza a war is like fornicating with words. Wars occur between armies and states.
What is happening in Gaza is actually a merciless and brutal rampage of murder and terror waged by a Wehrmacht-like army against a blockaded, beleaguered and starved people who want to survive and be free, very much like Jews did under the Nazi occupation of Europe.
Indeed, when Israel murders a hundred Palestinian, mostly innocent civilians, for every Israeli killed, there is a name for that, it is massacre.
It is conscionable that honest people around the world, including many conscientious Jews who can’t bear watching the heinous crimes Israel is committing in their collective name, must call the spade a spade. A holocaust, after all, doesn’t become lesser when perpetrated by Jews. There is no such a thing as a kosher holocaust or kosher massacres.
Vilnai
Now, once again, human decency is being affronted and insulted by this reptile terrorist Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defense minister, who has gone as far as threatening the thoroughly tormented Gazans with a holocaust.
Speaking to the Israeli army radio Friday morning, 29 February, Vilnai said “the more Qassam rockets fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, the Palestinians will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our power to defend ourselves.”
Well, if Israel thinks that carrying out a holocaust against its victims in Gaza and Rafah and Khan Younis can be justified, then why blame Hitler for effecting a holocaust against his own respective enemies? Is Vilnai vindicating the holocaust?
I think Jews should realize that this criminal state, with its manifestly intransigence and bellicosity, is forcing them to make a moral judgment. In the face of evil, and Israel is a clear embodiment of evil, one can’t be neutral. It is either one stands with evil or stands against it.
Today, people around the world, including millions of Jews, are watching the pornographic slaughter in Gaza live on their TV screens. And no amount of spin, lie, or hasbara will make the images of mutilated babies look innocuous.
Finally, the people of the world will not be duped by the propagandistic lies about so-called rocket attacks on Israeli towns, which are meant first and foremost to create an artificial equation between the wanton extermination of Gazans and the mainly psychological discomfort experienced by some Israeli citizens as a result of the fall of these nearly innocuous fire-crackers, fired by some desperate Gazans in order to deter Israel from killing more of their children.
This is because Israel knows very well how calm and peace can be restored for both the people of Gaza and Israelis across the border: Lift the criminal siege on Gaza, allow Gazans to access food and to travel, allow them to export and import, and stop these daily massacres. And then not a single Qassam will be fired onto Israel.
1 March, 2008
In June, 1942, in reprisal for the assassination of the Nazi commander Reinhard Heydrich, the Germans carried out a murderous rampage of murder and terror throughout Czechoslovakia. The small Czech village of Lidice bore the brunt of the German revenge, with the SS killing all the men, deported all women and children and razed the village to the ground.
Similarly, in March 1944, thirty-three German soldiers were killed when members of an Italian resistance group set off a bomb close to a column of German troops who were marching on via Rasella in Rome . Adolph Hitler got furious and ordered that within 24 hours, ten Italians were to be shot for each German soldier that had been killed. Herbert Kappler, the local German commander, quickly compiled a list of 320 civilians who were to be assassinated as vengeance. On March 24, the victims were transported to the Ardeatine caves where they were summarily executed by the SS.
Numerous other ‘pacification operations’ were carried out by the Nazi armies against civilians throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, in which men, women and children were brutally killed to avenge the death of German occupation soldiers by local resistance fighters.
Now what is the difference between these Nazi atrocities and what Israel, the “only democracy in the Middle East” is doing in the Gaza Strip, where “the most moral army in the world” is slaughtering babies as young as six-months’ old? I know that many Jews, especially Zionist Jews, have developed almost instinctive knee- jerk defensive reactions to any comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany. However, the truth must be proclaimed aloud, irrespective of how many Zionists will get angry.
Israel claims that it doesn’t murder innocent civilians deliberately. But this is a big, obscene lie, of which even most Israelis are aware. Mistakes happen a few times, but when the wanton slaughter of children occurs each day and every day of the year, it means it is policy.
In addition, when the number of victims, especially innocent victims, as in Gaza, even intent itself becomes irrelevant.
In the final analysis, murdering knowingly is murdering deliberately, regardless of the prevarication and the verbal juggling.
Hence, Jews around the world, especially those who support Israel, should be willing to bring themselves to recognizing that what their wonderful state is doing to these helpless Palestinians is a virtual holocaust or at least a holocaust in the making.
How else can any honest person relate to these phantasmagoric images that keep coming from Gaza, haunting the conscience of every human being?
True, Israel had not introduced gas chambers in Beit Hanun and Khan Younis or Rafah. But we have F-16s raining down bombs and death on sleeping children and women and innocent civilians.
If Jews who support this satanic entity are not willing to call the spade a spade and recognize a holocaust as a holocaust, then they should be viewed as active accomplices in this wanton rampage of murder and terror.
This is not a war. Calling the current Israeli onslaught on Gaza a war is like fornicating with words. Wars occur between armies and states.
What is happening in Gaza is actually a merciless and brutal rampage of murder and terror waged by a Wehrmacht-like army against a blockaded, beleaguered and starved people who want to survive and be free, very much like Jews did under the Nazi occupation of Europe.
Indeed, when Israel murders a hundred Palestinian, mostly innocent civilians, for every Israeli killed, there is a name for that, it is massacre.
It is conscionable that honest people around the world, including many conscientious Jews who can’t bear watching the heinous crimes Israel is committing in their collective name, must call the spade a spade. A holocaust, after all, doesn’t become lesser when perpetrated by Jews. There is no such a thing as a kosher holocaust or kosher massacres.
Vilnai
Now, once again, human decency is being affronted and insulted by this reptile terrorist Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defense minister, who has gone as far as threatening the thoroughly tormented Gazans with a holocaust.
Speaking to the Israeli army radio Friday morning, 29 February, Vilnai said “the more Qassam rockets fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, the Palestinians will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our power to defend ourselves.”
Well, if Israel thinks that carrying out a holocaust against its victims in Gaza and Rafah and Khan Younis can be justified, then why blame Hitler for effecting a holocaust against his own respective enemies? Is Vilnai vindicating the holocaust?
I think Jews should realize that this criminal state, with its manifestly intransigence and bellicosity, is forcing them to make a moral judgment. In the face of evil, and Israel is a clear embodiment of evil, one can’t be neutral. It is either one stands with evil or stands against it.
Today, people around the world, including millions of Jews, are watching the pornographic slaughter in Gaza live on their TV screens. And no amount of spin, lie, or hasbara will make the images of mutilated babies look innocuous.
Finally, the people of the world will not be duped by the propagandistic lies about so-called rocket attacks on Israeli towns, which are meant first and foremost to create an artificial equation between the wanton extermination of Gazans and the mainly psychological discomfort experienced by some Israeli citizens as a result of the fall of these nearly innocuous fire-crackers, fired by some desperate Gazans in order to deter Israel from killing more of their children.
This is because Israel knows very well how calm and peace can be restored for both the people of Gaza and Israelis across the border: Lift the criminal siege on Gaza, allow Gazans to access food and to travel, allow them to export and import, and stop these daily massacres. And then not a single Qassam will be fired onto Israel.
Saturday 1 March 2008
Gaza: The Slaughter House
The Israeli bombardment and shelling to Gaza escalated sharply this morning, leaving dead 40 Palestinian victims, two thirds of them are civilians and one third of these civilians are children and women. Gaza Health Ministry officials also said over 120 people were wounded and 14 were in critical condition.
For a minute, I could not believe the figure. Yesterday, there was 27 dead and today there is another 40. All in all, this makes the total 67. If divided by the past 48 hours, the rate of killing reaches 1.5 per an hour. Gaza is a slaughter house.
I phoned Gaza as usual to get some news. This time the call was to my sister, the pharmacists who live in Khan Younis. I was astonished to learn that she was not at work. Why? The first question I raised. Your work is very much needed at these days.
With calm voice she replied I could not go to work today. And she started to tell the story. Two people were killed before the pharmacy where I work and I could not do anything. I had my baby with me at work and I was taking the blood pressure of a pregnant lady when a rocket struck a car next to the pharmacy’s door. The blast was so strong.
I left the pharmacy and went to see what had happened. The car was on fire. The people there were burning. What I can do to save their lives? The sound of the Israeli planes were still in the sky hovering. What would be their next target? I asked myself. My baby was crying behind. The woman carried him and ran away far from the scene.
For a minute, my mind stopped thinking. My tears were frozen in my eyes while looking at the car powerless. What shall I do at this moment? Shall I save my life and run away or shall I try to do anything to help the victims? But to what extent my help can help at this moment? After all what can be done from my end? Nothing, I whispered to myself. The vicitms on the car are burnt. Yet, I started to call an ambulance but there was no signal. People started to gather bringing water to set the fire off.
The sound of the plane is getting clearer and people started to run away. I found myself running with the crowd. People started to call me pointing at the lady who holds my baby. I got him and ran for our lives. Since then and I am at home. I do nothing but listening to news, calling my family at the camp, my husband at work and friends where the bombs fall and praying. From the news, I learnt that the two men were from our neighborhood: one from Al Farra family and the other from Shamia. They work at the municipality of Khan Younis and they were in their way back home after finishing their work.
I am very upset, very tired, very sad and very frustrated. I got a degree in a pharmacy to be of some help to my community in such bleak days. Yet time and again, I find myself in a position that could not provide a thing beyond tears and confusion.
At the end of this day the number of victims has reached 55.
For a minute, I could not believe the figure. Yesterday, there was 27 dead and today there is another 40. All in all, this makes the total 67. If divided by the past 48 hours, the rate of killing reaches 1.5 per an hour. Gaza is a slaughter house.
I phoned Gaza as usual to get some news. This time the call was to my sister, the pharmacists who live in Khan Younis. I was astonished to learn that she was not at work. Why? The first question I raised. Your work is very much needed at these days.
With calm voice she replied I could not go to work today. And she started to tell the story. Two people were killed before the pharmacy where I work and I could not do anything. I had my baby with me at work and I was taking the blood pressure of a pregnant lady when a rocket struck a car next to the pharmacy’s door. The blast was so strong.
I left the pharmacy and went to see what had happened. The car was on fire. The people there were burning. What I can do to save their lives? The sound of the Israeli planes were still in the sky hovering. What would be their next target? I asked myself. My baby was crying behind. The woman carried him and ran away far from the scene.
For a minute, my mind stopped thinking. My tears were frozen in my eyes while looking at the car powerless. What shall I do at this moment? Shall I save my life and run away or shall I try to do anything to help the victims? But to what extent my help can help at this moment? After all what can be done from my end? Nothing, I whispered to myself. The vicitms on the car are burnt. Yet, I started to call an ambulance but there was no signal. People started to gather bringing water to set the fire off.
The sound of the plane is getting clearer and people started to run away. I found myself running with the crowd. People started to call me pointing at the lady who holds my baby. I got him and ran for our lives. Since then and I am at home. I do nothing but listening to news, calling my family at the camp, my husband at work and friends where the bombs fall and praying. From the news, I learnt that the two men were from our neighborhood: one from Al Farra family and the other from Shamia. They work at the municipality of Khan Younis and they were in their way back home after finishing their work.
I am very upset, very tired, very sad and very frustrated. I got a degree in a pharmacy to be of some help to my community in such bleak days. Yet time and again, I find myself in a position that could not provide a thing beyond tears and confusion.
At the end of this day the number of victims has reached 55.
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Palestinian refugees sit at Khan Younis refugee camp
