“Apartheid is a crime
against humanity. Israel has deprived
millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has perpetuated a system of gross racial
discrimination and inequality. It has
systematically incarcerated and tortured thousands of Palestinians, contrary to
international law. It has, in
particular, waged a war against a civilian population, in particular children.”
– Nelson Mandela, former prisoner-of-conscience for 25 years
The most singular physical
manifestation of the apartheid which the State of Israel is inflicting on the
native population of Palestine is the Apartheid Wall surrounding the West
Bank. It is quite similar to the Berlin
Wall destroyed in 1989 and to the so-called “Peace Lines” built in 1969 between
Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods in Belfast, Derry, Portadown, and other
cities which still exist.
The Israeli-inflicted
apartheid is harshest, however, in the Gaza Strip. Since 2006, the State of Israel has converted
the Gaza Strip into a 141 sq. mi. (365 sq. km) prison comparable to the Warsaw
Ghetto. Don’t get mad at goy me for that
comparison; Israeli survivors of the Ghetto and of the Holocaust made that
comparison before me.
And for what crime has
Israel been inflicting this illegal collective punishment on the people of
Gaza? In 2006, in what international
observers judged to be a cleaner election than many in most developed countries,
Hamas won a majority of seats in the parliament of Occupied Palestine fairly
and squarely. In local elections, Hamas
won a large majority of the offices and council seats in the Gaza Strip, where
Fatah won few. People in the Gaza Strip
were sick of neglect by Ramallah and the corruption and complacency of Fatah.
I do not like Hamas, any
more than I like any sectarian, theocratic political group regardless of their professed
religion, but it was a clean election and they won fairly. Israel and the U.S.A. hubristically failed in
their analysis and did little to support any alternative. Thus red-faced at being caught with their
pants down, the IDF (Israeli Defense Force), the Mossad, and the governments of
Ehud Barak and Bibi Netanyahu have taken out their chagrin on the people of
Gaza, collective punishment in violation of every tenet of all international
law and standards of human rights for exercising their freedom to vote. Especially after the coup d’etat they
attempted through Fatah in 2007 failed so miserably.
In
the recent war of Israel upon the Gaza Strip dubbed “Operation Pillar of
Defense”, which began with Israel’s assassination of Ahmed Jabari, 162
Palestinians died compared to just 5 Israelis.
Of those Palestinians, at least 30 among the 110 civilian victims were school-age
children. Also among the dead were eleven
members from four generations of a single family whose home, according to
official IDF sources, had been deliberately targeted.
In
their 2008-2009 invasion of the Gaza Strip dubbed “Operation Cast Lead”, the
IDF killed 1400 Palestinians, 353 of whom were children, while suffering only
13 casualties. Such lop-sided casualty
rates remind me of Mark Twain’s story “War Prayer”, his response to a massacre during
the Moro War (1902-1913) of 900 civilians (men, women, children) on the
Philippine island of Mindanao by American troops who suffered a mere 35 casualties,
all by friendly fire.
The following was written
by my niece in Gaza City, Hadeel, who is 16 years old, and with her permission
I am including it so that readers may know “the rest of the story”, which you
may not be getting from CNN, Fox, or MSNBC.
“Yesterday night, I almost closed my eyes to
catch some Z's after a bloody, miserable day, I barely slept, the sound of
explosions began approaching, it was everywhere, I was telling myself it's ok, it's
just one, don't worry it's almost over, another explosion, I said that is the
last one then everything will be over, Booomb! Another one, two and three ...
it was too much so that I got up from bed.
With every sound of shaking bombs I was fleeing to my parents' room,
daddy took me in his arms, he tried hard to stop my rainy eyes.
“Lying between my dad's arms, covering my head under the blanket, closing my eyes to this dark world, having nightmares even while I'm not sleeping, that was how I spent this night. Daddy was watching the window and warning me with every rocket-propelled, he was whispering LIGHT! As a sign to hold my breath and get ready for the next explosion!
“Daddy thought that I was crying because I was afraid of death. Not really! It was a crying with a different flavor; I was crying because it was the first time to feel that I'm going to lose someone of my family, despite everything was going, I was not afraid of death, it doesn't scare me anymore, even if I knew I would be underground within seconds...but what is scaring me the thought of losing someone I love in these events, I may lose the life of my father, mother, brother, or a friend. I will be lucky if it is about losing my life only. With every explosion, I could see the death becomes closer to one of them, many thoughts were spoiling in my head, I was extremely weak, it was the first time to feel that weakness, I was someone I've never met before.
“Fire, bombs, explosions,
blood and death, it was too much for a girl in my age to endure, to breathe the
atmosphere of blood smell is something terrible! As if you are experiencing death more than once
while you are still alive!!
“Then, for a moment, I closed my eyes. There was an instant of extreme cold and total darkness. Suddenly I was in deep, dreamless, sleep.
“I opened my eyes upon my mom, she was raising her hands to the sky and praying to God to keep us safe, this increased my faith, I said to myself: they can never defeat us! I decided to curse my weakness and shackle it with chains; I decided to be stronger, yes stronger!”
– Hadeel M. Abu Oun, 19
November 2012, Gaza City, Palestine
According
to Gideon Levy, an Israeli reporter for the newspaper Ha’aretz, since April 2001 a total of 59 Israelis have died in
hostilities between them compared to 4,717 Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip
and West Bank.
There’s
this story about a Palestinian, an American, a French Iranian, and an Israeli
meeting on a tour boat on the River Seine through Paris…sounds like the
beginning of a joke, right? Only it
really happened; I know because I was one of them. The picture we had taken of the four of us together
has proven to be one of the more popular that I’ve posted to Facebook. It’s about peace, and the hope for a future
in which We the People of the World will finally fulfill President Eisenhower’s
prediction that one day we will want peace so much that our governments will
have to step aside and let us have it.
And
if they fail to do that, we will just step around them.
(NOTE: This article was originally written as an opinion piece in a local online newspaper, The Chattanoogan. However, when I sent it, I received this reply from the editor: "chuck not sure want to get into that topic". He was silencing not just me but my niece and all the other victims in the Gaza Strip.)
(NOTE: This article was originally written as an opinion piece in a local online newspaper, The Chattanoogan. However, when I sent it, I received this reply from the editor: "chuck not sure want to get into that topic". He was silencing not just me but my niece and all the other victims in the Gaza Strip.)
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