For the Palestinians,it’s endless suffering [Archives:2004/779/Opinion]

Hassan Al-Haifi
This observer is flabbergasted by the obvious closed-eyed attitude of the international community to the mass suffering that is being inflicted on the Palestinians of Jabalya, Gaza. While the killing of two Israeli children reportedly by Ghassan rockets fired by Hamas, may not be viewed, from a humanitarian point, as an applaudable act, the furious attack launched by Israeli troops on the squalid refugee camps of Gaza surely is not blessed with a civilized rationale by all means. Needless to say that the Palestinians of Gaza are already undergoing the epitome of suffering after already having been driven away by the Israelis from their original homes in Palestine, on more than one occasion. For years of merely watching by the international community, while the Israelis continue to swallow up the Holy Land by forced removal of the original Christian and Moslem Arab inhabitants (with thousands of them killed indiscriminately along the way), the Palestinians have been compelled to turn to armed resistance to try to salvage what they could of their remaining homeland. Yet, thanks to the crude efforts of resistance by some of the frustrated Palestinians, the Israelis mercilessly take advantage of world silence and unleash their state of the art killing machine without regard to the victims as revenge for the death of illegitimate settlers on illegitimately occupied territory, who are exposing themselves to obvious danger by settling on territory that is not theirs. While the Israelis are living in the highest of modern splendor, the indigenous population are forced to live in the worst of conditions in make-shift refugee camps that have solidified into pitiful slums, deprived of the most basic of hygienic and resourceful surroundings. Yet, the Israelis still insist that it is their God-given right to steal land and push out anyone that stands in their way and bring suffering to anyone that stands to prevent them from snatching any land they wish to take. They will push the Palestinians to the breaking point and then cry out terrorism when these poor Palestinians see someone else enjoy all the modern amenities, or kill hundreds of their own indiscriminately and become forced to turn to the justice of the gun, as a last resort to save whatever remains of their homeland. No, it is terrorism, when a fully mechanized army storms barbarically into a largely civilian enclave, that is by its own nature, an abode of suffering, on the pretext of securing their own illegitimate settlers. This is how a Guardian reporter describes the real terror that is being unleashed in the Holy Land at Jabalya: “Israeli forces have demolished the homes of hundreds of Palestinians, bulldozed swaths of agricultural land and destroyed infrastructure. More than 70 people have died in Operation Days of Penitence, launched in northern Gaza six days ago after a Hamas rocket attack killed two Israeli children. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said that the dead included 31 civilians. Nineteen were under 18.” This is the self defense that Washington calls the Israeli actions in Gaza and Palestine. The right to counter an illegitimate and cruel occupation and the outright plunder of land is not self defense but terror in the expansive Likudnik mentality that is now reigning in Tel Aviv and Washington, DC. What kind of world are we being led into? Right is being viewed as wrong. Mass murder is being portrayed as legitimate self defense. The use of all the killing technology against helpless students or young girls going to school is sanctified, while trying to hold on to the last bit of territory, inherited for generations is condoned in the worst of slander. Yes, Israel is thriving on the free hand given to it by Washington to help the Bushniks avenge the victims of 9/11 and the only good Arab is a dead Arab has its firm grip on the psyche of the Likudnik demagogues in Israel and the United States. Bombs away is the cherished slogan of the Israeli Defense Forces as they trample on anything and everything that could support life in the Holy Land for any Arab. In addition, the emphasis is on the targeting the children, as dictated by the Ariel Sharon Zionist mentality, which sees the best way to serve the Zionist cause is by eliminating as many Palestinian children as possible. Look at the numbers in Jabalya: 19 of the 31 civilians killed in Jabalya were under 18. The Guardian tells it all: “Most of the nine people killed yesterday were Palestinian fighters, but a teenage girl was among the dead, shot in her home. In southern Gaza Israeli forces killed a four-year-old boy in Khan Yunis refugee camp, where several Palestinian children have been shot dead in recent weeks”. How can the rules of self defense be allowed to bend to the liking of the occupier and the illegitimate settler, while no efforts are spared to spread hopelessness for any kind of a life for the indigenous population of the land? What has this world come to? Thanks to the spread of an ugly mentality among many misguided Americans (the Likudnik mentality), all values have been changed to favor the aggressor and the mass murderers of innocent civilians trapped in squalid camps and slum residences created by accumulated previous years of systematic repression and tortuous occupation. They say this is Judean-Christian doctrine. The Palestinians say this is hell on Earth. Tanks against school children, who wake up each day wondering if they will again ever see their homes, their parents and their pathetic dwellings, when they come back from school. This is self defense in Likudnik mentality. But, in the end, one must ask: what mentality is it of the Arab states as they find the only way to revive any pride in themselves is to replay old footage of battles that were won more than thirty years ago, when Arabs understood well that the Palestine tragedy is every Arabs' tragedy. Now the proud Arab kings and presidents see the tragedy in two theaters, Iraq and Palestine, while all they do is comfort themselves with stale worthless propaganda. Are they still in need of another theater before they realize where they are at?
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