It is God’s that they take away [Archives:2004/778/Opinion]

Hassan Al-Haifi
The ugliness of mass death is again hovering over the Holy Land from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean in incredible numbers. This ugliness is moreover hitting the most tender of “collateral” damage, with several children falling dead or limbless for the rest of their lives. All this horrible display of senseless killing is being unleashed simultaneously by the most powerful nation on earth and by the most powerful regional power. Both have an unlimited stockpile of the most destructive weapons, and both have given themselves immunity from adherence to all the international statutes that have regulated the relations between nations since the end of World War II. Both are also applauding each other's actions, on the pretext that they are fighting against terror. Both are actually the birthplace of terrorism in several respects. Israel was established with terror as its cardinal weapon, and the United States has encouraged the propagation of terror, by its blind support of a state that has caused havoc in the Middle East for the past fifty years, irrespective of the total disregard for moral or civilized conduct, on which Zionist doctrine is based on. Death and destruction are the common scenes the observer is witnesses in Palestine and Iraq against a helpless people, in both countries, who have no one to assure them that their sleep on any night will be free from the explosive ugly sounds of rockets or from the catapult of tank shells. Yes, the war on terror has actually brought terror to a refined art practiced by supposedly the most civilized of nations, which claim to uphold the highest of human values. But the scenes of children being dragged out of the fallen rubble that interrupted their normal slumber of the night and turned it to an endless sleep, without yet even given an opportunity to leave their marks on life. In this terrible display of power versus the meek, destinies become beset by hopelessness, because there are narrow minded arrogant thugs in this world, who insist on monopolizing the right to life, the right to peaceful slumber for them and their children, even if the whole world burns, while they are enjoying their tranquil and prosperous lives. No, these arrogant monsters living behind a facade of legitimacy by sheer power think that the whole world is for the taking to suit their own visions of a world dominated by their infinite quests for power and plunder. Yes, these phony articulators of might makes right think that all the children of the world are vulnerable to their rockets, and laser guided ordnances, if per chance their school happens to be along the paths of their monstrous lethal tanks. Even if these children could not help but defy the odds and confront these tanks with harmless stones. The cowardly troops hiding behind the armor unleash their hate with impunity against these young stone throwers to satisfy the bloodthirsty ego that Zionism and American arrogance has engrained in the shallow minds of the men in these invincible machines of slaughter as they tread mercilessly over the shanty refugee camps of Gaza or the poverty stricken neighborhoods of Samarra or Baghdad. Never mind that the refugee camps of Gaza were created by several years of the same ongoing confrontation between the meek and the destitute against the powerful worshippers of demagoguery. Several years of helplessness have brought on a kind of unusual courage even among children, who know that those tanks are killing machines that cannot be held back no matter how many pebbles or rocks they can manage to collect and hurl at those mighty armor vehicles, the payload of which was designed to destroy, kill and permanently injure all or anything that stands in their way. In the Holy Land of all places, men who been scientifically reared to kill are allowed to freely unleash all the might at their disposal against the helpless of the Holy Land to satisfy the mythology of men, who actually claim to be civilized. Yes, it is first of all God's land, and where God has destined such land for other children to enjoy the right of a peaceful slumber, even if in squalid refugee camps created by a long history of institutionalized terror based on might and might alone. Yet those brave children defy the odds and hurl their harmless stones against this mighty display of armor creeping into their crowded residences, with their mothers praying that maybe they will still have a chance to see their young children again, a prayer they fully know can be blocked from the Heavens and because they know that their children will not let themselves become used for target practice by these merciless death machines. But the children say no to all the impossible odds and say that if life is meant defiance of the odds then be it so. They take out their helplessness against this ugly enemy that has been driving their parents and their parents' parents for generations from one refugee camp to another, insisting to offer them no more than a life of perpetual misery they themselves have no appetite for. Those children know that these tanks were sent to hunt them down and take away all that God only has the right to take away from man: the right to live; the right to sound sleep, the right to dream, the right to plant their seeds. It is an arrogance that only Zionism has refined to a masterly art of Spartan chauvinism, with the full backing of another monstrous power that seeks to persuade the world that it and only it knows when the time to kill is right and why. It is God that gives life and it is God that takes it away. But when arrogance is driven by a careless display of might, the arrogant seeks to challenge the might of the Almighty and decides that this might in their hands is a God given blessing to them. No, it is more than that, it raises them to the pedestal of takers away of the very life that God has given: a foolish belief that they are indeed also Gods. Even helpless children are theirs for the taking to unleash their ugly propensity to kill for the sake of quenching an engrained thirst for blood, on which Zionism, as preached by the likes of Ariel Sharon thrives and on which the arrogance of a cowboy urge to overtake the world of the helpless and the meek finds solace. It is a horrible rendition of the ugliness of men, who claim to have the powers of God to take life away, just so they can only be the sole possessors of this most wonderful gift, which only the Lord Himself can grant to helpless mortals. They insist that what they are doing is correct and proper, because their arrogance has blinded them to set all proper conduct according to their chauvinistic and narrow minded whims. They are after all the Gods of the Earth and they can take any life away they want, even the life of small infants who have yet to enjoy their first taste of their mother's milk.
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