Muscat, Oman – The whole world should condemn Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. Nine more Palestinian protestors killed. Thirty dead this week. The rogue state of Israel does not have to worry about complying with International Law as long as it has the United States’ “unconditional support.” This has got to stop. Every year Palestinians hold a peaceful demonstration at this time of year concerning their Right of Return guaranteed by international law that the Israeli government is in flagrant violation of. And every year the Israeli military sets up snipers to pick off peaceful protesters in cold blood.
The Palestinians burn tires hoping the smoke will obscure the view for the Israeli snipers, but the Israeli military uses huge fans to blow smoke away. Burning tires is not a capital offense. Those doing so, nonviolent bystanders, and journalists covering the protests should not be shot. Those Israeli soldiers and those who are ordering them to shoot into these crowds are murderers. The United States needs to suspend military aid to Israel and stop blocking UN action. We need to demand truth and justice. Palestinians have every right under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to peaceful protest. Not yet genocide by the legal definition, but certainly racist and oppressive by any definition. Imagine the reaction, however, if Palestinian snipers killed 30 Israeli settlers in a similar protest. The double-standard is clearly racist.
The first death was last Friday – A man that wasn’t even part of the protest – a Palestinian farmer. His crime is that his land comes close to the 1,000 foot zone on the Gaza side that the Israelis won’t allow Palestinians to be on. It’s their own land-not on the Israeli side which is vastly larger. Why doesn’t Israel put this 1,000 foot zone on their own side? The Israeli assassinating of Palestinian farmers and fishermen simply going about their work is nothing new … it happens all the time … Israel’s supposed military supremacy continues to compound its own failure–of intelligence, legitimacy, and moral dignity–and of its crimes against humanity. Every innocent Palestinian death is a testament to this fact.
Israel has Palestinians under a brutal and illegal apartheid military occupation. They had their land confiscated and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were removed under a policy called “forced relocation” and forced into refugee camps and these apartheid zones, one of which is Gaza, that the Israeli government has turned into what is essentially a huge prison. Israel continues to confiscate Palestinian land to this day. They bulldoze Palestinian homes, farms and orchards and build illegal settlements on top of the ruins. This has been going on for over a half century. They aren’t a side in a war between militaries, they are a criminal apartheid regime in violation of at least 65 UN resolutions and a plethora of violations of international laws. The trouble started when the Zionists, formed in Europe in the late 1800s, decided to colonize Palestine as their “Jewish state.” Until then Palestinian Arabs and Jews were living side-by-side in relative peace.
Over the period 2009-2018, the US is set to provide military aid to Israel worth $30 billion and governments and companies across the world export weapons and security services to Israel. Israel’s military industry depends on exports to foreign markets: up to 70% of Israel’s military production is exported, mainly to the global South. Military assaults on Palestinians are used by Israeli military companies to test and market new weapons and military technology. Israeli weapons companies market their weapons as “field-tested”. Israeli military companies such as Elbit Systems are key drivers in the proliferation of both drones, and a ruthless model of securitization and militarized repression to the world.
Opposing the illegal actions, and deadly force of the Israeli Government’s actions, is not anti-semitic. It’s anti-illegal action, anti-unwarranted deadly force, and anti-illegal occupation. Zionism is both a national liberation movement for an oppressed people and a colonial settler enterprise. It’s important to recognize both elements. Personally, I don’t believe the former justifies the latter, but I do think it’s important to recognize the diversity within the Zionist movement, regardless of whether one thinks Zionism itself is legitimate.
They must not be allowed to get away with this. As for “strong allies”, the US is essentially their only meaningful ally. If it weren’t for US support and continued vetoes of UN resolutions that condemn these kinds of assaults, Israel could not get away with these crimes against humanity. I’m convinced their leadership would have been called to answer to these before the International Court of Justice in the Hague a long time ago. Israel is the only country in the world to build walls around human beings and the only country in the world to practice genocide on small children, babies and all people who are Palestinian. It is shocking that the international community just turns away when it comes to the Nazi crimes if Israel…
Jefferson famously said that the tree of liberty is nourished with the blood of patriots. Every man’s right, nay, his duty, is to resist tyranny. I understand why the Palestinians fight with whatever means they have available. My sense is that the Palestinians are not looking for Israeli charity. They are looking for their dignity, humanity and respect. So many thousands of them have been killed since the Reagan years. I’m not sure if the demographics have changed as a result, but at one time the Palestinians – compared to all the other Arab groups – had the highest per capita education and professionals.
Just like the European colonists denied them the right of return, the European Jews deny the Palestinians the right of return. There are still Palestinians alive who remember their homes, now disposed from them in the State of Israel. Living memories, not some ancestral claim asserted in a book of fairy tales. Their reservation borders are controlled – regulated by a foreign occupying power. The frequent pogroms has destroyed essential infrastructure. 90% of their water is undrinkable. They are dependent on their tormentors for basic life sustaining supplies.
Old Testament or not, the Jews had no right to go to Palestine to kill the Palestinians and drive 750,000 from their homes to create Israel in 1948. Because of their prior ownership they are mocking God by butchering Palestinians and treating them worst than animals with money and weapons received by blackmailing America to reclaim their Holy Land. Any one who claims that Israel is the victim not the aggressor; is nothing but fiction, hocus pocus, misrepresentation, half truths, omissions and out right lies. Those who says that Israel stands tall as a beacon of Democracy in an otherwise dark middle east where oppression and slavery are norm are insulting every democracy around the world.
Israel is not going to ever give up their “chosen” land….a biblical Israel within anything like the “defined” – protean borders we see today. There was a Judea and Samarea which the last dynasty, the Maccabees, a priestly class presided. They were conquered by the Romans who appointed a Syrian governor to administer the lands. His name was Herod. He married into the Maccabean family and systematically exterminated his in-laws, including his wife, replacing them with his own bloodlines … Saul or Saulus, as he was known, was a descendant in a long line of Temple treasurers. That is how he got his Roman citizenship and was a Pharisee. He was the first Christian huxster, who murdered the early followers of Jesus and his brother James, ultimately subverting their philosophy and movement. Palestine derives from the Roman name for these regions: Palestinia.
Mousumi Roy
Mousumi Roy has a Masters (MA - Political Science) from Calcutta University and is a visiting professor of International Relations in Muscat, Oman