Every time I see world figures solemnly commemorate victims of the terrorism
of Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS), I want to shout out loud about another
series of terrorist activities that has been going on before our eyes for
almost seven decades.
That terrorism has been orchestrated by none other than the descendants of the
Holocaust, who today form the Israeli government. Israeli occupation forces
have been systematically murdering and maiming the innocent in Palestine for
more than 60 years.
News about the crimes that Hitler committed against various groups during
World War II did not travel very fast, as in those days there were no
instantaneous broadcasts of live pictures and film illustrating the
viciousness of the Nazi occupation. There was no international condemnation
during those atrocities.
Today, we cannot forgive ourselves for keeping quiet. And we cannot be
selective. Who can forget the tragic image of a father shielding his
eight-year-old son, as Israeli forces callously shot him dead while the
cameras were running? Or the image of Rachel Corrie, an American from Seattle
who defiantly stood in the face of Israeli bulldozers, only to be violently
crushed to death by the Caterpillar's blades?
Or the images of an eight-year-old girl shot in the head by an Israeli sniper
out for target practice? Or of two children, one eight and the other 10 years
old, who were slaughtered as they were playing outside their homes? Or four
Palestinian children playing by the sea and mercilessly shot down by Israeli
aircraft while Israeli civilians vocally expressed their glee? All this at the
hands of Benjamin Netanyahu who, like his predecessor Ariel Sharon, is a man
with war crimes coursing through his soul, and with no obvious intention to
seek peace.
Does no one wonder about a monstrous and illegitimate wall being built in and
around Palestinian land? In the face of objections from some quarters around
the world, Israel continues to go ahead. Is this what you would expect as a
peaceful overture from a government that does not hesitate to remind the world
of the Holocaust, but continues to disregard most international calls for
restraint?
From the killing fields of Sabra and Shatila in the 1980s, to the documented
cases of ethnic cleansing in Jericho, in Jenin, in Bethlehem and a host of
towns and villages across Palestine, the cries for justice ring hollow in the
minds of Netanyahu and his henchmen, as they continue to remind the world of
the first Holocaust and demand collective guilt.
In 2012, Hagit Ofran of the Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now denounced
Netanyahu's government for encouraging and legitimizing new settlements ''in a
deceitful way.'' She said, ''The Israeli government is proving its true
policy, that instead of going for peace it is building new settlements. This
is the first time since 1990 that the government of Israel decides on
establishing new settlements, and the government›s maneuver, of establishing a
committee to establish the settlements, is a trick aimed at hiding the true
policy from the public. All the years these outposts weren›t legal, the state
said they aren›t for real, and now they suddenly are.''
Noted American author and icon Noam Chomsky added his own thoughts. An
88-year-old Jew and an individual who had lived through the Holocaust of World
War II, Chomsky said, ''I thought 40 years ago and I think today that people
who call themselves supporters of Israel are, in fact, supporting its moral
degeneration, its increased international isolation and possibly its ultimate
destruction.
''I think these policies are suicidal and immoral. For the past 40 years,
Israel has pursued a policy very consciously of preferring expansion rather
than security,'' he asserted.
A prominent Israeli journalist who had previously worked for the right-wing
Jerusalem Post admitted that his country had indeed become an ''apartheid''
state. Bradley Burston said, ''I used to be one of those people who took issue
with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. I was one of those people
who could be counted on to argue that, while the country's settlement and
occupation policies were anti-democratic and brutal and slow-dose suicidal,
the word apartheid did not apply.
''I'm not one of those people any more. Not after the last few weeks. Not
after terrorists firebombed a West Bank Palestinian home, annihilating a
family, murdering an 18-month-old boy and his father, burning his mother over
90 percent of her body – only to have Israel's government rule the family
ineligible for the financial support and compensation automatically granted
Israeli victims of terrorism, settlers included.''
Daesh draws a lot of publicity and vocal condemnation and rightly so in its
terror activities against civilians, and yet the world remains mysteriously
silent about the daily state-sponsored terrorist activities of the Israeli
government against the Palestinian people in which human lives are lost.
Are we missing something here? What is the difference? Daesh and Israel appear
to be of the same mold.
— The author can be reached at talmaeena@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter @talmaeena
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