Just last week, an unholy quartet, driven by the ugly racism known as Zionism, published an opinion piece on the pro-Israel ‘news’ site, CNN. This group included the U.S.’s clown-like ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley; the rabidly racist U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman; the incompetent and unqualified ‘senior advisor’ to President Trump, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and finally, to round it all out, Jason Greenblatt, the ‘special representative for international negotiations’.
The title of this piece was quite provocative: “For Gaza peace, tell the truth about Hamas.” We will dissect a few of the most interesting statements from this article, and comment on them.
· “Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza….” The esteemed writers seem to forget that Hamas ‘controls’ Gaza, because it was voted in, during elections that the international community said were democratic. The U.S. and some other nations have designated Hamas a ‘terrorist’ organization, although they say nothing about IDF violence which causes suffering and death far beyond anything Hamas is capable of, even if that were its goal.
Also, to say that Hamas ‘controls’ Gaza is a blatant lie. It is Israel that controls Gaza, blockading it by land, sea and air, preventing much-needed supplies, including medicines and building equipment, from entering. At present, Israel will not allow cooking oil to be imported into Gaza, causing hundreds of thousands of people to be forced to cook over open fires.
· Hamas “…has been inciting the violence at the Israeli boundary fence for months….” It does seem that Haley and Company have not been acquainted with those inconvenient things called ‘facts’. Peaceful demonstrations at the border of Israel have been met with sniper fire, wherein hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including clearly marked medics and members of the press, have been killed. These killings, in case anyone is unaware, are considered war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Why don’t Haley and her cohorts comment on that?
Also, Palestinians never breached the border; they were demonstrating on Palestinian land; they were shot while standing in their own country.
· “…using Palestinian civilians as human shields.” This is simply untrue; there is no evidence whatsoever to support this charge.
· “And Hamas and other terror groups have fired more than 100 rockets….” We have already commented on these politicians’ designation of Hamas as a terrorist group. But regarding those ‘rockets’: Norman Finkelstein, son of Holocaust survivors and an ardent critic of Israel, refers to them as ‘enhanced fireworks’. Calling them ‘rockets’ serves a purpose for both sides: Palestinians know that something is being done on their behalf, and Israel can ‘defend’ itself against rocket fire.
Also, it is worth noting that in less than 60 days in 2014, Israel fired more rockets into Palestine than Palestine had fired into Israel in the previous 14 years.
· “…and sent untold numbers of flaming kites, some displaying swastikas, into Israel in the past month, hoping to kill as many Israeli civilians and destroy as much property as possible.” Flaming kites! Imagine! And all Israel has is the most advanced weaponry in the world, some if it illegal under international law, which it routinely uses against the Palestinians.
Perhaps Haley and her minions have forgotten that, according to international law, an occupied people has the right to resist the occupation in any way possible. The sending of flaming kites is within the legal right of the Palestinians.
But if they have forgotten about international law, perhaps we could remind them that it is also a violation of international law to for the occupier to move residents of the occupier’s nation permanently onto the occupied land. Over half a million illegal settlers are now living on land stolen from the Palestinians, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that not one of them will ever be removed.
So, perhaps we need an article entitled ‘For Gaza peace, tell the truth about Israel’. And what is that truth?
· Israel occupies the West Bank, Jerusalem and blockades the Gaza Strip in violation of international law.
· The people in Gaza live in near-starvation conditions, because Israel refuses to allow them to import sufficient food.
· In the West Bank, Israel has constructed hundreds of illegal check points, arbitrarily opened and closed, making what should be a short commute an hours-long ordeal for Palestinians. Palestinians have been denied timely medical care, because they were blocked from crossing a checkpoint established in their own land. Babies have been born at check points because of this, with some of them dying because they were forbidden to cross to obtain acutely needed treatment.
· In the West Bank, there are well-maintained roads that are for the exclusive use of Israelis; Palestinian are not allowed to drive on them. If a new Israeli road crosses over a Palestinian road, Palestinians are not allowed to cross the new intersection. This, in common language, is known as ‘apartheid’.
The list goes on.
Let us take a minute to talk about the role of Greenblatt, the ‘special representative for international negotiations’. Negotiations between Israel and Palestine, brokered for decades by the United States, have been worse than worthless. They have enabled the U.S. to say that Israel is willing to sit at the table, but Palestine’s leaders are not being reasonable. It must be remembered that negotiations can only occur between two parties, each of which has something the other wants, that can only be obtained by surrendering something it has. The U.S. allows Israel to take whatever it wants from Palestine with complete impunity.
Additionally, negotiations are not necessary. All that is required is for Israel to adhere to international law. If a man robs a bank and is then caught by the police, he is not asked to negotiate with the manager of the bank regarding home much of the stolen money to return. He must return it all, and pay the penalties for his crime. Israel must be required by the international community to vacate the West Bank and remove the blockade of the Gaza Strip. There is nothing to negotiate.
There have been reports that Trump will soon release his ‘deal of the century’ regarding Palestine and Israel. The few aspects of it that have been leaked to the press indicate that it provides Israel with everything it wants, and Palestine with nothing it wants. Currently, Israel is tightening its already brutal and deadly siege on the Gaza Strip, in an apparent effort to make things so difficult there that Palestine’s leaders will agree to anything. It is unlikely that even the weak, spineless traitor Mahmoud Abbas, the ‘leader’ of Fatah in the West Bank, would agree to this farce; there is no way the people of Palestine ever would.
Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi has said: “The Palestinians are the only people on earth required to guarantee the security of the occupier, while Israel is the only country that demands protection from its victims.” This bizarre philosophy is fully embraced by the mighty United States.
But Haley, Greenblatt, Kushner and Friedman can write all the nonsense they want; international condemnation of Israel is ever-increasing, as more people see the reality of the situation, rather than accepting the lies the governments of the U.S. and Israel insist on perpetrating. The suffering of the Palestinian people continues, but, like in South Africa a generation ago, apartheid will be defeated, and Palestine will be free.
Originally published by the USJournal.