MAY 28, 2018
by RAMZY BAROUD
60 Palestinians were killed in
Gaza on May 15, simply for protesting and demanding their Right of Return as
guaranteed by international law.
50 more were killed since
March 30, the start of the ‘Great March of Return’, which marks Land Day.
Nearly 10,000 have been
wounded and maimed in between these two dates.
‘Israel has the right to
defend itself’, White House officials announced, paying no heed to the
ludicrousness of the statement when understood within the current context of an
unequal struggle.
Peaceful protesters were not
threatening the existence of Israel; rock throwing kids were not about to
overwhelm hundreds of Israeli snipers, who shot, killed and wounded Gaza
youngsters with no legal or moral boundary whatsoever.
8-months old, Laila al-Ghandour
was one of the 60 who were killed on May 15. She suffocated to death from
Israeli teargas. Many, like her, were wounded or killed some distance away from
the border. Some were killed for simply being nearby, or for being Palestinian.
Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump,
daughter of US President, Donald Trump, ushered in a new era of international
relations, when she and her companions unveiled the new US Embassy in
Jerusalem.
She was ‘all smiles’ while, at
the exact same moment, hundreds of Gazans were being felled at the border. The
already dilapidated hospitals have no room for most of the wounded. They bled
in hallways awaiting medical attention.
Ivanka has never been to Gaza
– and will unlikely ever visit or be welcomed there. Gazans do not register in
her moral conscience, if she has any beyond her immediate interests, as people
deserving of rights, freedom and dignity.
At the border, many Gaza kids
have been coloring their bodies in blue paint, dressing up in homemade costumes
to imitate characters from the Hollywood movie, ‘Avatar’. They hoped that, by
hiding their brown skin, their plight and suffering could be more relatable to
the world.
But when they were shot, their
blood gave them away. They were still human, still from Gaza.
The international community
has already condemned Trump’s decision to relocate his country’s embassy to
Jerusalem, and declared his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital ‘null
and void’, but will it go further than mere words?
Will the international
community remain trapped between hollow statements and no action? Will they
ever truly recognize the humanity of Laila al-Ghandour and all the other
children, men and women who died and continue to perish under Gaza’s besieged
skies? Will they ever care enough to do something?
The plight of the Palestinians
is compounded with the burden of having a useless ‘leadership’. The President
of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has been busy of late, demanding
allegiance from the occupied Palestinians in the West Bank. Large signs and
larger banners have been erected everywhere, where families, professional
associations, unions and companies have announced, in large font: the “Renewal
of Loyalty and Support to President Mahmoud Abbas.”
‘Renewal’? Abbas’ mandate
expired in 2009. Besides, is this what Abbas and his Fatah party perceive to be
the most urgent matter that needs to be addressed, while his people are being
massacred?
Abbas fears that Hamas is
using the blood of the Gaza victims to bolster its popularity. Ironically, it
is a shared concern with Israeli leaders, the likes of Israeli army spokesman,
Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus. The latter said that Hamas has won the PR war at
the Gaza border by a ‘knockout.’
This propaganda is as false as
it is utterly racist; yet, it has persisted for far too long. It proposes that
Palestinians and Arabs lack human agency. They are incapable of mobilizing and
organizing their collective efforts to demand their long-denied rights. They
are only pawns, puppets in the hands of factions, to be sacrificed at the altar
of public relations.
It did not dawn on Conricus to
note that, perhaps, his army lost the ‘PR war’ because its brutes shot
thousands of unarmed civilians who did nothing, aside from gathering at the
border demanding an end to their perpetual siege; or that, just maybe, the PR
war was lost because Israel’s top leaders announced proudly that Gazans are
fair game, since, according to Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, “there are
no innocents in Gaza.’
Ivanka will go down in
Israel’s history as a hero. But Palestinian Resistance is not fueled or subdued
by Ivanka, but by the sacrifices of the Palestinians themselves, and by the
blood of Laila al-Ghandour, who was denied even a celebration of her first
birthday on God’s besieged earth.
The US government has
decisively and blatantly moved to the wrong side of history. As their officials
attended parties, galas and celebrations of the Embassy move, whether in Israel
or in Washington and elsewhere, Palestinians dug 60 more graves and held 60 more
funerals.
The world watched in horror,
and even western media failed to hide the full ugly truth from its readers. The
two acts – of lavish parties and heartbreaking burials – were beamed all over
the world, and the already struggling American reputation sank deeper and
deeper.
Israeli Prime Minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu, may have thought he had won. Comforted by his rightwing
government and society on the one hand, Trump and his angry UN bully, Nikki
Haley, on the other, he feels invulnerable.
But he should rethink his
power-driven logic. When Gazan youth stood bare-chested at the border fence,
falling one drove after the other, they crossed a fear barrier that no
generation of Palestinians has ever crossed. And when people are unafraid, they
can never be subdued or defeated.
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