Judeo-Christian Peace Processes For The Killing Of Muslim Palestinians
By Agustin Velloso
17 January, 2007
In the early hours of Tuesday, January 15th 2008, the Israeli occupation army in Palestine
killed sixteen Palestinians and injured about fifty others, some critically. Once again, it was
just another incursion with fighters, helicopters, tanks, armoured bulldozers and snipers in
the city of Gaza, which is under an international blockade.
This army did not confront another one in the battlefield, it did not face an army hiding in
trenches, guarded by anti-aircraft batteries and equipped with state of the art weapons. It
attacked, as it usually does, civilians living under occupation - people who should enjoy
special protection according to Geneva Conventions. These people were in the streets of their
hometown, Gaza, one of the most populated cities in the world, defenceless. Half Gaza's
inhabitants are under the age of 15.
Beyond the area where the victims' families live, this crime against humanity is not an issue.
Crimes like this have been committed so many times by Israel, and then pardoned and forgotten
so fast by its allies in Europe and the United States, that each crime quickly covers the one
preceding it : today's overwrites that of the 14th, which hid that of the 13th, which erased
that of the 12th.
Sixteen Palestinians died today, half a dozen yesterday, a similar amount in the previous days.
4,000 have died since September 2000 - many under age. More than 25,000 have been injured -
many crippled for life. More than 11,000 are held prisoner - many uncharged and held without
trial. More than 6,000 houses have been demolished in the Gaza Strip - another gross violation
of Geneva Conventions.
This procession of death and pain is unparalleled, both for its duration (more than 60 years)
and for the complicity of the international community. UN consent and active support by some
member states acting individually, have been known since 1991 all over the world as "the peace
process".
Those who speak of peace with the Palestinians in Annapolis and other places, are the same
people that send their armies to kill them and steal their land. Those who encircle
Palestinians inside a watertight blockade are the same people that arm Israel while financing
and supporting its deadly attacks. Those who conduct the process and reap the benefits are the
Israelis and their European and American allies. The victims, obviously the weakest party by
far, are the Palestinians, who lose their lives and their land with each passing day, although
they also keep on resisting against all odds, generation after generation.
We are talking about a plan of ethnic cleansing and land robbery very well designed and
superbly implemented in comparison with the Nazi plan in the first half of the last century.
There is a striking difference though. Leaders responsible for the Nazi plan were found guilty
in the Nuremberg trials and hanged afterwards. On the other hand, their latter-day counterparts
are considered "men of peace". They get Nobel Peace Prizes, are promoted to the position of
Secretary General of world organisations and international agencies. Some become editorialists
or commentators. All of them are paid handsomely.
This difference is not important for Palestinians (or for Iraqis, Lebanese and Afghanis who
undergo a similar fate), although it is for Westerners. It shows, even more clearly than some
other crimes do (the robbery of poor countries' natural resources, the unbridled pollution, the
exploitation of unskilled workers around the world, etc.) what Judeo-Christian civilisation is
willing to do to the other people of the Book, the Muslims, in order to achieve its aims.
The divine commandment and above all the age-old common sense that urges human beings to treat
others like equals, was recently transferred to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "all
human beings are born free and equal". It comes as no surprise that more and more Muslims
despise this Declaration and also Jews and Christians in general. What is really surprising is
why all of them at once do not take this stand more strongly.
Another odd fact is that mass media have managed to convince millions of European and United
States citizens to support the peace process, with its absurd summits and ill-fated results,
which decent people naturally loathe, instead of supporting international legality and also the
sanctity of all human beings, not only Jews.
After this interlude of sixteen corpses, those who watch the farce from their comfortable and
safe living rooms, can assume that no Israeli soldier was injured, that Abbas will soon resume
kissing Olmert, that Palestinians will show their despair in front of foreign TV crews, and
that political leaders together with editorialists will go on exerting strenuous efforts in
order for the peace process to move on and advance as decisively and with the same promise as
usual towards the end of the Middle East conflict.
Although the images of the blood-stained bodies sent from Gaza could make the commentators of
the "bible of the world liberal press" and like-minded media shudder for a second, it is safe
to bet that they will not hesitate to write in support of "the peace process" and the efforts
made by the Moons, Bushes, Olmerts, Abbases, Solanas and Moratinos of the moment. They will
also endorse these individual's policies designed to protect Westerners against extremists,
that is to say, the big majority of Palestinians who voted for HAMAS on January 25th, 2006 who
have lived with their children under Israeli occupation since 1967 and more recently under the
international blockade now in force in Gaza.
On January 15th, Mr. Zapatero, Spain's president, showed out his acute sense of timing in
Madrid when he insisted before Turkey's president, Mr. Erdogan, about his efficient proposal
for solving the Middle East conflict : the alliance of civilisations, which has enjoyed so much
success since its inception some years ago. He also announced another summit in the near
future, to which Israel's president, Mr. Olmert, will be invited as an honoured guest. Most
probably the meeting will coincide with yet another massacre of Palestinians by the Israeli
occupation army.
If you are neither an editorialist nor a politician. If Palestinians have never harmed you. If
you think that Arabs and Muslims are human beings just like you, then you have no reason
whatsoever to support their fantasy peace processes and ignore the real deaths of Palestinians.
Rather, the right thing to do is the very opposite. It is democratic, human and Christian to
denounce the peace process and demand of those responsible that they give it up. Do not allow
others to kill in your name, to misrepresent your country and to misuse your religion for this
purpose.
Do not say the Palestinian conflict is difficult to understand, or that you do not know where
the truth is. In the Palestinian case, as in any other, backing the truth means siding with the
victims, not with the aggressors.
proof-read by Toni Solo, activist based in Nicaragua
.
|
