palestine

Posted by: inbetweennomore on: May 16, 2021

In: personal
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The silence of the international community is deafening. The lack of outrage and moral indignation over what’s happening in Israel these days is appalling. We take action on the ethnic cleansing of Uighur in Xinjiang but not on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Israel. We impose sanctions for the occupation of Crimea but not for the occupation of Palestine. Since 1967 we turn a blind eye to persecution, oppression, arbitrary detentions, deportation, house demolition, unfair trials in courts, forced evictions of Palestinian families from their homes replaced with illegal settlements, ethnic cleansing, a brutal siege of what’s became the largest open-air prison on earth – Gaza, restrictions of their freedom of movement, a disproportionate response by the occupiers to the violence of the occupied, inhumane and humiliating treatement (skunk water anyone?), constant harassment, administrative abuse and bullying at the hands of settlers, police, army, local authorities, government in order to make their life unbearable and so to drive them out, and ultimately what is an overt national project of colonization and an apartheid regime in the West Bank. Israel’s breaching of international and humanitarian laws and of previous agreements they signed is done with impunity and with the tacit consent of the West. I might sound racially prejudiced, if not downright anti-semite, but nowadays I wouldn’t trust a Jew’s words even if he would tell me the water is wet or that one plus one equals two. We build museums and memorials about the Holocaust in order to raise awareness and not to repeat the past. And, lo and behold, it’s exactly what we are doing. We look, once again, the other way when these atrocities take place. The notion that we allowed the oppressed to turn into oppressor is surreal. I can’t think of anything more disturbing than to see someone who suffered the horrors of Holocaust inflicting them on other people. Turning Gaza into a cvasi concentration camp. Abusing power with impunity. Dehumanizing innocent people while mob lynching them. Their moral standing is deeply dented and they now need themselves to learn about Shoah. How fucked up is that?

And I’m sick and tired of people defending Israel’s position by playing Mercutio’s line over and over: “a plague on both your houses”. The “both sides are to blame” game. The incessant whataboutism. None of this would have happened without the brutal attack of the Israeli Police on Palestinian worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. We can keep both sides accountable for their wrongdoings and trespassings but it’s not like the Montague and Capulet families stand on an equal footing in this eternal feud. Let’s not forget the root issue which is Occupation. One side is the occupier and the other side is occupied. The failure of our western civilization to be indignant over Israeli (supposedly temporary) military occupation and oppressing the Palestinian people and the fact that Israel can get away with anything is sickening.