Dear editor,
May 15, 74 years ago, in 1948 the State of Israel was created as the British ended their control over Palestine to hand it over to Zionists who were hellbent on claiming Palestine as an exclusive majority Jewish state! The creation of Israel led to the forced expulsion of about 750,000 Palestinians from their own land and the destruction of some 530 villages.
The creation of Israel was a longstanding struggle that European Jews began more than 100 years earlier in conferences and movements across Europe as their final solution to the horrific racism that was meted out to Jews in Europe!
It was an objective that Europeans also welcomed as it gave them an opportunity to address their despicable racism and bigotry against their own fellow citizens who happened to belong to a different religion, Judaism!
Consequently, as the Zionists (the extremist bigoted European Jews) take over Palestine they dispossessed the Arab inhabitants of their land with massive violations and discrimination. This was how the masses of Palestinians were forced to flee their homeland while others took refuge in a location that eventually grew into what is called Gaza today.
To further dispossess Palestinians, the Israelis intensified their violence by forcing more Palestinians into Gaza which they now barricaded into an open air prison. Since then Israel has continuously blockaded Gaza restricting all essential services and strangulating the economy even more. The UN has classified the enclave as a humanitarian disaster!
As we mark the 74th anniversary of the Nakba Day or the Day of Catastrophe, once again we witness the same aggression of Israel in dispossessing Palestinians off their homes. The crisis in the West Bank town of Jenin last week in which journalist Shireen was murdered by occupation forces follows a similar event in another West Bank town of Sheikh Jarrah last year where six Palestinian homes were demolished and forcefully seized and given to Israeli settlers aka foreign Jews, which sparked yet another fatal crisis.
These crises are always an opportunity for Israel to further assault, weaken and divide Palestinians. It does not matter if Palestinians march, wave hands, throw stones or send rockets, the Israelis will always respond in the most fatal manner possible to violate rights with impunity.
Last year, Israel unleashed hundreds of heavy bombings on Gaza in response to Hamas sending rockets into Israeli cities to protest the Sheikh Jarrah demolitions. In their assault the Israelis killed more than 140 people in Gaza. But in West Bank, there were no rockets launched by Palestinians yet Israel shot dead more than 10 people for merely protesting in the streets! So what’s the difference if Palestinians resisted with rockets or protested with bare hands? At the end of the day, Israel will still kill them anyway.
This scenario therefore invalidates the claim that Hamas or other Palestinian resistance groups are terrorists! The one unleashing terror is Israel. Obviously if Israel ends this occupation there would have been no violent resistance. But whether the Palestinians throw rockets or water bottles, they still get beaten and shot at by the Israeli forces.
This was amply demonstrated few days ago at the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh where Israeli soldiers beat pallbearers that the coffin nearly dropped on the ground. The mourners were neither armed nor provocative rather it was Israeli forces that provocatively came to interfere with the funeral. In response, mourners only shouted and threw plastics bottles and tissue paper at them only to trigger the wrath of the occupation forces by beating Palestinians with batons!
Learn about the world to get the facts and uphold your conscience to stand up for justice, self determination and human rights. This is how we will create freedom and peace in the world!
Palestine must be free! Israel must be stopped!
Madi Jobarteh
Kembujeh
