Like a thief in the night, as much of the Western world slept its way through the annual season of peace and goodwill, the Zionist state of Israel launched an attack on the Gaza Strip.
The ostensible reason for this act of aggression was to stop the Hamas authorities in Gaza launching homemade missiles into southern Israel.
The real reason is that Zionism, a modern political movement created by Theodore Herzl and others in the late 1800s, is inherently incapable of accepting Palestinians as equals because its immediate impact is to deprive them of their land and to set up Zionist Jews as occupiers of Palestinian territory.
All of the contemporary conflict in the Middle East comes down to this one simple statement of fact: “Israel” is Occupied Palestine.
It is to the eternal shame of Zionism that it has created Israel’s own version of the Warsaw Ghetto in the Gaza Strip.
When, in 1943, the Jews of that wretched place fought back against the enforced starvation and medical and other deprivations imposed by the occupying Nazis, the latter systematically destroyed the buildings and infrastructure of the Ghetto, accusing the Jewish resistance fighters of using children as food smugglers and shields. They murdered resistance fighters and civilians alike.
Jews should never have to go through such an obscene experience again, and nor should they put other people though it either.
The political doctrine of Zionism was understandably attractive to many of the survivors of the Holocaust. However, it is not and never will be, sustainable. The occupied and oppressed cannot become the occupiers and oppressors without paying a terrible price, if only in terms of their own humanity.
Non-Zionist Jews such as the heroic young Shministim who refuse to be called up into the Israeli Army are the hope for peace in the Middle East.
Tamar Katz (right) is one such Shministim. She is 19 and lives in Tel-Aviv, capital of Israel. She has been jailed three times for refusing to be drafted into the Israeli Army.
Tamar says, “I refuse to enlist in the Israeli military on conscientious grounds. I am not willing to become part of an occupying army, that has been an invader of foreign lands for decades, which perpetuates a racist regime of robbery in these lands, tyrannizes civilians and makes life difficult for millions under a false pretext of security.”
Hers is a courageous statement in a state founded on the arrogant claim that the Jews are the “chosen people of God” and that “Israel is the land given by God to the Jews”. Only the arrogance of a claim to genetic or racial superiority can come close to such a preposterous notion as that of the “chosen of God”. But the behaviour that emanates from both is the same.
Secular friendship and understanding between Muslims, Christians and Jews, and between Palestinians and Israelis will eventually see a relaxation of tension and a resolution of conflict.
In the meantime, the occupied Palestinians have the right and duty to resist their occupiers.
Israeli aggressors, out of Gaza!
………………………………….
For more information on the Shminstim, see: http://december18th.org/
The ostensible reason for this act of aggression was to stop the Hamas authorities in Gaza launching homemade missiles into southern Israel.
The real reason is that Zionism, a modern political movement created by Theodore Herzl and others in the late 1800s, is inherently incapable of accepting Palestinians as equals because its immediate impact is to deprive them of their land and to set up Zionist Jews as occupiers of Palestinian territory.
All of the contemporary conflict in the Middle East comes down to this one simple statement of fact: “Israel” is Occupied Palestine.
It is to the eternal shame of Zionism that it has created Israel’s own version of the Warsaw Ghetto in the Gaza Strip.
When, in 1943, the Jews of that wretched place fought back against the enforced starvation and medical and other deprivations imposed by the occupying Nazis, the latter systematically destroyed the buildings and infrastructure of the Ghetto, accusing the Jewish resistance fighters of using children as food smugglers and shields. They murdered resistance fighters and civilians alike.
Jews should never have to go through such an obscene experience again, and nor should they put other people though it either.
The political doctrine of Zionism was understandably attractive to many of the survivors of the Holocaust. However, it is not and never will be, sustainable. The occupied and oppressed cannot become the occupiers and oppressors without paying a terrible price, if only in terms of their own humanity.
Non-Zionist Jews such as the heroic young Shministim who refuse to be called up into the Israeli Army are the hope for peace in the Middle East.
Tamar Katz (right) is one such Shministim. She is 19 and lives in Tel-Aviv, capital of Israel. She has been jailed three times for refusing to be drafted into the Israeli Army.Tamar says, “I refuse to enlist in the Israeli military on conscientious grounds. I am not willing to become part of an occupying army, that has been an invader of foreign lands for decades, which perpetuates a racist regime of robbery in these lands, tyrannizes civilians and makes life difficult for millions under a false pretext of security.”
Hers is a courageous statement in a state founded on the arrogant claim that the Jews are the “chosen people of God” and that “Israel is the land given by God to the Jews”. Only the arrogance of a claim to genetic or racial superiority can come close to such a preposterous notion as that of the “chosen of God”. But the behaviour that emanates from both is the same.
Secular friendship and understanding between Muslims, Christians and Jews, and between Palestinians and Israelis will eventually see a relaxation of tension and a resolution of conflict.
In the meantime, the occupied Palestinians have the right and duty to resist their occupiers.
Israeli aggressors, out of Gaza!
………………………………….
For more information on the Shminstim, see: http://december18th.org/
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