435 People Dead / 59 CHILDREN!
2,285 Wounded
Please read the following article written by one of my favorite writers Mr Tariq Al-Maeena. He explains the situation very clearly.
Reflections on an on-going holocaust
Tariq A. Al-Maeena
There’s a holocaust in progress and yet the world keeps watching. Powerless in the face of the Nazi-like tactics the Israelis are using against the defenseless people of Gaza, this atrocity should stain the moral conscience of all those who wish it would simply disappear to back page columns so that they could carry on about their daily lives.
The Israelis, under the pretext of retaliation from rockets made from fertilizers have been feverishly dispatching their US supplied F-16s loaded with deadly bombs against the Palestinians in the latest round to exterminate the force of resistance of an occupied people. And the massacres continue under the shelter or indifference of the United States and other western countries.
As the death toll of civilians rises, so does the shallowness of Israeli claims that this is a defensive maneuver. Since the massive aerial attack was unleashed on Saturday, over 450 Palestinian civilians, including 59 children, have been killed and 1,720 wounded, Gaza medics have reported
Israel has been employing such murderous defensive tactics at the expense of Palestinians lives for far too long. There will be no peace now as long as they continue this tactic. It is a given today that the majority of those in the region view Israel as a terrorist state, and the only such pariah in the region.
In spite of the efforts of some media pundits to alarm the Arab street about the threat of Iran lately, it has been obvious for quite some time that the real menace to the region is Israel’s continued expansion policy of oppression and confinement of a people who simply refuse to be exterminated.
What the Nazis did against the Jews in Germany, the Israelis have done one better. Under the cloak of state sponsored terrorism, they continue to carry out their assault against a people who have been deprived of the arms to fight back. And yet the will of Palestinians remains strong against this latest terror. While the world stands by and watches.
It’s no secret that for the past two years, the people of Gaza have been denied every humanitarian measure to bend them into submission. They had been under a suffocating siege. Deprivation of food, water, electricity and badly needed medical supplies were a constant headline, supplemented with the frequent attacks on their soil by the Israeli forces under one pretext or another. And the people of Gaza were expected to remain silent. But what Israel has succeeded in doing is exposing its terroristic ambitions and hardening the resolve of its victims not to relent.
For the past sixty years the Israelis have defied every United Nations Security Council resolution in their quest to obliterate the voice of resistance. Efforts by various governments to seek a just peace to both parties have failed and will continue to do so as long as Israel engages in such holocausts, undoubtedly encouraged by great lengths in the veto power of the United States at the United Nations.
They are also engaging their spin machine within the western media to justify such atrocities. The comparisons made by the assault on civilians with F-16s and Apache helicopters with fertilizer fueled rockets borders on the ridiculous. Suddenly, fighting for your land and right is no longer a valid reason among some western columnists, who view any form of Palestinian resistance as a form of terrorism. Talk about hypocrisy!
However, if Israel is under any illusion that their latest round of carnage will lead to peace, then they are grotesquely mistaken. While the Arab governments remain mutedly silent in this latest round of atrocity, the people of the region and elsewhere have intensified their solidarity with the plight of the Palestinians and will continue to support the struggle for freedom.
The people have stood in unity with Lebanon and Hezbollah during Israel’s 32-day assault on that country. They will continue to do the same for the people of Gaza and Hamas. The Reverend Martin Luther King once boldly stated: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."
The holocaust no longer remains the exclusive right of Jews exterminated during World War two. That mantle now firmly rests with the Palestinian people whose human misery toll far outweighs crimes of the past. And unlike its predecessor, this holocaust continues in the face of world wide media coverage of the on-going acts of terrorism. And yet the world watches.
