DRIP, DRIP, DRIP
These are three simple words that represent many aspects of human survival. There is a drip of water that quenches the thirst. There is a teardrop running down the cheek, be it in sorrow or happiness and there is a drip of rain that keeps the ground fertile, green and alive. But then there is the drip of poison that has been administered to the Palestinian nation by the Zionists for over 100 years. Especially in and over Gaza
Whether this drip be administered by Israeli politicians, by the military, by the academics, thinkers and/ or writers it has one taste and one purpose. It is bitter and it is fatal.
Some reading this might think that I have gone over-board this time, writing about the Zionist movement’s brutality and inhumanity towards us Palestinians. I haven’t even scratched the surface. Their plan, from the word ‘go’ has been to eliminate any person or any thing that is Palestinian. They wiped out 560 towns and villages. They uprooted 800,000 olive trees. They have expelled 750,000 Palestinians. They have killed men, women and children. Even our historic buildings, churches, mosques, homes, shelters, schools, hospitals, community centres were not spared. This brutality was played out in the full glare of TV cameras from all over the world in 2014 over the besieged Gaza Strip.
They bombed Gaza and they used an obscene amount of arson including white phosporous bombs, depleted uranium bombs and bullets that expand at contact with the human body. They poisoned the ground waters of Gaza and they sprayed Gaza fields with toxic chemicals. The air that Gaza breathes is full of poisonous Gas. The water that Gaza drinks is polluted with raw sewage and sea-water to the extent that the United Nations announced that Gaza will not be fit for human habitation 2020. That is next year. May I ask you to cast your minds back into what has become history. I wonder how many of you are aware of what happened to Palestine on 10 March 1948.
As the late Alan Hart pointed out in one of his many articles on the destruction of Palestine, “In defiance of the will of the organized international community as it then was at the UN, Zionism’s political and military leaders met in Tel Aviv to formally adopt PLAN DALET, the blueprint, with operational military orders, for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine”.
It was never called Ethnic Cleansing of course, it was called ‘transfer’. The earliest insider information we have on Zionist thinking is from the diary of Theodor Herzl, the founding father of Zionism. He wrote:
“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”
The first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion wrote to his son saying that if ever they, the Jewish people, were to have a country they would have to expel the Palestinians from the land and take their place.
As for the proposed ‘transfer’ he said, when asked of its immorality, “I don’t see anything immoral in it.”
Whatever euphemisms they wanted to use, this was a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, clearly illustrated by Haifa-born, Israeli Jewish historian, Professor Ilan Pappe, in his book ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.’ In short, what Professor Pappe said was that the Zionists were atheists, who only called on The Bible and God to justify their theft of Palestine. He continues to say that the Zionists wanted Palestine, all of Palestine, preferably with no Palestinians in it.
That thinking, over 70 years ago has not changed. In fact, it has become more ingrained, more brutal.
Do you remember back in 2006, after Hamas won the election and took charge of Gaza? The Israeli response was to besiege Gaza from air, sea and land and put the the two-million inhabitants on a diet, low enough to keep its people hungry but not quite enough to kill them.
Before the siege, 400 food trucks went into Gaza per day. After the siege the food supply, determined by the UN amounting to 170 trucks of food per day as a bare minimum was gradually reduced to around 67 trucks a day. Considerably less than half. Of course the number of times those 67 trucks never arrived, for all sorts of reasons, including stoppages at check-points when food spoiled in the sun were not calculated.
It does not need an expert to conclude that the imposition of this “diet” would entail widespread malnutrition, especially among children. And that is precisely what happened, as a leaked report from the International Committee of the Red Cross found at the time. “Chronic malnutrition is on a steadily rising trend and micro-nutrient deficiencies are of great concern,” it reported in early 2008.
The champions of these war crimes are running Israel and there are more champions of these atrocities who are hoping to run Israel.
As The Electronic Intafada has reported, “Benny Gantz, the former Israeli army chief, is bragging about how much killing and destruction he committed in Gaza in a series of campaign videos for his new political party posted on YouTube and social media over the weekend.
Gantz hopes to replace Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister in elections scheduled for April.
One of the videos shows drone footage of a devastated neighborhood in Gaza in August 2014, following Israel’s 51-day assault on the territory.
The video’s title includes the words “Parts of Gaza were returned to the stone ages.”
Against the swell of dramatic music, captions on screen announce, “6,231 targets destroyed,” and “1,364 terrorists killed.”
The ad then claims that this carnage brought “3.5 years of quiet.”
A second video displays a kill-counter on screen racking up bodies until the number 1,364 is reached. In the background Palestinians are seen conducting funerals.
The video is another depraved celebration of killing.
All the videos contain the words “Only the strong win.”
But despite all this, there is that other drip, drip, drip. This time of mercy in the form of international humanitarian aid to Gaza and its near starving inhabitants. I am just going to mention one drop of gentle mercy that came yesterday, courtesy of the Emir of Qatar. The Israeli Occupation Forces have allowed cash, donated by Qatar, in the form of $100 each to go through to 94,000 families in Gaza.
This is, of course, a temporary yet welcome relief for these needy families. But what they really want is not a drip, drip, drip of hand-outs. What the people want is the end of the siege and the end of their incarceration. And what all we Palestinians want is the restoration of our rights and the liberation of our land.
Jafar M Ramini is a Palestinian writer and political analyst, based in London, presently in Perth, Western Australia. He was born in Jenin in 1943 and was five years old when he and his family had to flee the terror of the Urgun and Stern gangs. Justice for the people of Palestine is a life-long commitment.
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