Opinion Editorials, June 2015

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Israelis Murdered, Maimed Thousands of Palestinian Civilians, Knowingly and Deliberately

By Khalid Amayreh

in the West Bank, Palestine

A report issued Sunday by the Israeli occupation army on last year's genocidal blitz in the Gaza Strip claimed that Israeli forces didn't intentionally target Palestinian civilians.
 
The report, issued belatedly and scandalously fraught with half-truths, selective data taken out of context and containing a preponderance of sheer lies, seems to be intended to counter growing international convictions that Israel did commit real war crimes and crimes against humanity during its 50-day devastating aggression on Gaza last summer.
 
However, it seems that Israel’s task of exonerating itself of manifestly damning charges related to war crimes is not going to be easy.
 
Indeed, the irrefutable facts available to the UN, the Red Cross and other neutral third parties should be sufficient to condemn and convict Israel as a murderous state.
 
There are also thousands of testimonies by on-the-ground eyewitness who have presented credible and honest narratives of the atrocities which killed and maimed thousands of civilians including hundreds of children.
 
It is really hard to believe that thousands of civilians were killed inadvertently or by mistake or as a result of collateral damage. Believing such claims would be an insult to human intelligence.
 
True, Israel is constantly shielded from international condemnation, especially punishment, by the United States, Israel's ultimate guardian-ally, as well as the governments of Western Europe.
 
But in this age of open skies and internet, it is imperative for all honest men and women around the world, irrespective of their religion or race, to expose the brutal ugliness of this criminal entity called Israel. This is the very least humanity should do on behalf of the helpless victims.
 
This is very crucial because Israel is convinced it is above the laws of man and God and unbounded by the international norms.
 
And should the world, God forbid, continue to fail to call the spade a spade, especially when the proverbial implement is seen in the hands of our grave-diggers, and I am not speaking metaphorically, it should be a foregone conclusion that Israel could or probably would eventually embark on the unthinkable vis-à-vis its helpless victims.
 
I don't know for sure how the unthinkable would be played out on the ground. However, 67 years of the Israeli experience should be more than sufficient to invoke and remember Stalin and his Gulags, Hitler and his concentration camps, Pol Pot and his genocidal crimes and Bashar El-Assad and his sectarian massacres.
 
Don’t tell me Israel is too civilized and wouldn't indulge in the unthinkable. The truth is that Israel would unhesitatingly embark on the unthinkable should the humanity go into a brief moment of slumber. 
 
Israel calculates that apart from a brief outburst of half-hearted denunciations and some vociferous demonstrations in some western capitals, the world powers, particularly the US, would just "let it pass" and probably content with issuing indifferent calls on "all sides to exercise self-restraint."
 
I really don't know if the macabre Israeli calculations are accurate or not. However, from our bitter experience with the West especially since the Second World War, Israel seems ostensibly correct in its prognosis of western moral bankruptcy.
 
Indeed, a West that is looking on rather passively as Assad with active support from the Russians, the Iranians and Hizbullah is slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians, is decidedly unlikely to experience an awakening of moral conscience if and when the Israeli death machine gangs up on the Palestinians.
 
Genocidal Israelis
 
Israel is not Denmark or Sweden or even Britain. There is a definitely genocidal mindset in Israel which millions of Europeans and North Americans cannot easily detect due to many years of sustained brain-washing by Zionist-influenced or Zionist controlled media in the West.
 
Several years ago, an Israeli settler leader named Daniela Weiss from a colony in the northern West Bank delivered a hair-raising speech to dozens of fanatical Gush Emunim settlers in Hebron.
 
In her brief tirade, the gung ho settler leader told the fanatical multitude that the best way to deal with the Palestinians was the Joshua's way, an allusion to Biblical massacres carried out by Biblical Israelites against indigenous Canaanite tribes.
 
The speech, met with loud cheers, didn't raise many eyebrows in Israel, neither in the media nor in the government.
 
Hence, the claim that Israelis or Jews wouldn't allow the government of Israel to resort to genocide against the Palestinian is based more on wishful thinking than on any convincing arguments.
 
Today, the Palestinian people owe their survival as a people to the good-will of the international community.
 
But the continuity of this good-will cannot be taken for granted. This is why humanity must remain vigilant because the Israeli snake is venomous and treacherous.
 

Khalid Amayreh is a veteran Palestinian journalist and current affairs commentators living in occupied Palestine.

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