Tuesday, May 17, 2022

NST Leader: Palestine, 74 years on



NST Leader: Palestine, 74 years on


Activists take part in a rally to mark Nakba, the catastrophe, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC on May 15, 2022. - AFP PIC


On Sunday, Nakba, or catastrophe, turned 74. On that fateful May day, two-thirds of Palestinians were forcefully driven out from their homes by Israel — under the watch of Britain and the United States, it must be said — to make way for a Jewish-majority state.

Apartheid Israel had a very early birth. It is much older than its South African strain. Countless Palestinians were killed in the ethnic cleansing campaign of the Zionist regime. Those who survived the massacre and their descendants remain refugees to this day, though international law affords them a right of return.

The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by the Israelis remains the most ignored war crime in modern human history. What's worse, as pointed out by Dr Husam Zomlot the head of the Palestinian mission to the United Kingdom, in his op-ed in the Middle East Eye, a regional portal, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is a work-in-progress. Consider two examples.

First, a court decision. Early this month, an Israeli high court gave the go-ahead to the Israeli military to forcibly remove more than 1,000 Palestinians from their homes in Masafer Yatta near Hebron in the occupied territories of the West Bank.
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Like the forcible removal of the 750,000 Palestinians in 1948, this violent transfer is illegal under international law. Israel knows this and yet it acts with impunity because Britain and the US keep turning a blind eye to all its crimes against the Palestinians. The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11, our second example, is the most recent. There is a pattern here.

Since 2000, 47 Palestinian journalists have been gunned down, not by stray bullets, but by Israeli snipers. A bullet to the head of Abu Akleh just below the helmet she was wearing is very telling. To the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv, Palestinian journalists must not be allowed to tell the world their story. News is a chosen story by a "chosen" people. Thus does the practice of apartheid creep beyond Zionist politics. It is a worldview, and a very dangerous one at that. The world has seen no less than 74 years of such a dangerous way of Zionist seeing. Isn't there a way of ending Israel's impunity?

There is, but do not expect Tel Aviv to change. It must be forced to change. And only two countries can do that. One is Britain, a country that made the birth of the pseudo nation possible. Two is the US, the country that was the first to recognise Israel as a nation. Compelling Israel to change shouldn't be difficult. After all, both consider Israel's occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip as illegal.

International law of occupation — even in the reading of Britain and the US — imposes certain responsibilities on occupying forces. In the case of Israel, its illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territories aren't just a breach of international law, but are war crimes. Britain and the US must treat them as such. If the duo want to look back proudly at their contribution to the rules-based world order they helped create after World War 2, they must do three things.

One, stop all Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. Two, force the return of all occupied Palestinian territories. Three, make Israel accountable for all its war crimes. Otherwise, the Middle East will never see peace.

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kt comments:

The irony is Christian Right's support for Israel is the Christians' support for an anti-Jesus people. Israeli-Judaists-Jews consider Jesus (Yehoshua ben Yosef) as a heretic, a person who practised/believed in Judaist heresy.

 

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