Palestinian Massacre

 Palestinian Land Day Massacre

By Dr Elias Akleh

Similar to Jesus, who was persecuted, tortured, crucified and murdered by ancient Jews, then rose up from the dead confirming his teachings, today’s Palestinians, whose parents had been robbed, persecuted, unjustly imprisoned, ethnically cleansed, and massacred by present day Jews, are rising up against Jewish Israeli terrorism, injustice, land theft, and brute murder, in peaceful mass rallies started on Friday March 31st towards their parents’ usurped homes and lands, asserting and exercising their right of return as confirmed by UN resolution 194.

These mass rallies commemorate the Palestinian Land Day, when in 1976 Yitzhak Rabin’s ministry decided to usurp more Palestinian land in the occupied Galilee but Palestinian masses in the north as well as in West Bank took to the streets in protests, that eventually and after bloody confrontations with the Israeli terrorist army and the shooting murder of 6 Palestinians, forced Rabin to cancel the decision. The current mass rallies are planned to continue daily and culminate on the 15th of May to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Nakba; Israeli occupation of Palestine, and to protest the planned transfer of the American embassy to Al-Quds on that day.

These mass rallies by young and old, male and female Palestinians brake the Zionist myth Ben Gurion once stated after the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) when almost 800,000 Palestinians were forcefully driven out of their homeland, that “the old (Palestinians) will die, and the young will forget.” Young Palestinians have never forgotten their homeland, their homes, and their heritage. The Palestinians are bringing their young children to these rallies where workshop tents had been setup to teach the young generations their Palestinian history, their rights to the land, and to pass on the keys to their usurped homes along with the Palestinian flag. The young will never forget, and they will carry the torch until complete liberation.

These mass rallies also send powerful messages to the world, to the UN member countries, to the Zionist organization, and especially to the Arab leaders, who abandoned their Palestinian Arab brothers, betrayed the Palestinian just cause, and slept in bed with the Zionist Israeli enemy in the hope to keep their ruling positions, that the Palestinian cause is still alive and well, that the Palestinian new generations will not give up their rights to their homeland, and that the Zionist Greater Israel project is doomed to failure.

These mass rallies are also a message to the American administration, especially to president Trump, that Al-Quds is Palestinian; capital of Palestine and is not Jewish Jerusalem; capital of Israeli terrorist state. The Palestinians would never give up their own capital; Al-Quds, nor would they accept what have been dubbed as the deal of the century offering Palestinians a replacement semi-homeland in Sinai or parts of Jordan, similar to what America had done to the native American Indians when they imprisoned them in collective Indian concentration camps; euphemistically called “Indian Reservations.”

As usual, and as a prominent characteristic of the Israeli terrorist state, Israel had dispatched its very well armed terrorist army onto the entrances of Palestinian towns and onto the borders of the Gaza Strip to engage and to suppress the Palestinian peaceful rallies. In the West Bank and in the 1948 occupied areas these terrorist soldiers met the peaceful demonstrators with rubber coated bullets, live bullets, tear gas and stun grenades. In the Gaza Strip Israeli tanks and snipers were dispatched to engage Palestinians demonstrators. The Israeli soldiers had also used drones to bomb the Palestinian masses with gas grenades.

On the first day; Friday, of these peaceful walks the terrorist Israeli soldiers including snipers had murdered 16 Palestinians and wounded 1416 others, while thousands others suffered from tear gas inhalations. Such attacks by well-armed soldiers against unarmed peaceful civilian demonstrators are considered war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Terrorist Israeli army routinely perpetrate such crimes against Palestinian civilians particularly against Palestinian children. The silence of the international community, the shameful unconditional American support, and the pitiful silence and cooperation of some Arab leaders, had encouraged Israel to continue perpetrating such crimes without fear of any reprisal.

Israel is scared of the Palestinian resolve and aspiration that is reflected in their children. Israel’s fear of such peaceful rallies is reflected in their cruel and harsh suppression and persecution of Palestinians especially the children. Israeli leaders had stated many times their skewed belief that violence is the only means to deal with Palestinians in order to instill fear of reprisal in the hearts of the children. Yet it is the Palestinian children who scare the Israeli leaders, for the spirit of struggle to obtain their freedom and to regain their country is alive in them and is reflected in their behavior when they unfearfully face the heavily armed and well trained Israeli soldiers with only their bare hands. Israel had failed to instill fear in the hearts of the young generations of Palestinians. Their struggle will keep on going.

The UNSC, called upon by Kuwait to protect Palestinians by condemning the Israeli crimes, had failed to issue any condemnation due to the American veto. UNSC members are apprehensive about any American “punishment” if they voted against Israel. It is still fresh in their memory what Trump and Nikki Haley had threatened against such votes. Trump had openly stated that the US gives money to the UN as bribes so that its member countries would support the American positions right or wrong. Ignoring all the well documented Israeli crimes against Palestinians in order to keep receiving American financial aid make members of the UNSC partners in these crimes. All what they could offer is their false concern about the victims, call for restraint by all parties involved, and offer their support for the unworkable unpractical two-states solution.

The Palestinians had given peace many chances. They gave up almost 80% of their homeland in order to live peacefully and to build their own state. They entered into peace negotiations with Israel, yet all these negotiations led only to more Israeli usurpation of Palestinian land and the building of more illegal Israeli colonies. After the fair election of Hamas government in 2007, as attested by international monitors, the Gaza Strip had been abandoned by Abbas Fatah organization, and besieged by Israel and Egypt to starve Palestinians there to death. Israel had conducted bloody wars against Gaza Strip using the illegal cluster and white phosphorous bombs against the civilian areas. Many Arab leaders within the Arab League had abandoned Palestinians and normalized relationship with Israel on the expense of the Palestinian cause.

Religious fundamentalist Jewish extremist colonialists increased their terror attacks against Palestinian civilians; poisoning their water wells, shooting their cattle, cutting down their trees, burning their homes, kidnapping and murdering their children, and worst of all are the guarded violations of Al-Aqsa Mosque in an attempt to claim the Islamic holy places as their own Jewish holy places. Last week Jewish extremist Rabbis had conducted rehearsals to conduct animal sacrificial ceremonies within the Al-Aqsa Mosque compounds as celebration for their Passover feast.

Abandoned, betrayed, besieged, with many of their children imprisoned, and left to die by starvation the Palestinians, who lost their country, lost their rights and freedom, found themselves isolated and have nothing else to lose. Their recognition that they could not depend on their brother Arab leaders for any real help, convince them that the only solution they have is to depend only on their own selves and that the only language Israel understands is the language of armed struggle to establish facts on the grounds.

countercurrents.org

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab American from a Palestinian descent. His family was evicted from Haifa, Palestine, after the 1948 Nakba when the Zionists stole his family’s property. Then the family was evicted again from the West Bank during the 1967 Naksah, after the Zionist, again, occupied the rest of Palestine.