Palestinians forgotten at Xmas, Eid and Hanukkah

A Hanukkah of light vs. a Hanukkah of darkness

From Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem

4 December, 2007

Hanukkah is the Jewish holiday of light that recounts the Talmudic story of the Maccabees victory over the armies of King Antiochus IV. The story symbolizes the triumph of good over evil and light over darkness.

This year, the celebration of Hanukkah coincides with a slow-motion genocide the legions of Zionism are carrying out against nearly 1.5 million helpless human beings in the Gaza Strip.

According to human rights organizations, Gazans are dying in significant numbers as Israel continues to bar them from accessing food and work. Scores of patients have also succumbed to their illnesses thanks to Israel’s refusal to allow these unfortunate people to travel abroad or reach the West Bank to seek proper medical care.

This week, the Israeli Supreme Court, a mere rubber stamp in the hands of the occupation army, authorized further cuts of fuel supplies and electricity to Gaza.

This, coupled with the sinister policy of denying Gazans access to fresh food, vaccines, and clean water, is already having a disastrous impact on innocent people whose only crime is that 23 months ago, they elected a government that Israel didn’t like.

According to the Maan News Agency, hospitals in Gaza are already facing nightmarish conditions resulting from the fuel shortage.

Muawiya Hassanin, Director of Emergency Medical Services in Gaza, was quoted as saying that the continued cut-off of fuel supplies to Gaza would cause the destruction of crucial vaccines and other essential medication supplies. The fuel Shortage is also impacting intensive care units, dialysis units, operating rooms and neonatal incubators.

In addition to the callous blockade, the Israeli occupation army murders innocent Palestinian civilians on a daily basis. And to justify or at least extenuate these crimes, the Israeli army routinely concocts excuses, pretexts and lies which are readily parroted by a generally dishonest western media that refuses to call things by their real names.

As an occupying power, Israel is morally and legally obliged under international law to meet the needs of the people of Gaza. Israel claims to have ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip. But this is a brash lie since the Israeli occupation army continues to control Gaza’s borders, land, air and sea. Even impoverished Gaza fishermen seeking to obtain food for their starving kids from the sea are routinely hounded and often killed by Israeli gunboats.

In the West Bank, the same policy of murder and oppression reigns supreme despite all the artificial aura of hope and good will Israel and the West are trying to foster, particularly in the aftermath of the American-hosted conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

On Sunday, 2 December, trigger-happy Israeli soldiers shot and killed 31-year-old Firas Qasqas near Ramallah as he was walking with his brother outside the latter’s home. The father of three female children died a few hours later at Ramallah’s government hospital. As usual in such circumstances, the Israeli army issued a terse statement, saying the army was investigating the incident.

Meanwhile, Israeli occupation troops continue, nearly every night, to storm Palestinian homes, usually in the quiet hours before dawn, terrorizing innocent men, women and children.

They beat and humiliate fathers in full view of their wives and children and vandalize property before dragging youngsters all the way to the notorious Ketziot detention camp in the Negev desert in southern Israel.

Israel already detains as many as 11,000 Palestinians, many without charge or trial. Indeed, numerous detainees have intimated to this journalist that they don’t really know why they are being incarcerated.

Furthering abusing its authority as an occupying power, Israel often keeps inmates in prison months and even years after the expiration of their respective prison terms, apparently to further torment them and break, as much as possible, their mental sanity.

And when a given prisoner is released, he is often rearrested three months later without any genuine reason, apart from the sick desire to disrupt his family life and keep him in a constant state of anxiety.

Why does Israel indulge in all these obscenities against a thoroughly tormented people whose only crime is its enduring desire to be free?

Do these sick minds really think that oppressing and humiliating helpless Palestinians give them a feeling of virility and manliness? Is manliness measured by the extent to which a solider humiliates and brutalizes another human being? If so, then the Gestapo, SS and the Wehrmacht must have been the most virile and manly of all men!!

Zionism not only has wreaked havoc and vengeance on a people that had nothing to do with the holocaust, but has also nearly completely destroyed the moral fabric of the Jewish people by morphing them from ordinary men and women with a special sensitivity to justice into jailers, oppressors, murderers, thieves, and liars.

Judaism taught thou shall not murder, but murder has always been and continues to be Zionism’s modus operandi. Judaism taught thou shall not steal, but Zionism and theft are effectively two sides of the same coin, and Israel is the greatest kleptomaniac in the history of mankind. Judaism taught thou shall not lie, but Zionism lies as often as it breathes.

Judaism says don’t mistreat foreigners who are living in your land. Treat them as you would a fellow Israelite, and love them as you love yourselves, but Zionism insists on viewing non-Jews as children of a lesser God.

In Numbers-15 (15-16), the Lord tells the children of Israel that for all time to come, the same rules are binding on you and the foreigners who live among you. You and they are alike in the Lord’s sight; therefore, the same laws and regulations apply to you and to them.

Don’t these rabbis who shout starve them, kill them, destroy them read and understand these exhortations? Or is their Hanukkah a Hanukkah of darkness?

It is sad and lamentable that the state of Israel, the illegitimate daughter of Zionism, continues to walk in the path of inequity and evil, all under the rubric of protecting Jews and safeguarding their vital interests. But in so doing, Zionism is striping Judaism and Jews of morality and justice. And a Judaism without morality and justice, is a heartless and soulless Judaism.

One ancient rabbi encapsulated Judaism in a few words. He said Do not do unto others what you wouldn’t want others to do unto you.

Now, compare this with what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank!