Israel's Final Solution

international | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Wednesday July 08, 2009 01:02 by Richard Whelan

The continuing oppression of the Palestinian people continues unabated

A boat full of humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip was seized in international waters by the Israeli army in recent days, with 21 crew (two Irish included) being detained by Israeli authorities. Yet another blatant breach of international law, our Government and others in the West have turned a blind eye. Israeli robbery of Palestinian land through settlement continues, along with their "security" wall, boxing in the West Bank while simultaneously taking large chunks out of it. They have recently stopped letting schoolbooks in to the Gaza Strip, adding to the long list of basic items unavailable to it's long suffering population. It is time for us in the West to wake up to the suffering of our friends in Palestine, and to stand up to the bully that is Israel. It is morally reprehensible to continue to watch such horror take place any longer.

The county of Dublin is around 922 square kilometres in area, with a population of around 1.2 million. Our relatively small city has many amenities, including a spectacular bay and mountain range, public parks, a large range of housing, good schools, plenty of employment opportunities and a reasonable quality of life. We have a port and airport along with many miles of road and rail connections to deliver to us the fuel, food, medicine etc that our city requires. We have local councils and a Government that represent us and our interests in the world. We do not live in fear of violence on a grand scale, or that war will be declared on our small city.
Now, contrast our situation with that of the Gaza Strip. At 365 square kilometres, it is two and a half times smaller than Dublin, and yet has an extra 500,000 people living within it's borders. It's people live in some of the most crowded conditions on Earth. Close to a million of it's people live in abject poverty, that is below $2 a day. And anything one does in Gaza to improve their lot is usually met by a brick wall. This is clear from birth, where you are most likely going to be malnourished, unable to go to functioning schools, not allowed go to university, unable to set up a business, not be recognised as a citizen of your state, and live in daily fear that any member of your family could be killed or wounded by one of the most well equipped armies in the world. You are not allowed leave this hellish existence. You and your family are destined to live your lives in misery.
Their problems are caused almost in their entireity by the state of Israel. Israel was founded in 1948, based on an agreement set down by the UN. Their people had endured untold suffering in the years of World War II, with one of the most powerful dictatorships of the 20th century putting into action a plan to annihalate their race. It is one of the most ugliest chapters in the history of humanity, and something which must always be faced up to an condemned.
This however, gives absolutely no right whatsoever to the Jewish people to rob, rape, pillage and murder the land, people and dignity of the nation of Palestine. Over the past 60 years, they have extended further and further into the land of Palestine, to the point now where it seems that a viable Palestinian State seems now in real danger of becoming meaningless. And caught in the middle are the millions of Palestinians, especially those within the confines of the open air prison that is Gaza, who must endure a daily struggle to maintain life. They have no hope of ever having a decent quality of life or be recognised by the world as a citizen of a nation. The Jewish people are brainwashed by their media, government, and extreme right religious zealots that their state is not only legitimate, but also moral. They are yet again the decent minority, fighting the evil Arabs all around them. Such brainwashing is, ironically, similar to that of Nazi Germany. This is the only parallel I can think of- it seems very ironic that the Zionist element of Israeli society has views on their own racial superiority over the surrounding Palestinians, that can be closely correlated to the views of 1940s Germans on their own superiority over Jews. I also think that it could also be seen that the conditions in Gaza are very reminiscent of the Jewish Ghettos in Poland and around Europe during the Second World War.
It may seem puzzling as to why this continues to happen, and why we sit around and allow such blatant abuses of human rights and international law to occour. It certainly is a disgrace of the highest order that we in the West actually support the actions of Israel, by feebly accepting their right to “defend democracy” against the “tyranny” of the Arab world. But we have all been blinkered by the polarisation of our world into the us and them of the West and the Muslim world. We see the suffering Palestinians as enemies, because they do not speak our language, or appear the same as us. They are associated with extremists who are willing to bomb and cause terror in Western cities.
We must wake up. The spectacle of seeing children killed, of blood stained paths and crumbling buildings, of the screaming of women for their husbands, of the suffering of a people locked into a tiny strip of land with nothing to live or hope for is one that cannot be allowed continue. And the bully boy tactics of Israel, at the centre of all this misery, should not go unpunished because of something that happened 60 years ago. We cannot keep being held to ransom for what a dictatorial madman did in a war that very few of us actually have lived through. It is time for the suffering of the people of Palestine to end, for us all to stand up and show that the so called values of the West are virtuous and that we can free a nation from the vicegrip that is one of the cruelest ironies in history.