The Palestinians Are Being Slaughtered
Elio Delgado Legon
HAVANA TIMES — All honest people around the world ought to be profoundly moved and horrified by the crimes against the Palestinian people being perpetrated by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
The last harrowing news we heard involved the murder of a group of children who were playing soccer at a beach. Though these incidents occur in plain sight, for everyone to see, very little is done to put an end to the mass killing and to have international law vigorously persecute those who order such acts of aggression.
The Hague Court should be aware of what is happening and rule to have the murderers captured, so they can be tried and convicted to the full extent of the law.
It was both frustrating and disconcerting for me to hear the declarations of a high US government official who sympathized with Israel and voiced support for the criminal actions perpetrated by this country. The support of the United States encourages the criminals and gives them a sense of immunity.
Both the United States and Israel justify the slaughter referring to a number of locally-assembled missiles that were fired into Israeli territory and the fact the country has the right to defend itself. Don’t the Palestinian people, who have suffered the illegal occupation of part of their territory since 1967, also have the right to defend themselves?
Return to Palestinians what belongs to them and the conflict will be over. Let us not forget that the State of Israel was created in Palestinian territory so that the millions of Jews wandering the world would have a place to return to. Israel was not satisfied with what it got and, in 1967, it unleashed a war of expansion, occupying part of Palestine, the Golan Heights in Syria and other border territories.
Can you imagine offering a homeless friend a room in your house where he can stay and then seeing how this friend, rather than show gratitude, violently take over a part of your house and even murder some of your children?
This is what has happened in Palestine at a larger scale. Palestinians have every right to fight to recover what rightfully belongs to them. Israel has not fulfilled any of the UN resolutions regarding Palestine and nothing happens. Those who murder children, women, elderly and young Palestinians ought to be convicted by an international court.
We can’t continue to bear witness to the slaughter of the Palestinian people as though we were watching a horror film. The civilized world cannot continue to stand horrified by events in Palestine and to do nothing to stop the massacre and to take the Israeli-Palestinian border to where it ought to be by law: where it was before the war of 1967.
Slaughtered?? The Palestinians are raining missiles down on Israel. Israel should storm into the Gaza strip and force them into other Arab lands! What if the Taino were not slaughtered in Cuba and they started raining missiles onto Havana? The Israelis show incredible mercy for the warfaring Palestinians , any other country would not tolerate this. Israel without the Westbank and Gaza is smaller than Los Angeles County. Let Qatar have the Palestinians… or Cuba. I’m not Jewish and have been to Israel and Cuba many times.
The Arabs began attacking Jewish communities in Palestine even before WWI and before Balfour.
Your equivalence between what the Nazis did to the Warsaw Ghetto and what Israel is doing in Gaza is historically ignorant and morally perverse.
The Nazis deliberately murdered everybody they could find:
“Over 100,000 of the Ghetto’s residents died due to rampant disease or starvation, as well as random killings, even before the Nazis began massive deportations of the inhabitants from the Ghetto’s Umschlagplatz to the Treblinka extermination camp during the Grossaktion Warschau, part of the countrywideOperation Reinhard. Between Tisha B’Av (July 23) and Yom Kippur (September 21) of 1942, about 254,000 Ghetto residents (or at least 300,000 by different accounts)[7] were sent to Treblinka and murdered there.[16]
“The final battle started on the eve of Passover of April 19, 1943, when a Nazi force consisting of several thousand troops entered the ghetto. After initial setbacks, the Germans under the field command of Jürgen Stroop systematically burned and blew up the ghetto buildings, block by block, rounding up or murdering anybody they could capture. Significant resistance ended on April 28, and the Nazi operation officially ended in mid-May, symbolically culminating with the demolition of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw on May 16. According to the official report, at least 56,065 people were killed on the spot or deported to German Nazi concentration and death camps (Treblinka, Poniatowa, Majdanek, Trawniki).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto#Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising_and_destruction_of_the_Ghetto
In Gaza, the IDF warns civilians of an operations and urges them to evacuate. The IDF has called off several bombing attacks when civilians were spotted near the target. The IDF does not engage in mass deportations nor do they operate death camps.
I buy it, I can rationalize your narrative, not really sure that I could, if I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp. You see, the Palestinian also got their demographic charts, their land house titles.
Boy, and they said that Manhattan real state market is cut throat.
Bottom line is your narrative amounts to History it’s written by the winners. And Arabs are saying its not over until its over.
Then yes, Hamas leadership could be Millionaire. Pprofiteering from Qatar from gory pics. But Zionists are quick setting the scene, and developing quite a juicy market for “cutting-edge photographic parafernalia”
So Jewish heads all the way to Damascus its a powerful image, and some lunatics right wingers are reinforcing it with : We have Fuck hard these people in Ramadan. On top the Christian are queasy about abortions.
Finally there is a special place in my godless, atheist soul for the Abrahamics religions, next to the genocidals, warmongers, etc
Israelis are behaving like the child abused victim that growth up to become a notorious pedophile. That is cristal clear as has being broadcast, for everyone with two functional neurons and onze of empathy to notice. Doesn’t matter if you agree or not, they know it, after all psychologi is part of the impressive legacy of the hebrew to the humanities.
Do anybody think, that Israelis military-political strategists waist any time hair spliting, UN resolutions, archeological evidences and holy scripts? They know perfectly well that it’ s trough force that this “divine mandate ” is achievable.
To the old Man in Havana, I dont know if they have told you. But old boy Vlad, have just shut down a civilian plane. Innocents, middleclass westerners, aren’t the typical colateral damage that the West bruch under the carpet.
The whole sorry episode began in the aftermath of W.W.I with the Balfour Declaration. The West is always giving away the land of other folks, or, as in the case of Iraq and other nations in the Middle East and Africa, arbitrarily redrawing national boundaries to suit their imperial ends. It was one thing to steal the lands of the Native Americans who, as hunter-gatherers, had little chance of reclaiming them. (Although with their casinos and tax free status for selling stuff on tribal reservations, at least they are now beginning to recoup that which has been stolen from them!) On the other hand, the Palestinians have a friend or two in the neighborhood, and those friends have friends. Although most Arab nations are now U.S. client states (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc.), ultimately, when “our” dictators and shieks can’t produce any real economic progress for the Arab masses, their corrupt and anti-democratic regimes will come to a rapid, and bloody, end. The Egyptian Army is good for putting down their own people; not so much for answering Zionist aggression. Slowly, the rest of the world is coming around to the Palestinians’ side. They can see that the murderous Zionist entity is no better than were Nazis, from whom the Zionists have learned their techniques. What they are now doing to Gaza is akin to what the Nazis did to the Warsaw Ghetto. Thanks for your elloquent defense of the Palestinian victims, Elio!
Terror is very profitable for Hamas. The leadership has no reason to work for peace. In fact, they are highly motivated to keep the conflict going.
Professor Ahmed Karima of Al-Azhar University in Egypt noted that in recent years Hamas has blossomed into a movement of millionaires. According to Karima, Hamas can boast no fewer than 1,200 millionaires among its leadership and mid-level officials. That assertion was backed up by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who in 2012 estimated the number of Gaza millionaires to be 800.
In particular, overall Hamas leader Khaled Mashal has amassed a fortune of $2.6 billion, the Jordanian media reported.
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/24754/Default.aspx
The casualty reports from Gaza are supplied to Western journalists from Hamas. Hamas has issued instructions for their representatives on how to speak to Western journalists:
“The video and guidelines were published in Arabic, but MEMRI has translated parts of the text into English:
Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.”
http://www.truthrevolt.org/israel-revolt/hamas-instructing-people-how-lie-about-civilian-casualties
Irgun and Haganah carried out a few terrorist acts for a few years, but they were small potatoes compared to the 60 years of terror committed by the various Palestinian terrorist groups and the Arab states which have attacked Israel.
I wrote the facts as they are.
Some of the people in Gaza today used to live in what is now Israel. In 1948, the invading Arab armies broadcasted radio messages warning Arabs to get out of the way while they came in to destroy the fledgling State of Israel and kill all the Jews. About half of the Palestinians living in Israel then were expelled, and the other half left of their own volition. Those Arabs who stayed put were allowed to stay and eventually became citizens of Israel. All of the Jews who were living in the West Bank, including ancient communities in Hebron and East Jerusalem, were killed or fled the invading Jordanian army.
By their own words and deeds, the Arab armies attempted a genocide against the Jews in 1948 and they failed.
There is nothing remotely genocidal in Israel’s actions in defending her people. The Arab population of Gaza has tripled in the past 30 years: that makes for a terribly incompetent genocide, don’t you think?
The founding charter of Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel. Now THAT’S genocide!
Thanks for this wonderful piece which I am sure zionists and imperialists will twist and turn to distort the reality and the facts of history. The Jews used Irgun and Haganah, two bands of terrorists that did the same acts that Israel now accuses Hamas of doing. Ignorance of history is bliss but it is also a way of imposing the will of the oppressor. Fortunately, some of us remember history….not the zionist myth.
Griffin, you are like despots who want to rewrite history, the people who are now living ensconced in the Gaza Ghetto used to live in what is now Israel, they were expelled by the Zionists. It is against international law Hague Regulation, 1907 to use “collective punishment” to people under occupation. Israel is a racist, genocidal state that has forgotten what its own people went through in WWII. That is a shame!
Iran supplied Hamas with the longer range and more powerful missiles which have been targeted at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-celebrates-use-of-rockets-supplied-to-hamas/
Elio wrote a piece of historical nonsense:
“Let us not forget that the State of Israel was created in Palestinian territory so that the millions of Jews wandering the world would have a place to return to. Israel was not satisfied with what it got and, in 1967, it unleashed a war of expansion, occupying part of Palestine, the Golan Heights in Syria and other border territories.”
Where to begin? So many lies, falsehoods and ignorance are imbedded in that paragraph.
In 1947, the UN partitioned the territory to create a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted the offer and founded the modern state of Israel. The Arabs refused the offer and began a war of annihilation against the Jews.
Elio wrote: “Can you imagine offering a homeless friend a room in your house where he can stay and then seeing how this friend, rather than show gratitude, violently take over a part of your house and even murder some of your children?”
Really, Elio? The Jews began emigrating to the region in 1880’s, buying land from the local Turkish and Arab landowners. Organized attacks against the small jewish communities began shortly thereafter. These attacks have continued to this day. The Jews’ only sin has been to defend themselves, to fight back and to prevail.
Against all odds, Israel survived and defeated the invading armies of the six surrounding Arab states which attacked them in 1948. The Kingdom of Jordan occupied the West Bank and annexed it into their own country. They did not establish any sort of independent Palestinian state on this land, which had been assigned to the Palestinian Arabs by the UN. Likewise, Egypt occupied Gaza, where they too failed to establish a Palestinian Arab state. Ditto Syria & the Golan Heights. Prior to 1967, there was no Israeli-Palestine border, for the simple reason that the Arabs had refused to recognize such a border or to establish a Palestinian state.
In 1967, the Egyptian dictator Naser vowed to destroy Israel and moved his army to Israel’s border, in violation of the UN brokered peace treaty which had existed up to then. Jordan and Syria followed Naser’s lead and moved their armies to Israel’s border. Then began a series of hostile military actions by the Arab armies against Israel. Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, a recognized act of war. Egyptian & Syrian artillery fired onto Israeli territory, another act of war. Two Egyptian MIGs (most likely piloted by Russians) overflew the Israeli city of Dimona: yet another act of war. The Arab states refused the UN call to pull back their armies from the Israeli borders. Egytian, Jordanian & Syrian radio broadcasts were filled with threats to launch a final war against Israel. The President of Syria vowed to line the streets of Damascus with Jewish skulls.
It was only then that Israel launched a stunning air raid against the Egyptian airforce, destroying it on the ground. Diplomatic messages from Tel Aviv to Amman & Damascus warned them not to get involved, and the Israeli airforce would leave them alone. Stunned by the sudden loss of their airforce, built up at great expense by the USSR, Naser went on the radio and declared the Egyptian Army was engaged in a victorious invasion of Israel. Not wanting to miss out on the spoils, Jordan & Syria both attacked Israel.
Israel counter-attacked and defeated the invading Arab armies, again. As soon as the war had ended, Israel offered to return the conquered land to her Arab neighbours, if they would agree to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state within secure borders. The Arab state refused to accept any peace offers from Israel. In 1973, the same three Arab states again attacked Israel in the Yom Kippur War. A brigade of Cuban tank crews driving Soviet tanks served in the Syrian army during that war, and were defeated by the IDF. Again Israel offered land for peace, again the Arabs refused.
When Egypt’s Anwar Sadat did finally agree to a peace treaty with Israel in 1978, in return for the Sinai, he was labeled a traitor by many Arabs and was eventually assassinated by Islamic extremists for making peace with Israel.
That is why the West Bank remains occupied by Israel. Gaza was occupied until 2005 when the Israelis unilaterally withdrew. Since then Hamas has turned it into a prison for the Palestinian people and a terrorist base from which to attack Israel.
The current Israeli operation in Gaza was launched in response to Hamas attacking Israel with hundreds of rockets. Some of the rockets are home-built, but the newer longer range missiles which have targeted Tel Aviv and Jerusalem came from Syria & Iran. Over 100 of the rockets Hamas has launched came down in Gaza, no doubt causing civilian casualties.
The leadership of Hamas, who live in luxury in Qatar, does not care how many Palestinians are killed in this fighting. They are banking on the chance of getting gory photographs of dead Arab children as a ghoulish propaganda victory.
If people around the world want to save the lives of Palestinian civilians, they should stop funding the terrorists of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the many other terrorist groups dedicated to waging war on Israel. Arm terrorists and you will get terror. Make peace and you will get peace.
Elio writes, “…a number of locally-assembled missiles that were fired into Israeli territory and the fact the country has the right to defend itself.” Here’s a hint: stop firing these missiles (locally-assembled missiles kill just as well as foreign-made) at Israel and Israel will stop killing Palestinians. This conflict dates back centuries. Israeli Jews argue they were there first as well. Elio is simply parroting the Castro propaganda line he was given. These Cuban mouthpieces refuse to think for themselves. Rather than cast blame, why don’t knuckleheads like Elio work to find peace.