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.