Gaza now resembles Berlin at the end of WW2. A bombed out ruin, littered with the decomposing bodies of innocent civilians, entombed in the rubble of their homes. The way is now cleared for Israel to take possession of all of Gaza. To forever banish the Palestinians from their traditional homeland. And the world watches on with little more than dispassionate interest. For Israel, founded by victims of the holocaust, how the worm has turned.
In his P&I podcast of March 22nd Barry Jones makes the statement that, in relation to what is now Israel, “The Jews were there first”. But this isn’t so.
It can be argued that the Israeli claim to ancient Canaan, seen by many Jews as their homeland, is weaker than that of the Palestinians.
Historians today commonly use the term Canaanite to refer to the Philistines, the antecedents of the Palestinians, and also to the Israelites; both of whom dwelt in Canaan prior to 1200 BCE.
Historians also suggest that the tribes of Israel invaded Canaan, the homeland of the Philistines, in the 15th century BCE, thus delegitimising the Jewish ‘historic’ claim of sole ownership.
For the last millennia the Turks ruled over Palestine with an iron fist up until the British takeover in 1917. With the contentious UN brokered Partition Resolution 181 in 1947, the colonial settler state of Israel came into existence.
As the years rolled by, the Zionist occupation saw Palestinian land shrink from over 90% in 1947 to just a few scattered pockets totalling less than 10% today.
In a bizarre twist it is apparently now perfectly acceptable for Israel to commit genocide, and for much of the Jewish diaspora, wherever they reside, to actively support the stated intention of Israel to bomb the inhabitants of Gaza back to the stone age.
The world’s media is quick to point the finger at Hamas’ aggression. The justification for the Israeli war on women and children, is that Hamas had launched an unprovoked attack on the Israeli settlements. The media presents this as an unjustifiable and inexcusable assault, committed entirely without provocation. One that was sanctioned by and with the connivance of all of the inhabitants of Gaza.
The popular press simply ignores the fact that the Israeli jackboot has been on the throat of the Palestinian people for decades. As each day passes the repressive regime turns the screws ever tighter on the impoverished occupants of Palestine.
For decades the long promised two state solution sat unattended. Following the actions of Hamas and the barbaric Israeli response, it is even further beyond reach. Surely it is now an unattainable goal.
The October 2023 attack by Hamas was the trigger that Israel had long been waiting for. Israel poked and prodded, year in and year out. The rolling annexure of Palestine property and the ongoing imprisonment of many thousands of Palestinians without charges continued.
The disproportionate Israeli response to the Hamas attack has been the total obliteration of every Palestinian man, woman, and child in reach of their indiscriminate 2,000 lb bombs.
Jewish children in Israel sing songs that call for the death of all Palestinians. Israeli politicians describe the need to eradicate all of the ‘Palestinian vermin’. Netanyahu is unapologetic. He states there will never be a two state solution. His hardline rhetoric sees no distinction between a Palestinian child and the devil incarnate.
Netanyahu’s justification? If they aren’t terrorists now, then they soon will be. Isn’t prevention better than cure? Surely it’s more humane to just kill them all now. Is it not the duty of every Jew to eliminate the ‘Palestinian plague’ – because they have dared to lay claim to Canaan?
And all the while the predominantly Christian Western world does nothing. Their only contribution is to supply Israel with arms. The Palestinians are unseen. Invisible. The free world stands silently by. Seeing, but not caring.
Gaza now resembles Berlin at the end of WW2. A bombed out ruin, littered with the decomposing bodies of innocent civilians, entombed in the rubble of their homes. The way is now cleared for Israel to take possession of all of Gaza. To forever banish the Palestinians from their traditional homeland.
And the world watches on with little more than dispassionate interest.
Israeli bias is evident in every news item. The 31,000 thousand dead Palestinian civilians, predominantly women and children, are just collateral damage. No distinction is drawn between the relative few who carry the weapons and the many tens of thousands that the Israeli bombs rain down upon.
The Israeli Government continues to deny any culpability for the current genocide. Does all of this sound sickeningly familiar?
How can it be that a people who were so appallingly treated at the hands of the Nazis have embraced ‘the final solution’ and applied it so ruthlessly to the people of Palestine? The holocaust has indeed been reborn. And the bitter irony is that it is the tool that is now being so brutally wielded by those descendants of the holocaust survivors.
How quickly have the Israelis forgotten the appalling inhumanity of the extermination of a people based solely on race and religion.
Wind the clock back ninety years to Germany in 1933. What the Germans did to the Jews is now what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. It was genocide then. It is genocide now. The descendants of the victims in Germany all those years ago are now the indiscriminate killers. The only difference is that the dead today are Moslems.
Gaza in 2024 is the holocaust reborn. The Israeli gameplan is obvious. Provoke – retaliate – exterminate. And the world watches on, content to sit back and do nothing.
Australia, the UK and the US are complicit rogue states.
The worm has indeed turned.
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Peter Hehir
Peter Hehir was a co-founder of the first Green Party in Australia, the Sydney Greens. He is a past secretary and president of the Rozelle branch of the ALP, who was expelled for opposing Hawke’s backflip on uranium with Labor’s endorsement of Roxby Downs. He was also a member of the now defunct Nuclear Disarmament Party. Peter no longer has any political party affiliation.
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