Angela Merkel publicly announced her shame over the Jewish Holocaust at a time when a Palestinian Holocaust is taking place — also with German sympathy and blind support. The same kind of acquiescence that led to the first Holocaust is allowing this new Holocaust to continue unabated.
The German Stuka dive-bombers and the Panzer tanks have been replaced by the helicopter gunship and the Israeli tank. The Jewish victims have been replaced with Palestinians, and the former oppressed has now become the oppressor.
In the last month, more than 100 Palestinian women and children have become the victims of a perverse, extremist sect within Israel that relishes blood and misery and uses its influence to ensure that peace will never come.
Al-Jazeera airs images of the innocent victims of air strikes and armored incursions. The cries of desperate survivors searching the rubble for their loved ones and the agony of mourners are heartbreaking. The brutal scene of the slaughter enters every home in the Arab and Muslim world, yet no one comes to the rescue, and Israel does not allow relief to reach the starving, wounded innocents.
Israel condemns Al-Jazeera for exposing the butchery in Gaza and the occupied territories while the Western media downplay the incursions, keeping many people of the West in the dark. In the meantime, Arab and Muslim leaders respond with the usual condemnation.
Muslim leaders call Israel’s collective punishment of civilians a violation of international human rights and say, “the occupying forces must be held responsible for these war crimes.” Meanwhile, it is business as usual in the busy streets of the Arab and Muslim countries.
No one lifts a finger in defense of the hapless Palestinians. Only the hearts of the people with conscience bleed, and brave pens warn of dire consequences. The best that the leaders of the Western world do is to urge restraint on Israel. A Palestinian from East Jerusalem, enraged by the slaughter, slays eight students and wounds several others at the religious school of Zionist extremists Mercaz HaRav. The religious institution is the center of the extremist settlement movement, which openly calls on Israelis to rob Palestinians of their lands and incites hatred against all Palestinians in the occupied territories. An argument you might hear in the Middle East is that his targets are Israeli militias planning the genocide against Palestinians living in their own homeland.
Israel calls it a terrorist act, and the Western world refuses to acknowledge the real problem. No matter who gets elected or what happens, Israel always finds an excuse to avoid peace.
The Israeli occupation and settlement expansion, the imposed sanctions and boycotts, the erection of the racist separation wall, banning the building of Palestinian homes, the closing of Palestinian institutions, imposing heavy taxes and depriving people of their livelihood by uprooting olive trees and confiscating lands is not going to stop the resistance movements of Hamas or other Palestinian acts of outrage and revenge.
The rocket attacks of Hamas have killed 12 Israelis in seven years, while Israel helicopter gun ships and tanks kill hundreds of Palestinians. A Palestinian extremist fires a rocket; Israel launches a massive retaliation, and talk of peace is replaced by justification by one side or the other for the death of innocent people. This can go on forever with losses on both sides.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel’s attacks on Palestinian civilians and said that, “Israel has employed inappropriate and disproportionate use of force.”
US officials, on the other hand, were quick to condemn the Palestinian’s attack and used strong words to express their outrage and reiterate their allegiance to Israel. It would appear that in the US view, Israel is always justified and has a green light to do as it wishes. Sadly, there seems to be no voice of moderation coming from America, not from Condoleezza Rice, not from George Bush, not from Hillary Clinton and not from Barack Obama.
This is the reason why the conflict never ends. The blind support for Israel emboldens it to continue its aggression, build its walls and deny any normalcy to the people of Palestine.
Why the double standard? Is Palestinian blood so cheap? Do they not have the right to live in dignity and security? Why has the whole world abandoned them and continues to only pay lip service to their plight and misery?
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his speech at the Organization of the Islamic Conference Summit in Dakar said that the success of US-brokered peace talks depended on Israel showing willingness to live up to the spirit of the process.
Israel openly defies any world leaders’ half-hearted advice to accept a two-state solution or the Arab peace plan. King Abdullah’s peace initiative offering Israel normal relations with all 22 Arab states, if it withdraws to its 1967 borders, is the only way Israel can find peace for its citizens and friendly relations with its neighbors.
Even President Bush, the strongest ally of Israel has declared that it is essential to establish a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians, and he said he hopes Israel accepts a two-state solution before he leaves office at the end of this year — a sentiment that has echoed around the globe for decades.
Israeli public opinion is also in favor of a peace settlement. According to the latest polls in Israel, the majority in Israel favors giving up settlements for peace and 64 percent call for direct negotiations with Hamas.
Unfortunately, extremist elements get the ear of the Israeli government. How long will Israeli hard-liners have a free hand to subject the Jewish people and the Palestinians to a destiny of violence and bloodshed?
The Palestinians will not disappear; coexistence is the only chance for a peaceful way to end this conflict. A two-state solution is the only hope for prosperity across the region and security around the world.
It is the greatest of ironies that the people of Israel, who were awarded a homeland because of the barbarity the Jews of Europe suffered at the hands of the Nazis, could allow their government to so thoroughly persecute another people and deny them the same security and freedom they were denied not long ago. Gaza should not be a concentration camp, and it is the duty of liberty-loving people around the world to let their outrage be known against the persecution of any people, be they Palestinian, Sudanese, Somali or Israeli.
The situation goes from bad to worse because of the bias of the West, the ineffectiveness of the UN and the silence of a global majority either unaware of what is happening or too busy struggling to survive poverty, disease or abuse.
In the name of all the Jews, Christians, Muslims and all the good people of this world, let us urge Israel to change direction and give peace a chance. A recent cartoon run in Arab News about the Arab-Israeli conflict simply defined insanity as repeating the same act again and again and expecting a different outcome. It is clearly a time for a change, and any change must begin with a change of heart by the Israeli people. Let all of us pray that they will do their part to end this madness and let the future we all so dearly seek for our children begin.
— Samar Fatany is a Saudi radio journalist.
