Nearly 580 Palestinians have thus far been killed, either gunned down by Israeli snipers or assassinated by the Israeli military. Artillery guns, gunships and missiles have done their job. Many were killed in their offices or while walking on the streets. Many were children sleeping in their homes among their families. The greatest number were courageous young men murdered while defending their villages from the soldiers of occupation or ruthless settlers.
It is a human tragedy. A people are being murdered and brutalized for no crime other than that of having lived on a land that has been stolen by another. This is a simple issue understood by all everywhere, except in the US. There, the media has either lost its ability to differentiate between the victim and the murderer, or has intentionally turned a blind eye to the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle against the vicious occupation.
Within two days, on July 30 and 31, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, through his policy of assassination, managed to kill 16 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. But the number was hardly shocking to the US media. The US vice president scrambled to find justification for Israel’s killings, and lawmakers in the Congress dishonestly blamed Arafat for the violence.
But the number 16 came up again. A few days later, a young Palestinian man blew himself up in a crowded pizza parlor in Jerusalem on Thursday, Aug. 9, killing 16 people.
Somehow that 16 was different. The two sixteens apparently had two completely different values. It depends on who is being counted. The American media reacted to the killing of 16 Israelis with horror. No one had the courage or the decency to ask the question, what could drive a young man to blow himself up?
US commentators here tell you that “nothing could justify the death of children.” How about Palestinian children? How about the two Nablus brothers and dozens of others? Why were their deaths justifiable?
Many have conveniently forgotten to link the Jerusalem bombing to earlier events. Many have failed to admit that when a nation is under blockade, when a policy of starvation, constant assassinations and systematic killings is imposed on them, when people are brutalized in the streets, when schools are raided by Apache helicopters, when F16s bomb villages and towns, when no one feels safe any more, when a whole nation is collectively abused and violated without any protection, while their occupier is backed by the United States, and the rest of the world is largely apathetic to their plight, there is nothing left but young men blowing themselves up.
If only someone would stand and ask the question, who is occupying whom? What business does the Israeli Army have in the West Bank and Gaza? What legal or moral rights does a war criminal like Sharon have to hold open meetings where he publicly presents names of Palestinians that are to be assassinated, and why does the US turn a blind eye to all this?
We can no longer fool ourselves. Warmongers like Sharon have always been, and will always be, there. The real problem is that such a man is on the loose, hungry for the blood of a nation. The problem is the racist mentality that would look down at 16 dead Palestinians as expendable, and cry endlessly for the Israeli victims.
The more the American media elaborate on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the less Americans would actually understand the truth of the conflict. It’s tragic that despite the “extensive coverage” of the Middle East in the US media, most Americans still think of Palestinians as the powerful party and of Israel as the victim. Most do not even know that Israel is the occupying power and that Palestinians are an occupied nation, under siege, abused and oppressed.
Sharon is not alone in this. He is backed by ignorance, by racism and by the controlled American media and government. Once former American President Bill Clinton exclaimed angrily, while commenting on a suicide bombing in, that he wished he could enter the heads of those young men and see what drove them to commit such acts. But, I say, you need not enter anyone’s head; just enter a refugee camp and attend the funeral of a Palestinian and you might understand.
