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In 2019, I wrote an article for Al Jazeera in which I reiterated that the Palestinians in Gaza have already made our choice. I wrote, “We will not kill a slow and dishonorable death while thanking our murderers and working under a self-deception that considers slavery to be the truth.” Our struggle is not sectarian, as enshrined in the basic principles of the International Declaration of Human Rights, despite the hypocritical media of the West trying to hide the truth.
And now apartheid, Israel has decided to launch another deadly bombing campaign against one of the world’s most populous areas, the Gaza Strip. Once again, there are innocent civilians among the victims: children, women and men. About 200 Palestinians have been killed, including 40 children. On May 15, dozens of Palestinians were massacred on Al Wehda Street in Gaza City alone.
Medical staff were also not rescued. On May 16, Dr. Ayman Abu Alouf, head of the internal medicine department at Al-Shifa Medical Complex, was killed along with most of his family.
With American-manufactured F-16 fighter jets, Israel has bombed and razed dozens of apartment buildings and hundreds of homes.
Ambulance and civil defense crews have been retrieving Palestinians who were buried in the rubble for days, some are using their mobile phones to ask for help before taking their last breath.
The message is very clear to us – it is civilians who are after Israel!
Once again, apartheid Israel has spread its long-standing Dahiya doctrine – Gadi Eisenkot, head of the army’s northern division, a plan for the massacre and destruction determined in 2006 after the Israeli war in Lebanon.
When the Dahiya district of Beirut was demolished with a sharp 34-day bombardment, Eisenkot said: “What happened in the Dahiya district of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every town where Israel is firing … From our point of view, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.”
In other words, the entire military population of Gaza, including the child of the day, is a legitimate military target for Israel.
The ultimate goal of the Israelis is to desert the Palestinians, to renounce their resistance, any claim to any land. As former Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said in 2002, the victory of the Israeli army would be “tremendous”[ing] to the Palestinian and Arab consciousness that “” terrorism and violence (read: resistance) will not defeat us “.
As with previous massacres, this time Israel and the Palestinians – the oppressor and the oppressed – are equated as “two sides of the conflict” and what is legal resistance under international law is placed on the same level as a savage illegal occupation. US President Joe Biden says apartheid Israel has a right to defend itself. That Israel has a real army, that it has unrestricted firepower and an occupier, is excluded as usual, as well as a significant difference in the number of dead. Biden, Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel and other Western leaders and their “domestic Arabs” are not able to see the humanity of the Palestinians.
Despite all the evidence, they deny recognition that it is an occupation, initiated by a colonial-colonial power that seeks to ethnically cleanse an entire indigenous population in order to consolidate and legitimize its colony. What is happening in Gaza is an incremental genocide, not a “security operation”. And yet, if the Palestinians give up in the face of a slow death, die without purpose, show no rebellion, and accept resistance if they kill, it is their fault.
The question in the minds of Palestinians is: Why is this allowed to happen, 27 years after the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa? We know why Israel does it – we are unwanted goyim, refugees reminiscent of the original sin committed in 1948, a premeditated crime of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. It should be noted that two-thirds of Gaza’s residents are refugees with the right to return as provided for in UN General Assembly Resolution 194.
In Gaza, we know that Israel will flee simply because it has been responsible for the massacres it has never committed. We know he will commit more and worse crimes. The United Nations, the European Union, the Arab League, the so-called “international community” in general, have failed the Palestinian people and will continue to do so.
The question is: what should those who love freedom see in terms of death and destruction in order to turn their words of help into action? What more than the bodies of hundreds of Palestinian children? A child, whether Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, or of another religion, should not see what Palestinian children are seeing right now.
The Palestinians will no longer accept the orders of the so-called “international community” that supports Israel and continues to cover up war crimes. In the light of the great sacrifices made by our people, to speak of improving the conditions of our oppression is a betrayal of Palestinian victims of Israeli war crimes.
We don’t want little. We want to return to our lands and live in them with full rights under international law.
It is the ethical responsibility of every person who believes in freedom for all to prevent genocide and apartheid from happening again.
That is why we now say that the Boycott, Divestment and Punishments against Israel are not only the responsibility of civil society organizations, but also the responsibility of each person. This is what we can all do. We can boycott Israeli goods and Israeli institutions, move away from Israeli business and demand sanctions from the Israeli government.
If we do it together and in solidarity, only then will Israel begin to reconsider what it has done to the Palestinians.
Gaza could be the spark that starts a different Palestine between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean in the heart of the Middle East. The current uprising in the West Bank and Israeli Palestinian countries could be the end of a racist solution for both states and the birth of a new feature of the establishment of a secular democratic state in the Palestinian territory, an inclusive state. Like South Africa.
Be it the Gaza war in 2009 like the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in South Africa, when white apartheid police fired on unarmed black protesters and overthrew the apartheid movement. May the massacre in Gaza in 2021 be the beginning of a new, more democratic Middle East, with a secular and democratic Palestinian state that treats all citizens equally, regardless of religion, race and gender.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the attitude of the Al Jazeera editorial.
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