Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Gaza in my 'backyard'


I had enough reading nonsense concerning Israeli Zionist Regime’s continuous ground, sea and air assaults in the Gaza Strip by people like Kujie here. http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/95636

Like our MSM, there are many international media which, once again, become ‘mouthpiece’ to the inhumane regime – thanks to sponsorship and shareholding of sporadic, successful Zionists in these organisations. This resulted in many people thinking that such attacks are well justified in the name of self-defense and to make it even worse, certain quarters deem that these incessant bombings can stop Muslim terrorism.

They blame Hamas for ending the ceasefire when this regime had repeatedly violated the ceasefire long before 2008 through assassination raids on Hamas leaders and it self-imposed embargo on electricity, fuels, and many foods and medicines, denying basic human rights, into Gaza. Perhaps, you may want to read our Malaysian-born Dr. Ang Swee Chai’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem” to fully understand the plights of 1.5 million Palestinians within the walled Gaza City. This book is highly recommended for deep soul searching and it excellently tells one that this conflict, made worse by the Zionist regime, is not at all about religion fanatics. It is so bewildered that a group of people who highly think themselves as the followers of the book and better than others, treated too many innocence lives like animals.

My curiosity on this ongoing conflict got the better of me and I found an interesting site “Washington Report on Middle East Affairs” here, which chronicles how this conflict started.

1. Not all Jews are supporting these incessant attacks. Those involved are the cruel Zionists - a distinct minority of the Jewish people until after the WWII – desired to demand Israel, basing on extended kingdom of David and Solomon that ruled the land for 414 years, where “Jews could be masters of their own fate, given the bleak history of Jewish oppression;

2. Throughout the history, we can find that Jews were expelled, not only from Jerusalem when the Holy City was conquered by the Roman Empire, but also from a long list of sovereigns. Don’t you sense something amiss here?

3. Starting 1880s, the Zionists started to purchase lands in Palestine from the ‘fake’ landowners (a member of upper class of the society that was skilful at manipulating the law to their advantage) resulting in seizure of the lands and removal of the poor farmers. Sounds familiar?

4. Zionist societies like “Lover of Zion”, forerunner of Zionist organisation, tried convincing Jews all over the world to come back to Palestine, where they will rebuild the ancient Jewish Kingdom of David and Solomon. While some did, others fled to US and Europe.

5. British Army conquered Palestine in 1914, ending its Muslim rule. The Balfour Declaration, made in November 1917 by the British Government by 4 European Powers promised the Jews a non-European Jewish Homeland, disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory, in contrary to Anglo French Declaration promising the Arabs of the former Ottoman colonies their independence – all in the name of their commitments to Zionism and Zionism. Hence, it so relevant to blame and push US and European Nations to stop this conflict.

6. US was the most aggressive proponent to UN partition plan where Palestine will be divided a 3-state - one to Jewish, another to Arab and Jerusalem will be under UN. Harry Truman was quoted by saying, “I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents”.

7. But the Zionists were not happy with the small UN earmarked lands and they felt that they could only expand their state boundaries through war, at the expense of Palestinians. See how greedy they are?

8. The war began in December 1947, when the British announced that they would withdraw from Palestine by 15 May 1948. What started out as strikes against the partition by Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa grew into all-out war and 8 out of 13 major Zionist military attacks on Palestinian lands granted to the Arabs.

9. Before May 1948, with its might military preparation and organisation and before any possible intervention of Arab states, the regime occupied most of the Arab cities in Palestine. Massacres, expulsions and dispossessions were so rampant that the Arab armies started to intervene. Nonetheless, no cities within Israel state was attacked and occupied by the Arabs.

10. Ever since, the Zionist regime told the world they attacked in self-defence when in reality their offensive against Palestinians intensified. Publicly they all continued to speak of coexistence and to attribute the violence to a small minority of zealots and agitators. But this was merely a public posed as summed up by David Ben Gurion, the regime’s first PM: 'With compulsory transfer we would have a vast area for settlement. I don't see anything immoral in it”.

11. Israeli propaganda has largely relinquished the claim that the Palestinian exodus of 1948 was 'self-inspired'. Official circles implicitly concede that the Arab population fled because of atrocious Israeli action like the Deir Yassin massacre.

12. Ben-Gurion's ultimate aim was to evacuate as much of the Arab population as possible from the Jewish state can hardly be doubted, if only from the variety of means he employed to achieve his purpose, most decisively, the destruction of whole villages and the eviction of their inhabitants, even if they had not participated in the war and had stayed in Israel hoping to live in peace and equality, as promised in the Declaration of Independence.

13. During May 1948, ideas about how to consolidate and give permanence to the Palestinian exile began to crystallize, and the destruction of villages was immediately perceived as a primary means of achieving this aim.

14. The refusal to recognize the Palestinians' right to self-determination and statehood proved over the years to be the main source of the turbulence, violence, and bloodshed that came to pass.

15. The winter of 1949, the first winter of exile for more than seven hundred fifty thousand Palestinians, was cold and hard. Families huddled in caves, abandoned huts, or makeshift tents. Many of the starving was only miles away from their own vegetable gardens and orchards in occupied Palestine - the new state of Israel. At the end of 1949 the United Nations finally acted. It set up the United Nations Relief and Works Administration (UNRWA) to take over 60 refugee camps from voluntary agencies. It managed to keep people alive, but only barely.

The article also address about terrorism as we hear a lot about Palestinian terrorism, so how about the Zionist Regime’s record? Sadly, Israeli terrorism goes back to the origins of the state in the countless acts of massacre and brutal expulsion of Arabs from their lands.

Israel, a state built on conquest, that it has invaded surrounding countries, bombed and destroyed at will, to the fact that it currently occupies Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian territory against international law—is simply never cited, never subjected to scrutiny in the U.S. media or in official discourse or ‘punished’ by embargo and never it was addressed as playing any role at all in provoking 'Islamic terror.'

While Kuji’s take on the attacks is plainly inhumane and ignorant, I found my 2 heroes – Gologan Kiri’s “Gaza has every reason to retaliate” and MZH’s “Israeli army the Mid-East's greatest terror agent”.

Today, like any other day, I pray for humanity to prevail. May all this misery comes to an end – soon. God speed!


“A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair – Abraham Joshua Heschel”

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