The Erasure Of Palestine

The Erasure Of Palestine

A small part of my heart breaks every day as news about the genocidal violence of the Israeli Defence Force against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank gets more gruesome. There's no doubt about it: the goal is to wipe the Palestinian people off the map, and our Western governments are complicit.

_{source: YouTube}

I'll tell you a little bit about myself. I'm the son of a father who grew up in a colony of The Netherlands, Suriname, where I was also born. He therefore always had powerful feelings about any oppressed people in the world. He and my mother took me and my sister to The Netherlands when I was three years old, and I remember well growing up in their house. The attic in that house was somewhat of a playground to me, and it was where I got my first sense of political awakening; going up the staircase into the attic one was greeted with the world-famous poster of Che Guevara, with next to it a poster of a soldier dropping dead after being shot in the back, with the question "Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" There was also a black and white poster of Yasser Arafat hanging there...

I'm more than 50 years old now, and now you know why I've been concerned with the plight of the Palestinian people from a young age, and why I've never taken for granted any news or teachings even about that region of the world. If you've read my previous post, you also know why no one should take Western news about the Israel-Palestine conflict at face value, or about any conflict for that matter. The phrase "the victors write history" doesn't only apply afterward; it's written as the conflict goes on. The October 7 attacks by Hamas are always described as "atrocious", "horrible", and "inhuman" terrorist attacks. Anyone who dares speak for the Palestinians has first to condemn the attacks and Hamas a thousand times. In contrast, the genocidal behavior by the Israelis is described as an "unfortunate" consequence of their "right", nay "duty" to defend themselves, and the cowardice of Hamas, who use "human shields"...

The human shield accusation has been used for decades now. The only problem is it's never been proven. Where's the proof that Gazan hospitals, schools, and homes are used as cover for Hamas strongholds? Now, the Wikipedia article says that there is proof of Hamas using human shields, but even Wikipedia isn't always right. My problem with all the so-called evidence of this practice is found in the last paragraph of the article:

Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini argue that whether civilians are framed as "human shields" by virtue of their physical proximity to belligerents ("proximate shields"), depends largely on whether the belligerents in question are military or irregulars: "Israeli citizens in Tel Aviv are not classified as shields when Hamas launches rockets towards the Israel Defense Forces military command headquarters located in the city center. By sharp contrast, Palestinian civilians are cast as human shields when Israel bombs Hamas command centers and military infrastructures in Gaza. In other words, if Hamas kills Israeli civilians, it is to blame, and if Israel kills Palestinian civilians, then Hamas is also to blame, since, at least ostensibly, it is Hamas that has deployed these civilians as shields."
_{source: Wikipedia}

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also said that there's no evidence of Hamas using human shields in previous conflicts, for example:

Amnesty International investigated claims made by Israel in the 2008–2009 Gaza War and the 2014 Gaza War that Hamas employed human shields, but found no evidence of such usage. In their report on the 2008-2009 war, Amnesty said that "contrary to repeated allegations by Israeli officials" that it had found no evidence of Hamas directing civilians to shield military assets or that it had forced civilians to remain in or near buildings used by fighters. Amnesty found that Hamas has launched rockets from near civilian locations, which it said endangered civilians and amounted to a violation of the requirement that Hamas take all necessary precautions to protect civilians from military action, but that this does not constitute shielding under international law.[9] Human Rights Watch also said they found no evidence that Hamas had used human shields in the conflict.[10] In 2014, Amnesty said, regarding repeated allegations by Israel of Hamas using civilians as human shields, that it "does not have evidence at this point that Palestinian civilians have been intentionally used by Hamas or Palestinian armed groups during the current hostilities to 'shield' specific locations or military personnel or equipment from Israeli attacks."
_{source: Wikipedia}

This accusation is bogus and conjures up images of a vile criminal hiding behind an innocent bystander, threatening to kill her in an attempt to escape from the police, as seen in so many movies. This is all part of a concerted effort to paint Palestinians as less than human. With the accusation of using human shields by Hamas comes the assertion they do this to protect themselves from Israeli fire and abuse Israel's efforts to minimize civilian casualties... Who still believes this? Their genocidal intent is clear for anyone to see, and they don't make a distinction between Hamas and Palestinian citizens. If you're still in doubt, watch this short clip of IDF soldiers chanting "We know our slogan: there are no uninvolved civilians":

_{Israeli soldiers cheering and chanting “to occupy Gaza”}

They also invoke Amalek, again, indicating that every man, woman, and child is their mortal enemy who needs to be eradicated.

The official death toll, or as official as we can get in this apocalyptic mess, stands at just over 17,000, the majority of which are women and children. Some will say that 17,000 out of 2.3 million a genocide does not make. That's wrong, obviously (look up the definition of the word), but it's not only the murdering and displacing of the Palestinians. It's the targeted attacks against journalists, artists, writers, archives and bibliotheques. One facility with Palestinian writings, among which were land deeds, some more than 100 years old, was demolished by bombing. Historical sites were flattened. There are videos from the West Bank as well where shrines and statues of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian reporter who was murdered in a previous conflict are bulldozed by fanatical Israeli settlers. They are wiping the Palestinian people off the map, their past, their present, and their future.

I'll close by sharing this Al Jazeera interview with a former Israeli army general on civilian deaths in Gaza. If you can stomach it...

_{Former Israeli army general on civilian deaths in Gaza | UpFront}

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