The concept or definition of self-defence of Israel is entirely different from that of Palestine. The leaders of America and the West have the same say in the context and question of the defence of Israel. According to the USA Secretary of State – Blinken, America will always be on the side of Israel even though Israel has become strong enough to defend itself (CNN, October 12, 2023). But what about the defence of the poorest, prisoned, colonised, and the most over-crowded vulnerable people of the world? Blinken adds that America will defend Israel against these Palestinian people (in the present context of the Israel-Palestinian conflict) as long as America exists. Does not it look as if Israel is a part of America? Nuclear weapon state Israel alone is capable of its own protection against all the Middle Eastern countries while in fact, Palestinians need only food, pure water, electricity, gas, education, and minimum security for living without being bombed in the hospitals, markets, and mosques.
Palestinians never demand anti-missile tanks or nuclear weapons from the world; they just want to get rid of being interrogated, harassed and tortured every day in their own homes day and night by the Israeli occupants. Cannot the American and Western leaders refrain Israel from disrupting and destroying these basic necessities of the poor Palestinians? Will it be wrong to say that America and the West are the worst collaborators of these mayhems done by Israel year after year? Israel is heavily teemed, equipped and gifted with more and more weapons by America and the West while the same countries are consistently denying and depriving the minimum human rights of the Palestinians by blockading, then raiding and bombing and next starving to death. Is there any novelty in this information?
We have also learnt the discourse of democracy from the American President, Mr Joe Biden whose democracy goes along with Israel which has been continuously murdering people, occupying the colonized people’s lands, housing the illegal settlers on their property, deporting people from their own country, burning the houses of the innocent residents and shelling and killing the colonized for the last seven decades. Mr President also informs that they are acting according to the act of law (The Times of Israel, October 18, 2023). Act of law indeed! This is the law of Israel, and the world is familiar with this law being used to demonise, dehumanise and deport a population of around 14 million in number over the years. There is nothing new in these speeches of the American and Western leaders. Do we have to learn the Israeli version of law and democracy anew! Israel and its allies exercise the same democracy and law in this context and they have always been identical to the people of the world like Palestinians.
Self-defence of Israel means stopping giving electricity, fuel, gas, food, water and medicine to the children, old, injured and common people of Palestine? Palestinian people have no right to live as they, according to the Israeli defence minister, are ‘human animals’ (HuffPost, October 2023). This is how America and the West have given Israel the right to do whatever they desire. It is surprising that these countries make sure the right of every citizen to be preserved irrespective of race and colour inside their own countries but they are totally blind to the racist, colonial, fascist and aggressive atrocities of Israel. Rather, they are supportive in every action of this apartheid state. Israel and its allies have entirely proved themselves to be morally paralyzed on the issues of Palestine and the world has legal and reasonable reasons to challenge them.
Does Israeli self-defence mean anything else than blasting and flattening the hospitals, houses, schools and killing the blameless? Can you remember a man named Baruch Goldstein who killed 29 (of them several were 12 years old) Muslims praying Taraweeh in the month of Ramadan in 1994? Before killing, he poured acid under the carpet of the mosque; he, despite being a doctor in the IDF, did not treat the Arabs, and he even wrote in the New York Times to remove the Arabs from within the border of Israel. He was a settler from America, who was never reigned nor punished for his atrocities by the Israeli government before the killing. After massacring 29 people, he was declared a hero by many of his followers. And do you know how the Muslims were rewarded? Muslims in Hebron were punished by reducing their access space to forty percent by giving the rest sixty percent to the Jews. This is the typical example of Israeli self-defence.
In May 2021, Israel prolonged its bombardment and destruction on Gaza for 11 days in the month of Ramadan by killing 261 people, let alone the numbers of the injured and the devastation of the households and properties. In every Ramadan of the year, the Muslims are tear-gassed, tortured, humiliated and barred from praying in the Al Aqsa Mosque. It seems that Israeli atrocities get wider in the religious month of the Palestinians.
Is it not true that self-defence for Israel means there is no value for the blood, body and lives of the Palestinian people? When Israel kills Palestinians every day on average irrespective of the pregnant women, babies, children and old by occupying more than 93% of its land (Middle East Forum, December. 1997), the American and Western aids are never shrunk for Israel as it is their right of self-defence. This is the idea of self-protection of the Israeli, American, French, British, Canada and German leaders. In contrast, the European Union has stopped the aids to the Palestinians. The same European countries like Britain and Germany are supplying military equipments to Israel.
Can you see how America is advocating and supporting the self-defence of Israel? They have sent two biggest aircraft carriers with many fighter jets, arms, ammunitions and five thousand soldiers to back up Israel. Not the last but the least, America has also sent its Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin to scare the Muslim governments and warn them not to be involved in defending the Palestinians being starved, bombed, prisoned and then killed by the Israeli army.
Israel, since its occupation, has used the same tactics of making the lives of Palestinians unbearable by killing, removing, torturing, prisoning and blocking the daily necessities so that the people become bound to relocate by themselves anywhere outside Palestine. This is the most common practice of the terror state Israel to oust the Palestinians from their motherland throughout the years since 1948. Violation, coercion and oppression are the only weapons Israel has had. And now Biden’s American envoys confirm that only a military solution will be the best option to eradicate Hamas instead of any diplomatic solution. It means the American government is legalising more killing, more bombing leading to erase the map of the remains of the remaining Palestine from the earth.
As to crime like violence and terrorism, America and its allies have voiced that the people of Israel are suffering unspeakable losses (Al Jazeera, October 10, 2023). So, Israel, as reported by them, is just responding to the crime of Hamas, indicating that Israel cannot commit any crime. On the contrary Hamas, to them, is a terrorist organization. But do you know what did they say to PLO before the birth of Hamas? They also called them terrorist because they formed resistance movement against the occupier Israel. So, yesterday it was PLO, now Hamas, and tomorrow anyone challenging the colonizer will be tagged as terrorist by Israel and its collaborators.
We do not know how America and the West could be trusted? Did they not help Israel to exile 750,000 (7.5 million) Palestinians permanently from their own ancestral home and land just in two years? Have America and the West taken any steps against this forced mass exodus of deportation of the children, women and old? Were these 7.5 million people terrorists? Hamas was not born then. Conversely, Israel is rewarded with money, arms, legislation, diplomacy in every way. Even America is said to compel many countries to support and establish diplomatic relations with Israel by using its power of sanction.
Notice that Israel and its allies blame Hamas for killing the people of Israel. Then how come that only Hamas is not told to leave or surrender or evacuate? Who, including Hamas, are predominantly told to evacuate? All the Palestinians including babies, children, women, old and the injured. Are the babies and children terrorists? Are the pregnant, disabled and old terrorists? The truth is that these very people are the worst victims as they cannot save themselves from the war easily. This narrow ploy of Israel is nothing new. It has no change at all; it has always been the same. It has been committing these atrocities repeatedly against the civilian population since the day it occupied the holy land. Nowadays, they have intensified their cruelty, aggression and oppression. What is the justification of this self-defence by massacring these vulnerable people and homeless civilians sheltered in schools, missions, hospitals, mosques and churches? Oh! This is the right of self-defence of Israel, isn’t it?
Israel, only by America, has been given more than $264 billion dollars (Al Jazeera, October 11, 2023) for its military and economic development. In addition, there are continuous forms of supports from Britain, France, Germany, Norway, Australia, the European Union, Canada, some middle eastern countries and so on. The world’s richest countries have been giving so much financial, military and moral provisions to Israel that it has now grown richer than many of its backers. Contrarily, Palestinians’ land is occupied, business is restricted, economy is destroyed, investment is barred, education is circumscribed, communication is controlled, movement is delimited and their aid is often cut. Even they are too poor to drink pure water. They are made poorer by the richest countries on purpose. On one side, America and the West have built up Israel as a country with one of the most powerful economy, world-strongest military force and highest technology. But then, Palestinians are forced to be homeless beggars and refugees: a nation without any state, dignity, right, power and freedom. Even their minimum right of living and resistance are denied by America, the West and their allies.
Almost in every conflict, Israel, by terrorizing and then ordering the natives to evacuate from their own land, has seized the Palestinian property. The coloniser, this way, has extended and established building after building for the settlers illegally. Do you have any idea of any population who are refugees and prisoned in their own country? Yes. It is in Palestine. And this has been the law, justice and democracy of Israeli, American and Western leaders since the middle of the 20th century. Now, the Israeli plot is clear and conspicuous: to erase the name of Palestine from the earth. How can you know?
The Israeli prime minister vows and reiterates to “change the Middle East” (Reuters, October 9, 2023). Not Palestine but the Middle East. Do the leaders of the Arab countries know what he implied? His plan is to occupy Gaza by pushing and relocating all its people either to the west bank for a short time or some other Arab countries for ever. By destroying any resistance movement led by Hamas or any other organisation, Israel wants a puppet Abbas-led government who will be overthrown later at a convenient time under the pretext of some terrorist activities projected and completed by IDF. After that, it will occupy the land of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Türkiye bit by bit.
(Mr Haque is a freelance writer and critic.)
(This article was first published in Amaresh on 19 October 2023 at 15:20)
Reference and Bibliography:
Antony Blinken pledges US will never falter from supporting Israel as he likens Hamas’ crimes to ISIS | CNN Politics, October 12, 2023
⦁ HuffPost UK
Biden’s speech: Hamas unleashed evil; we’ll ensure Israel has what it needs to respond | The Times of Israel, OCTOBER 18, 2023
Middle EAst forum
⦁ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/11/how-big-is-israels-military-and-how-much-funding-does-it-get-from-the-us
⦁ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/netanyahu-says-israels-response-gaza-attack-will-change-middle-east-2023-10-09/
⦁ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/10/biden-pledges-military-aid-political-support-for-israel-amid-gaza-war
h⦁ ttps://amardesh.co.uk/post-editorial/details/3127?fbclid=IwAR0-iB-2_4A2Icv_GpIUFY155U5zf7XYGy3⦁ 7⦁ gAFkSwHuM9D7MAkln2RTjf4
Picture Courtesy:
⦁ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/18/what-has-been-us-president-bidens-stance-on-israel-gaza-war-so-far
⦁ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/10/16/israel-hamas-war-live-iran-warns-resistance-front-may-attack
