Opinion

A twilight of reckoning

August 23, 2017
A twilight of reckoning

Tariq A. Al-Maeena

Every day, Palestinian civilians are being murdered in cold blood by the ruthless and heavily armed Israeli forces operating in occupied Palestine. Coupled with the viciousness of the armed Israeli settlers who have illegally encroached on Palestinian lands, the situation is beyond dire. It is a holocaust of some proportions as ethnic cleansing is in full swing under the patronage of Benjamin Netanyahu, who will undoubtedly one day be charged with having committed crimes against humanity. And yet, the world watches in silence.

Along with thousands of illegal settlers, Netanyahu is calculatedly following the game plan set by his mentor Ariel Sharon, a former Israeli prime minister who once said in a recorded interview: “I don’t know something called International Principles. I vow that I’ll burn every Palestinian child (that) will be born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child are more dangerous than the man, because the Palestinian child’s existence infers that generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger. I vow that if I was just an Israeli civilian and I met a Palestinian I would burn him and I would make him suffer before killing him. With one hit I’ve killed 750 Palestinians in Rafah in 1956.”

Israeli brutality has reached its peak in recent years with the uncensured daily murders of Palestinian civilians. Crimes against women and children have reached unprecedented levels. In a span of three days, Israeli Occupation Forces shot a 13-year-old Palestinian girl because she “wouldn’t stop.” They then tried to cover up the documented video clip by falsely claiming that she was attempting an attack, when in reality she was on her way to her friend’s house.

The next day, Israeli occupation forces beat, and then kidnapped a Palestinian girl near the illegal Israeli Jewish settlement of Itmar, south of the West Bank city of Nablus. According to eyewitnesses, Israeli occupation forces called on the girl from a distance of about 50 meters and asked her to raise her hands and sit down. The girl obeyed the order and did all that she was ordered to do by the heavily armed and intimidating Israelis. They then approached the girl, beat her, blindfolded her and took her to an unknown place. In justifying their actions, the Israeli media reported that Israeli occupation army sources claimed that the girl was kidnapped because she had a knife with her. As has been their recent modus operandi, the Israeli forces failed to provide any proof that the girl was indeed carrying a knife.

Two Palestinian brothers, unarmed and on their way home, were accosted by the Israeli Occupation forces and shot. Mousa Khadour was killed, while his brother Raghad was seriously injured. Their other sibling Majd had been killed by the Israelis two months earlier.

Iyad Hamed was another unfortunate victim of Israeli terrorism. He was gunned down by Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Silwad. In the face of overwhelming evidence, the army was forced to admit that the victim had not, in fact, been a terrorist and was not carrying a weapon. Witnesses reported that he had lost his way, panicked when he saw the soldiers, and tried to run to safety, whereupon he was shot in the back. This was corroborated by medics who examined his wounds on the scene. What makes the case of Iyad Hamed tragically significant is that he had a mental disability. He was a simple-minded father who was on his way home from the store to deliver candy to his children, who themselves had special needs, before, as a witness stated, he was murdered and “the candies he bought for his children were mixed with his blood.”

Israeli Occupation forces executed four Palestinians in less than 24 hours, including one with Jordanian citizenship. Among the victims was a 15-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed Rugby who was the third victim executed in a terror swoop. The following day, an Israeli settler ran over and killed a six-year-old Palestinian girl with his car as she stood in front of her home.

Sabra, Shatila, and Jenin are not the only reminders of mass murder against the Palestinian population. Such atrocities continue unabated and unchecked today with sinister intentions. Such acts of calculated violence have not escaped the attention of those who have not been swayed by the propaganda of the Israeli government. A German diplomat was incensed and asked me angrily: “Have

Arabs lost their soul? Don’t they see what is going on in Gaza and the rest of Palestine today? The Nazis used similar tactics: terror, intimidation and finally murder. Today, the Israelis expect the world to apologize for those sins of long ago, while they brazenly keep committing similar ones.”

What is the rest of the world waiting for? For a time when there are no more Palestinians left? Have those hapless people reached the point of no return?

— The writer can be reached at talmaeena@aol.com; follow him on Twitter / @talmaeena


August 23, 2017
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