05/01/07
Khalid Amayreh
Israeli Knesset Speaker and Acting President Dalia Itzik (President Moshe Katsav has been suspended for allegedly committing sexual crimes) on Monday urged Palestinians to "trade your Qassams for computers."
"Our advice to you is replace your Katyoushas and Qassams with computers and loving education," Itzik said during a speech marking Israel's Independence Day.
"The citizens of Iran, Syria and the Palestinian Authority should think twice about why they are so thirsty for battles and blood. Isn't the blood that you have already spilled enough?" she added.
Well, it is manifestly clear that Itzik's remarks are void of even an iota of truth and honesty. Their mendacity and brazen hypocrisy cry out to the seventh heaven.
Indeed, urging Palestinians to trade their Qassams, the primitive, ineffectual home-made projectiles, for computers, and appealing to them to stop bloodshed would have made sense had it come from a decent and peaceable state that respects human rights and observes the rule of international law.
But coming from Israel, the international pariah and perpetual violator of international law, Izik's homily can be compared to a veteran whore exhorting others to celebrate her chastity.
Well, who is occupying whose land? Who is murdering whose children? Who is demolishing whose homes? Who is narrowing whose horizons? Who is stealing whose land? And who is barring whom from accessing food and work?
More importantly, who has been committing a slow-motion genocide against whom? There are thousands of other questions that Itzik should have answered before indulging in this verbal fornication.
One doesn't need to be a great specialist in the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict to detect the shocking mendacity of Itzik's remarks.
According to "The Middle East Military Balance," edited by Shai Feldman and Yiftah Shapir (2004), the Israeli army is composed of a total of 631,000 soldiers, has as many as 798 combat aircrafts and more than 3930 battle tanks and thousands of armored personnel carriers.
Moreover, it is believed that Israel has as many as 250 attack helicopters, 4500 artillery pieces as well as a huge arsenal of biological and chemical weapons.
This is, of course, in addition to Israel's nuclear arsenal of 280-320 nuclear bombs and warheads and their delivery systems, which are trained toward Major Muslim cities in the Middle East.
As to the Palestinians, let us examine their "armed forces" and see if an arms reduction on their part is warranted. Their army is made up of hundreds of thousands of impoverished and miserable souls struggling to make ends meet, especially after the criminal siege imposed by Israel and her western allies following the January, 2006 elections in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In addition, the Palestinians have striking special forces made up of thousands of orphans and maimed children and youths targeted by Israeli apache helicopters and F-16 fighters since 2000.
And, of course, there are tens of thousands of starving families whose children are made to starve and go hungry because Israel is withholding their salaries to punish the Palestinian people for electing the "wrong" people.
As to the bloodshed, nothing can be further from truth.
According to the Israeli National Insurance Institute, the number of Israeli civilians killed in hostile action since Israel's creation in 1948 is 1635. (see Ha'aretz, 22 April)
Well, compare this with the tens of thousands (or more) of Palestinians and Arabs murdered mercilessly by Zionism since Israel's misbegotten birth nearly sixty years ago.
Since the beginning of the Intifada in 2000, the Israeli army and paramilitary Jewish terrorists have killed more than 5140 Palestinians, one fourth of them children and minors.
In addition, it is believed that over 35,000 Palestinians have been injured or seriously maimed by an army that views its victims as children of a lesser God whose lives are expendable and whose blood is less red than the blood of Jews.
So, once again, who is shedding whose blood? Indeed, merely 48 hours before Itzik gave her mendacious and dishonest speech, Israeli death squads murdered 9 Palestinians, not in Tel Aviv or West Jerusalem, but in their own homes, streets and neighborhoods in the West Bank.
One of the victims of this latest outrage is Bushra Berjis, a 17-year-old student who was hit right in the head by a bullet fired by the indifferent hands of an Israeli soldier while sitting down in her room revising for her final school exams in her home in the Jenin refugee camp.
I don't want to make Zionist-Nazi analogies, but I do want to ask the following questions: Where are the conscientious Jews to protest this outrage? What happened to their honesty and rectitude? Has Zionism killed both their humanity and honesty?
It is indeed lamentable that instead of urging her people to walk in the path of peace and stop killing and oppressing the already thoroughly tormented Palestinians and stealing their land and narrowing their horizons, Itzik chose to indulge in wanton lies as if lies are Israel's oxygen.
It is also especially sad that Itzik's outrageous speech went unanswered and unchallenged, neither by Israeli officials, nor by the Israeli intellectual community, nor, indeed, by the Israeli media.
This shows that the Israeli society is still suffering from a collective psychosis, a serious moral morbidity that needs a long time to heal.
-###-
No comments:
Post a Comment