The Israeli war on Gaza is the hot topic at the moment. It’s everywhere; in random chats, on TV, in the papers, in blogs, in the background of every daily activity of anyone who has seen the pictures of the bloodshed in Gaza.
A lot of what is being said about the situation is emotional. That’s understandable. It’s hard to restrain your emotions when you see your people being maimed by Israeli bombs, dismembered in the streets and killed in mosques, and when you hear the aggressive occupiers dismissing their crimes as if they were nothing. The damage does not stop at the physical destruction in Gaza, but is carved deep in the minds of everyone who sees it: this lust for blood which our “neighbor” periodically displays both frightens and angers us. The international official silence and our leaders’ utter failure to act burns deeper still.
How can you not be emotional when you experience all the shame and shock in the world; shame because you are part of the problem, and shock because the world is not doing anything to solve it?
For years we have prayed, we have quoted Quranic verses promising us victory or preaching Armageddon as endgame, we have bought the lie our leaders told us that “peace is the only option” and forgot that we are in no position to negotiate, we have signed peace treaties and have kept mum when Israel did not keep its part of the deal, we have shut our eyes blind to the glaringly unbalanced clauses in these treaties, we have let the dream of peace take over the reality of what’s happening on the ground. That’s how bad we wanted this 60-year-old nightmare to end.
“Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts.”
- Nelson Mandela
No matter what treaties we have with Israel, we should never lose sight of the fact that Palestinians are our priority. They are our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, our people. Western, primarily American, media bias in favor of Israel should not make us forget that Gaza has been under siege for about two years, during which the people in Gaza (Hamas and everyone else) were starved, humiliated, isolated from the outside world, and asked to die silently. Isn’t Israel’s request for the rockets to stop a plea for Palestinians to shut up and die silently? Do Israeli children live in a greater degree of fear from Hamas rockets than Palestinians children do with no access to healthy food, electricity, good education, or contact with the outside world, while being threatened with death, and now literally facing it?
“While firing rockets at civilians is a crime so, too, is the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which is an egregious violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions.
According to the UN, most of Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinian refugees subsist near the edge of hunger. Seventy per cent of Palestinian children in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition and psychological trauma.
Medical facilities are critically short of doctors, personnel, equipment, and drugs. Gaza has quite literally become a human garbage dump for all the Arabs that Israel does not want.
Gaza is one of the world’s most-densely populated places, a vast outdoor prison camp filled with desperate people. In the past, they threw stones at their Israeli occupiers; now they launch home-made rockets.
Call it a prison riot, writ large.”
For years we have pretended that the Palestinian people can solve their problem with Israel on their own. We chose to ignore that it is our problem too. We chose to pursue peace individually as separate states and left Palestine under Israeli mercy. We chose to buy defeatist peace rhetoric so we can clear our conscience and live our lives normally while the people next door were being humiliated at every checkpoint. We chose to abandon Palestine, and the onus is on us to wash this shame away.
Change starts right now. It simply cannot come from others to change the situation in Gaza and Palestine, it has to come from us. We are as responsible as Israel for the bloodshed in Gaza, because we let it happen. Praying and lighting candles do nothing, sending aid and donating blood do more but not much in any account, and clinging to blissful defeatism is the worst danger of all.
It’s about time we thought long and hard of what we are doing to alleviate the pain in Palestine. Our roles as classic sympathizers, eager aid-senders, chatty case-defenders, religious doom-preachers, liberal peace-advocates have all proved to be futile in the face of organized, US-backed, propagandist Israeli actions.
When the frustrated people took to the streets in Arab capitals, their governments listened. Their demonstrations were not interrupted. Nobody was prevented from expressing their opinions. This spontaneous anger must turn into organized action to stop Israeli atrocities in Palestine and it must teach us a lesson: our governments have ears, we just need to shout loud enough, maybe squeeze them a little, to get results.
Change starts from within. Our governments must cooperate to exercise leverage on Israel and its supporters, because individually, none of our Arab countries can affect any mentionable pressure. Far from it being a call for unity, a dream long abandoned, it is a call to practice group work for once. It is a simple demand to translate the attitudes of Arab people into collaborative action by their governments. If our governments fail, yet again, to represent us and to speak in our name, the contract that binds us with them, if any other than fear, must be annulled. After all, a monkey can impose taxes if trained.
Take concrete steps today to tell your government that you are not pleased with its reaction to the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Form a group to protest official silence over the attacks, in whatever country you live. Email biased media outlets and back your argument with valid evidence. Abandon facebook groups that exploit your justified anger just to boast of large membership numbers. Do something.
Once again, the onus is on us to affect change in our attitude to the Palestinians question, and to make our leaders acknowledge and act upon it. They should understand that we have had enough of them being toyed with by puppet masters and paid big money to sit on the fence, and that for once, we are ready to avenge our true honor and wash the shame away.
Hi. I am a long time reader. I wanted to say that I like your blog and the layout.
Peter Quinn
[...] 5, 2009 by laylatoot If you must pluck one post from the tidal wave of opinions on Gaza, let it be this one, by [...]
I’m glad you’re back. And congratulations on writing one of the few things regarding this current conflict that I actually agree with 85% of.
Isn’t the problem more so with the people’s thoughts rather than the governments’ inaction ? isn’t part of the problem people’s detachment from reality and escapism in the scripts of divine revelation ?
I admire the fact that what you wrote has a beneficial echo, which is focus on your immediate society hopping that it will ripple through to others as well (i know that’s not what you meant)
I really don’t have anything to add to this opinion but let me instead quote something that bambam had said above that caught my attention.
Quote***
Isn’t the problem more so with the people’s thoughts rather than the governments’ inaction ? isn’t part of the problem people’s detachment from reality and escapism in the scripts of divine revelation ?
End Quote***
[...] in the attacks on Gaza. Qwaider writes critically about the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, while Tololy urges Jordanians and Arabs in general to shoulder their responsibility toward Palestinians. More [...]
“Change starts from within. Our governments must cooperate to exercise leverage on Israel and its supporters, because individually, none of our Arab countries can affect any mentionable pressure”
Your government are more threatened by Hamas than Israel is… Don’t you get it?
As for your so-called negotiations and peace-making. GIVE US A BREAK! In 2000 Ehud Barak offered 100% of Gaza (which is now in Arab control anyways), 97% of Judea&Samaria, Control over East Jerusalem and 3% of Israel proper to make up for permanent towns and cities in Judea. ARAFAT NOT ONLY REJECTED THIS DEAL – HE ENDED NEGOTIATIONS RIGHT THERE and went to plan THE SECOND INTIFADAH (Bargouti has admitted this, as have many architects of this so-called “spontaneous action”…AS IF Ariel Sharon isn’t allow to visit one of Judaism holy sites!? THe Temple MOunt is where Abraham circumcized Isaac, yet Jews have to fear to be here… IN ISRAEL! It’s comical!)
THIS CONFLICT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH LAND AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH QURAN INSPIRED CALLS TO BRINGING AL THAT IS DAR AL HARAB INTO THE FOLD OF ISLAM (The abode of War, the Abode of Islam, it’s in your Koran, look it up). If this was about land then why does every single Israeli concession lead to increased deaths?
Israel left all of Lebanon? The result: Hezbollah moved to areas previously held by the IDF and used them to invade Israel and then launch thousands of rockets… WHO IS PROTESTING THE IRANIAN OCCUPATION OF LEBANON?! WHO IS PROTESTING AGAINST HEZBOLLAH? EXACTLY WHAT ARE THEY FIGHTING FOR? Lebanon never belonged to Iran, the Shebba Farms never belonged to neither Lebanon nor Iran (it was lost by SYRIA, after it attacked Israel and lost the war).
Israel leaves Gaza and 5000 rockets are launched
Israel resurrects an all but irrelevant ARafat with Oslo (remember, the guy was living it up in his Tunisian Mansion, he wasn’t even relevant any more) and what does it get? ROCKS TURN TO GUNS WHICH TURN INTO SUICIDE BOMBS. Israel had no obligation to enter talks, they could have maintained the 1st intifadah for 5000 years. Israel had successfully defended itself from its Arab neighbours, it had won the lands after its neighbours tried to destroy it, WHY SHOULD THE WINNER MAKE A CONCESSION TO THE INSTIGATOR AND LOSER?! It did so because it is a moral nation.
The fact of the matter is that THESE NEGOTIATIONS ARE WHAT CAUSED THE INCREASE IN ARAB VIOLENCE – Suicide bombings started AFTER the negotiations, so did the non-stop rocket fire and gunmen.
So as the Arab world looks for a scapegoat it looks to the big bad hook nosed Jew. Lest we forget, 60 years ago the Jews were the ones outgunned, outnumbered – with no USA to back them (while the Arabs had Russia as a sponsor very early on). They introspected, they built, and today they are a productive, pluralistic democracy. Instead of looking to their neighbours as the source of their woes, they got their house in order first. This is something the Arabs need a lesson in! While the Arabs look to Israel, they are subjecated, persecuted and brainwashed by their leadership. In Gaza, 3 year olds long for Shehade, this has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with your television, your schools, your culture and your leadership.
LEST WE FORGET: The Arabs control 99% of the Middle East. They too benefitted from newly created countries built atop the remains of the Ottoman Empire. Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia are all new nations – yet we don’t question their right to exist. Israel sits on 23% of British Mandate Palestine (Which was NEVER EVER an Arab country), Jordan takes up the majority (about 73%) with the rest being Gaza & a small part of Syria (look it up, history didn’t start in 1948, it goes back to the fall of the ottomans).
wingless,,,,are you trying to tell us that the color of the skies are green,,the question that has to be answered, who is occupying who?,who terrorising who ?.
Since the arrival of the Zionist gangs in Palestine ,the terror has gone unabated to ethnically cleanse us from our ancestral land,our historic Palestine.
This terror campaign by the Israeli terrorist army and before that the terrorists Zionist gangs has failed to erase us from our land and we will be here for eternity and we are not going anywhere soon ,get use to it wingless.
Well, your plan is better than just a bunch of “blah blah blah” from a bunch of fat and lazy beaurocrats who just incite hatred for no particular reason except they’d rather their people hated somebody else, and not them! I wish you luck with it :)
Since the arrival of the Zionist gangs in Palestine ,the terror has gone unabated to ethnically cleanse us from our ancestral land,our historic Palestine.
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Ethnically cleanse? Get a dictionary for your use of the word insults real victims of ethnic cleansing. You have not lost 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of your population – how DARE YOU claim ethnic cleansing. If Israel was interested in that, they could do it in a fortnight – as in 100% of you gone… It does not do this though. Who among us can say that an Arab state being in the same position would not annihalate the weaker enemy?
As for your ‘historic Palestine’ – get it through your head – it isn’t an Arab country, has NEVER been an Arab country and if your leaders keep up their shaninigans will NEVER be an Arab country. You have benefitted from the racist Ottoman Empire enough! You now control 99% of that land – the Arabs were given several new countries including (but not limited to) Syria, Jordan (they are the occupiers of “Arab Palestine”, they sit on 70% of it yet you want to fight with the people on 23% of it?!), Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. These were lands for ARABS, you my friend are an ARAB – you are ethnically, culturally and genetically identical to a Jordanian and a Syrian. That said: you already have homelands galore!
Lest we forget – all of Mandate Palestine was promised to the Jews in the Balfour Declaration. It would have gone to the Jews but the Hashemites lost the piece of land they were given originally (Herjaz, became Saudi Arabia) in a war with the House of Saud (became rulers of Saudi Arabia). After they lost this they cried to the Brits for ANOTHER DOMINION so the Brits gave them 70% of “Mandate Palestine”… That became the homeland of the Arab “Palestinians” (Arabs who lived in Mandate Palestine, it’s not a cultural or ethnic label), it is made up of 75-95% people and descendants of those who lived in Mandate Palestine. SO WHY ARE YOU NOT FIGHTING THE HASHEMITES? THey make up maybe 1-3% of Jordan and hold dominion over a land they have no historical basis in (they were just given leadership as reward for helping in defeating the Ottomans). Even Arafat realized this, of course we all know that Arab on Arab violence is far more gruesome and without mercy than Jew on Arab violence, in one month King Hussein killed more Arab civilians during peace time than Israel did in 50 years of war.
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This terror campaign by the Israeli terrorist army and before that the terrorists Zionist gangs has failed to erase us from our land and we will be here for eternity and we are not going anywhere soon ,get use to it wingless.
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Terrorist Zionists?
Do you even know what ZIonism is sir? It is simply the concept and practice of Jews returning to the land they or their ancestors were exiled from!
The history of the Holy Land repeats itself – Empire comes, Empire conquers, Empire persecutes, dhimmifies or outright exiles the Jews. However, a signifigant population was always able to remain and/or return shortly thereafter. (the joke they make about Jewish holidays is this; they are all the same: X conquered us, but G*d helped us survive…so let’s EAT!)
Jews are the only group that has maintained a constant prescence on the land. Roman, Assyrian, Byzantium, Macedonian, Greek, Persian and various other Empires recorded histories speak of a Jewish Holy Land. They speak of a Jewish majority, of Jewish customs and places. ARE THEY ALL LYING?! These are Empires with different languages, of different ethnicities, of different eras, yet they all talk of a Jewish land!
The Old Testament speaks of a Jewish Homeland
The New Testament speaks of a Jewish Jesus with Jewish Disciples walking throughout Jewish Israel (occupied by the Romans at the time)
Even the Koran is ABSOLUTELY CLEAR:
[5:20] Recall that Moses said to his people (the Jews), “O my people, remember GOD’s blessings upon you: He appointed prophets from among you, made you kings, and granted you what He never granted any other people.
[5:21] “O my people, enter the holy land (Israel) that GOD has decreed for you, and do not rebel, lest you become losers.”
As for the Koran – it never once mentions Jerusalem…NOT ONCE!
Yes, there was a very brief period where Muslims outnumbered Jews during and shortly after the Ottoman Empire. This is because the Ottoman’s heavily encouraged Islamic immigration (They were Islamic fundamentalists, their aim was to saturate the Middle East in Islam), they dhimmified Jews and exiled them through their ‘Surgun’ movements. Of course, as soon as the Ottoman Empire fell, the exiles and their descendants rushed back to the land. What you fail to understand is that Zionism is simply a return, it’s not a conquest, but a return of exiles and their descendants to the land that has been theirs for 5000 years.
BTW: A great number of these so-called “Zionists” were actually fervent ANTI-ZIONISTS! Approximately 1 MILLION JEWS WERE FORCIBLY EXILED FROM ARAB COUNTRIES IN 1948 (many of Jews of the Arab countries, who had been there for centuries, were not interested in Zionism or moving to Israel). Israel immediately absorbed them and called them ‘citizen’. That is why 60 years later, you do not hear of Jewish refugees (Arabs have somehow made refugeeism an inherited condition, as if you pass it on through blood). Furthermore, those of your brethren that decided to stay in Israel or return shortly after the wars were welcomed back, HOW DO WE KNOW THIS? WHERE IS THE PROOF? It’s in the eyes of 20-25% of Israel’s population – the only Arabs in the MidEast who vote in regular elections, sit on the Supreme Court and Democratic Parliament – I am talking about the Israeli Arabs.
Of course, in a world of 30 second sound bytes, history and truth often take a backseat (heck, their in the trunk!) to the shameless showcasing of dead babies.
It’s a sad state of affairs…
debate us: wingless DOT aoriginality DOT com
(no www)
Hey wingless, do you use megaphone? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_tool)
I let you comment here out of an ethical obligation to let people present their points of view which may be different than mine, but your comments reeked of rabid anti-Arabism (more generally, antisemitism, because I, too, am a Semite) and pure hate. I highlighted some of the more loopy arguments you made:
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“Your government are more threatened by Hamas than Israel is… Don’t you get it? As for your so-called negotiations and peace-making. GIVE US A BREAK! ”
Whoever said I support Hamas? Did you even READ what I wrote in the post? I’m guessing you didn’t.
So you’re against peace and negotiations, and yet you claim to be wingless, as in not taking sides? Re-examine your stance or change your nickname.
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“If this was about land then why does every single Israeli concession lead to increased deaths?”
Oh, I don’t know, maybe because Israel keeps Palestinians in a vast cage called Gaza where they don’t have access to the basics of decent life such as fuel, electricity, education, food, and other supplies? Maybe it’s because Israel has crammed Palestinians in a negligible percentage of their homeland and violated the UN Charter and a multitude of international human rights agreements? Or, it could be because Israel wants Palestinians to die silently and so resents their continuous struggle to make their voices heard with whatever tools they have at their disposal?
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“The Shebba Farms never belonged to neither Lebanon nor Iran (it was lost by SYRIA, after it attacked Israel and lost the war)”
So Israel INVADED Shebba farms, so it’s a colonialist occupier which must be ousted. Duh.
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“Israel had no obligation to enter talks, they could have maintained the 1st intifadah for 5000 years. Israel had successfully defended itself from its Arab neighbours, it had won the lands after its neighbours tried to destroy it, WHY SHOULD THE WINNER MAKE A CONCESSION TO THE INSTIGATOR AND LOSER?! It did so because it is a moral nation.”
The use of “concessions” and “moral” in this context are really disturbing. Israel did not make any concessions by giving back a small percentage of land to the native people, the Palestinians, and by filling out the majority of their land with imported citizens from all over the world, by setting up an apartheid wall, by humiliating Palestinians at checkpoints, or by selling its sob story as a nation of holocaust survivors to the world as a means to justify its vicious treatment of Palestinians, which ironically bears a lot of resemblance to Jewish persecution.
To describe a state that has injured close to 3075 people and killed 680 until now (more than 215 children & 89 women), most of whom are civilians, in less than two weeks, and which has destroyed the infrastructure of Gaza and isolated it from the outside world for close to two years, and bombed a UN school (not the first time it has done so, either), and prevented medical and emergency aid from being delivered to the population until OTHER nations coerced into doing so, and which CONTINUES to prevent international media from even entering Gaza to record its crimes there… to describe this state as “moral” makes me wonder what dictionary YOU are using. All of this and I have only listed the most recent atrocities committed by Israel.
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“Lest we forget, 60 years ago the Jews were the ones outgunned, outnumbered – with no USA to back them (while the Arabs had Russia as a sponsor very early on). They introspected, they built, and today they are a productive, pluralistic democracy. Instead of looking to their neighbours as the source of their woes, they got their house in order first.”
As far as I know, the early Jewish settlers in Mandate PALESTINE were supported by the British who not only supplied them with arms but also facilitated the creation of their state, they formed gangs which carried out raids on Palestinian people, killing and injuring them and scaring them out of their homes. The Israelis constantly regurgitate the holocaust as a historical guilt-trip for Germany and as a very lucrative source for emotional blackmail on the international scene, I bet that’s what you mean by “they got their house in order first.”
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“Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia are all new nations – yet we don’t question their right to exist. Israel sits on 23% of British Mandate Palestine (Which was NEVER EVER an Arab country), Jordan takes up the majority (about 73%) with the rest being Gaza & a small part of Syria”
Let me get this straight. You’re arguing that Mandate PALESTINE was never an Arab country in the sense that it first was under Ottoman rule, then under British rule, so why not be under Israeli occupation, as well? That is as outrageous as asking why a victim of gang-rape was not abused by X if she was already abused by Y,Z,F,L,B.
Are you also complaining that Israel is only sitting on 23% of Mandate PALESTINE? I wouldn’t be surprised if you were. Colonial states have a taste for expansion. Are you planning to invade Jordan as well, so you can complete your 100% of Mandate PALESTINE occupied-land-made-into-a-state scheme?
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“If Israel was interested in that, they could do it in a fortnight – as in 100% of you gone… It does not do this though.”
Do I even need to point out how hateful, aggressive, and plain blood-thirsty this statement is? What, do you expect Arabs to thank Israel for their lives? Do you plan on re-staging the holocaust, but for Arabs?
Just by saying what you said, everyone who read it who has any sense of decency has dismissed you as a blood-thirsty terrorist.
I will continue to debunk your points, just because other readers should not be influenced by your hateful rhetoric.
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“That said: you already have homelands galore!”
So what? You want to take that away from us? Why should we let you invade, humiliate, and kill our people?
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“Lest we forget – all of Mandate Palestine was promised to the Jews in the Balfour Declaration.”
You make my point for me. Israel is an extension of a colonialist presence in the region. The British had Palestine under their rule, but it never belonged to them in the first place, in order for them to give it away to whomever they please. I’d like to see the British give you Wales.
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“The Old Testament speaks of a Jewish Homeland
The New Testament speaks of a Jewish Jesus with Jewish Disciples walking throughout Jewish Israel (occupied by the Romans at the time)”
You quote the bible as a historically reliable source of information? And you expect me to be convinced?
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“What you fail to understand is that Zionism is simply a return, it’s not a conquest, but a return of exiles and their descendants to the land that has been theirs for 5000 years.”
Evolutionary evidence, to the best of my knowledge, states that all modern humans started out in Africa. Are you suggesting we all relocate to Africa and kill the natives? That, too, would be a return, and not a conquest, by your standards.
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Do note that I don’t have the time to write similar lengthy replies frequently, so you will probably not find me terribly engaged in the comments section. It’s a space where I’d like other people to write.
I couldn’t say better ,way to go Tololy,I admire your courage and logic,
I find it wast of time to engage this dude that calls himself Craig ,he is just misinformed and brained washed by his own propaganda.
lol. That dude Craig seems to have better reading comprehension than that guy elmashkalgy. I didn’t write the comment Tololy replied to. Which means you made up your mind about me beforehand, based on something else. That’s called “prejudice”.
I don’t even discuss politics on Tololy’s blog, and never have. I don’t like her readers. At all. I only like her. She’s the only reason I’m here. I especially don’t like being called a Jew, when I’m not, or a right-wing extremist, when I’m not. Look around, right now, right here, and you’ll see an actual right-wing extremist in this thread. And it ain’t me! The fact that you confuse that person’s positions, with mine (which are very different) is pretty good evidence you wouldn’t know a right-wing extremist if one fell out of the sky and landed in your living room. We’re all the same, to you, aren’t we? Everyone who isn’t a member of your click, or a wannabe member… we’re all the same.
Tololy,,,You are a real genuine Human Being let alone, a remarkable and inspiring to all women in Jordan, I see in you another making of Toujan Al Fisal,and if I live to see a Democratic Jordan,I will vote for you as Prime Minster.