By Ameen Izzadeen
The Nakba Day massacre and the grotesque ceremony to mark the opening of the United States’ embassy in Jerusalem turned Monday, May 14, into one of the darkest days in recent history.
Television footage of the massacre reminded us of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre 99 years ago at Amritsar in British India. The two massacres had many parallels, but one that is most disgusting is that the perpetrators had no remorse. General Reginald Dyer, who gave orders to his troops to open fire at the unarmed Punjabi protesters, died unrepentant and his only regret was that he did not have time to kill more.
The Israelis were unrepentant, too. Monday’s death toll of more than 60 brought the number of Palestinians killed from March 30 to more than 100. On March 30, the Gaza Strip’s Palestinians, living in abject poverty, began their Great March of Return for a sit-in protest on the border. Killing Palestinians is no sin, for they are not humans, according to Zionist hardliners, including deputy defence minister Eli Ben Dahan. Israel and its American supporters will not shed a tear even if a million Palestinians are killed. This desensitization process began even prior to the setting up of Israel. Israel was founded on the deaths of thousands of Palestinians and the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians. Rarely is this horror story highlighted in the Israeli-friendly corporate media, under whose spell we have come into. We let our thoughts to be shaped by the corporate media’s propaganda aimed at promoting the evil designs of the Zionists, the capitalists and the agents of war, also known as the arms industry. Global justice activists insist that such stories need to be told and retold. Otherwise, evil will thrive in the silence of the good people. One such less spoken about stories in the corporate media is the Deir Yassin massacre.
Just before the dawn on April 9, 1948, armed members of the Zionist terrorist gang Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin who later became Israel’s Prime Minister, and the terror group Stern Gang raided the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, inhabited by some 750 Palestinians. The village on a high ground overlooking Jerusalem lay just outside the United Nations drawn partition line. The villagers were ordered to leave. When they resisted, the terrorists killed more than 125 people. Similar massacres took place in Jaffa and other places in the run-up to Israel’s declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948. From 1947 to 1949, some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their villages.
In the Palestinian annals, the tragedy is called Al-Nakba or the Catastrophe. The Palestinians who lost their homes still live in refugee camps or are scattered all over the world. Every year on Nakba Day, they hold high their corroding house keys for the world to see. Their history has been erased. As George Orwell said, “the past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”
The charade continues. In Zionist narrations, the oppressor, a nuclear power, is presented as the oppressed, injustice is portrayed as justice and freedom fighters are branded as terrorists. No wonder, the US President Donald Trump kills the peace process and calls his action a great push for peace. At the Jerusalem embassy opening ceremony, boycotted even by the United States’ allies, Trump’s Zionist son-in-law Jared Kushner, without any moral compunction, accused the Palestinians of being part of the problem and said the “journey to peace started with a strong America recognising the truth.”
For the Zionists, the injustice caused to the Palestinians does not construe the truth. For them, the truth is that Jews are the chosen people of God and Jerusalem is the ‘eternal’ capital of the Jews. With Judaism being hijacked by hardline Zionists from Europe to achieve political ends, such misinterpretation of the scriptures is repeated.
American evangelicals who adore the criminal Zionists say there is a God-given foreign policy which America needs to follow. Quoting from Genesis, they say, “Whoever blesses Israel will be blessed, and whoever curses Israel will be cursed.” But they seem to have overlooked the fact that Jesus called them the “faithless and perverse generation”.
The evangelicals need to be asked that if Jesus were to come today, on whose side will he be. Will he be with the oppressed Palestinians or oppressor Israel? Those who say that Zionists are God’s chosen people are committing blasphemy, for they make God a god of apartheid, a god of injustice, a god who encourages discriminatory practices. Trump is part of this Zionist-Evangelical axis, which has sold God’s commandments for justice – you shall not covert your neighbour’s property — for 30 silver coins.
At the Jerusalem embassy opening ceremony – a clear violation of International law — were those who financed his White House campaign in 2016. Among them was Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who prodded Trump to shift the embassy to Jerusalem. Then there was Southern Baptist Pastor Robert Jeffress who has repeatedly said that divine providence has a hand in Trump’s election and that God has authorised Trump to do, basically, whatever he wants.
As the celebrations went on in Jerusalem, there was little pity for those who were being killed, just 70 km away in Gaza. Dancing on the dead bodies of Palestinian children was Trump’s daughter Ivanka. The New York Daily News, a liberal newspaper, aptly described her in a page one headline as the ‘Daddy’s Little Ghoul’ for her obscene indifference to the killing of Palestinians by Israel, whom her father described as a country that, like the United States, believes in human rights and democracy.
Imagine a massacre of this magnitude had taken place in Iran, Syria or Sri Lanka. There would have been worldwide outrage with calls for international probe. At the UN Security Council emergency meeting on Tuesday, US envoy Nikki Haley blamed Iran and Hamas for the deaths of the Palestinians. She was reminded by the Bolivian envoy that the problem was simply Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.
Yes, that is the root cause of the problem. It is a shame that in the 21st century, the United States, the greatest democracy on earth, has become part of the Zionist colonial project. Until the US frees itself from the clutches of Zionism, the Palestinians’ freedom will remain elusive.
(This article first appeared in the Daily Mirror, Sri Lanka)
-
Recent Posts
Archives
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
Categories
Meta