What if it was two million Israelis were being held in an open-air prison like Gaza and when they demanded their right to return to their homes 120 of them were shot in cold blood and some 130,000 of them wounded? Would the US and its mass media lackeys have dared condemn them for declaring a Great March of Return to their homes? Certainly not!
Why, then, must it be different when it is the Palestinians, in a powerful, nonviolent, unapologetic expression of their most basic fundamental rights, demanding their right to return to their homes? Tens of thousands of them marched to the Gaza-Israeli border unarmed, unless you count the flaming kites, the occasional Molotov cocktail and the stones, to face Israel’s deadly armed force, deliberately slaughtering civilians as if they were nothing more than ducks sitting on a wall.
Why must the Palestinians, who have already endured 71 years of occupation, be subjected to constant condemnation and belittlement that does not befit an animal? The answer is simple. Virtually every American politician and every media pundit dutifully echoes the Israeli talking points laid down Benjamin Netanyahu, with language like “Hamas uses the telegenically dead to further their cause,” or “It is the politics of human sacrifice staged by Hamas to get people killed on camera.” Shmuel Rosner in a New York Times editorial asserted that “Guarding the border, or whatever it is, was more important than avoiding killing. They want human sacrifice, we’ll give them human sacrifice.” Not to be outdone, Knesset member Avi Dichter reassured us that the Israeli army “has enough bullets for everyone. If every man, woman and child in Gaza gathers at the gate, there is a bullet for every one of them. They can all be killed, no problem.”
Most reasonable people understand the ethico-political standard at work here. No other country in the world would get away with such blatant crimes against humanity without suffering a torrent of criticism from Western politicians and media pundits. Why, then, was Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation, so overtly hostile and indignant when 120 nations dared condemn Israel for its criminal actions? Is it because she so shamelessly and dutifully carries out Sheldon Adelson’s orders, himself the mouthpiece for Benjamin Netanyahu, neither of whom tolerate any criticism of Israel?
Nathan J. Robinson, another Israeli apologist, said “Any amount of Palestinian deaths, however large, was justified to prevent any amount of risk to Israelis, however small.” Western governments and media have fashioned, and are doing their utmost to sustain, an ethico-political universe where Israel can lay siege to millions of people, bomb them occasionally and then kill them when they show up at the wall to throw rocks.
When will this madness stop. Perhaps more importantly, who will have the courage to stop it.
A more in-depth discussion of Israeli actions against Palestinians can be found in Israeli and Palestinian Voices: A Dialogue with Both Sides.
This book is available for purchase here. Amazon
Cathy Sultan blog 