[col. writ. 8/6/14] © ’14 Mumia Abu-Jamal
As guns, rockets and bombs from fighter planes, go silent, the real war begins between the apartheid state, Israel, and the embattled occupied state of Hamas, on behalf of the captives of Gaza.
This is the war of words.
How can we say that words are more real than bombs?
Because, under the pressure of Arab states, the U.S., and Israel, Hamas is being urged to sell their souls – as has already been done by the so-called Palestinian Authority of the West Bank.
Hamas, hammered by the bombs given to Israel by the Americans, is quietly being urged to sell out the interests of the Palestinians, a people besieged like few populations in the world, by a racist, tyrannical state that pummels and kills them if they dare to resist their bludgeoning.
Today, the Palestinian Authority has been trained by the Zionist and Americans to keep their people in line, and quiescent while Israelis scoop up more and more Palestinian lands, water supplies, and anything else of value.
It is a crime, under Israeli apartheid law, to even mention the Occupation, and these crimes are prosecuted by the Israeli military, where Palestinians, – even juveniles – face military judges, under military law.
These courts are only for Palestinians – not Israelis.
It is a mirror of the Bantustan system that once reigned in South Africa.
South Africa’s Anglican Archbishop, Desmond Tutu, speaking of his visit there, said:
I have been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land…it reminds me so much of what happened to us blacks in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about (Finkelstein xxxviii)
Now, as words replace shrapnel, the U.S., Israel’s armory and its bank, proposes to play the role of mediator.
In what world can that even begin to look fair?
–© ‘14maj
[Source: Finkelstein, Norman G., Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. (London/NY Verso, 1995, 2005, 2d Ed.}