How much more can the Palestinians suffer before they instinctively decide to commit national harakiri and rub themselves off this terribly unjust world they were left in by the big, colonial powers? As Israelis and Palestinians take on each other in the village and town alleyways, it is worth remembering that before the 1948 geopolitical fiasco imposed by the United States with the initial hesitant assistance from Britain and the United Nations, Jews and Arabs had lived peacefully together in those same areas. It was only when the migrants from Europe arrived that the political troubles started.
Europe first saved what was left of the unfortunate Jews from the European Nazis, whose descendants, as wolves in sheep’s clothing, today form convenient majorities in Brussels, then was relieved to have them go elsewhere. Since then the world has hardly had a day off from the burning issue of the Palestinian people suffering under successive Israeli governments intent on keeping them divided, subdued and on a leash. To this very day, they have been intentionally overlooked in the anti-Covid-19 vaccination programme as they watch families losing their time-honoured homes to make way for more Jewish settlers.
And what is the international media’s reaction to all this? Mamma mia, the Palestinians are firing rockets at Israel! So the Israelis had no alternative but to bomb poverty-stricken, under-privileged, half-demolished Gaza where people try to squeeze out a daily living under conditions over which historic revolutions took place. Should the Palestinians be firing doughnuts instead? There is that famous Mintoff quote, during the time Palestinians were hijacking aeroplanes to bring attention to their cause for freedom and independence, “if I were a Palestinian, I would likewise have been hijacking airplanes”. And this, from a then very pro-Israel politician with strong ties with the Israeli Labour Party via the Socialist International.
Almost exactly seven years ago, when the last same-magnitude flare-up occurred, I was writing in this very space that the disproportion is so hugely unfair and the odds are so incredibly obvious “that one is rightly shocked to still find the usual Western war-mongers talking in terms as if it is all an issue of tit for tat. It bloody well is not”. For however hard you try, it is just plainly impossible to remain neutral over this harsh David-vs-Goliath battle and the heart-wrenching human tragedy that is sadly re-occurring. How can one remain neutral? Even the UN seems to ignore the fact that Israel is not waging war with an equal.
I wonder what those rich Arab countries, which recently signed agreements with Israel to please the Orange Man, are saying now as they watch the Palestinian people, once again, suffering the injustice of their fate. They cannot be having sleepless nights in the desert, but dessert in their sky-scraping palaces certainly. While they have chosen to throw a black towel over the Palestinians’ face, the Americans and other Western allies of Israel continue to stick strictly to their defence of the Jewish State, whether it’s right or wrong.
Some may still mistakenly attribute the present troubles to the issue of recognition of the State of Israel. That has long been buried. Most Arabs, including the moderate majority of Palestinians, today, albiet grudgingly, accept the cruel reality of the situation, but in doing so they also demand the creation of a Palestinian State. A free and enterprising state that would gradually agree to have good neighbourly relations with Israel but on an equal footing. There are also many peace-seeking Israeli citizens, who concur with this eventuality.
Instead, we are having to watch the continuing tragedy of the Palestinian people being bombed by sophisticated, hi-tech, American-made weapons in response to home-made rockets with limited range and which the so-called Iron Dome, also American-made, is supposed to help extinguish in midair. Palestinians die by the hundreds, Israeli victims in single digits. Out comes President Biden insisting the Palestinians stop firing their rockets; not far-right Israelis stopping from taking over Palestinians homes; not armed Israelis refraining from building more and more settlements on Palestinian territory; not Israeli Arab citizens being treated equally. Perhaps the Norwegians are already packaging the Nobel Peace Prize in crushed velvet for him.
In the meantime, we have also had to assist to the American tech giants pathetically blaming “system errors” for deleted posts on the unrest in Jerusalem; an action that a coaliton of civil society groups and digital rights activists have rightly interpreted as censoring Palestinian content. This happened when Palestinians, facing eviction from occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah precinct, took to social media to protest, with their posts, photos and videos being removed and accounts blocked for – blasphemously, I guess – “violating community standards”.
A people’s torture by any means.
European lunacy
Disqualifying a Maltese author from taking part in this year’s European Union Prize for Literature because his book was published by a media house with a political affiliation can only be described as yet another display of European lunacy. SKS Publishers have rightly deplored and condemned the treatment accorded by the European Union Prize for Literature organisation to Aleks Farrugia, the 2020 Malta Book Prize winner with his book Għall-glorja tal-patrija.
I have known Aleks for several years, having written columns and other articles in newspapers he edited during his print journalism days. As an editor, he was fair, brave and resolute, sometimes against all odds. As a budding author, he was the same. Now that he has mellowed into the award-deserving writer that he is, out come the EU clowns to thwart his way to European recognition with their stupid objection to his publishers.