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By Ghali Hassan (06 March, 2008 - Countercurrents.org)

In response to Palestinian Resistance to Israel’s terror, Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defence minister, threatened Palestinian with a holocaust. Vilnai told Israeli Army Radio: “[the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah (holocaust) because we will use all our might to defend ourselves”. An occupying power (aggressor) has no right to self-defence. The deliberate killing of innocent and defenceless Palestinians is not self-defence; it is terrorism.

For nearly sixty years, Jews - Israeli in particular -, have exclusively used the word “holocaust” to describe crimes committed against Jews by the Nazis, ignoring the Nazi’s millions of none-Jewish victims. The holocaust is not only being used as a Zionist tool (a weapon) to shield Israel from any criticism, but also to manipulate the public and gain Israel sympathy as a “victim state”. In addition, Israeli leaders use the holocaust as a justification for ongoing Israel’s terror and war crimes against the Palestinian people. The creation of Israel brought unimaginable suffering on the Palestinian people and turned them into holocaust victims.

According to Gaza-based journalist Mohammed Omar of rafahtoday.org, at least 130 Palestinians, including 39 children and 10 women were murdered by the Israeli army in the last days of February 2008. Even babies as young as six-month-old are targeted by Israel’s terror. In addition, more than 370 children were injured. Only one Israeli settler and two Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinian resisting Israeli aggression against the people of Gaza, the perfect pretext for mass murder of Palestinians. The home-made Palestinian rockets used by the Palestinian Resistance are nothing compared with the F-16s bombers, helicopter missiles, cluster bombs and artillery shells used by the Israeli war machine against defenceless Palestinian population under brutal occupation.

For more than a year, the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza have been under brutal blockade enforced by the Israeli army and backed by U.S. and European leaders. Mass starvations of Palestinian children, daily bombardment of residential areas, kidnapping, imprisonment and assassination of political leaders have become the norms. People have become used to the suffering of the Palestinian people. According to Israel, the terror is justified. The Israeli Supreme Court (the guardian of Jewish Justice) has approved this policy of collective punishment and mass starvation (Ha’aretz, 02/02/2008). However, it is worth noting that, Israel would not be able to perpetuate violence on such scale were it not for the apathy and equanimity of Westerners; they share responsibility.

The morally correct Western powers, led by the U.S. - who never shies away from putting Israel’s interests first - have unconditionally supported Israel’s violence. Major European powers and the U.S. continue to provide massive military, financial and political supports to Israel. And with disregards to the suffering of the Palestinian people, Westerners commemorate Israel’s genocidal policy of ethnic cleansing and dispossession of the Palestinian people by celebrating Israel’s so-called “60th Anniversary”. British children are now required to take lessons on the “Jewish holocaust”, while French children are encouraged to identify with the personal stories of French Jewish children who died in the “Jewish holocaust”.

In addition to the unconditional backing of the West, Israel has the unquestionable backing of Western media. Global propaganda outlets such as, the BBC, CNN, New York Times, etc. are tirelessly covering-up Israel’s war crimes and spreading Israeli propaganda. As portrayed by Western media, Israel is a “civilised” and “democratic” nation, never initiates terrorist attacks or involved in daily acts of terrorism. Israel simply responds and retaliates. Israel responds to Palestinian throwing stones and retaliates against Palestinian rockets. Israeli soldiers are ‘forced’ to kill Palestinian children and pregnant women, and demolish Palestinian houses. Israeli soldiers are not responsible because they are facing a stronger enemy. The fact that these crimes are acts of terrorism against defenceless people doesn’t seem to interest Western media. The fact that Israel is a racist apartheid state aimed at becoming a homogenous “Jewish state” at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian people is deliberately ignored by Western media. By contrast, the Palestinians are portrayed as ‘militants’ - regardless of age -, ‘seeking revenge’ and trying to ‘destroy’ a ‘peace-loving Israel’.

Of course, when it comes to “peace” there is no such discourse among Israeli leaders. Peace has become Israel’s euphemism for violence and Palestinian dispossession. For Israeli leaders, peace means the ongoing killing of defenceless Palestinians, initiated by Israeli violent provocations. And in collaboration with Palestinian traitors (elites), Israel continues to build and expand its illegal Jewish colonies (settlements) and Jewish-only roads. The Apartheid Wall separates Palestinian from their children’s schools, farms and isolates them in designated ghettos deprived of land and water. For the Palestinians, “daily living is defined by the body count [of their love ones], the number of coffins being hurried to the cemeteries, the crammed hospital corridors and the overflowing of intensive care units”, said an editorial in the Gulf News. It is genocide in slow motion.

In another development, a new opinion conducted by the Israeli daily Ha’aretz and the polling company Dialog in collaboration with Tel Aviv University, shows 64 percent of Israelis favour a truce with the Palestinian Resistance, including HAMAS, the highest majority to date. HAMAS leaders said they would consider a ceasefire if Israel lifted its blockade and ceased violent attacks in besieged Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Successive Israeli leaders have rejected every Palestinian proposal for ceasefire or peace, blindly pursuing the Zionist policy of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their homeland.

Finally, a “holocaust” will not bring peace to Palestine. Peace will return to Palestine only if Israeli leaders end their genocidal policy and the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. Under the international Genocide Convention adopted in 1948 after the defeat Nazism, incitement to genocide is punishable war crime. Hence, Israeli leaders should abide by international laws and revoke terrorism and violence.

Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.

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