The Palestinian people have the right to defend their lives from Israeli aggression, they have the right to resist apartheid and we have the right to stand by them as they do. When did solidarity become such an awful thing?
I really pray and hope that in this worst moment of your life when Palestinians stand in Shujaiya, Deir al-Balah or Gaza City, gazing at the slaughterhouse created by Israeli warplanes, tanks and artillery, you would not lose hope in humanity. This humanity even includes Israelis, those who do not have the courage to speak but who express their horror in private as my overflowing email and Facebook inboxes attest, as well as the small handful who demonstrate publicly against the incremental genocide in Gaza.
It is only right and fitting that a proper response be made to the OpEd written by Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, and head of the Manhigut Yehudit (“Jewish Leadership”) faction of Israel’s governing Likud party, entitled My Outline for a Solution in Gaza and published in Arutz Sheva on July 15th, 2014.
Netanyahu goes nowhere near Gaza so avoids witnessing the horrors inflicted by Israeli troops on his demented orders.
A wish-list for the brave Palestinians
“We have spoken to Israel for more than 18 years and the result has been zero. We have signed agreements here and there at various times and then when there is a change in the government of Israel we have to start again from the beginning. We ask for our life and to be given back our Jerusalem, to be given our state and for enough water to drink. We want to be given more opportunity to reach Jerusalem. I have not seen Jerusalem since 1990.
Image above: Khaled Kana’n 13 years old arrested by IOF.
Palestinians have done it all. We choose resistance, always, in all its forms. We resist because it is our right. Because we are the indigenous people of the land and we have nowhere else to go or belong. Because our parents, grandparents, great grandparents and on and on are buried in this soil. Because we are right and our cause is just. We resist passively and actively. We resist violently and non-violently.
Gaza isn’t the only open air prison; Lebanon has 12 of its own. And the people there are denied the most elementary right to apply for a job in more than 50 professions. Worth noting also is that the US Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 could mandate a cut-off of all American aid to Lebanon due to ongoing violations of their human rights. Solidarity—credible, genuine solidarity—is within our grasp; let us reach for it.
The leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, has said the group wants a truce as soon as possible, but with a genuine guarantee to lift the eight-year long siege.
In an exclusive interview with the BBC’s HARDtalk programme, Mr Meshaal said that Palestinians in Gaza wanted to live without the Israeli and Egyptian blockade and open up to the world.
He said the people of Gaza were “being punished with a slow death in the world’s biggest prison”.
He said: “We are eager that the bloodshed should end in Gaza”
