I share the dread of watching US and Canadian news coverage of wars that many feel. I turn to Al-Jazeera for balanced reporting. Israel’s defence minister calls Palestinians “human animals.” Its prime minister wants to annihilate them. Nothing new here. Israel has practiced terrorism from its early formation and with annual billions of dollars and the latest sophisticated weaponry given it by wayward Americans it has bombed and beaten the Palestinians into enclaves. For a long time Palestinians had stones to defend themselves. Israelis broke the children’s hands for throwing them. Yes, Gaza was turned into the largest open air prison and its citizens endured periodical bombing for decades which had to have a psychological effect. To understand their plight, for example 248 Palestinians killed by Israelis between January 1 and 4 October and thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons without trial, I ask Biden and Trudeau to put themselves in their shoes. The Hamas incursion into Israel was not terrorism; it was men driven to madness and certain oblivion. Inhumanity arises from hatred, of which both sides are guilty. The solution is not more weapons, more “double standard”, more cries for revenge but an honest attempt to free the Palestinians and make the lying far right Israeli government accede to a Palestinian state.
David Richard Beasley, Simcoe, ON
Fear
There is fear in the pit of my stomach
Television shows me impending doom
Israel with all its weapons will kill
At long last the offending Palestinians
Their buildings blasted to crush them.
My stomach turns when I see TV
The righteous Jews and their acolytes
Official faces once excited by politics
Now creased in hatred at invaders
Who dared shoot innocents on their land
Driven by madness, rampant, insatiable.
Decades of humiliation, persecution within
Terror, fanaticism, revenge without.
Too late armed Israelis stopped the slaughter
Their great army, tanks and cannons
Ready to crush the bombed ruins of Gaza.
Americans exhibit butchered babies on TV
—To justify the coming genocide of a people
Trapped in their prison by sadists.—
Propaganda in a world led by psychopaths.
Questions arise how could this happen?
Frantic to hide their incompetence
Israel’s leaders call the invaders “animals”
Blaming a failure of intelligence
Which monitors every movement in Gaza
Egyptian intelligence warned them of invasion
An awkward news item to be managed
Israeli troops stationed elsewhere
As if the nation had no care
Israel’s furious rioters calmed by the holiday
Its criminal leader keeping them at bay.
I rage at the hypocrisy
At Western duplicity
Weaponizing a people of greed
Sanctimonious in religion
As if a god would sanctify their deeds.
Palestinian children dying in scores
Bereft of medicine, food, water and love
Awaiting the crushing of tanks
While their parents wail in peril.
The future lies in wait
To erupt in Armageddon
There is fear in the pit of my stomach
Television shows me impending doom.
I watched habitually Lawrence O’Donnell weekday evenings at 10 o’clock on MSNBC. I like the lawyers he asked to analyze the charges against D. J. Trump and his stern denouncements of the cruelty to children, the hypocrisy of politicians and the stupidities of officials in government and business. In the early days of the Gaza—Israeli War he showed a large crowd of Jewish residents in Brooklyn clamouring outside Senator Schumer’s house with signs pleading that he stop the genocide of Palestinians before switching to Schumer speaking in Israel. Schumer had ignored his constituents to bemoan the attack by Hamas, praise Israel and vow solid support for it without a word for the Palestinians. Was O’Donnell emphasizing the hypocrisy of the politician against the genuine feelings of the Jews who understood only too well the murderous intentions of the right-wing government in Israel? From his blanket endorsement of Jewish politicians and retired generals fiercely calling for the annihilation of Hamas, I assumed not. I was disgusted by O’Donnell. Any sense of justice, any scrap of integrity he may have shown was lost. Had he surrendered his soul to the station’s owners? or the lock-step orders of government minders?
The wholesale destruction of Gaza and slaughter of thousands of Palestinians and the complicity of the United States in these war crimes will never be forgiven by the world. We all, including Jews, knew from history that Israel was incapable of reason, let alone mercy. I quote from a respected online newsletter: “In Gaza, Israel is gearing up to commit genocide. It is not doing so quietly. It is repeating its intent every day, announcing it to the world in both its words and actions. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant described those in Gaza as ‘human animals’ while declaring that Israel was cutting off water, fuel, electricity and food to the entire blockaded strip. Likud officials have called for nuclear strikes as well as a second Nakba. Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, has rejected the distinction between civilians and combatants, asserting that ‘it is an entire nation out there that is responsible’. Israeli military officials have made clear that their aim is ‘damage, not precision’. All the while, Israel has subjected the 365-square-kilometre area to relentless shelling, dropping the same number of bombs on its 2.3 million inhabitants as the United States unleashed on Afghanistan in an entire year at the height of its murderous invasion. Hospitals, mosques, schools and homes – all have been deemed adequate military targets. . . ."
As of last count over 4,000 Palestinians have been killed, including great numbers of children, many thousands wounded, Lawrence, whom I hope will stop his constant praise of Joe Biden, sycophant, whom Netanyahu embraced and then ignored.
D. R. Beasley
A news item in the Toronto Star that York University officials demand that Student Union newspapers erase their championing of the Palestinians demonstrates how controlled such organizations are and how out of touch they are with the feelings for humanity that are being expressed by protestors in the streets of cities throughout the world.
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