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| An Unanswered Question |
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An Unanswered Question
New York Cesar Chelala
After the brutal attack on innocent Israelis that left more than 1,200 dead and scores of injured, as well as more than 70,000 Palestinians dead and hundreds of thousands injured, an essential question remains unanswered? Why did Hamas do it?
Why did they sacrifice their lives, those of their families and friends and the rest of the Palestinians in Gaza? Why did they decide to confront one of the most powerful armies in the world, using the most elementary weapons?
Do we remember dozens of Palestinians riding on motorbikes through a fence on Israeli territory? On motorbikes?
Do we remember children throwing stones to powerfully armored Israeli soldiers? Stones vs bullets?
Under Netanyahu’s orders these soldiers, armed with the latest and most destructive weapons have caused enormous civilian damage. The bombing is unrelenting. According to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR,) 70 percent of those killed by the Israeli army are women and children.
A 5-year-old child is rescued from a building bombed to smithereens in Northern Gaza. She is crying due to her serious injuries, and she is asking for her mother and father who, unknown to her, died during the bombing. Rescue workers have to tell her that she is now alone in the world.
This is happening as the whole world watches in terrified silence, unable or unwilling to stop this cruel insanity. Except for a few brave soldiers who have spoken against the war in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) remains deaf to calls for justice from the highest international law organizations, which have repeatedly condemned it for its genocidal actions against the Palestinians.
Criticism of the IDF’s action is increasing both inside and outside Israel. In Argentina, that has a large Jewish population, one can read the words of Argentine philosopher Tomás Abraham. In an interview with Alejandro Duchini published in La Gaceta Literaria from Tucuman, Argentina, Abraham says, “I come from a Jewish family that lived under Nazism, Romanian Nazism, and a large part of my family was killed. My parents were very young, and by one of life’s coincidences we were able to come to Argentina…For me, the justification for the birth of the State of Israel was very clear: Jews had nowhere to go. What has happened since October 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out the public killing of more than a thousand Israelis and Jews, led to Israel’s reaction of killing more than 70,000 Palestinians and razing cities. Seeing what they are doing in the West Bank—an act of criminal occupation in which Palestinians are killed so they abandon their land… What is happening now, with a million Lebanese displaced from their homes… With Israel governed by Netanyahu, who resembles Hitler, with the support of most people, with a cabinet of fundamentalists who aspire to a Greater Israel, I say: “everything changed for me.” That is, for a Jew of the diaspora like me, who believed there was a place in the world where Jews stopped being Jews and became simply people, what is happening now has changed everything for me. For me Israel was very important. But there are five million Palestinians who have a right to the land through the many generations who lived there.” These are words that are worth a thousand lectures…
Netanyahu, a destroyer of lives, hope and human decency, is willing to burn and annihilate any sign of life in Gaza. In an unquenched thirst for blood, under his command, the IDF is slaughtering tens of thousands of lives and condemning hundreds of thousands to a miserable life, maimed in body and mind with injuries they will never overcome.
Are Palestinians suicidal fools to continue fighting in abysmally unequal conditions without any hope of winning a most bloody and vicious battle?
Can they be so clueless as to let their homes, hospitals, schools, water and sanitation systems, parks, recreation centers, and religious building be destroyed without accepting defeat?
Or is it that they have a higher calling, a most elemental desire to live in their own land, ruling their own lives in freedom and dignity? As Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian poet and literary icon, wrote in 1973,
“Enemies might triumph over Gaza (the storming sea might triumph over an island. . . they might chop down all its trees).
They might break its bones.
They might implant tanks on the insides of its children and women. They might throw it into the sea, sand, or blood.
But it will not repeat lies and say “Yes” to invaders.
It will continue to explode.
It is neither death, nor suicide. It is Gaza’s way of declaring that it deserves to live.
It will continue to explode.
It is neither death, nor suicide. It is Gaza’s way of declaring that it deserves to live.
Cesar Chelala is a winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award. He is the New York correspondent for The Middle East Times International (Australia) and a global health consultant for The Globalist.
By Paola Bilancieri |
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