Felicity Arbuthnot
The “most moral army in the world” from “the only democracy in the Middle East” has attacked hospitals, a home for the disabled, a geriatric hospice, demolished five mosques, razed entire neighbourhoods, erased entire families — the youngest — so far — just three days old if you do not count the unborn, as in the case of twenty nine year old Samar Al Hallaq killed with her two sons, aged four and five, other members of her family and carrying her third child. Her husband was critically injured.
You take my water
Burn my olive trees
Destroy my house
Take my job
Steal my land
Imprison my father
Kill my mother
Bomb my country
Starve us all
Humiliate us all
But … I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.– Placard first seen in Gaza, 2012
Yet again a war is declared against children and the young. Forty three percent of Gaza’s population is aged 0-14 and just under 21 percent, 15-24. (Index Mundi, 2013.) Thus sixty-four percent, 0-24.
As Israel trades on eternal victim status whilst murdering neighbouring, fellow Semites with seeming legal impunity, stealing land, obliterating homes, nullifying history preceding even the coming of Christ in the land of his birth, the UN bleats weakly, as ever, of “concern” and “regret”, some countries have had enough.
Ecuador has recalled its Ambassador from Israel, Chile has suspended its free trade agreement negotiations. Bolivia’s President Evo Morales and Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro have called the assault on Gaza genocide and “extermination”, with Maduro demanding that the UN address the: “systematic violation of the Human Rights of the Palestinian population in Gaza by the State of Israel and adopt the necessary measures to halt those violations.” Venezuela severed all relations with Israel after its last massacre, “Cast Lead” over Christmas and New Year 2008-2009.
As Prime Minister David Cameron calls the onslaught on the 1.7 million people of Gaza in their 40-mile long ghetto “not disproportionate”, President Maduro stated:
It is clear you cannot morally compare occupied and massacred Palestine with the occupying state, Israel, which also possesses military superiority and acts on the margins of international law.
Meanwhile, amid massive protests in South Africa, the African National Congress in Parliament (who suffered their own long years of apartheid) is calling for the Israeli Ambassador to leave with “immediate effect” and for the South African Ambassador to Tel Aviv to be immediately recalled.