All men are equal unless…

Davin Ng

My first reaction was, "Sigh, Jews are attempting to re-enact the Holocaust on others."

I've stopped caring about the Israel-Palestinian thing, really. They're like two children fighting over a cookie jar, and have broken it two dozen times, the cookies are broken and full of glass bits but they're still tumbling around the floor like morons.

Typical first reactions would be, "Hey, that's not right! The Holocaust was the industrialized and mechanized mass-murdering of people. And what Israel does is far far away from that."

Yes, that may be true, but has anyone ever considered how earlier events had turned out, on the year 1948 when the state of Israel was born?

In April 1948, the same month as the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on Palestinian civilians in Haifa's market square, Plan Dalet was put into operation. This authorised the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of the indigenous population outside the borders of the state.

In July 1948, 70,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in Lydda and Ramleh in the heat of the summer with no food or water. Hundreds died. It was known as the Death March.

In all, 750,000 Palestinians became refugees. Some 400 villages were wiped off the map. That did not end the ethnic cleansing. Thousands of Palestinians (Israeli citizens) were expelled from Galilee in 1956. Many thousands more when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Under international law and sanctioned by UN resolution 194, refugees from war have a right to return or compensation. Israel has never accepted that right.

A lot of people in the West are utterly incapable of sympathy or solidarity with the Palestinians, because they are Muslim, because they are not white, because they look like the enemy in their own "War on Terror". The cheerleading for Israel, no matter what they do, and the callous dismissal of Palestinian suffering with "they had it coming" is absolutely sickening.

It is spurious to compare Israeli actions with the Holocaust, or to equate IDF troops with Nazi Stormtroopers, there is no similarity in intention, or in scale, but like an abused child, the state of Israel reacts in an abusive way itself, born in violence it knows no other way to behave.

Insulated from the true disastrous impact of their actions by an impenetrable belief in their own victimhood, they refuse to acknowledge their responsibility, as the regional superpower, to exercise some moral leadership.

Until Israel grows up and stops being led by the nose by Hamas though cycle after cycle of violence and oppression, they will never be able to guarantee their citizens safety, and the Palestinians won't be able to hope for any future at all.

- Development of nuclear weapons despite not being party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty opened for signature on July 1 1968. North Korea has done the same, and the West is giving it hell. But not to Israel. It's useless to give Israel trouble over it because the USA would immediately veto any discussions about it.

- Not recognizing the result of a democratically-elected government (Hamas), which Hamas admittedly got itself voted in out of merit in being more capable in providing basic services to their own people.

- An invasion into sovereign territory, Lebanon, where the United Nations would've slammed Israel right away if it was done by some other nation, like Iran. Useless to give Israel trouble about it because USA will immediately use its veto powers.

- Hemming in an entire populace and cutting them off from the outside world. Basically, a ghetto. UN may/may not give Israel trouble about it, but will be veto'd by USA anyway.

One may argue that Hamas is not an appropriate government for the Palestinians, but who are we to decide? Did Woodrow Wilson not declare self-determination for all during the formation of the League of Nations? Did the US military not invade two separate, sovereign nations and attempted to instill democracy to their political systems? Hamas' election has been democracy in action, just as they desire to spread to the world, but they had rejected it.

For a nation that takes pride in its own armed forces being "Protectors", "Liberators", and "Warriors", from that action mentioned above, it has become farcical to claim to be "Liberators" when they refuse to accept the results of a democratic election. It makes them no better than a certain Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

Is this all about US-bashing? No. What I do care about, is how people perceive human suffering. I will quote the US Constitution,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

All men are equal. What sickened me is how people have been saying, "Ha ha! The IDF is going to kick some ass!" without pondering about the unfortunate misery and suffering this will endow unto even more people. Neither do I condone what the Palestinians have been doing with their rockets to Israel, but it's not right at all to be crying out in joy when the other party strikes out to make things even worse than they already are.

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