Delving back series 001
In this series will be published articles from the past, to show
how people do not seem to learn from the past, how nothing seems to have
changed, how what is being said now was said so many years back. Plus, it will remind you of important event and facts you maay not know or may have forgotten.
We start with what the editor and manager of this blog wrote way
back in 2006
Gulamhusein Abba
Aug 23, 2006
I first learnt about
the Jews when I was just a little boy of 10. There was a picture in the
Illustrated Weekly of India. It depicted Kristallnacht! Even at that
young age I was interested in political events. The picture, specially the
title, caught my eye. I was shocked at what I read. Living in the midst of
bloody Hindu-Muslim riots of Bombay , I well knew the fear each community felt
in the area of the city in which it was a minority. People got killed. Houses
and businesses got burnt. In my childish ignorance I thought it happened only
in Bombay . And here I was reading about it happening in Germany to the Jews.
My heart went out to them.
I then learnt more
about their sufferings, their humiliations, mass murders, curfews, special
badges, permits to move from one place to another. These appeared in small
paragraphs in the Times of India. How terrible, I thought. I sympathized with
the Jews and was very, very angry at the Germans for treating them in such a
way.
About five years later
I distinctly remember reading about the brave resistance put up by the Jews of
the Warsaw Ghettos against their tormentors. They were hailed as freedom
fighters and resistance heroes. I was filled with admiration at their bravery
and indomitable spirit. There were reports of how they were supplied with food,
clothing, men and weapons through underground “tunnels” (sewers). Movies were
made in their honor and I cheered and clapped along with the rest of the
audience at their heroic deeds as they flashed on the silver screen.
But not very long
thereafter, faces of Jews began to appear on “WANTED --TERRORIST” posters put
out by the British during British Mandate years. The former freedom fighters
had become terrorists!
And, a short time
later, those whose faces had appeared as terrorists on British posters, became
the heroes of Israel when it was formally established. At least two of them, Menachem
Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, went on to
become prime ministers of Israel . Many of these “terrorists” have streets in
Israel named after them in their honor.
It can be argued that
all this was a long time back and that 9/11 has changed all that. Israel now no
longer condones terrorism of any kind. It understands what terrorism is and
wants to wipe it out.
Well, Israel’s new
foreign minister, Tzipin Livni, is the daughter of the man who was the chief
operations officer of the Zionist Irgun Tsvai Leumi, the terrorist organization
that dynamited, on the orders of Menachim Begin, the King David Hotel in
Jerusalem more than half a century back, in July ‘46, killing 91 people, mostly
civilians.
Granted that the sins
of the fathers should not be visited on their children and the appointment of
Tzipin Livni as Israel’s foreign minister cannot be faulted simply because of
who her father was.
But then how is one to
explain the putting up by the Israelis, in July 2006, of a plaque honoring the
blowing up of the hotel as a deed of ‘resistance’ to the British Mandate
government (which, it must be remembered, was put in place by the League of
Nations )?
Perhaps the Israelis
felt a need to counterbalance the bust and plaque displayed in the UN building
in Manhattan in honor of Count Folk Bernadette. He it was who saved 21 thousand
prisoners from German camps during World War II and whom the UN sent as its
envoy to Palestine to mediate and supervise the cease-fire there but was
murdered by Jewish terrorists.
Surprisingly, these
very same Israelis insist on calling the brave Palestinians who have been
heroically resisting the illegal, brutal, belligerent, 39-year-old Israeli
occupation of West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as “terrorists”!!
By the simple
expedient of so labeling them “terrorists”, and playing into the world-wide
fixation with terrorists and terrorism after 9/11, the Israelis have arrogated
to themselves the right to slaughter and massacre the Palestinians, wipe out
their villages, incarcerate and assassinate their leaders, kidnap,
detain and torture their young men, women and children, bomb out or bulldoze
their homes, sometimes with residents still inside, confiscate their lands,
steal and collar their water, uproot their olive groves and orchards, destroy
their farmlands, rip out their roads, demolish their bridges and
infrastructure, impose closures and curfews, some lasting for days, restrict
their movements, humiliate and even kill them at checkpoints, deport them and
prevent refugees from returning to their homes.
What greater irony can
there be than this? And how shameful that the US should be complicit in this
and the international community should watch impotently.
So then, ask yourself:
Are there any resistance heroes left in this world or are they all just
terrorists? More specifically, are the Palestinians “terrorists” or are they
heroic, indomitable freedom fighters exercising their right to resist and
overthrow a long standing and brutal occupation and neutralize state terrorism
of the worst kind?
Your views will be
greatly appreciated. E-mail them to justiceforpalestinianscommittee@yahoo.com
Gulamhusein A. Abba
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