WW editorial: Palestine will be free!

Another horrific attack on the Palestinian population occurred over the May 4-5 weekend. Once again, the deaths include some of the most vulnerable — of a people who have already been made entirely vulnerable by decades of apartheid conditions, including routine starvation, imprisonment, unemployment.

Once again, big business media played a numbers game in an attempt to conceal the true nature of the occupation. That a number of rockets were launched from Gaza is used to deflect the fact that 86 percent of the deaths — 24 to Israel’s 4 — were Palestinians.

U.S. politicians jumped at the chance to display their complicity in Israel’s continued attempts at genocide of the Palestinian people. In unequivocal terms, President Donald Trump tweeted, “We support Israel 100%.”

According to the Jerusalem Post, he also sent a paternalistic, condescending and hypocritical message: “ To the Gazan people — These terrorist acts against Israel will bring you nothing but more misery. END the violence and work towards peace — it can happen!’” (May 6) Only a couple of months ago, Trump signed an executive order claiming that Israel has sovereignty over Syrian Golan, illegally occupied by Zionist settlers since 1967.

Meanwhile, a new voice of dissent in Congress was immediately attacked. Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Somali-American Muslim congressperson from Minnesota, tweeted, “How many more protesters must be shot, rockets must be fired, and little kids must be killed until the endless cycle of violence ends?”

Furious conservatives focused their ire on her, including a video posted by Trump’s senior campaign adviser. The video attempted to portray rocket fire in the Ukraine — another place where U.S. intervention has fueled war and destruction — as a Palestinian attack on Israel. (Haaretz.com, May 5)

Even the bourgeois media admit that the tenuous ceasefire reached May 5 was promoted by Israel so the settler nation can try to clean up its image — this time by hosting an upcoming Eurovision singing competition in Tel Aviv!

The fact is that the Palestinians continue to resist and to demand an end to occupation — nothing less.

In an opinion piece published on Aljazeera.com, Haidar Eid, an associate professor at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza, declares: “We, the Palestinians in Gaza, have already made our choice. We will not die dishonourably a slow death while thanking our killers under the self-deception that portrays slavery to the occupier as a fait accompli.

“No, we will continue to fight for our dignity, for ourselves and for our children,” continues Eid. “We, members of the Palestinian civil society, have long argued that the way forward should be people’s power — the only force capable of tackling the huge asymmetry of power in the struggle against Israel. … We don’t want breadcrumbs. We want to return to our lands, we want our rights under international law to be recognised.” (May 6)

Eid’s call reminds us here in the U.S.: We exert our “people’s power” to continue our utmost solidarity with the Palestinian people.