Thursday, January 24, 2008

Exodus Gaza style!

Every year for 8 days, Jews worldwide celebrate Passover, commerating the Hebrews' trials and tribulation in the land of the Pharoahs, and their exodus out of the land of Egypt to the promised land led by Moses. Today the Palestinians in Gaza have much cause for celebration, for Hamas has not only blown up the thick concrete slabs of a wall denying them access to Egypt, but also dynamited the harsh, deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing directed against them by Israel. In other words, Hamas like Joshuah made the walls of their Israeli imposed ghetto fall down. In the media, pictures still or on video of the hundreds of thousands of Gazans pouring into the bordering towns of Egypt scurrying for the necessities of live which the Israeli had been denying them for even the merest of substance for survival. the outpouring of Palestinians through these concrete walls recalls the determination of displaced European Jews who evaded the embargo the British mandate authority imposed on any Jews wanting to reach Eretz Israel. And Hamas' actions belong to that catagory of will and exercise of self determination to a land which is rightfully theirs! Thus, Gazans have much cause for joy and for celebration and mark on calendars this red letter day of freedom and liberation.
Israel's ally Hosni Mubarek bowed to the inevitable, despite the heavy pressure from Tel Aviv and Washington to put away again a wall, and has allowed with a minimum of Egyptian police or military, Palestinians to buy food, medicine, and clothing, and fuel oil, and other necessities for life. In this way, he has tempered the anger of his own people against the harsh, vindictive policies of Tel Aviv against the Hamas elected government and the Gazans.
Israel through the tired voice of the arch Zionist Shimon Peres, sourly put the onus on Cairo; Gaza is now an Egyptian problem, not an Israeli concern. He thinks that Israel is above the law; it can pick and chose laws which favour its policies and dismiss other when they do not accord with Israel designs to chase Palestinians off land of theirs or reduce them to state of helots. He's wrong. Israel is not sui generis. It is a state like any other. If can hide behind the curtain of ha Shoah but its very machinations against the Palestians simply serve to show the world at large that it has learnt much from its Nazi masters who sought to clear eastern Europe of Jews, Gypsies, Poles, socialists, communists, gays, the mentally and physically handicapped, etc etc etc. This wholesale clearance of land they called 'Lebensraum', living space, which was to be settled by Aryans...and the cleansing of the land be in the west bank is of the same kind...it is for Jewish settlers...but instead of concentration camps and ovens...Israel will provide bantustans for a subject people, whilst the best land and its fruit go to Israeli Jews, much in the same way American settlers stole the land of Indian tribes.
It is obvious that the status quo ante is not possible. Herr Bush who has steadfastly backed Israel is not happy, nor are the Israeli at the turn of events. Too bad, boys! Hamas' forcefully opening up the Israeli built wall in the Sinai has once again thrown plans out of kilter. The struggle is not in the least over. Yet, Hamas has re affirmed in its own way that nothing is more precious than freedom and independence. Does this not sound familiar? It should! These are the very words that Ho Chi Minh used to defeat the Japanese, the French, and the Americans. Hamas is following in his footsteps.

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