Dear world, especially the US,
Don't you remember? Don't you remember Rwanda? Do you remember almost a million people killed, brutally, in just 100 days? Do you remember how the world turned our backs and let it happen? Do you remember how ashamed we were and how we said "never again"? Never again!
We first said that after the genocide of the Holocaust. And then we said 'never again' after Darfur, Cambodia, Guatemala, Bosnia, etc...
Well, we're letting it happen again! In fact, we're part of it, allowing it, funding it. We're allowing Israel to occupy Palestine, kill their people, drop bombs, kill their children, take away their homes, burn their farms, build a wall to separate them. We're allowing this!
Yes, Palestinians are fighting back, but the violence of an oppressed people is different than the violence of oppressors (not that I think violence in any case is the answer). Media would have us believe that the conflict is equal, equal killings and loss, or they would convince us Palestinians are far worse than the Israelis. But evidence doesn't support that view.
I thought we said never again? Never again would we sit by while a people group was targeted, killed, pushed out, denied human rights.
Why are we allowing this to happen again?
Paul Rusesabagina (made known in the movie Hotel Rwanda), said the following in a BBC article:
"The most abused words are 'never again'.
When they were saying that in 1994, it was happening again and again and again and again. So 'never again' to me is not enough."
Perhaps "never again" isn't enough.
For me, I wouldn't say that what Israel is doing is genocide. That is too strong a word, that needs to be reserved for too special a circumstance. I would say they are conducting an ethnic cleansing campaign.
ReplyDeleteI think Israel has done localized genocide- at Shubra and Shatilla, at some towns during al Nakba. But genocide refers to a complete and utter destruction of a people, a qorban that leaves nothing left. I think, for all the evil Israel has done, most of what it is doing is "merely" ethnic cleansing, trying to remove the Palestinian contagion to purify Israel and have it be for the Jews only- but doing this by making it very very hard for non-Jews to live there; not usually through outright killing of an entire people group.
I agree; I wouldn't call it genocide either (especially compared to the other examples).
ReplyDeleteBut I still think it's up there, as far as despicable and horrible behavior and an awful thing to do to another group of people.
Perhaps that's why more people aren't upset about it. It's not actual genocide.