This Land is Your Land--This Land is My Land: Israelis Clash with Palestinians in Gaza
By J. Michael Springmann/Arab America Contributing Writer
Apologies to Woody Guthrie. However, the American Main Stream (Lame Stream?) Media (MSM) has started reporting on Israeli attacks on peaceful Palestinian protests over “Land Day”, commemorating the theft of Palestine by the Israelis. And the MSM (e.g. the Washington Post) has only started reporting the seven murders and 1,400 malicious woundings (including nearly 400 by gunshot) as of Friday, April 6. (Numbers at odds with those reported by Raji Sourani, executive director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza on TV’s “Democracy Now”: “Massacre in Gaza: Israeli Forces Open Fire on Palestinians, Killing 18, Wounding As Many As 1,700.” (http://www.accuracy.org/release/israel-shooting-palestinian-protesters-and-the-gaza-conspiracy-of-silence).
The focus of the Lame Stream Media, as exemplified by the Washington Post of April 7, is that the estimated 30,000 protesters threw rocks and Molotov Cocktails at Israeli “Defense” Forces. Moreover, the Palestinians burned tires, creating smoke to hide them from Israeli soldiers. Additionally, they crowded almost up to the fence separating Gaza from the Zionist Entity. Therefore, ipso facto, the Izzie army was justified in using deadly force against the dispossessed, unemployed, starving Palestinians, bereft of all hope for a better life. Naturally, Hamas, the “militant group controlling Gaza,” provided the Israelis grounds for negative comments.
Here’s The Real Story:
Loveday Morris and Ruth Eglash, Post “journalists”, reporting on the subject, buried the real information in the body of the article, “7 Palestinians reported killed in Gaza clashes”: Many protestors…said they felt hopeless and frustrated. Gaza’s economy may be on the edge of collapse…only a tiny proportion of the enclave’s 2 million inhabitants are allowed to leave…
They followed this statement with the remark that, since Hamas is paying wounded demonstrators, that only encourages people to risk their lives in the face of deadly fire.
My Arabic tutor was correct in his assessment of MSM reporting: the story of the demonstrations will get ink only if the Palestinians are reported as throwing stones and firebombs. He also noted that tales of Palestinians burning tires are questionable. In resource-starved Gaza, even old, worn-out tires are serviceable, he said. Continuing, my tutor wondered if the tire-burners were really Israeli agents, out to smear the Palestinians’ reputation.
According to Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and former Palestinian negotiator, “From the video footage, we can see that people were shot in the back. Others were shot for carrying tires or for simply walking into these areas. These were individuals who posed no threat whatsoever. Even if they were attempting to cross the border, you don’t use live fire to kill people who are crossing a border.”
Moreover, she commented “the point of this was to highlight the fact that Palestinians cannot return. Eighty percent of the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip does not come from the Gaza Strip. They are actually refugees driven out by the Israelis. While Israel keeps claiming that there were attempts to ‘infiltrate,’ in any case, this is not a proper response….The fact that Israel was positioning snipers on the border indicates that they were ready, willing and able to shoot protesters in the back. The head of the Israeli defense establishment has said that every one of these snipers should be commended.” consortiumnews.com/2018/04/05/gaza-protesters-murdered-by-israeli-forces/
Here’s Some Background, including Numbers:
Yousef Munayer Puts It All in Perspective
“Once again, Israel had used lethal force against unarmed protesters, even as Israeli soldiers faced no imminent threat. Indeed, no Israeli soldiers were injured during the events. And it is hard to imagine how they could be. These are soldiers armed to the hilt and positioned atop dunes or in armored vehicles, behind a fence as well, firing at Palestinians from a great distance.
Even if a Palestinian was throwing a stone, the chances that under these conditions such an act could cause an imminent threat to life ― the only situation that would justify the use of lethal force under international law ― are infinitesimal. Indeed, even if Palestinians were trying to climb the fence, that would not give Israel the right to use lethal force. Why does Israel keep finding itself in these situations with the Palestinians?… The truth is, Israel keeps finding itself in these situations because of the ongoing denial of basic rights to millions of Palestinians. This march in Gaza was a demonstration against Israel’s policy of engagement.
Pluralistic democracies that respect human rights do not find themselves resorting to using lethal force against demonstrators. That’s what apartheid states do. But Israel has sold itself to the world as something else, a beacon of liberalism and democracy. Few things expose this image as a sham as well as massive non-violent mobilizations or civil disobedience.” www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-munayyer-gaza-israel_us_5ac28a5fe4b00fa46f8548d8
Where Are the American Marchers? What Are We to Do?
Washington, D.C. and other cities across the country recently experienced hundreds of thousands of marchers protesting the deaths of high school students in Florida. What happened to the marchers on behalf of Palestine? Oh, wait. No, can’t have that. Those are brown-skinned people speaking a foreign language and practicing a different religion. “Valuable” dead people, “valuable injured people” are those “just like us”. You know, Caucasian Christians that speak the King’s English.
Hypocrisy? Bias? Prejudice? In multi-culti Amreeka? Heaven forefend! But it’s true. Arabs and Arab Muslims come in all colors and practice and many different religions. And they don’t have their ethnicity or religion stenciled on their foreheads.
It’s time to become more visible. It’s time to take an “American” to lunch. It’s time to demonstrate that Arabs and Arab Muslims don’t have horns and a tail. It’s time to show that Arabs and Arab Muslims are auto mechanics and computer experts, as well as teachers, bakers, and candlestick makers.
Follow the lead of the Irish, the Negroes, and homosexuals: demonstrate en masse, find friendly journalists, start quoting the Constitution. Get in the blockheads’ faces.
Michael Springmann is an attorney, author, and political commentator. He has written Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked The World and a second book Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? Merkel’s Migrant Bomb. Both are available on Amazon. The books’ website is: www.michaelspringmann.com
