The Pledge of ‘Never Again' Doesn't Apply to Palestinians by Tariq Al Meena

Posted on 03 March 2008. Tags: Gaza, Israel, Palestinians

Silent no More:-

Prophet Muhammad said “if you see evil, rise up to end it, if you cannot participate actively, speak up against it, if you cannot speak up against evil, keep the challenge in your heart”.

The PPPP and the PML(N) is silent on the Palestinian issue and has ignored the plight of the Gazans. This contravenes the PPP manifesto and the writings of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and even Benazir Bhutto

After the Holocaust in Germany, the world pledged “Never Again”. The Never again is written into the Israeli constitution and is repeated at every Holocaust ceremony every year around the world in every synagogue. The “Never Again” pledge is not limited to a Holocaust against the Jews. The holocaust ceremonies mention that any genocide or act of war against any people will not be tolerated.

With this as background, Tariq Al Meena writes an article in the Arab Times
The Middle East’s Leading English Language Daily Saturday 1 March 2008 (23 Safar 1429)

The Pledge of ‘Never Again’ Doesn’t Apply to Palestinians Tariq A. Al-Maeena, talmaeena@aol.com -

Death and darkness shroud Gaza. Twelve people, including four children under 12, were killed in new Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip last Thursday. The four boys were playing in a refugee camp. Israel’s all too familiar spin claimed that they were among the “militants”. The latest casualties brought the death toll in the last two days of Israeli air raids to 27 including the death of a 6-month-old baby who was one of those killed in Wednesday’s raids.

The Palestinians are being systematically destroyed and shown no mercy. And, most of the world continues to remain silent. As if in atonement for whatever sins committed against the Jews by Adolph Hitler. And “never again” does not seem to apply to the Palestinians.

Because of the splitting of Palestine into small enclaves, and the imposition of a severe blockade on Gaza, the people in the occupied territories are going through indescribable miseries, with the hopes for a two-state solution fast receding.

Uri Avnery, the Israeli peace activist and a witness to the Jewish state’s injustices has stated that what is happening in Gaza is worse than many crimes. “The Gaza Strip is the largest prison on earth. The breaking of the Rafah wall was an act of liberation. It proves that an inhuman policy is always a stupid policy: no power can stand up against a mass of people that has crossed the border of despair.”

On the other hand, the United States has, as was only to be expected, quickly placed the blame on the Palestinians.

“The Palestinians living in Gaza are living under chaos because of Hamas, and the blame has to be placed fully at their feet,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino recently said.

This seems to be the de facto justification for the collective punishment of the people of Gaza. It also falls into the familiar pattern of highlighting Palestinian violence, keeping silence about the Israeli violence and the reasons for the Palestinian violence in the first place.

The Annapolis peace process may lead us to a Palestinian “state” that, notwithstanding US President Bush’s pious declarations, will resemble Gaza-like enclaves declared “unoccupied” and subjected to brutal repression.

While in Jerusalem recently, the US leader outlined his two-state vision that, critically translated, means the recognition of Israeli West Bank colonization, the preservation of Israel’s right to discriminate against non-Jews, and the creation of more sealed-off, “autonomous” Palestinian homelands.

This is in sharp contrast to the recent impatience demonstrated by the Americans and the EU to amputate a portion of a UN member state and accede to the demands of the Kosovar Albanians, who after having enjoyed almost nine years of UN administration and NATO protection, couldn’t be expected to wait any longer for their freedom, while the Palestinians, under a brutal occupation for over 40 years, are told that “any Palestinian independence, to be recognized and legally effective, must still be directly negotiated, on a wildly unequal bilateral basis, between the occupying power and the occupied people – and must be agreed to by the occupying power.”

This clearly demonstrates that for the US and the EU, the rights and wishes of a long-suffering and brutalized people, as well as international law, are irrelevant and these governments have shown unlimited and remarkable patience when it comes to condoning the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

Virtually every legal resident of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip seeks freedom from occupation – and has for over 40 years. For doing so, they are punished, sanctioned, besieged, humiliated and, day after endless day, killed by those who claim to occupy the moral high ground.