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Death in the Heart of Jerusalem
by Edna Yaghi
The human bomb that set himself off on Thursday,
August 9 in a crowded Jerusalem restaurant during the busy lunch
hour came as no surprise. After nearly a year of political
assassinations, shooting children at random, blowing up homes,
demolishing houses, uprooting trees, closures, curfews, isolating
one Palestinian area from another, starving and economically
strangulating the Palestinians, Israelis could expect little else.
Perhaps it is just what Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon really wants. He kills off Palestinians right and
left, he brutalizes them, he makes life as miserable as he can for
them knowing full well that there are young Palestinian men
seething with anger who are willing to die so that the rest of
Palestine can be free.
Once these human bombs blow themselves up taking
as many Israelis as they can with them, then Sharon finds his
excuse to wage an even greater war against the civilian
Palestinian population. When his war escalates, Sharon thinks he
can get away with more evil and take away more of the
Palestinians’ human and inalienable rights from them. He knows
full well that American President George Bush is an idiot without
an ounce of intelligence and he also knows that the Arab leaders
are impotent and have no desire to stop the carnage being waged
against the Palestinians.
It really makes no sense that Palestinians must
die and be brutalized by a people who have no business being there
on their land in the first place. Since all Jews came from some
place else, like Europe, Russia, or America, it makes no sense
that they are taking away a country not their own and annihilating
the indigenous inhabitants at the same time.
Of course the Israeli war state is supported and
defended by the American government. How ironic that the Americans
who once struggled so valiantly for their own freedom are so ready
to criticize the Palestinians in their own fight for liberty and
the Americans even condone the way the Israelis take more land and
kill more Palestinians.
Though Bush expresses his outrage at the
Palestinian human bombs, he is silent about the terror that is
constantly inflicted on the Palestinian civilian population. He
said about the Jerusalem bombing, "The deliberate murder of
innocent civilians is abhorrent to all."
But where was Bush when an Israeli helicopter
rocket attack earlier this month in the West Bank city of Nablus
killed 6 Hamas members and two children? Such indiscriminate
bombings only increase the chances of Palestinians risking their
lives to liberate their people. Where has Bush been when more than
500 Palestinians have been killed? And where has he been when more
than 13,000 have been injured, many of them permanently? And where
is he when the Palestinians are losing between $7 million to $10
million a day because of Israeli oppression?
Where was Bush when Israelis have beaten
Palestinians to death? How does he expect the Palestinians to go
on suffering without fighting back?
I watched the news yesterday about what happened
in Jerusalem. I hate to see anyone hurt. I hate to see anyone
killed. But as Israelis have tears to cry for themselves and their
loved ones, so do the Palestinians. When Palestinian mothers lose
their children no one hears them cry or sees their tears and no
one cares. When Palestinian children are orphaned because of
Apache helicopters bombing their fathers by remote control, no one
is concerned.
The whole world watches as Palestinians die every
day. The whole world does nothing. The Arab leaders could not care
less and they are too far immersed in their useless lives to even
call for a summit. They are blinded by their own greed and
self-complacency. And as long as this vast sea of indifference
continues and as long as Sharon practices his latest form of
murder and oppression, then there will be human bombs that will go
off at any moment and at any place. No Israeli is safe.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2001 Edna Yaghi
by the same author:
Reproduction in whole or
in part without permission is prohibited.
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