woensdag 22 april 2009

Eduardo Galeano


Palestine Think Tank
Free Minds for a Free Palestine

Eduardo Galeano - Operation Unpunished Lead
By Mary Rizzo • Jan 18th, 2009 at 22:39 • 

To justify itself, state terrorism manufactures terrorists: it sows hate and harvests alibis. Everything indicates that this slaughterhouse of Gaza, which according to its perpetrators is for finishing off the terrorists, will achieve boosting them.

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Since 1948, the Palestinians live condemned to perpetual humiliation. They cannot even breathe without permission. They have lost their country, their land, their water, their freedom, everything of theirs. They do not even have the right to choose their governments. When they vote for those they should not, they are punished. Gaza is being punished. It turned into a mousetrap without exit since Hamas cleanly won the elections of 2006. Something similar happened in 1932 when the Communist Party triumphed in the elections of El Salvador. Drenched in blood, the Salvadorans atoned for their bad behaviour and since then have lived under military dictatorships. Democracy is a luxury which not everyone deserves.

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The rockets which the cornered militants of Hamas clumsily aim in Gaza, on land that had been Palestinian and which the Israeli occupation usurped, are the children of impotence. And desperation, on the edge of suicidal madness, is the mother of the threats that deny the right of Israel’s existence: ineffectual cries, while the very efficient war of extermination is denying, for years, the right of Palestine’s existence.

Little remains of Palestine. Step by step, Israel is erasing the map.

The colonialists encroach, and after them the soldiers rush to the border. Bullets sanctify plunder as legitimate defence.

There is no aggressive war that does not say is defensive. Hitler invaded Poland to prevent Poland invading Germany. Bush invaded Iraq to prevent Iraq invading the world. In each of the defensive wars, Israel has swallowed up another piece of Palestine: the luncheon continues. The devouring is justified by the property rights the Bible granted, for the two thousand years of persecution that the Jewish people suffered and for the panic that the Palestinians lying in wait generate.

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Israel is a country that never complies with either the recommendations or the resolutions of the United Nation, that never obeys the judgments of the international tribunals, that mocks international laws, and is also the only country that has legalised the torture of prisoners.

Who has gifted it the right to deny all the rights? Where does this impunity, with which Israel is carrying out the killings in Gaza, derive from? The Spanish government could not have bombed Basque country with impunity to finish off ETA; neither could the British government have destroyed Ireland to liquidate the IRA. Perhaps the tragedy of the Holocaust entails a policy of everlasting impunity? Or that the green light comes from the bigshot power which has in Israel the most unquestioning of its vassals?

Geen opmerkingen:

Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...