[News] Gaza Bleeds Alone as ‘Liberals’ and ‘Progressives’ Go Mute

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/02/gazan-gandhis-gaza-bleeds-alone-as-liberals-and-progressives-go-mute/ 



  Gazan Gandhis: Gaza Bleeds Alone as ‘Liberals’ and ‘Progressives’ Go Mute

by Ramzy Baroud <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/cet6s/> - May 2, 2018
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Three more Palestinians were killed and 611 wounded last Friday, when 
tens of thousands of Gazans continued their largely non-violent protests 
at the Gaza-Israel border.

Yet as the casualty count keeps climbing – nearly 45 dead and over 5,500 
wounded – the deafening silence also continues. Tellingly, many of those 
who long chastised Palestinians for using armed resistance against the 
Israeli occupation are nowhere to be found, while children, journalists, 
women and men are all targeted by hundreds of Israeli snipers who dot 
the Gaza border.

Israeli officials are adamant. The likes of Defense Minister, Avigdor 
Lieberman, perceives his war against the unarmed protesters as a war on 
terrorists. He believes that “there are no innocents in Gaza.” While the 
Israeli mindset is not in the least surprising, it is emboldened by the 
lack of meaningful action, or outright international silence to the 
atrocities taking place at the border.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), aside from frequent statements 
laced with ambiguous legal jargon, has been quite useless thus far. Its 
Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, derided Israel’s killings in a recent 
statement, but also distorted facts in her attempt at ‘even-handed 
language’, to the delight of Israeli media.

“Violence against civilians – in a situation such as the one prevailing 
in Gaza – could constitute crimes under the Rome Statute of the 
International Criminal Court … as could the use of civilian presence for 
the purpose of shielding military activities,” she said.

Encouraged by Bensouda’s statement, Israel is exploiting the opportunity 
to deflect from its own crimes. On April 25, an Israeli law group, 
Shurat Hadin, is seeking to indict three Hamas leaders at the ICC, 
accusing Hamas of using children as human shields at the border protests.

It is tragic that many still find it difficult to grasp the notion that 
the Palestinian people are capable of mobilizing, resisting and making 
decisions independent from Palestinian factions.

Indeed, for the nearly decade-long Hamas-Fatah feud, the Israeli siege 
on Gaza and throughout the various destructive wars, Gazans have been 
sidelined, often seen as hapless victims of war and factionalism, and 
lacking any human agency.

Shurat Hadin, like Bensouda, are all feeding into that dehumanizing 
discourse.

By insisting that Palestinians are not capable of operating outside the 
confines of political factions, few feel the sense of political 
responsibility or moral accountability to come to the aid of the 
Palestinians.

This is reminiscent of former US President Barack Obama’s unsolicited 
lecture to Palestinians during his Cairo speech to the Muslim world in 2009.

“Palestinians must abandon violence,” he said. “Resistance through 
violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed.”

He then offered his own questionable version of history of how all 
nations, including ‘black people in America’, the nations of South 
Africa, South East Asia, Eastern Europe and Indonesia fought and won 
their freedom by peaceful means only.

This demeaning approach – of comparing supposed Palestinian failures to 
others’ successes – is always meant to highlight that Palestinians are 
different, lesser beings who are incapable of being like the rest of 
humanity. Interestingly, this is very much the core of the Zionist 
narrative about the Palestinians.

That very notion is often presented in the question “where is the 
Palestinian Gandhi?” The inquiry, often asked by so-called liberals and 
progressives, is not an inquiry at all, but is a judgement – and an 
unfair one at that.

Addressing the question soon after the last Israeli war on Gaza in 2014, 
Jeff Stein wrote in Newsweek, “The answer has been blown away in the 
smoke and rubble of Gaza, where the idea of non-violent protest seems as 
quaint as Peter, Paul and Mary. The Palestinians who preached 
non-violence and led peaceful marches, boycotts, mass sit-downs and the 
like are mostly dead, in jail, marginalized or in exile.”

Yet, astonishingly, it is being resurrected again, despite the numerous 
odds, the unfathomable anger and unrelenting pain.

Tens of thousands of protesters, raising Palestinian flags continue to 
hold their massive rallies across the Gaza border. Despite the high 
death toll and the thousands maimed, they return everyday with the same 
commitment to popular resistance that is predicated on collective unity, 
beyond factionalism and politics.

But why are they still being largely ignored?

Why isn’t Obama tweeting in solidarity with Gazans? Why isn’t Hillary 
Clinton taking the podium to address the unremitting Israeli violence?

It is politically convenient to criticize Palestinians as a matter of 
course, and utterly inconvenient to credit them, even when they display 
such courage, prowess and commitment to peaceful change.

The likes of famed author, J.K. Rowling, had much to stay in criticism 
of the peaceful Palestinian boycott movement, which aims at holding 
Israel accountable for its military occupation and violations of human 
rights. But she became mute when Israeli snipers killed children in 
Gaza, while cheering whenever a child falls.

The singer Bono of the band U2 dedicated a song to the late Israeli 
President Shimon Peres, accused of numerous war crimes, but his voice 
seems to have grown hoarse as the Gaza boy, Mohammed Ibrahim Ayoub, 15 
was shot by an Israeli sniper while protesting peacefully at the border.

However, there is a lesson in all of this. The Palestinian people should 
have no expectations of those who have constantly failed them. 
Chastising Palestinians for failing at this or that is an old habit, 
meant to simply hold Palestinians responsible for their own suffering, 
and to absolve Israel from any wrong doing. Not even Israel’s 
‘incremental genocide’ in Gaza will change that paradigm.

Instead, Palestinians must continue to count on themselves; to stay 
focused on formulating a proper strategy that will serve their own 
interests in the long run, the kind of strategy that transcends 
factionalism and offer all Palestinians a true roadmap to the coveted 
freedom.

The popular resistance in Gaza is just the beginning; it must serve as a 
foundation for a new outlook, a vision that will ensure that the blood 
of Mohammed Ibrahim Ayoub is not spilled in vain.

/*Dr. Ramzy Baroud* has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 
years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media 
consultant, an author of several books and the founder of 
PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom 
Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London). His website is: 
ramzybaroud.net/

-- 
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