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<div class="header reader-header" style="display: block;"
dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/02/gazan-gandhis-gaza-bleeds-alone-as-liberals-and-progressives-go-mute/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/02/gazan-gandhis-gaza-bleeds-alone-as-liberals-and-progressives-go-mute/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Gazan Gandhis: Gaza Bleeds Alone as
‘Liberals’ and ‘Progressives’ Go Mute</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/cet6s/"
rel="nofollow">Ramzy Baroud</a> - May 2, 2018</span></div>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Shurat Hadin, like Bensouda, are all feeding into that
dehumanizing discourse.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This is reminiscent of former US President Barack
Obama’s unsolicited lecture to Palestinians during his
Cairo speech to the Muslim world in 2009.</p>
<p>“Palestinians must abandon violence,” he said.
“Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and
does not succeed.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>Yet, astonishingly, it is being resurrected again,
despite the numerous odds, the unfathomable anger and
unrelenting pain.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>But why are they still being largely ignored?</p>
<p>Why isn’t Obama tweeting in solidarity with Gazans? Why
isn’t Hillary Clinton taking the podium to address the
unremitting Israeli violence?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p> <em><strong>Dr. Ramzy Baroud</strong> 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</em> </p>
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