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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/2018/05/28/israels-premature-celebration-gazans-have-crossed-the-fear-barrier/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/28/israels-premature-celebration-gazans-have-crossed-the-fear-barrier/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Israel’s Premature Celebration: Gazans
Have Crossed the Fear Barrier</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 28, 2018</span></div>
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<p>60 Palestinians were killed in Gaza on May 15, simply
for protesting and demanding their Right of Return as
guaranteed by international law.</p>
<p>50 more were killed since March 30, the start of the
‘Great March of Return’, which marks Land Day.</p>
<p>Nearly 10,000 have been wounded and maimed in between
these two dates.</p>
<p>‘Israel has the right to defend itself’, White House
officials announced, paying no heed to the ludicrousness
of the statement when understood within the current
context of an unequal struggle.</p>
<p>Peaceful protesters were not threatening the existence
of Israel; rock throwing kids were not about to
overwhelm hundreds of Israeli snipers, who shot, killed
and wounded Gaza youngsters with no legal or moral
boundary whatsoever.</p>
<p>8-months old, Laila al-Ghandour was one of the 60 who
were killed on May 15. She suffocated to death from
Israeli teargas. Many, like her, were wounded or killed
some distance away from the border. Some were killed for
simply being nearby, or for being Palestinian.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump, daughter of US President,
Donald Trump, ushered in a new era of international
relations, when she and her companions unveiled the new
US Embassy in Jerusalem.</p>
<p>She was ‘all smiles’ while, at the exact same moment,
hundreds of Gazans were being felled at the border. The
already dilapidated hospitals have no room for most of
the wounded. They bled in hallways awaiting medical
attention.</p>
<p>Ivanka has never been to Gaza – and will unlikely ever
visit or be welcomed there. Gazans do not register in
her moral conscience, if she has any beyond her
immediate interests, as people deserving of rights,
freedom and dignity.</p>
<p>At the border, many Gaza kids have been coloring their
bodies in blue paint, dressing up in homemade costumes
to imitate characters from the Hollywood movie,
‘Avatar’. They hoped that, by hiding their brown skin,
their plight and suffering could be more relatable to
the world.</p>
<p>But when they were shot, their blood gave them away.
They were still human, still from Gaza.</p>
<p>The international community has already condemned
Trump’s decision to relocate his country’s embassy to
Jerusalem, and declared his recognition of Jerusalem as
Israel’s capital ‘null and void’, but will it go further
than mere words?</p>
<p>Will the international community remain trapped between
hollow statements and no action? Will they ever truly
recognize the humanity of Laila al-Ghandour and all the
other children, men and women who died and continue to
perish under Gaza’s besieged skies? Will they ever care
enough to do something?</p>
<p>The plight of the Palestinians is compounded with the
burden of having a useless ‘leadership’. The President
of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has been
busy of late, demanding allegiance from the occupied
Palestinians in the West Bank. Large signs and larger
banners have been erected everywhere, where families,
professional associations, unions and companies have
announced, in large font: the “Renewal of Loyalty and
Support to President Mahmoud Abbas.”</p>
<p>‘Renewal’? Abbas’ mandate expired in 2009. Besides, is
this what Abbas and his Fatah party perceive to be the
most urgent matter that needs to be addressed, while his
people are being massacred?</p>
<p>Abbas fears that Hamas is using the blood of the Gaza
victims to bolster its popularity. Ironically, it is a
shared concern with Israeli leaders, the likes of
Israeli army spokesman, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus. The
latter said that Hamas has won the PR war at the Gaza
border by a ‘knockout.’</p>
<p>This propaganda is as false as it is utterly racist;
yet, it has persisted for far too long. It proposes that
Palestinians and Arabs lack human agency. They are
incapable of mobilizing and organizing their collective
efforts to demand their long-denied rights. They are
only pawns, puppets in the hands of factions, to be
sacrificed at the altar of public relations.</p>
<p>It did not dawn on Conricus to note that, perhaps, his
army lost the ‘PR war’ because its brutes shot thousands
of unarmed civilians who did nothing, aside from
gathering at the border demanding an end to their
perpetual siege; or that, just maybe, the PR war was
lost because Israel’s top leaders announced proudly that
Gazans are fair game, since, according to Defense
Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, “there are no innocents in
Gaza.’</p>
<p>Ivanka will go down in Israel’s history as a hero. But
Palestinian Resistance is not fueled or subdued by
Ivanka, but by the sacrifices of the Palestinians
themselves, and by the blood of Laila al-Ghandour, who
was denied even a celebration of her first birthday on
God’s besieged earth.</p>
<p>The US government has decisively and blatantly moved to
the wrong side of history. As their officials attended
parties, galas and celebrations of the Embassy move,
whether in Israel or in Washington and elsewhere,
Palestinians dug 60 more graves and held 60 more
funerals.</p>
<p>The world watched in horror, and even western media
failed to hide the full ugly truth from its readers. The
two acts – of lavish parties and heartbreaking burials –
were beamed all over the world, and the already
struggling American reputation sank deeper and deeper.</p>
<p>Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may have
thought he had won. Comforted by his rightwing
government and society on the one hand, Trump and his
angry UN bully, Nikki Haley, on the other, he feels
invulnerable.</p>
<p>But he should rethink his power-driven logic. When
Gazan youth stood bare-chested at the border fence,
falling one drove after the other, they crossed a fear
barrier that no generation of Palestinians has ever
crossed. And when people are unafraid, they can never be
subdued or defeated.</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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