From Sharpeville to Gaza - Apartheid and its Butchers Will Be Crushed!
Statement by the Internationalist Socialist League (Israel/Occupied Palestine), 01/04/2018, www.the-isleague.com
On March 30, 30,000 -50,000 Palestinians from Gaza, demonstrated for their right to return to their country and lands, stolen by the Zionist state. During the ethnic cleansing during 1948-1947 Zionist forces removed 750,000 Palestinians and made them refugees. Survivors, their descendants and their supporters demonstrated in Gaza behind the fence that makes Gaza a Palestinian ghetto under siege.
A Journalist from Gaza, while being interviewed a day before by Israeli TV, said that the people of Gaza are tired of Hamas and the PA have incited the action. They do not want to live under siege.
The Zionist army responded by shooting live ammunition and tear gas. The result of this shooting was the killing of 17 Palestinians while 1,400 were injured, many of them by live bullets. Two Palestinians were killed by tank fire, the Gaza Health Ministry said. The Israeli military said the two were militants who had opened fire at troops across the border. [1]
Israel blames Hamas for the massacre committed by the Zionist apartheid state. According to Israel, two members of Hamas fired on the Israeli army. Yet no Israeli soldier was injured in any shape or form. Israel, as of yet, has not shown any videos showing Palestinians fighters shooting at the Zionist army.
There are videos that clearly show that Israel killed a young man while praying. [2]
The British Telegraph wrote: "The Israeli military has defended its handling of clashes in Gaza which left 16 Palestinians dead even as footage emerged appearing to show unarmed protesters being shot by Israeli snipers.” [3]
Not only this, but according to Jerusalem Post "Families brought their children to the encampments just a few hundred meters (yards) from the Israeli security barrier with the Hamas Islamist-run enclave, and football fields were marked in the sand and scout bands played. But as the day wore on, hundreds of Palestinian youths ignored calls from the organizers and the Israeli military to stay away from the frontier, where Israeli soldiers across the border kept watch from dirt mound embankments." [4]
The reason for the cold blooded killing is clear. Israel has ruled out any right of return. The return of the refugees may transform the Jewish majority into a minority. In 1948 Zionist forces had taken more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and destroyed about 530 villages and cities, and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities, including more than 70 massacres.
In the years that followed the establishment of Israel, the state extended its systematic ethnic cleansing. Though armistice agreements had been signed with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon in 1949, the newly founded Israeli army committed a number of additional massacres and campaigns of forced displacement. For example, in 1950, the remaining 2,500 Palestinian residents of the city of Majdal were forced into the Gaza Strip, about 2,000 inhabitants of Beer el-Sabe were expelled to the West Bank, and some 2,000 residents of two northern villages were driven into Syria. [5]
58 years ago South African's Apartheid carried out a similar massacre in Sharpeville Transvaal, the ghetto for blacks. The police murdered black demonstrators against the pass system. 69 people were killed, including 8 women and 10 children, 180 injured, including 31 women and 19 children.
The SA Prime Minister told the Assembly that the crowd was in a riotous and aggressive mood and stoned the police. There is no evidence to support this. On the contrary, while the crowd was noisy and excitable, singing and occasionally shouting slogans it was not a hostile crowd. Their purpose was not to fight the police, but to show by their presence their hostility to the pass system, expecting that someone would make a statement about passes. Photos taken that morning show clearly that this was no crowd spoiling for a fight with the police. [6]
The massacre of the people of Gaza was carried out for the same reason. Israel’s position is that Palestinian refugees should resettle in a future state in the West Bank and Gaza. However, while Israel is in existence such positions are but a pipe dream, as Israel actively destroys any hope for its realization by promoting Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank.
Friday’s march in Gaza also coincided with the anniversary of Land Day when Israel killed six and wounded some 100 others.
There is an irony that the killing in cold blood of oppressed people took place at the Jewish Passover. This holiday symbolizes in the eyes of the Israeli Jews the time their ancestors were slaves, who were liberated by God inflicting many pains on Pharaoh and the Egyptians. At the same time most of them support and justify the oppression, including the killing of the Palestinians.
They say: "Do you know what could happen if the Palestinians were able to cross the fence, tens of thousands of Israelis would be killed". Exactly the same justification of the South African racists who defend the apartheids. Gidon Levi in Haaretz wrote: "The shooting on the Gaza border shows once again that the killing of Palestinians is accepted in Israel more lightly than the killing of mosquitoes.” [7]
"It should be noted that the now-deleted tweet from the official @IDFSpokesperson account stated: “Yesterday we saw 30,000 people; we arrived prepared and with precise reinforcements. Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed.”
Sarit Michaeli, B’Tselem’s international advocacy officer, characterized the statement as meaning that the “Israeli army takes full responsibility for the killing of all unarmed protesters and the injuring of hundreds with live ammunition.” The army’s deletion of the tweet is hardly surprising. The admission that its killings of demonstrators were premeditated down to the last bullet means it cannot deny responsibility for apparent war crimes, such as the lethal shooting of Abd al-Fattah Abd al-Nabi, 19, as he ran away from the Israel-Gaza boundary fence. Abd al-Nabi was reportedly shot in the head." [8]
This Zionist killing will continue as long as the Zionist state will continue to exist. Hypocritically, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Friday for an independent investigation into deadly clashes in Gaza between Palestinians and Israeli troops, while Security Council members urged restraint on both sides.
Last year Guterres himself, acting under US pressure, suppressed a UN report that found Israel practices apartheid against Palestinians. Everyone who is familiar with the UN knows that the UN will not do anything to Israeli leaders as long as Israel serves the interest of the other imperialists. [9]
Jeremy Corbyn after 24 hours wrote: "The killing and wounding by Israeli forces of civilians demonstrating for Palestinian rights in Gaza is appalling. The UK Government must make its voice heard on the urgency of a genuine settlement for peace and justice.”
The only solution would be a victorious revolutionary struggle led by the workers and the Fallahins. For this reason, we the ISL in Israel (occupied Palestine), the section of the RCIT, support the only possible solution which is Red democratic Palestine with civil equal rights for Palestinians and Israeli Jews, a state that will open the gates to the Palestinian refugees.
Footnotes:
[1] https://theintercept.com/2018/03/30/israel-gaza-march-killed-protest/
[2] http://mondoweiss.net/2018/03/palestinians-walking-praying/
[3] https://tinyurl.com/y9yxv9d4
[4] https://tinyurl.com/y7g5ah93
[5] https://tinyurl.com/y85omnsl
[6] https://tinyurl.com/yc58k4zx
[7] https://tinyurl.com/y96sjfqs
[8] see [1]
[9] see [1]