Death is tired of the killing of Palestinians, but Israel is not tired

Majid Kayali

Death is tired of the killing of Palestinians, while the killers in Israel are not tired of mass massacres, and the prisons are tired of detaining Palestinians, and of the largest prison system, known as the largest open prison in history (according to the title of a book by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe), while the Israeli jailer is not satisfied with that, In one of the most tyrannical and brutal occupation regimes the world has ever known (according to Israeli writer Gideon Levy).

In fact, history has never known an occupier who absents the colonized people, or tries to banish them from existence, or get rid of them, or demand that they guarantee their security, neither in the experience of French annexed settler colonialism in Algeria, nor in the experience of British colonialism in India, nor in the experience of Dutch settler colonialism in South Africa (Of course, with the exception of pre-modern colonial experiences in the Americas and Australia).

Now, that is, as of the moment of writing this article, the number of Palestinians killed by Israel has reached 11,000, a third of them children, and tens of thousands wounded. It has destroyed more than 60 percent of Gaza’s architecture and homes, completely or partially, and caused the displacement of two-thirds of its population, in uncontrollable unprecedented brutality, in a war that does not seem to end soon, or that Israel (with American support) does not want to end, perhaps until the demolishing of last hospital, the last oven, the last school, the last house, and the last Palestinian.

The meaning is that this war has become outside politics, with the pure killing, pure destruction, and pure displacement that Israel has been pursuing for over a month now becoming a goal in itself, especially with the cutting off of all means of life (water, electricity, medicine, food, and home). This confirms that Israel is waging, these days, a war of extermination against the Palestinians of Gaza in particular, and against the Palestinians between the river and the sea in general, which lends legitimacy to likening Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians, even before the war, to the policies of the Nazi army in Europe, during World War II (according to Abraham Burg’s description) , former Speaker of the Knesset.

In this war, Israel is trying to exploit the Hamas attack, on the 7th of last month, as an opportunity for it to complete what it was unable to do in the First Nakba (1948), which is the event upon which its establishment was founded, at the expense of the Palestinian people, 75 years ago. The Palestinians did not forget, and their memory is passed on to their children and grandchildren who refuse to forget, and their resistance has not stopped, in this form or level or another, despite all the high costs. That is, Israel wants to use this war to uproot a part of the Palestinians from their land, burn out their consciousness, and extinguish their resistance, in its various forms, in a tremendous process, unprecedented in its brutality.

The other use that Israel is trying is its attempt to impose a new narrative on the world, enabling it to regain its monopoly on the status of the victim, by presenting the Hamas attack as a parallel event to the Holocaust, or as a parallel to the terrorist attack on September 11 (2001) in the United States, as if this attack had nothing before it, or as if Israel had been a compassionate mother to the Palestinians for 75 years, or since it occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for 56 years, or since it besieged Gaza for 16 years.

However, this narrative did not deceive anyone, after all the dehumanizing massacres in the world, as even among Israel and Jews in the world, protests emerged against the genocide and mass killing of Palestinians. This is Judith Butler (an American/Jewish philosopher), with her criticism of the “Hamas” operation, but she refused to submit to Israeli blackmail, stressing that the “Hamas” operation cannot be viewed as an isolated event from what came before it, or without a connection to the policies that Israel is pursuing against the Palestinians. . “Let us be clear,” Butler says, “Israeli violence against Palestinians is overwhelming: relentless bombing, killing of people of all ages in their homes and in the streets, torture in prisons, various methods of starvation in Gaza, and the dispossession of homes. And all of this violence...is perpetrated against a people suffering under the laws of apartheid, colonial rule, and statelessness... I condemn violence unconditionally, and at the same time, like many others, I want to be part of the imagination and struggle to achieve true equality and justice in the region, in the way that It leads to forcing groups like “Hamas” to disappear, ending the occupation, and allowing new forms of political freedom and justice to flourish. Without achieving equality and justice, and without ending the stateof violence practiced by Israel, which itself was founded on violence, it is unthinkable to imagine any future, Including a future of true peace.”(10/20/2023).

This was also confirmed by Israeli analyst Yossi Klein. In his opinion, “the attack that occurred on Saturday did not occur in a vacuum. The atrocities were another chapter in a story that lasted 57 years... Everyone described our situation as sitting on “the crater of a volcano about to explode,” or on “A barrel of explosives.” When the volcano explodes, they invent a fact to justify stupid ignorance... We do not have the courage to confront the Palestinian issue that was brought upon us by the events of October 7... because of extremist nationalism, incitement, hatred, arrogance and racism.” (“Haaretz”, 11/2/2023).

The Israeli historian Ilan Pappé was bolder in expressing his opinion, saying: “The moral compass is what pushed me, and others in our society, to stand by the Palestinian people... This is what allows us, at the same time, to admire the courage of the Palestinian fighters who took over... on twelve military bases, and their defeat over the strongest army in the Middle East... and raising many questions about the moral or strategic value of some of the measures that accompanied this operation... I have doubts about the awareness of those who decided to decorate the Parliament building in London and the Eiffel Tower in Paris with colors of the Israeli flag... as a mandate to continue the genocide that Israel is now committing against the people of Gaza...” (Palestine Chronicle, 10/10/2023).

In short, Israel, in all this hatred against Gaza, is not only trying to avenge the blow that undermined the image of what it considers to be the holiest of holies, that is, the Israeli army, which it has always claimed is invincible. Rather, in this war, it is trying to exploit its narrative of the oppression it was subjected to a century ago in Europe, to demand that the West, in this pathological neurosis that it is experiencing, compensate it by supporting its brutality against the Palestinians, and forcing surrender on the Palestinian people, to brute force, and to the Israeli narrative that means the death of the Palestinian, or his alienation from time and place, and even from himself, so that he turns into an object. It lacks meaning, or is a hidden entity, behind the insulating walls, in the country and abroad, without history, identity, culture, or narrative.

As for Gaza’s share with Israel, it is an attempt to turn it into a cemetery, after it was a prison, among the largest open-air prison in history, for Palestinians from the river to the sea who have no rights, according to an expression by the Israeli writer Ilan Pappe, after it failed to drown in the sea, as some had once wished. The leaders of Israel who were incapacitated by this part of Palestine called Gaza, which is a narrow strip with an area of only 365 square kilometers.