How can you celebrate a festival if you look at the occupation, the continuous land grabbing and oppression in Palestine by the descendants of Jewish refugees from Egypt?
Before the “Salvation of Zion”, the “Geulat Zion”, there is the “Salvation of Palestine” from illegal Zionist Occupation!
By Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, English translation by Milena Rampoldi
In times of Islam hatred and of a philosemite Anti-Semitism, the beloved “Matzo Balls,” a wonderful Jewish traditional dish, gets stuck in my throat. How can you celebrate a festival if you look at the occupation, the continuous land grabbing and oppression in Palestine by the descendants of Jewish refugees from Egypt? Who can you say “Next year in Jerusalem” at the end of the supplications?
What does this mean? In which Jerusalem? In the Jerusalem under continuous Jewish occupation and Judaisation? No, I cannot and do not want to accept this! Without any doubt, it is important to transmit traditions, but a tradition denying the occupation, land grabbing, and humiliation at the expense of an occupied people, is a crime.
This well-known supplication about Jerusalem is the beginning of a religious, Zionist “tradition.” And from the beginning, already before the Holocaust, without taking the losses into consideration, this Zionist tradition pursued the goal to conquer a “Jewish State” for a “people without land, and a land without people”. This Zionist idea of Herzl will be celebrated in autumn with Netanyahu being invited to Basle. Yes, exactly to Basle! I am asking myself how this “Occupiers’ King Bibi” can be invited to Basle. Has he emigrated to Switzerland? Imagine the scenario of “Erdogan being invited to Germany.” How much greater would the agitation be than about the Turkish election campaign appearances?
Next Monday evening, Jewish citizens all over the world will sit on one table to celebrate the first Seder Evening of the Pessach festival, by commemorating the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. And at this moment, hundred thousands of illegally occupied Palestinians, trapped in their reservations, will involuntarily think about their exodus. Four years ago I wrote a comment about the Pessach festival in Palestine.
In 2013 I wrote “we were refugees in Egypt”; and at that time, Netanyahu praised the “success” of the almost concluded barrier construction to Egypt, by roaring: “There is no other Western country which was able to stop the mass immigration of illegal migrants. And we have ensured that no ‘infiltrant’ can reach the Israeli cities.” Infiltrant!
What about it in 2017? The “Jewish State” drove forward in the ethnical cleansing and judaisation on such a massive scale that it is just a matter of time before all Palestine will be “Muslim-free.” In the meantime, there are other walls to Gaza and prisons for black refugees, and there is US-president Trump planning a giant wall construction to keep out Mexican refugees. And it was him who ordered a “Muslim travel ban,” which has no equal. He falls seamlessly into the ranks of the Zionist racist wall and separation politics against Muslims, refugees, and foreigners. This “Christian-Jewish” alliance will put the fear of God into us!
The “Jewish State” upheld as model for the integration of refugees, and whose security and oppression measures are considered exemplary, surpasses anything you have seen before. In the end, the alleged “unique democracy” in the Middle East signed the International Convention of Refugees, obliging it to comply with international legal standards. However, where there is no claimant against this manifest racism, there is no judge. All this is just a paper waste, a ridiculous paper tiger for the Jewish Apartheid State, this ethnocracy only for Jews!
These Western value hypocrites do not only support this Jewish occupier and Apartheid State, but they even think about imitating its internationally criticized actions. No, this israelization of Germany must be stopped!
It is not enough that the Israel lobby prevents us from our freedom of speech and opinion because we critically talk about Israel’s unjust policies. The German authorities even deny the German constitution because they kowtow to the dictates of the Israel lobby. The reason of state for the safety of Israel is opposed to all democratic traditions. How can you stand up for the safety of an Apartheid and occupier state and be guilty of such a perversion of justice? How can this be, if we have a German Merkel government coalition always speaking about values and human rights, showing them to other governments, while spurning them.
If Chancellor Merkel and other politicians continuously speak about the “Two State Solution” we have to ask ourselves: Do you really believe in what you are saying, or has this well-worn phrase become a battle cry, just showing the indifferent helplessness of a mistaken and cowardly politics toward the “Jewish State” because of the “special” relationship the Netanyahu regime brutally profits from to play the eternal victim, surrounded by terror? How long will this game go on? What must happen to change the minds of people? The Holocaust justifies all means to create an “unholy” home for Jews at the expense of Palestinians, the native population. Zionism knows only one final goal: a judaistic ethnocracy, just for Jews. Nobody cares about the refugees convention or the nakba, the catastrophe of Palestinians. In this Zionist world view, there is definitively no place for “native people” or “infiltrants.”
This idea fatally fits in with the efforts of the agitators of the Christian Democratic Party, from Jens Spahn to the “Burka delegate” Julia Klöckner, to engage for an Islam Law which would not be compatible with our constitution! Should we ask for another delegate in the CDU, engaging for “homosexuals?”
Since 2013, in the country of the Holocaust victims the arbitrariness against Palestinians and unwelcome refugees /“infiltrants” has been so strengthened that all human rights violations and crimes against international law are justified in the context of war against terror and in the “anti-terror” alliance.
Some days ago, for the first time, more than two decades after the negotiations of Oslo and their signature in 1993, the Netanyahu regime announced the construction of a new settlement, and the increased extension of existing ones. This Chutzpah dimension of a new, unlimited indifference is possible knowing that the hypocrite Western community of values will just critizise a bit, and then be silent for ever. And so the myth of the helpless and threatened state will be maintained.
After this announcement, Netanyahu confirmed his “desire for peace” and affirmed that he will prevent the construction of “unauthorised” settlements. In the meantime, in the illegally occupied West Bank, more than two thousand new settlers‘ residential units were authorised, and ninety hectares of Palestinian land were declared as “public” Israeli land. However, all this was completely ignored, like the dispossession of Bedouins, the murder, and the air strikes.
The fact that all settlements are illegal, is ignored thanks to the Hasbara propaganda and all the lies of the Israel lobby. Even US-President Obama had passed a UN resolution without the usual veto confirming according to international right that all settlements are illegal. After all the “pro-Israel” gifts, it was like an farewell present. As expected, his successor Trump opposed to this definition. His deputy Mike Pence has announced that Trump is already working on the future relocation of the US ambassador Friedman from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to officially work from there.
And it goes into the same direction, that the UN report written by the two experts Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley which clearly proves why Israel is an Apartheid State and a regime deliberately backing the division (hafrada) of Palestinian groups. With these intrigues, the Zionist regime always gains the advantage of unlimited power.
It is an abject and shameful tragedy that ironically the new UN general secretary and former leader of the Portuguese socialists, Antonio Guterres, folded to the massive pressure of the Israel lobby and was forced to take distance from the report and also insisted on the cancellation of the report from the list of documents of the UN commission. This blackmailing caused the withdrawal of the UN secretary member, the executive secretary, and former Jordan minister Rima Khalaf, a brave woman refusing this arbitrariness. When Guterres hypocritically opposes to the settlement construction, he has to ask himself, if he is not co-responsible, and he should think about resigning!
For this reason, my past desire is more actual than ever before for the coming Pessach celebration. It does not suffice to do Holocaust politics, to polemicize with the Torah in the hand, to pray the Haggadah, and at the same time to continue to occupy Palestine, to grab land, to dispossess people, and to deny own wars and crimes. The Apartheid Wall must fall. And the illegal occupation must be ended immediately. I call for all diaspora Jews to face the truth and to stop this injustice, instead of blindly supporting the “Jewish State” which just feels strengthened and confirmed to go on with this terrible politics.
My after-dinner speech for the future Seder evening will be: “Next year, in a free, democratic State of Palestine”, since before the “salvation of Zion,” the “Geulat Zion,” there is the “salvation of Palestine” from the illegal Zionist occupation! Since only this is the real “Geulat Zion,” the “salvation of Zion” for a Free Palestine.
Originally posted AT
Desertpeace 