A cold and deliberate power

TO protest the 70th year of Zionist Israel’s unjust and illegal occupation of their land, the beleaguered people of Palestine launched the Nakba protests or the Great March of Return at the Gaza Strip border last March 30, 2018. Almost two months later, 115 had been killed among the ranks of the unarmed Palestinian protesters who want to symbolically breach the gates that has kept them away from their traditional villages and land. Like picking off game in a hunting slaughter, Israeli snipers perched on high vantage points shoot down scores from the Palestinian ranks as if they were target practice instead of people. The fact that hundreds have died in this manner and about twelve thousand injured is an indication of the depths this protracted conflict has brought the Zionist cause. It is a sad twist of fate when we consider that that the Israelis have evolved to become facsimiles of their Nazi tormentors while their victims, the Palestinians now have fates of generations worse than the victims of the Holocaust. The cynical will argue that the Palestinian cause has played the victim card to the hilt when there are cases of suicide attacks and dirty rocket attacks targeting Jewish settlements. Israel is just defending itself, they would argue, against present and future threat. But there should be no doubt that what is taking place is an asymmetrical conflict precipitated in the first place by the forcible occupation of Israel of Palestinian land and a segment of the beleaguered population have seen armed resistance as the only recourse. By and large, however, the reason why the Palestinian cause has continued to capture the imagination of the world is because they have taken on a brave and unusual path of non-violence, pitting their sticks and stones, their very bodies, to the far superior armaments and trained soldiers of the Israeli army. This clash of images distinguishing one camp from the other was displayed in the media coverage of the Nakba protests entering its third month this week. The stories of those who have been gunned down have been featured including the death of a journalist Yasser Murtaja, a paraplegic in a wheelchair Ibrahim Thraya, and more recently, a 20-year old nurse who was volunteering as a nurse to aid the injured and the dead at the protests. An Israeli sniper shot Razan Najjar last June 1st, 2018 while she was coming to the aid of a protester hit by a tear gas canister. On the other hand, the Israeli forces have been seen as a cold and calculating force that do not flinch from violating international statutes against the targeting of unarmed civilians and medical personnel. For them, the deliberate picking off of the likes of wheelchair-bound Thraya and nurse Najjar fulfill a calibrated effect. It relays the message to the Palestinians and the world that they do not exempt anyone including the disabled, women, and children, if they are a threat to the Israeli State and the Zionist agenda. It is a show of a deliberate and calculating force, which has been the preferred method of Israel to all challenges versus their illegitimate occupation of Palestine. In fact, the checkpoints, food and energy blockades, and the general condition of apartheid imposed by the Israeli government against the Palestinian population are all designed to precisely have that effect – demoralize and weaken the resolve of the Palestinian people in their just fight. There is a lot parallelisms that can be drawn between the Palestinian struggle and other minority groups who are sacrificed in the name of the political and economic interest of a dominant occupying force. The same systemic application of a deliberate and calculated violence is also taking place in indigenous areas in the Philippines, for instance, where anti-mining critics of government are gunned down in cold blood by suspected state forces to weaken communities that are resisting. Last May 26, 2018, Beverly Geronimo was returning home with her daughter from buying supplies for the upcoming school opening when she was shot by suspected military assassins in Trento, Agusan del Sur. She sustained seven gun shot wounds that led to her death, while her eight-year old daughter, who was riding with her in the motorcycle survived but was injured. She was a vocal anti-mining critic in the area and staunch defender of community schools where her children study. Weeks before, she and other parents of these schools were warned by the military about their perceived support for the rebels citing their anti-mining stance and support for these community-based schools. Beverly is the latest casualty in what has been a longdrawn struggle of indigenous groups to secure their ancestral land against encroaching mining and agricultural enterprises in the Philippines. And just like in the Palestinian struggle, the cold and deliberate power of guns and violence also fuel the inexhaustible spring of resistance in occupied territories all over the world.