Laboratory
Rats:
Palestinians Of Gaza And Our Contemporary Josefs Mengeles
By Agustin Velloso
16 June, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Faced with the fear that things
may get even worse, one must not lose sight of the causes of the events
in Gaza, their connection with the situation in Lebanon and Iraq and
above all the lies the media use to defend the interests of the West
and Israel at the expense of the Palestinians.
An editorial of June 13th
in Spain's biggest circulation newspaper - probably a joint effort by
Thomas Friedman, Victor Harel and Javier Solana - is a compendium of
anti-Palestinian remarks, anti-muslim feelings and racist arguments,
whose use for exam set-text commentary on selectivity should be obligatory
as a means to judge the maturity of adolescents: "co-existence
between the moderate Abbas and the government of Ismael Haniya has been
a fiction from the very moment the radical islamists, who waged a terror
war against Israel, won the parliamentary elections last year."
It is all too well known
that laboratory researchers subject small rodents to stressful situations
to provoke illness and aggression. It is also well-known that Gaza is
a huge prison. Israel holds the keys, until a short while ago had its
prison warders inside and now keeps them on the land and sea frontiers,
as well as policing the airspace.
Life there has been simply
inhuman since Israel occupied it militarily in 1967. For many years
now it has been a laboratory using human beings instead of rats, the
main difference being that rats get fed while the Palestinians do not.
"Half the inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank suffer malnutrition"
the Independent reported on June 12th.
Who stops food reaching the
Palestinians?: the radical islamists, the islamist militias, the Palestinian
factions, those favorite terms used by Nazis dressed-up as political
commentators to refer to human beings who barely manage to survive under
a criminal military occupation? No, Israel and the Western governments
are responsible for the Palestinian genocide: the Occupation they have
maintained for 40 years is illegal. The occupied population, which ought
to be protected by the international community, is condemned to death
by lack of freedom, of the means to feed itself, cure its illnesses,
to work, to study and carry out other normal activities just like ordinary
people in the West, but which are not permitted to the Palestinians
so that Israel can have unfettered enjoyment of its Zionist dream: all
Palestine exclusively for the Jews.
The Palestinians have done
more to advance psycho-biological science than all the rats of the world
put together. A good million Palestinians know from experience that
if you occupy them militarily, coop them up in 360 square kilometers,
destroy and loot their houses, cut off electricity and drinking water,
regularly bomb them, make them see they have no future and if finally
you blockade their economy and arm the leaders, then the very least
that will happen is that they set about shooting at one another.
The first thing the authoritative
editorialists do is blame Palestinian "militias and armed groups"
for what is happening since this is a necessary pre-judgment to demonize
the Palestinians and move right on to ask for intervention by the international
community, but without mentioning a single word about that community's
responsibility for the disaster. The same happens in the case of Lebanon
and Iraq.
The United States and its
allies occupy that country after having submitted it to thirteen years
of economic sanctions as criminal as those imposed on Palestine. They
violate at will the thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, human decency and common sense, while their word-gunslingers,
those authoritative editorialists, offer sermons on civil war in the
Arab world and the need for action by the UN : "(the Israeli) Prime
Minister suggested yesterday the deployment of an International force
on the frontier between Gaza and Egypt." What a super idea! Why
did they not ask for it during their 40 years of occupation and wars
of aggression against their neighbors from their very founding as a
State? Why no calls for the UN to deploy Blue Helmets in the military
airfields of the United States and Europe so as to prevent the air raids
on Iraq? Why no buffer force sent to northern Israel to halt the advance
of its tanks into Lebanon? Why does the UN not mount an economic boycott
against Israel, responsible for thousands of deaths in the Middle East
and for the destruction of Lebanon and Gaza?
How come an editorialist,
equipped with a style manual to talk about democracy and social principles,
is not led to reflect on the fact that if the Western blockade works
to impede the supply of food to Gaza but not of weapons, the Palestinians,
rather than invite each other to tea and cakes, will use those weapons
for a fratricidal war?
Social psychology does not explain everything, although it does explain
a lot, as the Palestinian psychologist Eyad El-Sarraj reminds us, "Psychological
research worldwide has shown that ongoing armed conflicts result in
what is known as chronic social intoxication which makes people and
children less sensitive and more ruthless, less rational and more impulsive,
less conversant and more violent." (http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-061307111901.htm).
The human condition also
has some weight from a moral viewpoint, not just a psychological one.
It might have been better to use those feeble forces and that desperation
to fight the Occupation, but it is as clear as it is lamentable that
the damage caused to Palestinian society by the Occupiers and their
allies has been so profound and its poison so effective that the interests
of the worst among the Palestinians have prevailed over the rights and
well-being of the majority. Like any other country, Palestine has bad
people, traitors, abnormal, violent, stupid, vengeful people, people
anxious for money and power and so on. The fundamental difference is
the enormous damage they do in Palestine as a result of the terrible
conditions there.
At the same time, the moral
condition of the editorialists prevents them from regarding the Palestinians
as anything but rats who deserve the fate they suffer, for that reason
they take refuge in political, social and cultural pretexts like the
terrorist character, factional behavior and the presence of Islamism.
Translation copyleft by tortilla con sal.
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