Tuesday 1 July 2014

Where the real blame lies.

In the wake of the news of the three dead  Israeli boys, staunch support for the Palestinians and a single tweet to their cause will leave you  hounded with questions from Israel supporters. Weren't they innocent? Did they deserve to die? What wrong have they ever done to anyone ?
I do not know Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar or Eyal Yifrach personally. But now I know their names, their faces, their ages of 16, 16, 19. I've been updated by my BBC app regularly on everything about this ever since their disappearance.
The murders "have been blamed on" Hamas. Note that Israel has no proof and has not provided any. But it promises attacks. Revenge. I'm sure in the following days , God forbid, BBC will be updating me about thousands of nameless faceless bodies , tiny ones, covered in the red anger of a war they didn't start. Of parents hunched over them , still unable to believe their entire world has stopped breathing.
Israel blames Hamas. The Palestinian government. The Palestinian people. The "terrorists". The hate mongers. The killers. The murderers.
Oh, the bitter irony.
Seeing through Netanyahu adamant facade, is something the masses can easily realise. This is an angry man, yes. This is a man out for revenge. This is a man who will thoughtlessly take countless lives now that he has even the shadow of a reason to.
But there is something for the perceptive to see, too. He blames this organisation and that government and these people but at the core of it all, who is truly responsible ? I do not know what the teenagers were guilty of or what they were not, but if they truly did not deserve to die , who is responsible for their deaths?
This very powerful angry man , with all his rage and thirst for justice knows the overwhelming truth. He is. His government is. His oppression and occupation and all his injustices have resulted in a tragedy, and at the center of it all , he and his people are to blame. 

The bitter truth is that thousands of Palestinian children were killed by this monster and his people and nobody batted an eye. Do you know the names and ages of these boys?(above picture ) Do you know when they died or how they died ? Have you seen their faces before ? Did you know that Israeli prisons hold children as young as nine? 

That news isn't nearly important enough. 


Those people aren't nearly important enough. 

Those deaths just weren't shocking enough.

The only reason why this seems so unfair and unjust to Israel is because they think that their lives, somehow  matter more than those of the Palestinians. One of those teenagers had US nationality which no newspaper forgot to stress. Like the killing of a US citizen is somehow more heinous a crime ,than to kill an ordinary human being. Are the citizens of war struck and third world countries somehow less human, then?


Israel held a vigil, for those three youths.  Three humans. They mourned their dead in peace .
A few months ago, Palestine tried to mourn the forced eviction of 600,00 of its citizens in 1967 by gathering on the West Bank.
Israel's forces fired tear gas at them.


To the average Israeli, all I say is this :If there's anything you wish to learn from this , then it should be this. You could not stand the loss and pain and crushing grief of the death of three boys.
The Palestinians have to deal with the loss and pain of more than 2000. If you want the lives of your boys to mean anything at all, their deaths to mean anything at all, let it open you up to how those countless  Palestinians feel everyday of their lives. You lost 3 boys.  They lost their homes , their lives, their jobs, and their families.

When Mother Teresa was asked what the average human being should do to contribute to world peace , she merely said" Go home and love your family."

What beautiful advice, indeed. Although one has to question what becomes of that peace when one no longer has a home to return to, or a family that is alive.

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