Apropos the continuing bombing spree by Israel, this needs to be shared from my Palestinian American friend: I’m sorry for my statuses about Gaza. I’m sorry to the families of the 10 Palestinian children, dressed in their special clothes for the Muslim Eid holiday yesterday, blown to bits by Israeli bombs while they were playing in a Gaza park. What would the US response be if these children had been Israelis, killed while playing during a Jewish holiday? They dared to be kids, to breathe amidst an illegal and brutal medieval siege, and for that they paid with their lives. That is what Zionism looks like to its Palestinian subjects. I’m sorry to my friend Elena Khoury, who after my post about the funeral service in a Palestinian Christian church in Gaza yesterday for her family member killed by an Israeli air strike, has been updating me about the now dead mother’s son, Jeries, who was found beneath the rubble, burned, and unconscious. He lost parts of both of his legs and desperately needs amputation and treatment but Israel is targeting hospitals and he can’t get out of the Gaza ghetto because it’s an open air prison. Where is the US response to the suffering and oppression of Palestinian Christians in the Occupied Territories? Or does the fact that this persecution is coming from Israel disrupt the anti-Arab racist and dehumanizing tropes and narratives in the US media? I’m sorry that the death toll in Gaza has now reached 1,100 in a matter of days. I’m sorry that these victims are blamed for their own killing within US centers of power and among American elites. Yet those children at the park had nothing to do with Hamas. Elena’s family has nothing to do with Hamas. Many of us do not support Hamas but these massacres only increase support for them. There is responsibility to be assigned to Hamas but the patronizing and disproportionate moralizing towards the occupied and the blind eyes to the immense power of the occupiers is shameful. There can be no moral equivalence between colonizer and colonized. I’m sorry that my mind is preoccupied with finding ways, on my behalf of my family and stateless nation, to implore the US to stop funding and enabling this madness. I’m sorry to those who are inconvenienced by my posts. But I can’t and won’t stop posting until these massacres fueled by US tax dollars-- given Israel’s status as the world’s largest recipient of US aid-- are no more. It’s the very least we can do as we try to count our dead and anxiously await the news of whose loved ones will be targeted next. - Saed Adel Atshan
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 19:36:23 +0000
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