Moshe Dayans famous 1956 eulogy for a young kibbutznik named Ro’i Rotenberg, who was killed by Gazan Arab shepherds, who had crossed over the border into Israel. After mind you, being harassed and insulted by Mr. Rotenberg, merely for trying to tend their flock of sheep. Dayan: Do not today besmirch the murderers with accusations. WHO ARE WE THAT WE (Political Zionists running the state of Israel) SHOULD BEWAIL THEIR (Palestinians) MIGHTY HATRED OF US? FOR EIGHT YEARS THEY SIT IN REFUGEE CAMPS IN GAZA (and actually still do to this day, in a closed off open-air prison aka the Gaza Strip), AND OPPOSITE THEIR GAZE WE APPROPRIATE FOR OURSELVES AS OUR OWN PORTION OF THE LAND AND THE VILLAGES IN WHICH THEY AND THEIR FATHERS DWELLED. Not from the Arabs in Gaza, but from ourselves shall we require the blood of Ro’i. How did we close our eyes so as not to see the goal of our generation in its full measure of cruelty? Did we forget that this group of young men and women, which dwells in Nahal Oz, bear on their shoulders the heavy gates of Gaza, gates on the other side of which are crowded together with hundreds of thousands of eyes and hands that pray for our weakness, that it may come, so that they may rip us to shreds – have we forgotten this? This we know: that in order that the hope to destroy us should die we have to be armed and ready, morning and night. We are a generation of settlement, and without a steel helmet and the barrel of a cannon we cannot plant a tree and build a house. Our children will not live if we do not build shelters, and without a barbed wire fence and a machine gun we cannot pave a road and channel water. The millions of Jews that were destroyed because they did not have a land look at us from the ashes of Israelite history and command us to take possession of and establish a land for our nation. (Translation, Michael Shalom Kochin, 2009) Quotes like Dayans offer all the insight, and context needed, to understand the roots of Palestinian resistance, to Zionist motivated, late 19th-20th century settler-colonialism!
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 21:43:35 +0000
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