Who cares for the Palestinians?

Hameed ABDUL KARIM

Where should we go after the last frontiers, where should the birds fly after the last sky? Mahmoud Darwish

There was this frail old man on Al-Jazeera the other day dangling an even older memory-laden key that antique collectors would be happy to own saying that he longed to go back to his house in Palestine and start life all over again.

But sadly for him, his house no longer exists. Neither does his village. Probably a plush Israeli settlement now stands in arrogant splendour on these lands of the miserable Palestinians who struggle to make sense of their lives in messy refugee camps the world compels them to live in. Rich Jews now live their ostentatious lives on lands that the humble Palestinians loved and cherished.

No one hears the echoes of the laughter of little Palestinian children as they played and sang their songs of joy in the land their forefathers had nourished for them over the centuries. No, no one cares.

Israel has converted the Gaza Strip into one of the largest prison camps the world has ever known. Gaza has over a million and half prisoners struggling to eke out a living just so that they can keep their children alive.

The Palestinians have become refugees in their own lands. But still no one cares.

Israel has constantly closed the Gaza Strip to prevent any food or medicine from getting in as a punishment for the resistance the Palestinians put up against the vicious Israeli occupation.

The Western media does not report Israeli atrocities, but it does not hesitate to report Palestinian resistance as acts of terror. HRW watches and does nothing.

Palestinians are killed on a daily basis. But the world does not cry. Only the Palestinians do.

The world watches but does not see little children being bombed to smithereens while having breakfast in their home in the refugee camp before departing for school. Members of a Palestinian family are killed on the Gaza beach as they try to holiday away their misery.

The Israeli pilots who carried out the raids may be decorated for their bravery some day. If not that, they will receive a pension for life for their gruesome crimes against humanity. And the world will applaud them for keeping the Middle East safe for tourists. None of them will spare a thought for the scores of murdered Palestinian children as they traverse the Holy Land in a state of a spiritual bliss. Why should they?

Palestinians, after all, are sub- humans destined to sacrifice their lives, land and dignity to compensate for the crimes of other people. While the atrocities against the Palestinians go on unabated, world leaders look the other way. If at all they were to say something then that thing would be a condemnation of the Palestinians for standing up to the awesome and brutal Israeli occupation of their lands.

Have they no conscience?

The humiliation the Palestinians have been subjected to when over 750,000 of them were forced out of their lands could be summarised in the poignant story of a young Palestinian boy that Michael Palumbo narrates in his book The Palestinian Catastrophe.

One day early in the morning young Fouzi went to pick figs in his fathers orchard in Lydda like he used to before the Jews unleashed their Hitler like cruelty on his people. While going about his task in a serene and childish way, a guard came up to him and asked him what he was doing. Fouzi replied he was picking fruit for his hungry family. The guard angered at the innocent response shouted at him saying I can see you are picking fruit. But who gave you permission to do that? And since when do I have to be given permission? This is our land and this is my tree the boy pleaded. This made the guard even angrier.

There is no such thing as ours the guard barked. This land belongs to the Jews-do you understand! Later a terror stricken Fouzi was taken to the cop shop and given the works that only the Jewish Zionist are capable of. His basket of figs was confiscated. Fouzi’s property had become Jewish property overnight.

May be Fouzi’s answer still hangs in the air somewhere in Lydda. Maybe his terror is carved on that tree in his father’s orchard.

May be his presence there on that fateful day is inscribed on the fertile ground where the orchard stood. But does anybody care? Do we hear him sob in terror when the Zionist bullies dragged him away?

Yes we can, but only if we listen, listen to the anguished cries of the dispossessed, the weeping of the mothers as they wail over their dead children - killed by the Israelis.

As things are, the frail old man on Al-Jazeera TV will never open the door to his house in Palestine. Neither will he be buried in the land he loves so much. But then who cares for the Palestinians?

(The writer is a vice president of the Sri Lanka Committee for Solidarity with Palestine)