How Gaza Defeated Israel – OpEd

Whatever little respect I had for the Israeli on the street, I’ve conclusively lost it after seeing the attempted lynching of a Palestinian motorist by a mob of Jewish men. This is blatant majoritarian violence and there is no other way to describe it except as a sickness, which is what the colonization of Palestine is all about.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Nothing justifies the lynching of Jews by Arabs, and nothing justifies the lynching of Arabs by Jews. We will not accept it. This is not us, not this violence, not this savagery…”

If the brutal occupation of Palestinian Territories and the killing of common people is not savagery, what is! The violence is you and so is the savagery! No two ways about it!

Who started the fight? By all accounts the eviction of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem based “on a 1970 Israeli law that allows Jews to reclaim East Jerusalem land owned by Jews before 1948” was the trigger for the violence. That there is no such a law for the Palestinians who have lost their land is only one part of the issue. The main issue is that an occupier’s law is meaningless for the occupied; they don’t have to recognize or even acknowledge its existence because it is the law of a robber imposed on the one who is robbed. 

Israel as a state does not even qualify for a highway robber because the latter have some ethics. They don’t first rob and then embark on murdering innocents. Every Palestinian is by definition innocent because they are not the occupiers. They are fighting an unjust occupation. Yes, morality is universal and no harm should be inflicted randomly on any people in any part of the world. This principle applies to both Israelis and Palestinians. This does not however alter the simple fact that Israel has absolutely no right to colonize the Palestinians and then expect them to behave ethically while their land is appropriated, their homes bombarded and their children killed in cold blood.

Israel’s savagery can only be answered by fearlessly confronting its brutality like it happens in any anti-colonial war of resistance. While the deaths of individuals are extremely tragic for the families, irrespective of whether they are from Israel or Palestinian Territories, there is no doubt that the responsibility lies with Israel and the American state. 

Violence comes with a heavy price both for the occupier and the occupied; but, in the case of the latter there is hope that freedom will give them the chance to liberate themselves from the mental chains that enslave them to the past. Israel is a free country that has chosen to walk the path of savagery. There is no such hope for Israel unless it ends the military occupation.

The Palestinians must celebrate their victory over Israel. Every time Israel demonstrates its savagery to the world by indiscriminately bombing and killing civilians, Palestinians are one step closer to freedom. Suffering, death and destruction of homes is the price that Palestinians have to pay for ending the occupation. In the end no price is too big for freedom. 

The Gazans have won against the might of the Israeli war machine by reminding the world that Israel’s occupation is illegitimate. A person afraid and in possession of weapons becomes more violent than what he or she would normally be. An abnormally afraid Israeli state used weapons relentlessly on the Gazans because they did not know how to handle the fear of facing a people resisting occupation. They know that the Palestinians are winning and the Iron Dome defense system has nothing to with it. It’s time that the Palestinians start living proudly and with dignity like free citizens in a land that was theirs to begin with.