Khalid Amayreh

The genocidal Israeli onslaught against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is strikingly similar to the German blitz in the initial stage of the Second World War. The pretexts are nearly the same and the behaviors of both Nazi and Israeli political and military leadership are nearly identical.

And as the German Nazis sought to justify their blitz against their neighbors to the east, using a plethora of carefully concocted lies and pretexts, Israel is doing virtually the same thing.

However, unlike the Nazis whose naked aggression was widely condemned around the world, the ongoing Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip is being condoned, even celebrated, by a huge media network throughout the western world from Sydney to Los Angeles.

Today, Israel is decapitating Gaza while claiming that it is only fighting Hamas. The Israeli air force is targeting and destroying schools, mosques, private homes, charities, public buildings, drug stores, colleges and universities, all under the false pretext of fighting Hamas.

This is not a war against Hamas. It is a war against the Palestinian people as is obvious from the fact that the bulk of the victims are innocent civilians.

And like all criminals, Israel is resorting to the fabrication of lies and half-truths to justify its genocidal blitz against an essentially unprotected people.

Many, probably most Jews in Israel and around the world, are bragging about the “heroic” Israeli army and its “achievements” against Hamas. Some Jews have described the slaughter as the “best Hanukah present ever.”

Well, I don’t really see any heroism in using state-of-the-art machines of death, such as the F-16 warplanes, apache helicopters and laser-guided bunker buster bombs against a people who don’t posses an army or an air force or anti-aircraft defenses.

There is no heroism, but sheer cowardice, in launching these deadly bombs at unprotected civilian buildings just as there was no heroism in the targeting of unarmed civilians by the Nazi war machines.

For sure, even the weakest air-force in the world could bomb and destroy unprotected buildings and kill as many civilians as seen fit by morbid minds of Ehud Barak’s ilk.

In short, the Israeli onslaught against a people who don’t possess the means to defend themselves and can’t protect their children from Israeli brutality is an act of sheer cowardice. It can be compared with the Nazi SS strafing Jewish protesters with machine gunfire.

Israel and her mouthpieces in the West claim that Israeli army, a Jewish Wehrmacht by any standard of objective analysis, is merely reacting to Palestinian projectiles fired from Gaza onto Israeli settlements outside Gaza.

Well, this is only a pretext for two many reasons:

The so-called Qassam projectiles are symbolic and nearly innocuous weapons that make more noise than damage. During the past eight years, less than two dozen Israelis were killed by these projectiles. In the meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians, mainly children and other innocent civilians, were annihilated by the indiscriminate Israeli death machine. These are war crimes because even in war, there is proportionality and using excessive force, mainly against civilians, in reaction to minor provocation puts Israel on equal footing with Nazi barbarianism.

There are those who would argue that Israel has the right and duty to defend its citizens. Well, this is not the real issue, because one could argue that even the worst state in the world has the right to defend its citizens.

But Israel has been savaging an entire people by imposing a Nazi-like siege upon them on no other account than to punish them for electing a government that both Israel and her guardian-ally, the United States, didn’t like.

In short, Israel has been effectively telling the Palestinians, in word as well as in deed, that they face two choices: Either to starve to death, or be exterminated by the Israeli war machine. In other words, the Palestinians must die if they resist and die if they don’t. This is while the Israeli hasbara (propaganda) machine keeps telling the world that Israel is only fighting Hamas and defending its citizens.

Well, Hamas may not be completely blameless in a certain sense. However, it is imperative to remind the world that the Islamic movement repeatedly voiced its willingness to stop the firing of “all” projectiles from the Gaza Strip if only Israel would reciprocate and lift the Nazi-like siege.

And as we all know, Israel consistently refused, insisting rather arrogantly that it had the right to kill the Palestinians and invade their territories whenever it deemed fit.

Needless to say, this is exactly the same sort of arrogance, insolence and bellicosity that characterized Nazi behavior.

A few days ago, Israelis analysts described the genocidal onslaught against Gaza as the Israeli version of the American “shock- and –awe bombing” at the beginning of the American invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. Shock and awe against a thoroughly tormented and completely savaged people who have been through a hateful blockade, unprecedented in its cruelty and wickedness.

I can’t understand why Jews are behaving the way they are. Do the scenes of havoc and destruction and death in the streets and refugee camps of Gaza give them self-confidence? Do they enjoy watching Palestinian kids mutilated to smithereens by these hellish missiles launched at apartment buildings and homes from high altitude.?

Does it make them feel that they are finally defeating Hitler?

I am asking these questions because I have seen Jews dancing and celebrating rather joyfully the carnage in Gaza. Indeed, a fleeting glance at the Israeli media these days reveals a sick and cannibalistic society that is as bestial as Nazi Germany was during the holocaust.

Perhaps I am doing some injustice to the Germans. After all, the Germans were living under a hateful and tyrannical dictatorship that would have brutally crushed any protests by conscientious citizens.

But, unlike Nazi Germany, Israel claims to be “a light upon the nations,” “the only democracy in the Middle East” and a civilized western nation.

Well, if such is the behavior of “democratic” Israel, just imagine how the Jewish state would behave once the terrorist entity fell in the hands of manifestly fascist forces and parties.

I have repeatedly warned in my writings that Israel is capable of committing a genocide or a holocaust against the Palestinian people and other peoples of the Middle East.

My warnings are not empty propaganda aimed at besmirching Israel’s image. Likewise, they are not motivated by anti-Semitism or hatred for the Jewish people, many of whom I respect and admire.

But the shocking pornographic slaughter in Gaza should be viewed as a clarion vindication of my warnings. Israel simply represents the Nazis of our time.

I know that many people around the world, especially in the West, realize the veracity of the analogy deep in their hearts. But they are afraid to call the spade a spade lest they be tarnished and hounded and harassed by the powerful Jewish media which more or less controls the public discourse in many western nations.

But the timidity of these cowards will not help them. Today, the Palestinians are the victims. But, surely, tomorrow will bring with it more victims, and Europeans and Americans in particular will not be immune.

Their lives may not be under an immediate threat now. But their freedoms certainly are.

Let us remember on this somber occasion the words of Martin Niemoller who lamented the bankruptcy of German intellectuals in the few years preceding the Second World War.

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

For God’s sake, let us learn from history, because today’s Israel is strikingly similar to 1936’s Germany.

Please, say No to Jewish Nazism before it is too late.

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By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem