Khalid Amayreh

“This is a translation of an Arabic interview with the author”

Question: Israel says it is only defending itself against recurrent attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian “terrorist” organizations?

Answer: All aggressors say they are only defending themselves. Nazi Germany said it was defending itself. Israel is the last country in the world that is fit to complain about terrorism. After all, Israel represents, encapsulates and embodies terror in its ugliest and most nefarious forms.

Indeed, from the very inception of its misbegotten birth, Israel has been a mass murderer, a child killer, a land thief and an irredeemable liar.

The genocidal rampage Israel is carrying out in Gaza represents the norm rather than the exception as far the patterns of Israeli behaviors are concerned. In the final analysis, one can safely claim that Israel’s entire history has been an uninterrupted chain of massacres and terror. What makes the present mini-holocaust in Gaza look especially gruesome is the live television coverage from the field. This didn’t exist in 1984 and the few subsequent years when Judeo-Nazis thugs committed numerous even more heinous massacres against the native Palestinians.

As to the current criminal onslaught, it is amply clear for those who value the truth that Israel is fully responsible for this huge crime against humanity. Ever since Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006, Israel has been blockading and besieging the Gaza Strip, pushing the region’s estimated 1.5 million Palestinians to the edge of physical extermination. In brief, Israel imposed two alternatives on Palestinians, either to live a dog’s life and die quietly of starvation as a result of the Nazi-like siege, or be exterminated by the Israeli war machine.

Q: Israel claims it doesn’t deliberately target Palestinian civilians. How would you respond to that?

A: As an essentially criminal state which murders children and bombs apartment buildings, killing and maiming thousands of innocent children, Israel feels it has to lie to cover up her crimes. Criminality and mendacity are two sides of the same coin.

To put it simply, the Israeli claim is a pornographic lie, which unfortunately is constantly echoed by much of the western media. And there is a great deal of cynicism here because these lies are echoed while the Israeli army, air force and navy are seen raining death on apartment buildings, mosques, drug stores, private homes, college buildings including dormitories, shopping centers, petrol stations, schools, and police stations.

You see, it is a no-holds-barred approach, very much like the Nazis behaved during the Second World War.

Q: But Israel says it doesn’t kill Palestinian l civilians deliberately like the Palestinians do.

A: Well, first of all, whatever modest and primitive means of resistance the Palestinians possess don’t pose a real strategic threat to nuclear-armed Israel. The Palestinian projectiles fired from Gaza should only be seen as a desperate outcry by a people who are being exterminated by the Israeli war machine. Certainly, these homemade projectiles are no match for the state-of-the-art of the American technology of death such as the F-16 Jet fighter, the Bunker Busters, and the Abrams tanks which Israel is using to wreak death and havoc on unprotected Gaza and its defenseless civilians.

Second, Israel doesn’t tell the truth when it claims it doesn’t target civilians. Mistakes happen once, twice, even ten times. However, when thousands of innocent civilians, including entire families, are murdered in indiscriminate aerial bombing, it means the killing of civilians is deliberate. After all, killing knowingly is killing deliberately. And it doesn’t matter if you call it collateral damage or use other euphemisms in reference to the killings.

Besides, when the number of innocent victims is so high and so disproportionate as is the case in Gaza now, even intent becomes irrelevant.

Q: Israel says that Hamas hides weapons inside mosques?

A: Israel is saying many things to justify its genocidal wars against the Palestinian people. Last week, the Israeli air force bombed a small truck it said was carrying rockets. However, it turned out, as the Israeli Human Rights group B’tselem pointed out, that the truck was carrying cooking gas canisters.

Besides, are weapons stored in mosques? Last night, the Israeli air force bombed a mosque packed with worshipers in northern Gaza, killing 18 people and injuring dozens others. This is a an evil war crime and who ever carried out the bombing and gave the orders are war criminals that should be prosecuted and punished. Otherwise, we are in a huge jungle.

Q: How could Palestinian reporters and journalists function under the current circumstances?

A: They are trying their best, and they take nothing for granted. Last week, Israeli war planes bombed a Television station and two days ago the offices of the Gaza-based Arabic-daily, al Risala, was bombed and destroyed. So, they are targeting every thing…everything.

Q: will Israel succeed in eradicating the Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation?

A: Israel may well succeed in weakening the resistance, but it can’t destroy it. The reason for that is simple. The resistance is not a “cause” but an “effect.” The real “cause” is this Nazi-like occupation of Palestine which seeks to complete what Israel started in 1948, namely the uprooting and ethnic cleansing of the remaining Palestinians in order to replace them with Jewish immigrants from around the world. This is very much like the Nazi concept of “lebensraum.” But here in Israel they call it “security.”

In short, Israel can’t eliminate the “effect” as long as the “cause” remains intact.

Q: why have the Arab states failed to help Palestinians militarily?

A: Most Arab sates, probably with the exception of Lebanon, are despotic and tyrannical regimes which happen to be at America’s beck and call. These dictatorial regimes are not answerable to their own masses. More to the point, the leaders of these regimes value the legitimacy that comes from American and Israeli acceptance more than that which comes from their own people’s acceptance.

In other words, these regimes don’t represent or reflect the will of the masses. Hence, a regime-change in these states is next to impossible under the present circumstances because free and fair elections are not allowed.

Needless to say, this situation is maintained and perpetuated thanks to the unlimited support and backing by the US, the ultimate slave-master of these police states.

Q: Do Palestinians feel betrayed?

A: Absolutely they do. After all, we are left alone to face this Nazi war machine which is exterminating our people on no other account than its enduring determination to gain freedom and justice.

Q: what do you think are the main goals of the Israeli operation in Gaza?

A: There are many goals.

First, they are trying to break the will of the Palestinian people to resist the colonialist Israeli occupation, which is actually an act of rape. In other words, they want to continue savaging and oppressing us in ways unimaginable, and when we resist and or even complain, they threaten us with physical annihilation. It is very much like a serial rapist who threatens to murder his victims if they resists or complain. But Israel is more than just a serial rapist. It is also a murderer, liar and thief.

Another goal is simply to be able to impose a complete surrender on the American-backed Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Israel as well as the Bush Administration think, I think erroneously, that if Hamas is neutralized, the PA can be coerced into accepting a “peace” settlement whereby Israel would take all the assets and Palestinians would take all the liabilities. I am talking about a sell-out “peace deal” that would allow Israel to keep the settlements, the bulk of East Jerusalem and decapitate the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees who were uprooted from their homes when Israel was created more than sixty years ago.

Another goal is to boost the chances of Israeli war minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni wining the next Israeli elections. It is well known in Israel that the more Palestinian blood a given Israeli politician sheds, the more popular he or she will become in the eyes of the Israeli Jewish public. I am not saying that 100% of Israelis think this way. But I think the percentage is not less than 80% . In short, we are talking about a mostly cannibalistic and psychotic society that would be willing to murder millions of people while claiming to be the victim.

Q: Do Palestinians blame Hamas for the suffering and havoc and death inflicted on them as a result of the Israeli attacks?

A: Some may do, but I think the vast majority of Palestinians don’t. After all, it was Israel, not Hamas, that violated the ceasefire. Throughout the duration of the last cease-fire, which lasted for six months, Hamas meticulously observed the ceasefire. But Israel killed as many as 49 Palestinians. Moreover, Israel tightened the siege on Gaza, transforming the coastal territory into a modern-day Ghetto Warsaw.

Even the PA in Ramallah is saying now that Israel alone is responsible for this massive crime against humanity.

Q: Why does Hamas not recognize Israel?

A: Why doesn’t Israel recognize Palestine? Besides, which Israel would you want Hamas to recognize? Does Israel have fixed borders? Moreover, how could we recognize a state that doesn’t recognize our very existence?

Q: I mean the 1967- borders?

A: Does Israel recognize the 1967 borders?

Q: Would you be willing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state?

A: Would American Jews, for example, be willing to recognize the US as an exclusive Protestant or Baptist state?

Q: When this war is over, How will Hamas look?

A: Hamas will be exhausted, and this is quite natural, given the unequal and asymmetrical nature of this war. However, soon after, Hamas will reassert itself and recover her strength. But the movement has already gained the sympathy, solidarity and admiration of tens of millions of Arabs and Muslims throughout the world.

Yes, Hamas’s relations with the regimes in the Middle East may not be good, given their subservience to the US. But Hamas is watching with great satisfaction millions of Arabs and Muslims who are identifying with the movement. This is exactly what Hamas is looking for and getting. In the final analysis, the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, criminal and satanic as it is, may well be proven ultimately a bless in disguise for Hamas and the overall Islamist cause.

Similarly, the pro-American “moderate regimes” will lose whatever modicum of respect that they may have had.

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By Khalid Amayreh "Questions & Answers regarding the Israeli holocaust in Gaza" www.xpis.ps