November 19, 2007

Dear Sir: Greeting

You must be aware of the nightmare now unfolding in the Gaza Strip. Gaza is simply dying a slow and painful death at the hands of the children and grandchildren of the Holocaust. This is not an overstatement or exaggerated description of a people long tormented by a sinister occupying power that is hell- bent on decimating them, using the basest and most inhumane of means, such as preventing food and other basic needs from reaching them.

I could go on and one and on describing and explaining the catastrophic situation in Gaza where on any given day, children and other civilians succumb to their illnesses because Israel and other neighboring countries wouldn’t allow them to leave the blockaded territory for adequate medical care.

I don’t know if your office is receiving daily and accurate reports from the Gaza Strip. But in case it doesn’t, a quick glance at news reports from that tormented land would suffice to give you a fair idea of what is happening there.

True, some food stuff and a few other commodities are being allowed to reach Gaza. However, these are utterly inadequate to meet the minimal needs of more than 1.4 million beleaguered human beings, the vast bulk of whom are unemployed, thoroughly impoverished and desperately hopeless.

Besides, Gazans, like the rest of humanity, need more than bread and tea. They need to live a dignified life. This is their God-given right as humans. This right must not be compromised by political cannibalism that is brazenly practiced by a world claming to be civilized and enlightened when in reality its actions and behavior are millions of light years apart from civility and enlightenment.

I am not going to blame Israel and the United States and their allies and friends for this unfolding tragedy. The Quran states "wala Yas’alu 'an thunoobihemol Mujrimun" meaning that "criminals are not much concerned about their sins."

This Quranic verse, which I am sure has Biblical equivalents, obviously applies fairly and squarely to child-killing and child-starving states and armies that kill children and innocent people knowingly and deliberately for political reasons.

However, as a UN official whose responsibility includes overseeing the situation in Gaza and preventing a Nazi-like catastrophe from taking place in any part of the world, you are called upon in the strongest terms to immediately take pro-active and tangible measures to save Gaza’s helpless inhabitants from what looks a certain looming disaster, especially if the current draconian blockade continues.

There is no doubt that the firing by Palestinian guerillas of homemade Qassam projectiles onto Israeli settlements in the area is a problem. But it is a problem made in Israel since the Jewish state stubbornly refuses to stop killing innocent Palestinians and destroying their homes and bulldozing their farms. Israel wants to keep up the killing of Palestinian children regardless of whether the Palestinian guerillas observe a ceasefire or not.

This sufficiently explains Israel’s adamant rejection of Palestinian ceasefire proposals made on several occasions by Prime Minister Haniya and other Gaza officials.

The reason for this may not be sufficiently clear for all, especially in the West where pro-Israeli media often turn the black into white and the big lie into a "virtually reality" glorified by millions.

Well, Israel simply doesn’t view herself as humanly equal to Palestinians and non-Jews in general. That is really the crux of the matter and the mother of all sins in the Middle East.

Today, the people of Gaza nearly completely rely on the good will of the international community for their physical survival, which they have come to no longer take for granted, given the indifferent silence and brutal callousness of the international community towards their enduring plight.

Unfortunately and regrettably, the UN, too, is watching the tragedy in Gaza with passivity and a great modicum of indifference. This passivity, unethical and incompatible with UN Charter and ideals, serves only to embolden Israel to tighten its barbaric grip on that tormented region further and exacerbate the suffering of its people.

I am saying that because I am convinced that Israel, under whose harsh occupation we have been languishing for over 40 years, would refrain from taking more pornographic acts of genocide against our people only if the international community made it clear that such behavior would be unacceptable. Otherwise, Israel would continue to test the will of the world so that if the world’s conscience slumbered or looked the other way, Israel would commit the unthinkable.

This is not far-fetched at all. A state that only last year dropped 2-3 million bomblets on Lebanon, could commit a similarly monstrous crime against the more vulnerable and utterly unprotected Palestinians.

This week, many members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, vociferously protested their army’s failure to "completely paralyze Gaza," with some lawmakers asking their government "why there is still life in Gaza, why there is still electricity in Gaza. We must make sure to them who are the masters!"

This shows that were it not for the international public opinion, Israel would emulate the Third Reich. We are talking after all about a state without conscience, without morality.

So, Israel won’t relent as long as the international community plays blind, deaf and dumb and looks the other way, while Gazans and other Palestinians are being killed, starved and brutalized.

Sir: Don’t you ever count on regional states. These failed regimes prefer the legitimacy that comes from pleasing and appeasing the United States more than that which comes from doing the right thing.

Now what are you going to do to put an end to this nightmare ? As a fellow human being, I urge you again in the name of the voiceless and the helpless in Gaza, ordinary people, un-politicized and nearly totally preoccupied with making ends meet, to take a meaningful action now to end this obscenity, the criminal blockade of the Gaza Strip.

I hope and pray you will deal with this matter with the urgency it deserves. Gaza is really really facing a grave danger of collapse and demise, and we must never allow this to happen.

Gaza is already a replica of Ghetto Warsaw. For God’s sake, we must not allow Israeli criminality, American acquiescence and international impotence to turn it into another Auschwitz.

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November 19, 2007 From Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem