Yet again, Israel is terrorising Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Yet again, smoke bombs are choking Palestinian lungs. Palestinian homes in Gaza are, yet again, being turned from places where families are loved, where children grow, where food is cooked and eaten, and where dreams are dreamt, into rubble: tangled steel, shards of glass and piles of bricks.
Palestinian eyes have been blinded by Israeli rubber bullets. Palestinian bodies have been bruised by Israeli batons. Palestinian bones have been broken. Palestinian children have been murdered with heavy weaponry. The words of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda are brought to mind: “And in the streets the blood of the children. Ran simply, like children’s blood.”
Newspaper headlines across Australia ask us to consider why this “cycle of violence” is continuing. Others describe the events of the last few days as another flashpoint in the “Israel/Palestine conflict.” These sanitised descriptions disguise what is, in reality, a generations-long project of ethnic cleansing.
This new offensive by Israel began in the neighbourhood of Sheik Jarrah, then spread to the Al Aqsa mosque and now into Gaza. It is designed to rid Palestine of Palestinians, or to at the very least to defeat them as a people: to break their national consciousness, to destroy their spirit.
Read the article by Vashti Fox in Red Flag.