Turning Jerusalem Into A Political Whorehouse

AP photo

By

Ahmed Tharwat

Earlier this week Israel celebrated the opening of the new American embassy in Jerusalem. However, for the millions of Palestinians, they commemorated the biggest catastrophe in their history, 70 years ago, Nakba Day. It is a day where the world and especially the Americans are fed lies and deceit regarding Palestinians and Arabs. The story of the Jewish state has been overwhelmingly told in this country to the point where there wasn’t enough space and time left for Palestinians to tell their story.

The Palestinian people have been demonized and marginalized to the point that killing thousands of them is just a shared statistic and Israeli self-defense. The apartheid Jewish state was and has been a European white settlers project all along, as explained in the words of the late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said: “Made by a European power … about a non-European territory… in a flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory.”

The Europeans to solve their Jewish problem, sent extremists, criminals, thugs and terrorists to Palestine to establish a new white settlers homeland, in the process killing and intimidating native Palestinians which resulted in them being expelled in their hundreds of thousands, who are today still living in refugee camps in Arab countries.

On this catastrophic day Trump decided to move the American embassy to Jerusalem, which under all international agreements still has to be decided in the context of a final comprehensive peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. Now you can understand why the Palestinians in Gaza are protesting on the same day. This was subsequently met by a massive reaction from the Israeli military, rubber and live bullets, teargas, helicopters, shooting peacefully unarmed civilians; 60 having so far been killed with almost 3,000 injured, according to Palestinian health officials.

Meanwhile the big orange clown sent his daughter Ivanka and her husband to the opening ceremony of the political circus, turning Jerusalem into a whorehouse, where alleged felons, Islamophobes, Hitler supporters, holocaust deniers, and an evangelical who believes that Jews and Muslims are going to hell were all in attendance; in an attempt, I guess, to try to speed up the biblical apocalyptic end.

The narrative of Israeli and American officials is to blame everything on Hamas, Hamas who showed great restrain by not falling to the Israeli’s constant provocative attempts to drag them into conflict and give Israel the needed pretext to bomb and attack Gaza. Now the people of Gaza have been shot and killed for peacefully protesting the inhumane and illegal blockade imposed by the Israelis, Egyptians, Saudis, Palestinian Authority and Americans, all wanting to destroy Hamas. On that day, Netanyahu gleefully declared; “Dear friends, what a glorious day!” As the Israeli columnist Bradley Burston in Haaretz pointed out how the Israeli PM was barely able to contain his glee; “What kind of a man grins like that, knowing the Gaza death toll is rising by ten an hour?”

Gaza has been under siege for years and has become an open prison, a concentration camp and ghetto where people are squeezed between the Israeli iron fist, and the Egyptian Arab Zionist, Egyptian General el-Sisi. Gaza lives with no ports, no airspace, denying and preventing basic food and medicine from movement. The American Jewish professor Norman G. Finkelstein in his new book, ‘Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom,’ describes the plight of the people of Gaza based on systematic and meticulous research on the devastation of criminal violence and aggressions of the Israelis on people in Gaza. He argues that “although Israel justified its blockade and violent assaults in the name of self-defense, which is incidentally a lie that American presidents adopted regardless of republicans or democrats, in fact these actions were a cynical exercise of brutal power against an essentially defenseless civilian population.” Israel has launched nine operations against Gaza, Finkelstein explained…“culminating in Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9 and Operation Protective Edge in 2014, that left behind three million tonnes of rubble.”

Recent UN reports predict that Gaza will be unlivable by 2020, poisoning millions and turning Gaza to a state of vegetation; this seemingly the long-term goal of Israel. Still, we are talking about the ludicrous claim by the most powerful, militarized, nuclear armed country in the area, that Israel has the right to defend itself. Defend itself from what – slingshots, flying kites, an 8 month old child, or an amputated man who was shot and killed after losing his legs from another Israeli attack 10 years ago?

The justification of the Israeli officials of the overwhelming assault on the people of Gaza mirrors those of the Nazi’s justification of killing Jews. “We kill the people who want to kill us,” An Israeli spokesperson stated in justification of the shooting of Palestinians, “We just can’t put them all in jail.” As Mr. Finkelstein explained to journalist Jeremy Scahill on the Intercept podcast, “Israel have no right for self-defense, once you deny it to the Palestinians;” the Palestinians have the right to defend themselves too, by peacefully marching to its own border, or god forbid, armed by slingshots!

Ahmed Tharwat

Ahmed Tharwat is the Producer and Host of the Arab-American TV show BelAhdan. His articles are published in national and international publications. He blogs at Notes from America, www.ahmediatv.com and his articles appear in national and international publications. Follow him on Twitter @AhmediaTV.