Eduardo Galeano – Operation Unpunished Lead
By Mary Rizzo • Jan 18th, 2009 at 22:39 • Category: Analysis, Israel, Mary's Choice, Newswire, Palestine, War, Zionism
To justify itself, state terrorism manufactures terrorists: it sows hate and harvests alibis. Everything indicates that this slaughterhouse of Gaza, which according to its perpetrators is for finishing off the terrorists, will achieve boosting them.
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Since 1948, the Palestinians live condemned to perpetual humiliation. They cannot even breathe without permission. They have lost their country, their land, their water, their freedom, everything of theirs. They do not even have the right to choose their governments. When they vote for those they should not, they are punished. Gaza is being punished. It turned into a mousetrap without exit since Hamas cleanly won the elections of 2006. Something similar happened in 1932 when the Communist Party triumphed in the elections of El Salvador. Drenched in blood, the Salvadorans atoned for their bad behaviour and since then have lived under military dictatorships. Democracy is a luxury which not everyone deserves.
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The rockets which the cornered militants of Hamas clumsily aim in Gaza, on land that had been Palestinian and which the Israeli occupation usurped, are the children of impotence. And desperation, on the edge of suicidal madness, is the mother of the threats that deny the right of Israel’s existence: ineffectual cries, while the very efficient war of extermination is denying, for years, the right of Palestine’s existence.
Little remains of Palestine. Step by step, Israel is erasing the map.
The colonialists encroach, and after them the soldiers rush to the border. Bullets sanctify plunder as legitimate defence.
There is no aggressive war that does not say is defensive. Hitler invaded Poland to prevent Poland invading Germany. Bush invaded Iraq to prevent Iraq invading the world. In each of the defensive wars, Israel has swallowed up another piece of Palestine: the luncheon continues. The devouring is justified by the property rights the Bible granted, for the two thousand years of persecution that the Jewish people suffered and for the panic that the Palestinians lying in wait generate.
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Israel is a country that never complies with either the recommendations or the resolutions of the United Nation, that never obeys the judgments of the international tribunals, that mocks international laws, and is also the only country that has legalised the torture of prisoners.
Who has gifted it the right to deny all the rights? Where does this impunity, with which Israel is carrying out the killings in Gaza, derive from? The Spanish government could not have bombed Basque country with impunity to finish off ETA; neither could the British government have destroyed Ireland to liquidate the IRA. Perhaps the tragedy of the Holocaust entails a policy of everlasting impunity? Or that the green light comes from the bigshot power which has in Israel the most unquestioning of its vassals?
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The Israeli army, the most modern and sophisticated in the world, knows who it kills. It does not kill by error. It kills by horror. The civilian victims are called collateral damages, according to the dictionary of the other imperial wars. In Gaza, three of every ten collateral damages are children. And the maimed add up to thousands, victims of human mutilation that the war industry is successfully rehearsing in this operation of ethnic cleansing.
And as always, always the same: in Gaza, a hundred for one. For each hundred Palestinians killed, one Israeli.
Dangerous people –warning of another bombardment – in charge of the enormous manipulative media that invite us to think that each Israeli life is worth as much as a hundred Palestinian lives. And those media also invite us to think that the two hundred atom bombs of Israel are humanitarian, and that a nuclear power called Iran was the one that annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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The so-called international community, Does it exist?
Is it anything more than a club of merchants, bankers and war-makers? Is it anything more than an artistic name that the United States attaches when it engages in theatre?
Before the tragedy of Gaza, the worldwide hypocrisy shows up once again. As ever, the indifference, the vacuous discourses, the empty declarations, the high sounding declamations, the ambiguous postures are a tribute to sacred impunity.
Before the tragedy of Gaza, the Arab countries wash their hands off. As always. And, as ever, the European countries wring their hands.
Old Europe, so capable of war and malignancy, sheds a tear or so, while secretly celebrating this master move. Because hunting the Jews was always a European custom, but since half a century that historical debt is being paid for by the Palestinians who also are Semites and who never were, nor are, anti-Semites. They are paying, in blood money, the price of others.
(This article is dedicated to my Jewish friends assassinated by the Latin American dictatorships to which Israel acted as consultant)
This is a translation into English of an article by Eduardo Galeano on Gaza. Original article in Spanish at:
http://www.brecha.com.uy/alter/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=585&Itemid=70
Translated by Supriyo Chatterjee for Tlaxcala
Mary Rizzo is an art restorer, translator and writer living in Italy. Editor and co-founder of Palestine Think Tank, co-founder of Tlaxcala translations collective. Her personal blog is Peacepalestine.
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Palestinians had their chance with peace when President Clinton brokered a peace agreement that would create 2 states Israel and Palestine. Arafat back out. Why don’t you face it? Islamic extremist Hamas torpedo the agreement with Iran’s interference. Also face the fact that Arabs hate Jews.
When Israel was created in 1948, All the Arab countries saw their chance to kick all the Jews out of their countries. About a million people were displaced and all of their properties were confiscated. I was one of them. You guys never ever mention that.. What about us?
The only true solution is to stop Iran from interfering. In the Middle East and then create 2 states as it was agreed upon back in 1993.
You cannot undue that was done to innocent ordinary people like Arab Jews and Palistinians.
Peace is only solution.
[...] He recently wrote: [...]
Hey ,Jdarwish—- I am Dutch ,but born in Indonesia wel you say;When Israel was creared in1948(My year of birth). Thats not thrue. Read; in 1948 When Palestine was robbed totally by Zionists they start deporting Killing and torturing the Inhabitans the Palestinians who were brothers with the Arabs in 1948 The Arabs reactoin was .They dit not "Kill" the Yews but kickt them Out. …..I think that was well done and human.Israel(palestine does not belongs to the zionists or Jews …And it was" Not Given by God", But Stolen from Palestines.Zionists are Not "Choosen" but most of them Aske-Nazis with roots to Khazaria on the black sea, no ties with Israel at all. ***Paul ***Ps as You can see, the Israelis in palestine are not innocent ordinairy people ,But Land thieves and MassKillers." The remains of the old biblical Yews are mainly The palestinians. But from now on ,you can get Gaza ,for all the israelis neocons Aipac bankers Media Bush Cheney enz all zionists . All palestines from Gaza and everywhere can live in PEACE now in their own land Palestine, Gaza can be in future, the prison of the Real crooks and criminals of this world And No interaction or any help anymore.
Operación Plomo Impune (por Eduardo Galeano)
Video con el texto de Eduardo Galeano:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x79CcjHB0dw
Mary, I ask permission to re-edit the video I made with text by Eduardo Galeano in his original language, and I think we do that through your translation, it broadens the distribution.
Thank you.
Pato
@PatoG3 –
You have more than my permission, we'd be honoured! I didn't do the translation though, it was by Supriyo Chatterjee, a member of Tlaxcala.
Please send the new video when it's ready and we would post it up here and at http://www.tlaxcala.es as well.
thanks so much!!