In a recent article we reported on the first 36 Palestinians murdered by the mis-named Israeli ‘Defence’ Force (IDF) and the zionist ‘settler’ movement during January 2023.
Since then, the situation across Palestine has become even more heated, with the various zionist soldiery and murderous settlers going into overdrive and carrying out non-stop killing and maiming sprees against anyone Palestinian or who may be regarded as pro-Palestinian. This continuing carnage by the zionist occupiers hasn’t gone unanswered by the brave fighters of the resistance brigades that have sprung up among the hard-pressed Palestinian people, as they hit back despite the cost to themselves, their friends and families.
At least 80 Palestinians (probably many more by the time this article is read), mostly, though not all, non-combatants, have been killed by Israeli fire so far this year, according to tallies by human rights groups and news organisations. Fifteen zionists, mainly the despised and vicious ‘settlers’ have been killed by the Palestinian resistance.
On 2 February 2023, US secretary of state Antony Blinken wrapped up his visit to ‘ease tensions’ in the middle east after pledging “ironclad” US support for Israel. His trip came amid heavily ramped-up violence against Palestinians, with the Israeli military openly carrying out their deadly raids in the occupied West Bank with the full knowledge of Blinken.
On 14 February 2023, in Ramallah, Mahmoud Majed Mohammad al-Ayedi, 17, was shot and killed by the IDF during one of the numerous raids constantly being carried out by the zionist stormtroopers on the al Far’a refugee camp (among the many camps that are targeted daily) in the northern occupied West Bank.
On the same day, 25-year-old Haroun Abu Aram succumbed to Israeli army gunshot wounds he had sustained on 1 January 2021, in Masafer Yatta, in the Hebron area of the southern occupied West Bank. Abu Aram’s gunshot wound in 2021 had caused paralysis from the neck down and the blockage of his leg arteries, which led to his leg being amputated, severe ulcers in his leg and pelvis, and infections in his lungs.
It may be recalled by some readers that Abu Aram was shot in the neck at point-blank range by the Israeli army as he tried to rescue an electricity generator belonging to his family that soldiers were stealing. The incident was filmed and shared widely online, but the imperialist media have, as usual, missed both the original shooting and his eventual death following two years of pain and misery. Unreported, too, is the zionist settler habit of gathering in large armed groups and, with IDF protection, launching extremely violent attacks on Palestinians, their homes and shops.
The incessant murder runs into the camps, terrible as they are, are not the worst of the zionist oppression in Palestine. There is the also the constant battle that the Israel project wages to break the will of the Palestinian masses through racist laws; the banning of the movement of Palestinians even where it is proven that critically-ill persons need to be moved to survive those illnesses; the non-stop destruction of Palestinian properties, even making the oppressed knock down their own houses with the threat of extra fines and attacks if they don’t, while they are pushed into smaller and smaller ghettos; the total denial to the oppressed of access to civilian law so that those arrested, children included, are processed through the zionist entity’s military courts, through which those detained can be disappeared for years, if they get released at all. Even death doesn’t guarantee the release of a Palestinian body from imprisonment!
Religious persecution is also used to try to break the will of the Palestinian masses. The Al-Aqsa mosque is becoming a favourite target of both the IDF and its equally murderous friends without uniforms, the settlers.
On 6 April 2023, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special papporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, reported on what was then the latest outrage, during which at least 31 Palestinians were injured inside and immediately outside the Al-Aqsa compound by zionist forces. Palestinian paramedics were forcibly prevented from entering the holy site and from providing medical treatment to the wounded.
The blatant attack on those at prayer in Al-Aqsa mosque was unusually violent even by zionist standards and was absolutely unprovoked. The IDF thugs used stun grenades and tear gas, fired so-called ‘sponge-tipped’ bullets, and indiscriminately beat the muslim worshippers – including young and elderly, men and women – with punches, kicks, batons and rifle butts. At least 450 Palestinian men were arrested, and were still being beaten by Israeli fascist soldiery as they were dragged out of the Haram Al-Sharif compound in handcuffs.
Francesca Albanese reported that at least 165 Israelis entered the compound, in violation of the status quo agreement, which Israel is bound by international law to respect. She said: “The well-known desire of Israeli settlers to either destroy the mosque or forcibly convert all or part of the compound into a synagogue, as happened to the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron, is a source of deep anxiety among Palestinians.” Attacks on this mosque, the third most important in Islam, also took place during Ramadan in both 2021 and 2022.
But like so many of the zionist provocations and unjustifiable cruelties towards the occupied and daily abused Palestinian people, these attacks do not quell the spirit of resistance to the occupation but, rather, they help solidify and temper it. Meanwhile, the settlers are also demanding that their, now openly fascistic, government takes similar action against christian churches and their followers in Palestine, as they do during their constant raids into neighbouring Syria.
As of 31 December 2022, Israeli authorities held, according to the Israeli prison service’s figures, 866 Palestinians in administrative detention, without charge or trial but based only on ‘secret evidence’. The total number of Palestinian political prisoners held by the zionist regime presently stands at over 5,000.
Israeli authorities also continue to facilitate the transfer of Israeli settlers into areas in the occupied West Bank to attack and try to destabilise Palestinian communities, and the fascist Israeli government has advanced plans for even more housing units in these illegal settlements, while continuing the destruction of Palestinian homes to make way for them.
Before anyone complains about the use of the word fascist to describe the government of the Israeli occupation project, we would refer them to a recently recorded admission of fascism by leading Israeli government member, Bezalel Smotrich, the head of the Religious Zionism party and Israel’s new finance minister.
After seeing a released recording of him admitting to being a fascist, he retorted: “I may be a far-right person, a homophobe, racist, fascist, but my word is my bond.” And as we have previously pointed out, the driving force of the latest government is its publicly-stated lament that the early zionists failed to rid their ‘jewish state’ of all its Palestinian inhabitants.
They believe their forefathers were right to murder and evict hundreds of thousands of Palestinians back in 1947-49, but wrong to allow a small minority to stay behind or allow that minority to grow in numbers and marginal influence. These are the followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the departed guru of so many zionist murderers, who argued in his 1980 book, They Must Go, that the Palestinians are a “cancer” in the body of the “jewish state” that must be removed by whatever means necessary.
Current minister of national security Itamar Ben-Gvir also believes that their ‘Israel’ will be better off without its Palestinian citizens. But, in a presumably zionist form of pragmatism, Ben-Gvir also says that if Palestinians must stay, then they can only be second or third-class citizens, while vowing total loyalty to their jewish masters. Once again, the irony in regards to the 1940s situation in Germany seems to escape these fanatics.
Unlike their political and ideological partner, Benjamin Netanyahu, the new followers of Kahane in the Knesset openly boast of jewish supremacy in their ‘jewish state’.
All of this, just like the support and financing of fascism in Ukraine by the west and its puppets, is open and easily-found information that is simply ignored by western media organisations. Just look at the Guardian reports of the killing of zionist settlers, for example.
On 8 April, the Guardian was horrified that two London-born sisters, Rina and Maia Dee, had died when their “car veered off the road when gunmen opened fire while overtaking their vehicle in the Jordan valley”. The girl’s mother, who was in the car with them, was taken to hospital in a coma but their father, Rabbi Leo Dee, one of the ultra-zionist preachers who had led his family to live in an extremist zionist settlement in Efrat near the Palestinian city of Bethlehem eight years ago, as a vocal supporter of the openly ‘extreme’ right new government, was travelling in a separate car further back for his security.
The Guardian published his statement, written for the press, without any question about why he would have taken his family from leafy Radlett to play a role in the suppression and elimination of Palestine and its people, simply reproducing his words: “Some people think that a religious government will suppress minority rights and become totalitarian … But this is not a risk in Israel as religious jews simply believe in balancing love and justice.”
Israel is not a real country and its time of continuing to appear on world maps is now very limited. If anyone doubts this, they need only look at the smile of pride and defiance on the faces of Palestinian children as they are dragged away to uncertain incarceration in armoured cars, or as they stand before zionist military courts that they know will jail and possibly disappear them.
From the river to the sea – Palestine will be free!
