The following day, Tuesday, is what the Palestinians commemorate as "Nakba" -- or the "Catastrophe" -- the 70th anniversary marking their dispossession as a people from their historic lands.
Over seven decades, millions of Palestinians have been expelled to refugee camps in neighboring states like Jordan and Lebanon. Others ended up in confined ghettos like Gaza or the West Bank, held under siege by Israeli "defense forces."
Out of these balkanized shards of land, the Palestinians are in theory supposed to gain future statehood. But that is a cynical pipe-dream that neither the Israelis nor the US really believe in. The trite talk of future peace is just a cover for the ongoing slow-motion dispossession of Palestinians until they are driven out altogether by the encroaching Israeli state.
The opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem this week, crushing Palestinians claims to East Jerusalem, is emblematic of the cynical and insidious process of historical ethnic cleansing.
In Gaza, where two million Palestinians subsist in appalling conditions of no clean water or electricity, the UN says that the coastal enclave will become unlivable in a matter of years. Under siege from the Israeli military, the people of Gaza are trapped in an open-air prison. Eventually, when they have been ground down into total destitution, the Israelis will probably evacuate them under some grubby American-backed deal to a compliant neighboring state, and finally, annex Gaza.
It is under these conditions of desperation that the people of Gaza have for the past six weeks taken to protesting at Israeli military penning them in with a so-called "security border." Over the past six weeks, nearly 50 unarmed protesters, including journalists and children, were shot dead by Israeli snipers under orders from high command in a tactic of shoot-to-kill. This week, the death toll more than doubled.
The sickening paradox of Israel is too much for words. The state was set up by Jewish migrants fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe. Today, it is maintained by the murderous practices of the Nazi SS and a Western media propaganda system that would marvel Josef Goebbels.
What adds to the horror is how supine European governments, the UN and the Western media are towards the barbarity being inflicted on Palestinians by the Israeli state and its American sponsor. The Arab client regimes of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states are equally odious in their silence.
European officials have called for "restraint" by "all sides," thus obfuscating the sheer criminality of Israel and the US. Why aren't the EU and UN calling for war crimes prosecutions?
The hypocrisy and double standards shown by Western governments is truly shocking. Only a few weeks ago, they were clamoring over an alleged chemical-weapons incident in Syria, and carried out air strikes on that country in "retribution." It turned out that the incident was a fabrication concocted by Western-backed terrorists.
How many times have we heard Western governments and their media pontificate about alleged Russian "annexation" of Crimea?
But these Western hypocrites say nothing about the ongoing murderous annexation of Palestine by the US-backed Israeli state.
We are living in nefarious, lawless times, where Western governments and media say next to nothing about the murder of civilians when it suits their geopolitics. But these same governments make up accusations on the basis of lies and fulminate with righteous condemnation out of cynical expedience against "enemies" like Syria, Iran and Russia.
The opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem this week was anointed with the blood of innocent people shot down by Israeli snipers. That massacre is surely the grotesque sign of the iniquitous and very dangerous times were are living in.
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