Or at least, those of us who haven't been brainwashed by BBC and Fox News know what's been going on. Gaza is under fire. And it's one of the most disgusting things you'll ever see.
According to The Guardian, around half a million citizens of Gaza have been forced to flee their homes following Israeli air strikes, and there are currently more than 200,000 living in United Nations schools. At least 60,000 Gazans are currently homeless. Not to mention, roads, sanitation systems, the water supply, and power generation distribution networks have all been severely damaged. Thanks, IDF.
For those of you who don't know, the IDF are the Israeli Defense Forces. And by 'defense', I mean 'offense'. Because I can't imagine why Israel would need to defend itself against these little guys.
448 Palestinian children, and counting, have been killed, and more than 2,500 kids have been injured so far in this 2014 "conflict". "Conflict". As far as I'm concerned, conflicts aren't one-sided. More than 1900 Gazan civilans have been killed, while only 3 Israeli civilians, and 64 Israeli soldiers, have been killed. Let's be real; this isn't a conflict or a war. It is an attempt to wipe out an entire community. This is something that we shouldn't stand for. This is something that no one with a shred of a conscious should stand for. Killing children, children who have the right to play and laugh and be happy, is pathetic and cowardly. These kids have seen horrors we could never imagine in our darkest dreams. All they know is terror. They have seen their mothers screaming, their houses destroyed, their families murdered before their very eyes. The ones fortunate enough to have survived these attacks live on with permanent psychological and emotional scars. All because they are claimed to be "human shields".
"Human shields".
So Israel claims that these children and their families, these innocent civilians, are being used by Hamas as human shields, and that that is the only reason Israel is attacking them. What about the four children who were playing football on the beach in Gaza, who were specifically targeted and shelled? Were they also being used as "human shields"? My bad. What about the eight children that were playing in the park that was bombed on the first day of Eid? Were they being used as "human shields"? Were Hamas's leaders hiding behind them, playing on the swings of that park as well? Human shields, my foot! Israel has been bombing Palestinians way before Hamas was even formed, so these claims are complete rubbish. I think it's worth mentioning that Hamas has been in control of Gaza since 2007, when they won the Palestinian elections.
Google knows its facts.
Now why did all of this start? Well, in reality, it's started years ago. In the year 1948, to be exact. There's always been tension between Palestine and Israel, and rightly so, Israel stealing the Palestinians' land and whatnot. But what's with the attacks that started this summer? What're they all about? Well, apparently, it starts whenever you want it to. It all depends on the starting point you pick. You could say it started when Hamas allegedly kidnapped a few Israeli "teenagers". But these "teenagers", in reality, were soldiers. There are many pictures available of them in their army suits, and the reason the Palestinians kidnapped these men was to trade them for some of the Palestinian prisoners who are currently detained in illegal Israeli prisons, which do not, by the way, follow human right protocols. So anyway, one Israeli soldier can be exchanged for around a thousand Palestinians. However, following the kidnapping, Israel responded by attacking thousands of innocent people who had nothing to do with any of this. What kind of messed up logic is that?! Or you could take the starting point as that time when Israel kidnapped Palestinian kids. But no one's going to remember that cause we all love Israel, right? You could also say it started when Hamas sent a few rockets into Israel, leading Israel to go attack a million times more violently, killing almost 2,000 civilians, who I'm pretty sure didn't fire those rockets.
And that's only the first 3 weeks of it all.
What's more, is that Israel has been attacking UN shelters, schools and hospitals, and I don't know what tactic that is, but it's a pretty shallow one.
The whole affair is just really upsetting. While I was Googling pictures for this blog post, I saw pictures of the disfigured bodies of Gaza's murdered children that would make you want to vomit and cry and scream all at once. Pictures of mangled bodies drenched in blood. Pictures of organs spilling out of little bodies. Pictures of kids with guns pointed against their heads. Pictures of Israeli kids sending these "gifts" to the children of Palestine.
And you know what's worse? It's that so many of the world's countries continue to turn a blind eye to what's happening in Gaza. The US continues to aid Israel and refuses to agree to send them to the International Criminal Court, claiming that Israel have the right to defend themselves (against kids, mind you), and Britain and several EU members are parroting after the US, as expected. If it were any country besides Israel that had committed these crimes, the US would have taken actions an eternity ago. As Mohammed Zeyara put it, "Israel has broken 65 UN resolutions with no consequences. Iraq broke 2 and got invaded, bombed and destroyed."
Then there's Egypt, the only Arab country neighbouring Gaza, who refuses to open its borders for a wide selection of invalid reasons that mean nothing when you consider the fact that PEOPLE ARE DYING IN GAZA! Trapped behind the border, in the jail that is their own beloved soil.
Heartless. That's the only word I have to describe this.
Luckily, there are a few nations that still have a sense of humanity. Lots of Latin American nations are showing their support for Gaza:
*Chile - Has suspended trade with Israel
*Brazil - Has recalled its Israeli ambassador
*Bolivia - Cut ties with Israel since "Operation Cast Lead" in 2009
*Venezuela - Cut ties with Israel since "Operation Cast Lead" in 2009
*Nicaragua - Cut ties with Israel after attack on Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, 2010
*Ecuador - Recalled its Israeli ambassador after attack on Freedom Flotilla to Gaza*Cuba - Broke diplomatic ties with Israel back in 1973.
*Argentina- Has stopped allowing Israeli nationality to all Argentinean passport holders and sends a profound, pained tribute to the children killed in the strikes.
*Peru and El Salvador have also recalled their ambassadors to Israel for consultations.
And though many Arab countries are embarrassingly not really doing much about this massacre, some of them are sending monetary aid, and a few gems, like Algeria, are doing their jobs quite well.
And it gives me a bit of hope to see that all around the world, people are demonstrating against Israel's crimes and supporting our Palestinian family, because it's not about being a Muslim or an Arab or a Palestinian... It's about being a human. It's about humanity.
South Africans being awesome.
Londoners being awesome.
And Americans being awesome.
Now, I want to make something perfectly clear. I do not hate Jews, and I am totally against the Holocaust. Judaism is a religion, like any other, and deserves to be respected, and as do Jews. Zionism and Judaism are not the same thing. The Prophet Muhammad PBUH respected his Jewish friends, visited them when they got sick and allowed the Jews to practice their religion freely. It is the Zionists that are reflecting a horrible image of the Jewish community. Most Orthodox Jews are against Zionism and were against an Israeli state to begin with. So please understand that people protesting against Israel does not make them anti-Semites.
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| Pro-Palestinian Jews are super duper cool. |
And I'll be honest; anyone who thinks that Palestinian land really does belongs to Israel is bonkers. And Israelis suddenly realized that this land was theirs in 1948? Give me a break.
Imagine if it were some other country, the USA for example, having its soil being taken away from it, bit by bit, by people who don't have the right.
Yes, what's going on in Gaza is really, really sad.
But through all the happenings in Gaza, we seem to have forgotten our brothers and sisters in Syria, and in all the other countries currently in crisis as well. Talking of Syria, we're 3 years into the Syrian civil war, but casualties are still high, and the Syrians continue to be victims of downright oppression. When will the Syrian government get the message that they are unwanted, get off their high horses and do a Mubarak? They can't simply carry on attacking their people. They are no better than the Zionists. And then there's Iraq, where about 140,000 people have fled from regions in the north just this week. 40 children have died because of violence, displacement and dehydration. Then there's the fighting in South Sudan, which has killed thousands, displaced hundreds of thousands more, and has left vulnerable populations in dire living conditions being worsened by seasonal rains. In South Sudan, nearly 1 million children under the age of 5 will require treatment for acute malnutrition this year, according to UNICEF. And I could just go on and on and on...
So I think it's safe to say that humanity isn't doing a really good job.
And when you think about it, it's awfully depressing that there's no telling when all the fighting going on all over the world will stop. Will it even stop? I doubt it, because there will always be bad people in the world. People who aren't pained by seeing children dying. People who couldn't care less about the innocent being murdered. People who just don't value justice and honour. If only there were only a way to rid the world of these bad people! Not to kill them... that would just lead to more tension. Maybe we could bake a really big batch of cupcakes, concoct an elixir of peace or something, and infuse the cupcakes with it. Then we could feed all those people these cupcakes, and hey presto!
Just imagine if it were that easy. A bite out of these cupcakes, and Bob's your uncle! No one fighting, no one burning down Masjids or churches or houses or shelters, no children dying simply for being of a particular nationality, no racism, no hate... These Cupcakes of Glory would totally put an end to worldsuck.
But sadly, I don't think there is such an elixir. And though I do know how to bake cupcakes without burning them (batch 2 today were a total success!), there are so many bad people in this world, more than I could possibly count, that I couldn't possibly make that amount of cupcakes. I guess we're going to have to end worldsuck the hard way... by promoting the qualities that many people don't seem to value any more, like honesty, integrity, kindness and 'not-killing-almost-500-children-for-no-reason-at-all'ness. That would be a good idea.
And though there's no way to make the world a completely perfect place, we can try.
As for our brothers and sisters who are living in crisis all over the world, we continue to pray for you, and will continue to spread awareness about your plights. We will boycott as many companies that fund your enemies as we can, and please know that we are with you through everything.
And heck, maybe someday, someone will concoct Cupcakes of Glory which will rid the world of all those bad people...
A girl can dream.
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