In January 1943 Jewish inmates of the Warsaw Ghetto mounted one of the most heroic and courageous acts of resistance ever recorded. In the face of overwhelming odds, against an advanced and brutal military power, they rose up with nothing more than small arms and an unquenchable human spirit burning in their hearts, choosing to die on their feet rather than go quietly to their doom. They perished and thereby wrote a chapter in human history that has ensured they will forever remain immortal, rightly revered as an example of that which is most noble and good about the human condition.
Conversely, those responsible for leveling the ghetto by aerial bombardment, tanks, and fire wrote their own chapter. Theirs was that of a brutal oppressor driven by racism and inhumanity to slaughter men, women, and children in the name of a poisonous ideology — one that justified cruelty in service to a distorted worldview of racial purity and supremacy as the cornerstone of human progress.
The parallels that exist between the fighters of the Jewish Underground back then and their Palestinian counterparts in Gaza today are clear. Indeed, those heroic Jewish men and women of the Warsaw Ghetto share a bond with the besieged and oppressed people of Gaza that is much stronger the one they could ever possibly share with those who’ve been slaughtering them in their name. Is a bond of which transcends religion, ethnicity, or creed. It is a bond forged in a shared oppression at the hands of those who claim the right to kill and oppress in the name of civilization.
There are times when words fail to do justice to human suffering and barbarity. These past ten months has been one of those times, as the world has stood by and watched a military superpower shelling, bombing, and attacking a relatively defenseless and captive population of 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip, a piece of land which qualifies as the world largest open prison — a ghetto by any other name.
Objectivity in matters of an oppressed people being slaughtered by their oppressor is in itself a crime. Hence we can state without fear or favor that the IDF and IAF — Israel’s army and air force — have been engaged in war crimes against civilians in Gaza.
Let us be even more frank: a special place in hell is reserved for soldiers and airmen who incinerate civilians and justify it by claiming the status of victim.
The narrative we have heard from Israeli spokespeople that no country would accept missiles being fired on it by “terrorists” is an inversion of the truth. On the contrary, no people would accept being forced to exist under the conditions the Palestinians of Gaza have been under since 2006, when as punishment for daring to elect a government of which their Zionist oppressor disapproves they were besieged on a scale that qualifies as biblical both in duration and brutality.
And yet to judge by the coverage of this ongoing massacre by Western media organizations, you would think that this conflict is taking place in a vacuum. Almost without fail they have sought to completely de-contextualize the conflict of its root cause — namely Israel’s decades long military occupation, settlement expansion, land theft, apartheid and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. They have sought to depict it as a conflict between two equal sides, and have in so doing legitimated and normalized the barbarism of the Zionist apartheid state.
But regardless of the role of Western government and their willing accomplices in the media in giving succor to Israel’s crimes, people have not been silent. All over the world there have been massive demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza. And with every man, woman, and child slaughtered or maimed more and more are raising their voices calling for a boycott of Israel, just as they did against apartheid in South Africa. In this regard, Nelson Mandela’s words in support of the Palestinian struggle have proved prophetic: “We know too well our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
No other state in the world currently boasts of its democratic institutions while holding millions of people under military occupation and siege, denying them their basic human rights, as the State of Israel does. It is an ongoing crime that reveals the profound hypocrisy which sits at the heart of the West’s arrogance in claiming the moral high ground when it comes to its cultural and moral values.
Israel exists in violation of international law, and has been doing it every day of its occupation since 1967. The spread and expansion of its illegal settlements on Palestinian land merely adds grist to the mill of the need to impose meaningful sanctions on what by any objective measure is a rogue state. But those sanctions will never be imposed because of the exceptionalism enjoyed by Israel for historical and geopolitical reasons.
But no matter, because in the course of trying to destroy Palestinian life in Gaza Israel has become a state and a society in crisis. It cannot sustain itself on foundations of oppression and apartheid. History leaves no doubt of it.
The heroic fighters of the Jewish Underground in Warsaw back in 1943 were derided as terrorists by their oppressor. As were the fighters of the French resistance. And as were Soviet and Yugoslav Partisans. All at the hands of an occupying power whose bloodlust was justified on the basis of an ideology that had conditioned its adherents to believe that there exists in our world a hierarchy of human worth, and that cultural, racial, and civilizational purity is coterminous with progress.
People who rail against attempts to draw comparison between the Nazis of yesterday and the Zionists of today are right to do so. There is no comparison to be drawn, as the Zionists of today are much worse than the Nazis of yesterday. They are worse simply because the Nazis and their monumental crimes have gone before as a warning from history, one that in the context of Israel and the Palestinians has gone unheeded.
If you enjoyed John’s article, you’ll love his new novel, Gaza – This Bleeding Land. Here’s a taste:
It’s July 2014. In the hours leading up to Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza as part of its Operation Protective Edgel, two young men, rival combatants, contemplate life and fate.
Omar is a member of the Palestinian resistance, a proud product of Jabiliya refugee camp in Gaza, who has only ever known occupation, death and oppression. Gabriel is a soldier with the IDF’s elite Golani Brigade, a passionate and unwavering Zionist for whom Israel represents Jewish liberation and pride.
As the clock ticks down they each go back through their respective lives and reflect on the experiences and seminal moments that brought them to this point, here, prepared to fight and to die for their cause.
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John Wight John Wight is a freelance writer and journalist whose work straddles politics, culture and sport, specifically the sport of boxing. He has written for the Guardian, the Independent, the Scottish Daily Record, the Huffington Post and RT among other publications. He spent five years in Hollywood working as a screenwriter. Please support John's writing via his Medium page by clicking the link below.
