December 31, 2009
Psalms 82
Unjust judgments rebuked
GOD STANDETH in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods. How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah. Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course. I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.
Palestine has been a Muslim country for well over one thousand years. In that period it has endured numerous invasions by the Crusaders.
Finally they took Palestine with most of the Middle East at the end of the First World War with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. The Imperialist powers - Britain and France - carved the land into small pieces to divide between them. The British had control over Palestine at the end of the First World War.
Twenty years before this a political movement called Zionism had started among the Jews, they demanded a land of their own. They decided on Palestine for their exclusive Jewish state. Most of the Jews at the time rejected the idea; they condemned Zionism as a "blasphemy against Judaism". And in fact on November 10, 1975 the world condemned Zionism at the UN General Assembly as "a form of racism and racial discrimination".
It is only with the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe that Zionism gathered more support among the Jews. The Zionist realized that their plot to steal Palestine will require the support from the Imperialist powers of the day. They had predicted the British take over of Palestine before the end of the First World War. So they held secret meetings with the British government promising to be their watchdog in the Middle East, securing British interest like the Suez Canal in return for Britain's support in the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine.
British Prime Minister Sir Campbell Bannerman reveals why Britain found it imperative to support the creation of a Zionist state in the heartland of Islam. This is a quote from the British Prime Minister over 40 years before the creation of Israel - he is talking about Muslims not just Palestinians:
“There are people who control spacious territories teeming with manifest and hidden resources. They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the cradle of human civilizations and religions.
These people have one faith, one language, one history and the same aspirations.
No natural barriers can isolate these people from one another... if per chance, this nation were to be unified into one state; it would then take the fate of the world into its hands and would separate Europe from the rest of the world.
Taking these considerations seriously, a foreign body should be planted in the heart of this nation to prevent the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could exhaust its powers in never-ending wars. It could also serve as a springboard for the West to gain its coveted objects.”
This resulted in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 in which Britain promised the Zionists a national home in Palestine. At that time, at the end of the First World War there were very few Jews in Palestine - just 56,000 Jews compare to 1 million Palestinians, that's less than 6% of the population in Pales0tine.
Lord Balfour in a confidential letter revealed the plot:
"In Palestine we do not propose to even go through the formality of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants… The four powers are committed to Zionism."
The four powers being America, Britain, France and Russia, they all conspired to create Israel.
After the Second World War the British Empire was coming to an end. The US, the country least exhausted by the war emerged as a new power in the world, so the Zionists turned to America for support, For the Americans this was an attractive proposal. President Truman new that a Zionist state, completely dependent on the US for its daily survival, would be devoted to US interests in the region.
So in 1946 after the Zionists blew up the King David hotel in Jerusalem, slaughtering 91 innocent people, the Palestinian issue was hurriedly passed to the UN. The UN has no legal mandate to partition a country against the wishes of its people and yet with US domination of the UN, it proposed a partition plan for Palestine granting 55% of Palestine to the Jews who in fact owned only 6% of the land.
Even after massive US bullying, all the countries of Asia and Africa opposed the partition plan, except for three, one of which was white dominated South-Africa.
The UN ambassador of Haiti began to cry when he was forced to change his vote, similarly vulnerable Liberia threatened with a rubber embargo had to obey the US. This is the sort of shameful open bullying that went on that day to secure the votes for the partition of Palestine.
The Palestinians obviously rejected the theft of their land and a war broke out as the ruthless Zionist soldiers made a grab for the land slaughtering Palestinians wherever they found them. The Palestinians were left to fight alone; they had no army and few weapons to oppose the Zionist military that had been trained and armed by the British.
On 9th of April 1948 soldiers of the Irgun, a particularly fanatic Zionist terrorist group commanded by Menachem Begin who later became the Prime Minister of Israel, entered the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. And they slaughtered 250-300 men, women, and children in cold blood. Their bodies were purposely mutilated to terrorize the rest of the Palestinians into fleeing their homes from fear of similar massacres, thereby achieving the Zionist aim of ethnic cleansing.
Menachem Begin himself said:
“Deir Yassin massacre was not only necessary but without it the State of Israel would not have emerged.”
At Haifa, Jaffa and other cities the Zionists terrorized the population into fleeing. Those that didn't flee were slaughtered or forcefully removed - over 400 Palestinian cities and villages were depopulated like this. Over 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes.
This slaughter of Muslims in Palestine - their blood shed on the holy soil of the land of the first Qibla (the direction that should be faced when a Muslim prays), the Masjid Al-Aqsa, that started with Deir Yassin continues to this day; like the siege and barbaric massacre at the Jenin Refugee Camp in 2002.
You might have read about the 15 Israeli soldiers that beat Muntaha Seraya and her four children after bursting into her home during the Jenin siege. The youngest was just 4 years old. She herself was four months pregnant… she suffered a miscarriage half an hour after the soldiers left.
They used her husband as a human shield, resting their M-16 rifles on his shoulder as they moved door to door firing in to the houses. When an Israeli sniper shot the "human shield" by mistake he was left bleeding for five days before being taken to the hospital.
This is the reality Palestinians live with every day.
You probably know the story of Rachel Corrie from my previous post. She felt her duty was to stand against injustice so she went to Palestine. She stood against this Israeli army bulldozer, defending a Palestinian home from destruction. The bulldozer drove directly over her, twice, crushing her body and she lost her life, standing for justice on the 16th of March 2003.
"I feel like I'm witnessing the systematic destruction of a people's ability to survive... Sometimes I sit down to dinner with people and I realize there is a massive military machine surrounding us, trying to kill the people I'm having dinner with.” ~ Rachel Corrie
She was only 23 years old with her whole life in front of her. She had the same aspirations that all of us have for life and yet she sacrificed her life to stand against injustice.
If we can not stand for justice like Rachel Corrie did, what we mustn't do is stand on the side of injustice – we mustn't help the oppressor. For that, there is no justification.
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