The tide is changing, slowly

The horrifying scenes in Paris as a result of the barbaric attacks by Daesh terrorists that led to the massacre of 129 civilians and hundreds of casualties, shocked all, including the United States, which regrettably has been lethargic in its tackling of this terrorist group that has been in control of large Arab territories for the past four years.

All will be anxiously watching the European and US reaction while at the same time, in the opinion of Palestinian officials, Israel is exploiting the bloody crisis to serve its untoward goals.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestine Liberation Organisation official, said in a statement that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ”is cynically exploiting the pain of the innocent victims in Paris … in order to create a misleading linkage and to justify Israeli state terror against the Palestinian people, while presenting Israel as the victim”.

She underlined that “Israel is an occupying power [that] has habitually terrorised Palestinian civilians, stolen their land and resources, and demolished their homes”.

The United Nations Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories, Robert Riper, stated that Israel’s punitive house demolition policy violates international law and called for its cessation.

“Punitive demolitions are inherently unjust, punishing innocent people for the acts of others.”

At the same time, The Jerusalem Post, adding insult to injury, reported that the Israeli government is planning to issue tenders for the construction of 436 new housing units in a Jerusalem suburb.

Even more shocking is the full-page advertisement in The New York Times, placed by a pro-Israel American Jewish group — a step Arab governments have yet to learn to duplicate — blasting Secretary of State John Kerry for his alleged “moral blindness on Israel [that] devalues Jewish lives”.

The ad, placed by The World Values Network, where Rabbi Shmuley Boteach serves as executive director, decried Palestinians’ actions against Israelis and went on to blast Kerry for saying that “there’s been a massive increase in [illegal Israeli] settlements over the course of the last years and there’s an increase in the violence because there’s this frustration that’s growing”.

The ad continued, in part: “In 2014, [Kerry] echoed a virulent anti-Semitic libel referring to Israel becoming an ‘apartheid state’. Later that year, Kerry was caught on a Fox News microphone criticising the so-called ‘disproportionality’ of Israel’s air strike against Hamas terrorists, sarcastically commenting: ‘It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation’.”

The ad said: “By equating the Jewish victims with Palestinian murderers, Kerry seems incapable of distinguishing right from wrong when it comes to Israel.”

It concluded by asking “Secretary Kerry, how cheap is Jewish life?”

The day before the ad appeared in The New York Times, a news story in the same paper detailed how “two dozen men wearing bulky jackets, woollen caps, hoodies and checkered kaffiyehs barged into a hospital in the West Bank city of Hebron before dawn … pushing what appeared to be a very pregnant woman in a wheelchair. But they were not headed to the delivery room”.

A surveillance camera revealed that they were “undercover Israeli security officers” who 10 minutes later were on their way out, “leaving behind a Palestinian man whom they fatally shot in the raid and wheeling out his cousin, a wounded patient whom they had come to arrest, according to hospital officials … who were livid”.

The raid was “the latest in a string of Israeli incursions on Palestinian hospitals”, the Times pointed out.

In other words, as the ad against Kerry asked, one should ask Netanyahu how cheap Palestinian life is.

In early October, an African American minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a former pastor of President Barack Obama’s, spoke about the Palestinians during the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March that called for justice for the African American community.

Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King wrote recently: “Citing what he called the ‘three-headed demon’ of racism, militarism and capitalism, [Rev.] Wright implored the gathering to stand beside our Palestinian brothers and sisters, who have been done one of the most egregious injustices in the 20th and 21st centuries.”

He added: “Apartheid is going on in Palestine. As we sit here, there is an apartheid wall being built twice the size of the Berlin Wall in height, keeping Palestinians off illegally occupied territories, where the Europeans [presumably Israelis] have claimed that land as their own.”

King quoted Wright as declaring: “Palestinians are saying Palestinian lives matter. We stand with you, we support you, we say God bless you.”

The writer is a Washington-based columnist.