"We
dream of a normal life, in freedom and
dignity.”
By Noam Chomsky
An old man in Gaza held a placard that reads: “You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house,
take my job,
steal
my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my
country, starve us all, humiliate us all but I am to blame:
I shot a rocket back.” [1]
steal
my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my
country, starve us all, humiliate us all but I am to blame:
I shot a rocket back.” [1]
The
old man’s message provides the proper context for the
timelines on the latest episode in the savage punishment of
Gaza. They are useful, but any effort to establish a
“beginning” cannot help but be misleading.
The crimes trace
back to 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
fled in terror or were expelled to Gaza by conquering
Israeli forces, who continued to truck them over the border
for years after the official cease-fire.
The persecution of
Gazans took new forms when Israel conquered the Strip in
1967. From recent Israeli scholarship we learn that the goal
of the government was to drive the refugees into the Sinai,
and if feasible the rest of the population too. . .
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