John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MIKO PELED IN MINTPRESS
‘Gaza March of Return Architect Abu Artema Celebrates Its First-Year Anniversary
‘“Why would we die here in silence? We want our message to reach the world. We want to say to the world ‘here there is a people. A people searching for a life of dignity, human rights and freedom.'” ‘
I find it extremely difficult to associate the word “celebration” with an event such as the March of Return.
Simply because Israel has used it as an opportunity for atrocities, for cowardly soldiers to kneel behind a fence, literally to ambush thousands of unarmed people, killing a couple of hundred and wounding thousands.
But despite Israel’s success in muffling Western media coverage and its success in using mass murder to intimidate, the Palestinians I believe have won a very important victory with the March of Return.
No matter how great Israel’s influence on the press, and it is great, when such obvious terror happens over and over, it becomes clear to a lot of people in the world that the people of Gaza are heroic in their opposition to oppression and that Israel’s armed forces behave no differently to the thugs of the Third Reich when confronted by genuine heroism – they shoot women and children and heroic medics and journalists. And the sad government of Israel lies about it, week after week, its hideously corrupt and murderous Prime Minister using the term “moral” to describe an army of cowardly assassins.
Americans are quite fond of the notion of having to sacrifice for freedom. It frequently provides a theme in popular songs and movies. But for most of them, it is only a phrase, nice to hear at Fourth-of-July picnic speeches, never having been asked to sacrifice anything.
But in these marches, we’ve witnessed the real thing, terribly oppressed people ready to give everything for change.
Were there any justice in the world, the Nobel Peace Prize would be awarded to the men who created and this movement and to the people who have made it happen. It is one of the bravest acts in the name of human freedom I have seen in my lifetime.
But, of course, there is no justice, and the prizes, for fear of offending America’s imperial establishment, are given for doing pretty much nothing.
