John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY EVA BARTLETT IN MINT PRESS
“Under Fire from Ukraine and Misperceived by the West, The People of the DPR Share Their Stories
“Eva Bartlett traveled to the besieged Donetsk People’s Republic to see firsthand how residents are faring amidst a western-backed Ukrainian incursion”
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Response to a comment saying, ‘"There is a Nazi state in the middle of Europe in the 21st Century. They are dangerous both for us and for the Western world" ‘Give me a break. Ukraine is basically run by Jews.’ In the length of his comment, the reader was essentially saying it was a contradiction in terms to speak of Nazis in a place run by Jewish people.
First, as to the article author's observation of "a Nazi state in the middle of Europe," something to which this commenter takes exception, see the interesting discussion and photos at: https://southfront.org/the-saker-zelenskii-in-free-fall/
But the focus of my response here is Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, a people whose numbers in the occupied territories and in Israel proper, are on the order of six million.
So, Jews can't possibly behave as Nazis?
A ridiculous assertion when we see millions of people held against their will with no rights and no votes and no hope by Israel for over half a century. Not just held but frequently abused and wounded and killed.
The people, the Palestinians, are left in a kind of perpetual institutionalized hell, modelled from the words of the conquering general in the Six Day War, Moshe Dayan, who said publicly afterward that it would be necessary to make the Palestinians miserable enough so they'd want to leave voluntarily.
Dayan’s advice has been Israel's unspoken policy ever since.
Frequently, there are even voices in Israel advocating such measures as driving the Palestinians off their land entirely. Quite prominent figures have thoughtlessly and angrily advocated that.
To where? Who cares? is basically the attitude.
And while they are held by Israel in a form of modern bondage, confined to Apartheid-style Bantustan districts, often, we see yet more homes and farms just openly stolen. Families are assaulted and, sometimes, killed. Farmers’ orchards and vines are often uprooted or vandalized. Streets are patrolled and homes are raided by heavily-armed Israeli soldiers.
The ugliest possible insults are used by some Israelis. Prominent voices have used the most savage language in describing Palestinians. Words like “vermin.” Gigantic concrete walls, with high observation and gun towers, have been constructed across some areas, always with their foundations laid on Palestinian land, walls which, apart from their dreariness, break up traditional routes and patterns, making life that much more difficult.
And where there aren’t walls, there are the many checkpoints at which people must stand in line sometimes for hours to speak to a rude soldier before being able to proceed to their destination. And if they don’t have their required identification in order, they won’t proceed at all.
Regular Israeli practices include improper imprisonment - that is, imprisonment with no proper legal charges or trial - for thousands. The arrest of children. Torture. Assassination of leaders and potential leaders. Brutally unfair laws and arbitrary restrictions, even around such humble, everyday matters as a small home improvement or repair. Harshly limited opportunities for employment and business growth. And really, just no opportunity for millions of people to thrive and develop as in a normal society.
That’s going on three entire generations of massive repression.
And the situation in the separate enclave of Gaza, a place whose very dense population reflects its having become a refugee camp for those driven from their homes and farms by the advancing terrors of 1948?
Gaza is one of the most appalling human situations on the planet. A giant, unsanitary, open-air prison surrounded by fences and automated radar-operated machine-gun towers and armed patrol boats on the water. Fishermen, in their tiny old-fashioned boats, straying at all from the tight distance limits imposed on the water have often been shot over the years.
Many of Gaza’s buildings and sanitary facilities have been left in ruins for years after several successive Israeli attacks, attacks which killed several thousand people, some of the streets’ open gutters literally ran red with blood at the time. Supplies needed for repairs are not permitted under a years-long, war-like blockade.
And when residents protest in marches, invariably without guns, Israel's "moral army" kneels behind a fence and shoots into the crowd, killing men, women, and children.
Over the last year and a half of protests, more than 300 have been killed and thousands wounded, some very seriously wounded because part of the "moral army" was using illegal butterfly-type ammunition, which, like dum-dums, blows big holes in limbs with even a slight contact.
The badly wounded only immensely compound the problems of poor sanitation, broken facilities, shortage of supplies, and no ability to receive adequate assistance from outside.
