Israel: a Bastard behaving true to type

Oct 13, 2023

One of the perils for those who write, especially on global and geopolitical issues, is that one is forced to repeat what one wrote or commented on several years ago.

The case of the unequal internecine tribal warfare between the Palestinians and the Israelis, disproportionately in favor of the latter, is a good case in point.

The problem is endemic; it has been with us for over seven decades and counting. It is as predictable and guaranteed as any immutable law of nature.

Unfortunately for both sides, most especially the Palestinians, the famed international community has failed to put serious efforts into solving it. The main interlocular, the United States, is not an honest broker. It is both nauseatingly biased and hypocritical to render it ineffective.

What is there to analyze, again?

The reason why I denounced Israel in the two articles that I will share here and

Cry Palestine!

Femi Akomolafe

October 13, 2023

One of the perils for those who write, especially on global and geopolitical issues, is that one is forced to repeat what one wrote or commented on several years ago. The case of the unequal internecine tribal warfare between the Palestinians and the Israelis, disproportionately in favor of the latter, is a good case in point.

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is rather simple:

I am unconditionally opposed to ANY and ALL forms of oppression/discrimination/colonization!

Period.

For me, there are NO ifs, buts, or any stupid rationalization or intellectualization!

If oppression is not good for me or you, why should it be good for another human being?

I condemn the arrogant behavior of Zionist Occupiers towards the Palestinian people. A people under such bestial and inhuman treatment are entitled to choose any means to get rid of the oppression!

My Yoruba people say: Iku ya ju eṣhin lọ / Death is preferable to ignominy!

Where were those who today shed tears about “unprovoked” Hamas terrorism when we saw miserable settlers invading homes, cutting down olive trees, spitting on people, and desecrating places of worship - all totally unnecessary provocations designed just to humiliate an already beaten people?

I share here the first of the articles I wrote on the subject about a decade or so ago.

Israel: a bastard behaving true to type!

“No matter how much you dress up a hog, it will soon resort to its true form.” – African proverb.

I am not a gambling type but I recently won a bet with a friend. I correctly predicted that the illegitimately sired Zionist state of Israel would behave stupidly in its confrontation with the Freedom Flotilla attempting to break the illegal siege of Gaza, the tiny strip of land where Israel has consigned 1.5 million Palestinians.

It was a no-brainer and I won very easily. No money changed hands and it gave me little joy that my prediction came at the loss of nine innocent lives.

In knotty circumstances, Africans reach for proverbs. It is my Yoruba people who say that Eefin ni iwa. It means that the character is like a smoke; it can never be hidden. It was the knowledge of this proverb that informed my prediction.

We can pretend all we want, but our true character will eventually reveal itself.

The Zionists have a well-oiled propaganda machine and a very powerful Jewish Lobby to sell the rotten illegalities they are committing against the Palestinian people; gradually their crimes against humanity are being unveiled.

Another potent Yoruba saying is: Ti ilé ba toró, ọmọ alé ibe koi ti dagba ni. It means that if the house is peaceful and tranquil, it is only because the bastard there hasn’t grown up.

The bastard the West sired in the Levant has grown up and it is behaving true to form.

Cheered on by their supporters in the West, mostly in the U.S., the Zionists waged a ferocious war against the democratically elected (everyone seems to have forgotten that) Hamas-led government. Operation Cast Iron killed 1,400 Palestinians and maimed thousands more. It destroyed the little infrastructure the colonized Palestinians needed to sustain a semblance of life. That was some eighteen months ago.

Not sated by the vicious bloodletting, the Zionists imposed a blockade on the occupied people. Palestinians have been groaning under this cruel occupation with the “international community” concerning itself with issuing its ritualistic useless condemnations and engaging in its unending “Peace Process.”

The lack of seriousness about bringing peace to the region is best emphasized by the fact that a criminal warmonger like Tony Blair was put in charge — adorned with the moniker of a “Peace Envoy.”

How much more cynical can one get?

The Zionists would want us to believe that their occupation was some giant humanitarian enterprise. Listen to their rabidly racist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman: “There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Israel is conducting itself in the most humanitarian manner, and allowing the entrance of thousands of tonnes of food and equipment to Gaza.”

One wonders what the warmonger knew about humanity!

But who the heck are the Israelis to determine how the Palestinians should live their lives? Who are they to determine what the Gazans should and should not get? Who appointed them the guardians of Palestine? Who the hell are the brutal Zionists to tell Palestinians how to defend themselves?

Among the items denied the Gazans is chocolate, which the Zionists determined is “Luxury goods.”

The truth, as many international organizations attested, is that the Zionist occupiers are just telling bare-faced lies. They are not only good thieves (they stole other people’s land, didn’t they?) but wonderful liars as well.

All the aid organizations working in Gaza affirm that there is widespread malnutrition directly attributable to the blockade. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a 2008 report that 70 percent of Gaza’s population suffered from “food insecurity.”

Cecilia Goin, the ICRC spokeswoman, said: “The situation is deteriorating due to the closure — there are restrictions of movement, restrictions of food — it causes problems in areas of health, water and sanitation. The ICRC is especially concerned about the health situation of the people.”

The United Nations Human Rights head, Navi Pillay, called the blockade a devastating collective punishment, illegal under international law.

UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, resorted to building mud houses because of the illegal blockade and Mr. Lieberman would want us to take him seriously!

Oxfam reported in early 2010 that 15 Gazans have died from “generator-related accidents.”

Amnesty International’s latest report concluded that four out of five Gazans depend on external aid to survive. The damning report says that Gaza’s 1.5 million people are “cut off from the rest of the world.”

And Mr. Lieberman would want us to cheer his country’s great humanitarian spirit!

All these crimes were being committed against the Palestinians with the “International Community” doing what it did best — nothing.

The Arab League, to its eternal shame, also looked on unconcerned. And Arab governments, also to their shame, looked incapable of mobilizing world opinion the way Africans were able to do in apartheid South Africa. With the quisling that Washington imposed on Egypt, Mubarak, sacrilegiously joined the blockade of fellow Arabs, thus reducing the people of Gaza to tunnel-digging to get life’s essentials.

The cries of Gazans went unheeded until several non-governmental organizations joined together to try and do something. In an act akin to the massive global pressure on apartheid South Africa, activists from about 30 countries including Israel managed to gather about 10,000 tonnes of supplies for delivery to the besieged Gazans. And that proved too much for the Zionists and their backers.

Israeli propagandists dubbed these world citizens with a conscience terrorists, Taliban-loving, and al Qaeda sympathizers.

On Monday, the 31st of May 2010, Israel did what it knows best — launched a stupid war of aggression. This time against a flotilla of unarmed ships carrying international human rights activists! And it did so in the full glare of global television! To top the profanity, it did so when the ships were in international waters — 64 km clear of any shore.

At least the whole wide world now has an inkling of what the Gazans are going through. If the Zionists can behave so aggressively when the eyes of the world are turned on them, how would they behave in the confines of occupied Gaza or their secret interrogation centers?

The assault on the Freedom Flotilla was just the latest perfidy in the unconscionable behaviors of the unreconstructed Zionists.

Another Yoruba saying is Igberaga ni nsiwaju iparun, which translates loosely as “Pride goes before fall.”

That the Zionists behaved true to form should surprise no one. What would have been amazing would be to have seen the aberrant behaving like a normal being. Allowing the ship to pass through would simply not have jelled with the type of muscular brutality image Israel likes to project.

We all witnessed the humiliation meted out to a visiting vice president of the United Snakes of Amerikka recently by the power-drunk Zionists, who forgot the saying that those who bite the hands that feed them will surely go hungry.

Israel lays an illegal siege on the Palestinian land of Gaza. It does so in clear breach of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1860. It could get away with it because it has a powerful ally in the world’s most powerful military power, the USA, which continues to see the bastard Zionist entity as a “Strategic Ally.”

The Israeli story that the flotilla was carrying weapons is a bare-faced lie, as the images of the cargo are revealed. It was also reported that the Turkish government informed the Israelis that it had satisfactorily inspected the shipment.

You can check a sample of what the Israelis claimed constituted weapons.

Were the Zionists not to be drunk with inordinate power they would have recourse to the most sensible action, which was to do nothing at all. The only wise thing would have been to allow the flotilla to discharge its cargo leave quietly and pretend that it never happened.

They have to behave true to form like some blood-thirsty, desert warriors carrying out the mandate of a vindictive and very petty Jehovah. They have to show the world that they are powerful and can commit any illegality and get away with it. After all, Uncle Sam is there to pick the tab and effectively shield them from all criticism.

But it looks like that, in this instance, the Zionists badly miscalculated on several fronts. It is doubtful if the Zionists configured the worldwide condemnation of their despicable act into their equation. It looks like the unrepentant Zionists have this time bitten off more than they can chew. They seem to have badly misread the world's opinion about their continuing irritatingly bad behavior.

The Yorubas say, Aja ti o ba sonu, ki ngbo fere ode. “The dog that will get lost will not hear the hunter’s whistle.”

Protest marches were organized in several countries across the world with thousands of people taking to the streets to roundly and very rightly condemn the actions of the unrepentant Zionists.

In the opinion of Salim Vally, chairperson of the Palestine Solidarity Committee of South Africa, the world needs to do to Israel what it did to apartheid in South Africa, and that is “Boycott, recall the South African ambassador to Tel Aviv, and expel the Israeli ambassador.”

To their credit, many Israelis also condemn the stupid assault. A quote from Ha’aretz, an Israeli newspaper reads: “Here in Israel, we have still yet to learn the lesson: We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege. The siege itself is becoming Israel’s Vietnam.”

Another fallout: Egypt’s President Mubarak, a US toady, was forced to act and open the Egyptian border with Gaza, which he had closed in solidarity with its “Peace partner.”

The Zionists also managed to effectively end the friendship between their state and Turkey, which had remained their only true friend in the troubled region.

Turkey, whose nine citizens were massacred by the Israeli commandos, called for a strong international response to the raid. The country’s incensed prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his parliament that Israel should be “punished” for its “bloody massacre” on the flotilla, and warned that no one should test Turkey’s patience. “It is no longer possible to cover up or ignore Israel’s lawlessness. Dry statements of condemnation are not enough … There should be results. The international community must from now on say ‘enough is enough’.”

A furious Mr. Erdogan went further by accusing Israel of “knowing how to kill.” He said the Israeli action was an attack “on international law, the conscience of humanity and world peace.”

As usual the mildest reprimand comes from Israel’s biggest supporter, the U.S. It is difficult to imagine what continues to inform the American obsession with continuing a clearly myopic and effectively counter-productive relationship with Israel. Not only is the relationship shortsighted, but it is difficult to imagine how it effectively promotes US strategic interests — if we discount waging insane wars, that is.

What exactly does the U.S. gain from this relationship except the opprobrium of the Arabs and the larger world?

Those in charge of US foreign policies are not helping matters with their blind blanket support for their “ally.”

As the African proverb says, “If your neighbor is eating a poisonous fruit and you fail to warn him, his groans at night will disturb your sleep.”

Israel has become effectively a nauseating abscess in the Middle East and no amount of spins by the vaunted “hasbara” or propaganda machine can undo the damage of the assault on the Freedom Flotilla.

It is doubtful if things will ever be the same again.

The emergence of a civic “international community” committed to taking action to break the siege of Gaza comes as a result of the incapacity of the official “international community” to do more than issue UN resolutions and condemnations. It is a phenomenon that is not likely to go away.

There are clear parallels the Zionist entity shares with apartheid South Africa. Like in the former Boer’s Dreamland, a minority settler regime tried but failed to perpetuate an unjust rule over a majority. The West also viewed South Africa as a “strategic partner,” a bulwark against communism that was allowed to arm itself to the teeth with weapons that included nuclear.

Instead of telling the Boers some home truth about the historic impossibility of their endeavor, the West engaged them in a useless “constructive engagement.”

An emboldened South Africa, believing in the myth of its invincibility, crossed the border into Angola where it had its ass whipped at the battle of Cuíto-Cuanavale by Cuban troops. This is akin to the way Hezbollah broke the myth of the omnipotence of the IDF.

Next came the worst nightmare for all occupiers. Civic international organizations formed solidarity with the ANC and brought unsustainable pressures on their government and companies. Capital fled South Africa like no man’s business as companies, under unbearable pressure, divested their investments. The rest, they say, is history.

Will the Zionists learn a lesson before it is too late? As I wrote in the piece “Cry Palestine” (Swans, February 23, 2009), no oppression can last forever.

I am old enough to remember the Boer leaders also strutting the world stage like some invincible overlords. Today, while Mandela has been elevated to sainthood, his oppressors have all been consigned to the dustbin of history.

It is not a question of if Gazans will be free, but when they will be free. Demography alone argues against a sustainable occupation.

May the souls of the martyrs massacred on Freedom Flotilla rest in peace.

About the Author

October 2, 2023
Farmer, Writer, Published Author, and Social Commentator

My latest Book, From Stamp to Click (it’s still a hello) is published and is available online at:

https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/from-stamp-to-click-its-still-hello

How to order it: https://www.africanbookscollective.com/how-to-order