If Shylock was a Palestinian…

I am a Palestinian.

Hath not a Palestinian eyes?

Hath not a Palestinian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions;

fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,

healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by

the same winter and summer as an Israeli is?

If you prick us do we not bleed?

If you tickle us do we not laugh?

If you poison us do we not die?

And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

If a Palestinian wrong an Israeli, what is his humility? Revenge.

If an Israeli wrong a Palestinian,

what should his sufferance be by an Israeli example? Why, revenge.

The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

           (Amended Shylock’s speech from A Merchant of Venice by W. Shakespeare)

Tears of Gaza

Blank expressions and dirt smeared faces where

Once the personality of a child resided, lived

Now bloodied, emptied, alone and in despair

Oh children of Gaza you are all insignificant

Cry as you might, the world does not care

Die as you might it means nothing out here

Your innocence snatched and lives shackled

Your futures in doubt, broken and battered

If this is not ethnic cleansing then what is?

As I write this another UN run school has been hit by a deadly Israeli missile killing 10 more Palestinian civilians, many of them children. The ongoing death toll is unimaginable and the ongoing silence is telling. As the bodies of innocent men, women, and especially children litter the dusty enclaves of Khan Younis, Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza, the question arises; what is the real purpose of this terror state inflicting a modern holocaust on innocent civilians?

At first we were told that it was in response to the missing Israeli soldiers, then it shifted to retaliating against Hamas rockets and now it is because the ‘terror tunnels’ need to be demolished. These same tunnels, the very lifeline of a starving, overcrowded, diseased population which Egypt has shamelessly and without a doubt in compliance with Israeli pressure, closed. What options to the Palestinians have?

The chilling destruction in Gaza will continue as long as the Zionist controlled United States turns a blind eye. Their silence too is deafening. What is the point of the UN? It has had its treaties violated time and time again by Israel and yet there is no outcry? Any credibility that is has or ever had, has been diminished and once again Israel is allowed to break International Law mercilessly and without cessation.

Further, where have all the Arab states gone? They always seem to go AWOL when there is any kind of abuse, violence or destruction in the Levant. Maybe this points to the hypocrisy of their complicity and poodle-like relationship that they share with their hegemonic masters? The truth is that this current cycle of ethnic cleansing that the Palestinians are being subjected to will continue unabashed.

The least we can do for them is pray for their ease.