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Don't Be Fooled, It's War on Humanity

By Laurence Dang for PalestineChronicle.com

March 5 2002. Another day of killings and reprisal. Another night when mothers in Palestine mourn and cry out for their dead children. Today Israel hit more Palestinian "targets" - a beautiful euphemism only reserved to designate Palestinian men women and children victims of a bloody, relentless war which has gone far beyond the boundaries determined by the Geneva convention regarding the treatment and protection of civilians.

This time they sent a missile on a truck filled with children and attacked an ambulance. The statistics help hide the horror behind a cold tally resembling a grim football score:

Palestinians - 19 dead, Israel 5 dead. Palestinians "win", one again the trophy for the highest victim count. The Israeli response to this unspeakable, inexcusable carnage: this "incident" was a "tragic aberration", in the words of spokesman Brigadier-General Ron Kitrey.

Now hold on a minute - an "aberration"? An aberration is by definition an outlier, an incredible exception, a phenomenon which has sometimes no logical explanation and whose origin is often unknown. An aberration falls outside a given pattern and defies the imagination. But there is nothing exceptional about what has been for the past 18 months a systematic and uninterrupted policy of humiliation, oppression, and elimination of the Palestinian people.

There is unfortunately no aberration when Palestinian men, women, and children in large majority unarmed and many of them completely helpless, are being killed at the rate of 20 to 30 per week. For every Israeli wounded, 10 Palestinians are thrown out of their homes, pregnant women are hunted on their way to the hospital, children are massacred, community leaders are assassinated without so much as a formal accusation.

In the past five days alone, 24 Palestinians were killed in a (very well-planned) raid on two West Bank refugee camps (under the pretext that terrorists were among them; these elusive terrorists were never found), 5 children and a woman were killed when a missile was sent on their car ride from school, 12 more were killed in another raid, including a doctor in an ambulance.

Does this sound like an "aberration"? Is there no logical explanation when missiles are sent with determination and force towards civilian homes and streets, tanks tear down homes, and refugee camps are raided? Is the origin of such horror inexplicable? Or does it lead directly and unmistakably to the top Israeli military command and a president who is fully in control and exerting his machiavellian power without restraint - whether domestic or international - and without decency: Ariel Sharon?

Why don't we characterize this so-called "aberration" more simply and honestly as it really is: a systematic policy of extermination. In a long and unabated string of attacks, invasions, destruction, killings and assassination, Ariel Sharon has effectively shown that he has every intention of rooting out Palestinians from their home and land through a calculated and carefully planned policy of ethnic cleansing.

The events of the past week should not fool anyone into thinking that the killing of children is a mere incident or an "unfortunate" example of collateral damage. No, rather, this is just a small piece of the monstrous puzzle assembled by Sharon against the Palestinian people and ultimately, against humanity itself.