Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 11.06.2024
What is happening in Gaza brings Babi Yar to mind.
“Babi Yar Park is a 27-acre memorial landscape that provides a place of quiet contemplation to reflect upon crimes against humanity and genocide. In 1969, Mayor William H. McNichols, Jr. designated the land to create “a place that would demonstrate a unified public protest.”[i]
“On September 29–30, 1941, SS and German police units and their auxiliaries, under the guidance of members of Einsatzgruppe C, murdered a significant number of the Jewish population who remained in Kyiv. The massacre occurred at a ravine called Babyn Yar (sometimes spelled “Babi Yar” in English). At the time, the ravine was located just outside the city.
The victims were summoned to the site, forced to undress, and then compelled to enter the ravine. Sonderkommando 4a, a special detachment from Einsatzgruppe C under SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, shot them in small groups. According to reports sent to the Einsatzgruppen View This Term in the Glossary headquarters in Berlin, 33,771 Jews were massacred during these two days.”[ii]
The Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish, who was a friend of mine when he lived in our beloved Palestine, wrote “The Siege,” which I bring here parts of it.
“Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time
Close to the gardens of broken shadows, we do what prisoners do,
And what the jobless do: We cultivate hope.
A country is preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent
For we closely watch the hour of victory: No night in our night lit up by the shelling
Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us in the darkness of cellars.
Here, there is no “I”. Here, Adam remembers the dust of his clay.
On the verge of death, he says: I have no trace left to lose.
Free I am so close to my liberty. My future lies in my own hands.
Soon, I shall penetrate my life, I shall be born free and parentless, and as my name, I shall choose azure letters…
Cypresses behind the soldiers, minarets protecting the sky from collapse. Behind the hedge of steel. Soldiers piss—under the watchful eye of a tank—
And the autumnal day ends its golden wandering in
A street as wide as a church after Sunday mass…
[To a killer] If you had contemplated the victim’s face and thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle. And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way to find one’s identity again.
The siege is a waiting period. Waiting on the tilted ladder in the middle of the storm.”
The Zionists and their Western imperialist friends are claiming that the tactical achievement of the Zionist state in freeing four Zionist captives is a historical event. In the real world, the Israeli military had conducted a massacre of more than 210 Palestinians aided by the US military, at least by providing intelligence information.
“A U.S. hostage cell provided advice and support throughout the process of locating and rescuing the hostages, according to a Biden administration official, who was not authorized to comment and requested anonymity. The hostage cells are multi-agency teams”.[iii]
“Israeli aircraft hummed overhead as the bodies of 109 Palestinians, including 23 children and 11 women, were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where spokesperson Khalil Degran told The Associated Press more than 100 wounded also arrived. He said that overall, 210 dead had been taken there and to Al-Awda Hospital, saying he had spoken to the director there. Al-Awda’s numbers couldn’t immediately be confirmed[iv].“
AP reporters saw dozens of bodies brought to Al Aqsa Hospital from the Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah areas as smoke rose in the distance and armored vehicles rolled by.A baby was among the dead. Small children wailed, covered in blood. Bodies were placed on the ground outside, their feet bare, as more wounded were rushed in.
My two cousins were killed, and two other cousins were seriously injured. They did not commit any sin. They were sitting at home,” one relative said in the chaos at Nuseirat refugee camp. As Palestinians explored the newly destroyed buildings, a small child sat on a collapsed metal door, overwhelmed.”[v]
“Israel said its forces had been preparing for such a raid for weeks. According to army radio, the entry of the 98th Division into the refugee camps in the center of the enclave, at Bureij and Nuseirat, at the beginning of the week, was not yet another assault, nor was it a large-scale operation aimed at dismantling the Hamas brigades still relatively unscathed in the area. These troops were preparing for the rescue, the main objective of their deployment”[vi].
“The horrific massacre committed today by Netanyahu and his fascist government against the Palestinian people in Gaza, which led to the slaughter of 210 and more than 400 wounded so far — under the pretext of liberating those detained by the resistance — confirms what the resistance has said repeatedly: that Netanyahu doesn’t plan to reach an agreement to stop the war and free the captured Israelis peacefully,” said Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official now based in Lebanon”.[vii]
“Israeli Shabak reporting that [the] Israeli army ‘rescued’ four of the Israeli hostages like it’s some achievement,” Barghouti said on X. “It took 245 days, the slaughter of 40,000 Palestinians most of whom are children, the killing of 70 of the Israeli hostages by Israeli air strikes and at least 3 of them by direct field executions, and Israel is trying to sell this as [an] achievement. What a delusional regime that’s truly trying to find anything to justify its slaughter.”[viii]
“The media won’t tell you this, but Israel just killed 150 Palestinians in Nuseirat refugee camp today,” said the Abdallah account. “This is a massacre. Israel is committing the worst crimes in modern history, and Western regimes are calling it ‘self-defense.'”[ix]
For the Palestinians to live, the Zionist monster must die!
For Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[i] https://mizelmuseum.org/exhibit/babi-yar-park-a-living-holocaust-memorial/
[ii]https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kiev-and-babi-yar
[iii] https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-8-6-2024-a5d1ef04763a5ed17de2d050ebc5d490
[iv] Ibid
[v] Ibid
[vi] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/06/08/israel-frees-four-hostages-in-deadly-gaza-raid_6674264_4.html
[vii] Ibid
[viii] https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-805467
[ix] Ibid