2023-10-30 18:56:00
Youssef Dorhom* 30.10.2023 • 18:56
For three weeks now, the occupying forces of Israel have committed yet another massacre against the indigenous Palestinian population. They say this will “last as long as it takes”. In fact, “it” has already lasted 75 years – but at what cost and with how much injustice? Genocide cannot be the solution to Israel’s expansion into our lands and the lands of other peoples.
Israel’s attack did not begin until three weeks ago. It started with the foundation of the state of Israel on the graves of Palestinians and the eradication of 500 villages and towns 75 years ago by Zionist paramilitary groups who even killed British and Americans to realize their dreams.
“The Greek people know well what genocide means. We face the same threat,” says Youssef Dorhom.
Much of the information being disseminated about the current crisis comes from the Israeli military. It is an attempt to justify Israel’s war crimes, having so far killed approximately 5,800 Palestinian civilians, including 2,300 children, 1,300 women and 290 elderly, while simultaneously demonizing and dehumanizing the Palestinian people.
The Israeli air force is slaughtering our children and mothers who have no safe haven. He did not hesitate to bomb the Christian church of Agios Porphyrios as well, killing 18 Palestinians who had sought protection there. Israel is suffocatingly besieging the entire Gaza Strip, which is about the size of Zakynthos and is deprived of water, electricity, food, medicine and fuel, as they blocked humanitarian aid from the only point of contact with the outside world, in Rafah, on the border with Egypt. Entire neighborhoods were leveled, hospitals were hit, places of religious worship and high-rise apartment complexes were reduced to piles of rubble, just to prove that it is one of the world’s most powerful armies, capable of dropping 12,000 tons of explosives on Gaza.
Israel is not exercising “legitimate self-defense” against a hostile state, it is committing war crimes against the unarmed Palestinian people living under occupation, in violation of the Geneva Convention, as well as countless resolutions of the United Nations, a state above all law, above by international law. In the last three weeks, 35 UN staff have been killed in the line of duty. At the moment, 12 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals are not functioning due to shelling and a lack of fuel, needed to generate electricity. Half the population of the Strip has been forcibly displaced, in the context of a political ethnic cleansing.
The greatest anguish of the Palestinians is that they cannot protect their children. Shocking scenes unfold constantly, with corpses of children on ranches or hospital floors, and with doctors desperately giving artificial respiration to infants, their names tattooed on their limbs so they can be identified later, alive or dead.
The Greek people know well what genocide means. We face the same threat as Israel has been trying to destroy our History, our culture, our people and our thinking for 75 years. Since its establishment, the Israeli state has been causing unrest in the region, attacking all of its neighbors and spreading unrest in other countries. It kills Palestinians with banned white phosphorus weapons, its army protects armed settlers who steal our land, launch pogroms against Palestinian villages in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and desecrate holy sites.
Israel is not exercising “legitimate self-defense” against a hostile state, it is committing war crimes against the unarmed Palestinian people living under occupation.
What they cannot take away from us is dignity and freedom. “Palestinians are like lion trees, you can cut them, you can burn them, but they are sure to grow back.” The history of our country is as old as the lion trees, many conquerors and settlers passed through, but in the end they left. Israel attempts to demonize us because we refuse to leave our land and remain deeply rooted in our homeland.
The Greek and Palestinian people have been linked by bonds of friendship since the Hellenistic era. Greeks know our leaders. They knew Yasser Arafat, they know the kafiya (Palestinian headscarf) as a symbol of peaceful, popular resistance to occupation. They know that our president, Mahmoud Abbas, is a man of peace, who rejects the killing or kidnapping of civilians. Today there are more than 6,500 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Our president is a leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, rejecting violence and following international law, using forms of peaceful, popular resistance and political action to win our freedom and independence.
In the past three weeks, Israel has also killed 103 Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank, in areas “A” under the full control of the Palestinian government under the Oslo peace accords. Even before October 7, Israeli rockets and drones had killed 250 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel is expanding the war in the West Bank and neighboring countries by trying to redraw the map of the Middle East, to make the new map that Netanyahu presented to the UN General Assembly a month ago.
The international community must end Israel’s genocide, war crimes, enforce peace and allow emergency humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza for the 2 million Palestinians. If immediate action is not taken, soon nothing will be left of the History, culture and religious monuments, including those of the Greek Orthodox Church, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. I repeat my appeal to Greece, a country historically friendly to the Palestinian people, not to legitimize Israel’s war crimes and not to offer any assistance. Greece has always supported international law and the legal rights of our people for self-determination, ending the Israeli occupation and establishing a Palestinian state on the internationally recognized borders of 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
I express my sincere gratitude to all Greek friends who support our legal rights with letters of support and peaceful marches. We will never succumb to Israel’s state terrorism. We trust you. We know the History of struggles and sacrifices of your people for freedom and justice. I am sure you too feel the pain of those who lose their child, mother, brother or father.
2,300 angels of Palestine sing for peace, but the trumpets of Israeli war and destruction keep the way to peace closed.
*Mr. Youssef Dorhom is the Palestinian ambassador in Greece.
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