Right to live…
Nobody listens to officials from the ruling Justice and Development (AKP), so it does not carry much meaning as to how strongly they denounce Israeli mass murders in Gaza. Look at the foreign ministers of France, Italy, Germany; how right they were in denouncing what they considered as anti-Semitism exploding on the streets of Europe “under the pretext” of deploring the Israeli massacre of Gazans?
It is a matter of perception. For the Israeli state – I know many Jewish people detest such horrendous policies and indeed protest them on the streets of Tel Aviv – and its satellite the United States and other supporters in the international community; the Jewish state has and is indeed applying its “right to defense.” Israel and its supporters defend that since Hamas could not be stopped firing missiles on Jewish settlements, since it did not denounce the use of terrorism as a weapon on the Jewish state, Israel has the right to take whatever measure required to enforce its defense and fulfill its obligation towards its own citizens: to defend them. Can anyone turn a blind eye to the legitimacy of Israel’s right to self-defense? Definitely not, yet I have the difficulty in understanding why only one person has lost their life from Palestinian missiles fired on Israeli territory, while according to independent accounts well over 1,100 Palestinians, mostly children and women, have lost their lives since Israel started its “pinpointed” land offensive.
Not because one death is less important than 1,100 deaths, as death of every individual is an individual apocalypse, but the figures represent the dimension of violence the two sides have been applying against each other. Even if some 90 or more Israeli soldiers killed in action was added to the Israeli casualty list, the Palestinian death toll demonstrates the kind of a brute murderous force that is being applied on the Palestinian people.
Criticism of Israel has somewhat become a taboo. Whoever says a word critical of the Jewish state is immediately branded as anti-Semitic. Large segments of global public opinion are having serious discomfort with the Jewish self-defense. Israel cannot hold global public opinion as hostages because of the tragedies Jewish people were subjected to over the past centuries. Can anyone claim that the right to live is sacred for the Israelis, but that the very same right can be ignored for the Palestinians?
