OPINION
By Musa Touray
Sandu Kuwonku
It’s quite a misfortune to be the aggrieved party in a world that only romanticises the value of human life and displays indifference to unspeakable human rights violations, as is the case for Palestine. The haven this world is supposed to be for the creation has been out of reach for Palestine, prompting the state to live in agony that shows no sign of ceasing.
The world should bury its head in shame for being aware of, and barely doing anything to thwart, Israel’s ongoing genocidal mission to erase every trace of Palestine and turn the idea of it just into a case study for historians of subsequent generations.
Women, children, and even the bedridden in at least a hospital are being killed in the most gruesome manner, and the world watches the bloodshed with a polarised sense of sympathy.
The questions that urgently demand answers permeate every corner of reason and need not be reiterated even to the soulless masterminds of this genocide and their international bedfellows. This reality is stripping surviving Palestinians of what remains of their hope for tranquillity in their besieged homeland.
They feel betrayed and defenceless at a time when everyone knows that their lives have been at stake. They don’t know where to turn to amidst Israel’s continuous bombing of their houses, workplaces, hospitals, and schools. Starvation has taken a fatal toll on the helpless population as Israeli forces continue to block humanitarian efforts trying to access the land.
In what is probably the shortest Friday sermon he’s ever delivered to a congregation, a Palestinian Imam by the name of Mahmoud Al-Hasanat captured the reality of global insouciance to their ordeal. “If thirty thousand martyrs, seventy thousand injured, and two million homeless Palestinians couldn’t wake up the ummah,” the Sheikh was reported to have said, “what impact will my words make?”
He simply gave up on the prospect of global intervention at a time when the sight of blood has become so normal in their lives, it’s no longer an eyesore.
“What more do I say and to whom? Straighten your rows, let’s pray,” he concluded the sermon. These words were borne out of long-endured desperation, and would force tears, just like the visibly emotional Imam, from anyone sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians.
When will this climate of terror come to an end, this dreadful purpose of getting to the bottom of a country’s endurance?
It’s no news that Israel is riding on the back of Western powers, notable of which are US and the UK, to perpetrate atrocity crimes. They not only rationalise the bloody havoc the Zionists are wrecking in Palestine but also offer military and financial support to drive the latter’s expansionist agenda.
It has got to a point where protests against the action of Israel are confronted with counteractive policies by Western governments. The UK, for example, recently announced the official redefinition of extremism, a term often deployed to villainize ideologues of religious doctrines, to restrict the actions of mainly Muslim civil rights movements across the country.
Media outlets that amplify the Palestinian cause and share horrifying footage from the genocide are being censored by respective western governments, while the latter go about sponsoring propaganda campaigns to distort facts of the matter.
As injustice holds sway in this pretend ecosystem of humanity we call the world, Palestine’s ordeal feels like a personal mistake of living out of place, where one’s life is robbed of the sanctity it naturally comes with.
