Joseph Stalin was once quoted as saying, “The death of one person is a tragedy. The death of thousands is a mere statistic.” He was quite right, of course.
Palestine is the current example of Stalin’s cynical observation. There, young, violent Israeli hoodlums – known as ‘settlers’ in Western media – have been trying to terrorise Arab villagers into flight. It’s all part of a broad plan of genocide against peaceful Palestinian villagers.
In fact, this is a repeat of what happened in the region in the 1940s and 1950s when close to a million Palestinians were driven from their homes in Palestine and the Galilee by armed Jewish vigilantes. Britain and the US allowed this to happen – or even encouraged it – under the slogan ‘a land without people for a people without land.’ It was a big lie but very effective.
Now, seven decades later, and after repeated ethnic cleansings, there are nearly 5m Palestinian refugees, among them many residents of Arab villages in Gaza.
Last week, Jewish settlers attacked another Palestinian household in Gaza. They tore up its fields, and cut down its cherished olive trees, which take a century to mature before bearing fruit. But worst of all for me, as one who respects and loves animals, they seized a little donkey from that farm, tied it to their jeep, and dragged it to its death. This crime was shown on French TV. It would not have appeared on heavily censored US TV.
Donkeys are sweet, gentle animals. They protect sheep from predators. They like to playfully nip humans. One of them bore Jesus to the manger in Bethlehem. They are God’s little creatures.
Sadly, they are the main method of transport across the Arab Middle East. They are starved, overworked, whipped and abused even though the Prophet of Islam urged his followers to be gentle to all animals.
I help support donkey sanctuaries in Israel and Puslinch, Canada with joy and satisfaction. I even bought hay last year for the Israeli refuge, something very new for me as a New Yorker.
I wish Israel’s police would stop closing their eyes to their settlers’ vandalism and provide protection to their animals. Before she came to me, one of my cats was run over in Tel Aviv and her back was broken. Excellent Israeli vets kept her in traction for months until she healed. That’s the humane side of Israel.
The inhumane side is all the savage attacks we see against animals – mostly innocent little donkeys whose ears are cut off and, worse, that are set on fire by young hoodlums. These Jewish sadists are being used by Israel’s far-right Netanyahu government. What a shameful blot on the honour of the Jewish people.
Eric S Margolis
&uuid=(email))