According to The Star, hundreds of Malaysians gathered at various locations to protest Israel’s military actions on Gaza. Khairy Jamaluddin, representing Coalition Against Israeli Aggression, submitted a memorandum of support to Palestinian Ambassador Abd ElAziz Abu Ghoush.
Contained in the memorandum was this statement: “The brutal massacre of the Palestinians, including women and children, by the Israeli military has reminded the world of the urgency to bring a just solution for the Palestinian people, guaranteeing their sovereignty, security and well-being.”
I don’t know how many Malaysians actually believe that there will ever be solution to the problem between the Israelis and the Palestinians, especially in light of Hamas’ stated goals with regards to Israel.
… did you know?
1. …the Hamas slogan? “Allah is its goal, The Prophet its model, the Qur’an its Charter, jihad its path, and death for the cause of Allah its most sublime belief” (Article 8 of The Hamas Charter).
2. Hamas is against any Middle East peace process? “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavors” (Article 13).
3. As Littman writes, “Article 28 widens the circle of hate to include all Jews: “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people: ‘May the cowards never sleep.’” The Charter in its preface quotes Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, as saying: “Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
Quoted from Diana West’s Context-less in Gaza
What do Malaysians, in general, know about the lead up to the military actions taken by Israel on the Gazans? There was hardly any reporting on the hundreds of rockets or mortars fired, almost on a daily basis since Israel left Gaza in 2005, at Israel? I did not hear that fact mentioned on TV3’s Bulletin Utama. What was mentioned repeatedly by TV3 was “rejim kejam Israel”, “kekejaman Israel” and words to that effect. NTV7’s 7 Edition, to their credit, albeit briefly, did mention the frequent rocket firings from Gaza into Israel.
And what of the cries of “disproportionate use of force” on Israel’s part on the Palestinians from the likes of the UN chief to the mainstream media? Would they prefer, in the words of Victor Davis Hanson, the following to make it “fair”?
1) Request that 50% of Israel’s air-to-ground missiles be duds to ensure greater proportionality.
2) Allow Hamas another 1,000 free rocket launches to see if they can catch up with the body count.
3) Have Israeli soldiers congregate in border barracks so that Hamas’s random rockets have a better chance of killing military personnel, to ensure it can claim at least a few military targets.
4) Redefine “holocaust” to refer to deaths of terrorists in numbers under 400 to give greater credence to Hamas’s current claims.
5) In the interest of fairness, allow Hamas to establish both the date that war is supposed to begin and the date when it must end.
6) Send Israeli military advisers to Hamas to improve the accuracy of their missiles.
7) Take down the barriers to return to Hamas a fair chance of getting suicide bombers back inside Israel.
The way I see it, there will never be a solution to the conflict in the Middle East, as long as the Palestinians and the Arab Muslims in that region and the world, refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the state of Israel.