It is a sickening time

What was going on in the news was inconceivable, yet there it was, happening right before me, right before the world.

Those poor Americans from a Detroit suburb. Here’s what happened, that was not relayed in the mass media and that nobody heard of : The advancingéNational Guard attacked dozens of citizenséin a Detroit suburb, and eventually held them under siege for over a month. They attempted to defend their homes and families with the little pathetic hand-held weaponry they had, but to no avail. Thirteen of them are now being deported to Europe, and twenty-six more to Canada. They are being deported because those freedom fighters -I mean terrorists- attempted to resist.

Sound unbelievable ? Well, not really. If you’ve read this far, you may have deduced that no such event took place in the US. Yet change the names in the story above from “Americans” to “Palestinians”, “a Detroit suburb” to “Bethlehem”é and “National Guard” to “Israeli occupation forces” , and you have an accurate description of what’s been going on in occupied Palestine.

A total of 39 Palestinians, among dozens who were besieged in the Church of the Nativity, are now being deported from their city, thirteen of them totally out of their country, for fighting against those who trespassed against them. What a sickening time we live in.

How dare they resist ? How dare they not succumb to the will of the Israeli military machine ? How dare they attempt to protect their homes and families ? In the words of one Israeli settler, she saidé”they ought to be murdered.” A sickening time indeed.

Had even a remotely close scenario as the one mentioned actually occurred in the US, or any civilized nation for that matter, the country would be up in arms. There would be anéoutcry in theémedia, a congressional investigation, a demand that those attacking the besieged beépunished, and those attackers more than likely eventually would be.

Those besieged would be heroes, defending their rights, honor and freedom against a vastly superior military force, as they rightly should be considered.

Yet it seems that the realities and principles which we live by start to fade into an alternate parallel universe when it comes to Israel. After all, nobody in the media likesébeing called an “Anti-Semite” , just as nobody likes to point out to that pesky little thing called occupation.

Your, and the White And so, being the civilized righteous nation that we are, weéfeed ourselves lies, so manyéof them we actually start to believe them. We conveniently forget who is the occupied and who is the occupier, who is the aggressor and who is the victim. We portray the standoff being between two equal powers, and deceive ourselves into believingéthat these freedom fighters -who are now separated from their families indefinitely and probably permanently- are indeed terrorists, to make our consciences feel better.