ISRAEL – A PARIAH STATE

By: Gulamhusein A. Abba

Note: This is a flashback to 2006, eight years back. This article was written by me then and publshed in several media outlets, including printed media. I am republishing it here in its original form to emphasize how long this problem has been contnuing and how nothing has chaanged. If anything, matters have become worse, much more so.

August 21, 2006

Israel is on a rampage. It has been raining death and destruction in Gaza for weeks. It pounded Lebanon into rubble. It, with the help of the US , resisted calls for an immediate cease fire. After the UN passed a resolution calling for a cessation of hostilities, it went ahead and carried out a raid in Lebanon , in flagrant and clear violation of the cease-fire resolution, and Israel ’s Prime Minister has said such raids may well continue.

In the West Bank it carried out a raid in broad daylight as late as Sunday August 20 and grabbed from his Ramallah home Mahmoud-al-Ramahi, a senior Hamas member and secretary general of the Palestinian parliament. Just a day before Israeil soldiers swooped in on Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer and seized him from his home, also n Ramallah. Israel presently holds five Palestinian Cabinet ministers and more than two dozen lawmakers. Almost all of Hamas West Bank leadership is now in Israeli custody.

Israel today is the most violence and war-prone, war mongering state. Capitalizing on post-holocaust world sympathy for the Jews, Israel ’s Zionist leaders have transformed a nation of people who were once considered the world’s ultimate victims into a nation of aggressors, invaders, conquerors and occupiers.

The oppressed and the persecuted have become oppressors and persecutors. Refusing the offer of peace and full recognition by all the Arab nations in the region, Israel relentlessly   

pursues territorial expansion, crushing those who resist.

It arrogantly invades other lands at will, tyrannizes its people and devastates their lands.

Pretending to fight terrorism, it has unleashed state terrorism on an unprecedented scale.

Demanding adherence to UN resolutions by others, it has thumbed its nose at countless UN resolutions and continues to do so.

Waging wars to get the release of a handful of Israelis held as prisoners by others, it continues to hold thousands of their citizens as prisoners, many of them women and children under 18, almost all without any charges against them.

Israel is a loose cannon ball. It is a dangerous force of instability. It will plunge the world into a catastrophic war unless restrained.

It is time for the US , in the name of justice and peace, and in its own interests as also that of Israel itself, to now distance itself from Israel .

It is time for the international community to rein in Israel, to treat it as it deserves – a rogue nation, a pariah state, till it decides to play by the rules and return to the comity of civilized, law abiding nations.