by Khalid Amayreh
The cruel Israeli regime is organizing a fresh campaign to demand the release of one of its occupation soldiers, detained in a secret Gaza location.
The new campaign, publicized by the Jewish-controlled media in Europe and North America, is assuming many expressions, including protests led by the soldier’s family, a propaganda ship organized by the American Jewish followers of the Nazi-minded rabbi Meir Kahana, and a call by happy-go-lucky French President Nicolas Sarkozy for the unconditional release of the Israeli soldier.
This is the same Sarkozy who kept silent during the murderous Israeli onslaught against the defenseless people of Gaza eighteen months ago. He is now invoking humanitarianism and charity as if the thousands of Gaza children, men and women, annihilated or maimed by the Israeli army were non-humans.
It is true that Gilad Shalit is not being accorded a five-star treatment. But this is not due to any presumed sadistic urges on Hamas’s part to torment the young soldier who is likely to have the blood of many children on his hand.
After all, Israel is a society of murderers and child-killers.
It is a society whose members Zionism has transformed into racists, cannibals and Nazi-minded murderers and child killers.
Indeed, were it not for the fact that Israel has been making constant and meticulous efforts to discover his whereabouts and liberate him by force, there is no doubt that Hamas would allow the International Commission of the Red Cross, even his family, to visit him.
But Israel, a country that murders peace activists on high seas and then calls the cold-blooded murder “armed confrontations with terrorists,” can’t be trusted.
Palestinians have had a long and bitter experience with Israeli treachery. This is why Hamas can’t allow itself to make the slightest risk in this regard. Yes, one might sympathize with Shalit at a certain human level. However, Shalit is only one person while the entire Palestinian people are held hostage by an evil regime that can only be compared with history’s worst. There are, of course, other aspects to this sensitive issue. Israel detains thousands of Palestinian political and resistance prisoners in its dungeons. And as the recently-freed Palestinian Islamic leader Sheikh Nayef Rajoub revealed, many of these prisoners are being subjected to Medieval savagery at the hands of those claiming to be “a light upon the nations.”
For those who have forgotten, Shalit was taken prisoner in battlefield. Moreover, had Israel succeeded in carrying out a rescue operation, he would have most likely got killed.
To be sure, Hamas had been negotiating in good faith with Israel, hoping to reach a dignified breakthrough that would see the repatriation of Shalit to his family in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian detainees to their families. That would be a win-win formula for everyone.
However, the Israeli government consistently and arrogantly rejected this logical proposal, making racist arguments which even the leaders and ideologues of the Third Reich didn’t dare to make. For example, Israeli leaders routinely invoke the mendacious canard that the Judeo-Nazi state cannot free prisoners who have Jewish blood on their hands. Well, what about the thousands or tens thousands of Israelis who have Palestinian, Lebanese and now Turkish blood on their hands? Is non-Jewish blood less red than Jewish blood?
Israel doesn’t dare indulge in a genuine argument in this regard. The reason is simple. Israel views the blood and lives of non-Jews as insignificant, at least in comparison to Jewish blood and Jewish lives. Just try to have a brief conversation with a rabbi and you will be more than shocked hearing what he will be saying in this regard.
In any case, Hamas must not show the slightest sign of fatigue vis-à-vis Israel because the lives and freedom of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are at stake.
Hamas has been successfully managing this Shalit affair for over three years. Israel committed untold massacres and has been imposing a manifestly criminal siege on 1.7 million human beings, in the hope of creating a crack in Hamas’s wall of steadfastness. But neither Israeli pressure, nor western conspiracy, nor Arab collusion and Palestinian Authority treachery, have succeeded in pressurizing Hamas to give in or give up.
Needless to say, these people have spent the prime of their lives in Israeli prisons so that their people will be able to live in dignity and in order to maintain the hope for freedom and liberation from evil Zionism.
Hence, we must not hesitate to proclaim and reassert the Palestinian position in this regard, namely that Shalit must stay behind bars as long as Israel insists on keeping our men, and women and children behind bars.
This position may not be popular in New York and Paris. But why show the slightest concern about what Paris and New York think in the firs place. They have always been and continue to be our direct or indirect tormentors. Our responsibility is first and foremost toward these tortured Palestinian prisoners and their suffering families who have kept our national just cause alive.
In a nutshell, our prisoners are not children of a lesser God.
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01/07/2010 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Thursday 'conditional readiness' to release 1,000 Palestinian captives to secure the release of soldier Gilad Shalit but said that the Zionist entity will not pay an unlimited price.
In a live address to the country, Netanyahu said all Israelis wanted Shalit back safely but claimed Israel could not "pay any price" because past experience showed that many Palestinians released had returned to carry out attacks on Israelis.
"Israel is willing to pay a heavy price for the release of Shalit, but not 'at any price.' This is the truth, and I am saying it now," Netanyahu claimed, adding that Israel will continue to make every effort to bring Shalit home while maintaining the security of Israel's citizens.
Netanyahu's address comes four days after the family and supporters of Shalit began a protest march from the Shalit's Galilee home to the prime minister's official residence in occupied Jerusalem.
Netanyahu said the decision to free Palestinian captives "is a difficult decision for any government." Despie this, he said he had agreed to the latest offer from Hamas. "The German mediator's offer which we agreed to accept called for the release of 1,000 people. This is the price I am prepared to pay to bring Gilad home. I said yes to the deal and it is ready for immediate implementation," Netanyahu said.
He was referring to a moment last December when a deal and a prisoner exchange appeared imminent but in the end never came about. Media reports at the time spoke of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit, although there was never official confirmation from the Israeli side.
"I am steadfast on two basic principles: The first principle is that dangerous terrorists will not return to the West Bank from where they can continue to harm Israel's citizens," Netanyahu went on to say, adding that the freed prisoners could go to Tunisia or the Gaza Strip or any other place, but not to the West Bank because this would afford them access to Israeli cities.
The second sticking point Netanyahu mentioned was "arch-terrorists." They would not be freed as part of the deal, he added.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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