Monday 21 July 2014

Invaders and the curse of memory


Palestinians celebrate in the West Bank city of Ramallah, late July 21, 2014, after Hamas' armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said it had captured an Israeli soldier during fighting in the Gaza Strip. (Photo: AFP-Abbas Momani)
Published Monday, July 21, 2014
The enemy has never known modesty. It has persistently behaved with a sense of superiority over its enemies, i.e. us Arabs. Eight years ago, its arrogance cost it heavily in Lebanon. And even after all that time, the enemy still does not accept its defeat, because it has never cast off its arrogance.

 
Each time the enemy tried to reassure itself that the Resistance in Palestine did not have what it took to put it at an advantage, it was digging another inch into its grave. And when the enemy allowed itself to perceive the Resistance as something similar to those it was negotiating with, in the sense that it can manipulate them and leave them empty handed in the end, it was falling into the trap of its own arrogance.
The enemy, whose intelligence services failed miserably with the capture of the three settlers, could not humble itself and back down. The enemy could not understand that force has limits, limits that include certain defeat. When the enemy thought it could punish whomever it wishes, whenever it wishes, wherever it wishes, and however it wishes, it was once again being killed by its own arrogance, and there it is now again leading itself to certain death.
What can the enemy do today? It can bring more blood and fire and cause more pain and sorrow. Yet the enemy does not understand after 60 years of mass murder, that our people do not count martyrs, not out of disrespect or out of fondness for death, but because these martyrs define the real borders of the homeland.
No, we count their dead and their losses. We count the images that together shall draw the end of an artificial, doomed entity. It is as if its people are telling us every day that there can be no way for this entity to survive, nor for them to survive as humans among us, and that no killer that draws the borders of his home with blood shall be able to endure.
Meanwhile, what more gifts can the enemy get, and who believes he is able to give the enemy a consolation prize to begin with? What the “General’s Egypt” is doing has no identifiable Arab flavor, spirit, or name. And if the enemy hopes the General can put pressure on the Resistance, then it is deluding itself, just like those who believe that hijacking the Resistance’s slogans gives them legs to stand on are. Indeed, there can be no life for those who fight and besiege the Resistance, or those who try to exploit it.
What has been happening in Gaza for days is the early fruits of long-standing steadfastness, rare perseverance on the part of a patient Resistance, and surreal efforts to preserve the elements of strength while surprising and deterring the enemy at once. These fruits are growing every hour with the blood of the martyrs.
The cries of the Resistance’s people are not unlike the cries of a child who is growing.
But in regards to them, those who have no place on our land, all their blood shall end up in a dark corner of the land where nothing grows.
Their cries are not unlike the cries of a dying old man.

What Gaza is showing us is neither vague nor ambiguous, and it requires no explanation or supporting arguments. It is an established phenomenon, whose name in short or in detail, euphemistically or directly, without equivocation, is Resistance.

Those who reject the occupation and the enemy, have no other choice henceforth: There is no point in dreaming, hoping, and pleading, and no possibility for an unseen man who can forcibly bring people together under one cause. The choice we are speaking of is to belong to this Resistance, period.
After what is going on in Gaza, no party has the right to cite material, moral, or other reasons not to be at the heart of this battle. Those who want to find excuses for themselves, and invoke stale rhetoric about this regime, this ruler, this ideology, this idea, or this slogan, let them remain hostages to their delusions and captives of their failures, because people will cast them off no matter how many positions and roles they may assume themselves to have.
In Gaza today, there is a story that we all know too well, the same story about Israeli crimes. Yet what is new are the tales the Resistance is penning in defeating the invaders, and imparting upon them memories of further defeat and doom for them that can never be effaced by time.
In Gaza today, Resistance fighters, who have names and addresses, and mothers, fathers, brothers, and children, are taking a stand. They know the real meaning of their lives, where there is no room for silence vis-à-vis the enemy, conspirators, or enablers of the crime.
As for the enemy, it now has July, the month of relentless disaster, the only month in the year for the enemy now, where no days come before it and no months shall come after it. And because memory is the curse of invaders, they shall ever be paralyzed by fear every July of every year of every decade.
Ibrahim al-Amin is the Editor-in-Chief of Al-Akhbar.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
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