By: Salim Nazzal

I devote this article to my friend Dr. Ebba Veregland, the friend of Palestine in Norway, who was among the first who broke the silence about the Zionist crimes, and who devoted and still much of her life defending the right of Palestinians to be a free nation.

In 62 years of continuous Zionist war crimes, Zionists have succeeded in misleading the international public opinion, which stood silent, and even supported them while they were expelling, murdering and displacing Palestinians.

In their 62 years of committing quantitative and qualitative war crimes against innocent Palestinians. Modern history does not give us one single example of such a genocidal murderous regime lasting for seven decades whilst still managing to present itself as a ‘democracy’ or its perpetrators and beneficiaries as ‘poor victims.’ This demonstrates Zionism’s huge powers of manipulation and deception, which no fascist regime has ever exceeded. Yet with each Zionist crime Palestinians have never stopped asking the same question: where is the world’s will to punish the Zionists? Palestinians’ appeals, however, have always fallen on deaf ears, to the extent that many of them came to the conclusion that Jews dominated the world and nobody was able to confront them. But despite that there was brave men and woman in Europe and the USA who broke the silence and sought to inform the public about the Zionist crimes.

Zionist Jews have sought constantly to give Palestinians the impression that they are the supreme rulers of the world, and that “the USA, Europe and the Vatican are under the Jews’ feet,” as one Palestinian prisoner was told by his Zionist interrogators. This culture, it seems, has become widespread; one Zionist soldier said in a documentary film that “he felt like God, [he] could kill or not kill any Palestinian.”

The reason for this policy is very obvious; it seeks to eradicate any hope that Palestinians will ever be free from the evil of Zionism. According to Abed Al-Nasser Al-Farawne, a distinguished Palestinian expert on the issue of Palestinian freedom fighters detained in Zionist prisons, the Zionist policy is based on the principle of destroying the will of Palestinians, not just during the period of their incarceration, but for their entire lives.

The result is that Palestinians have had to pay dearly, and seeing the Zionist thought police silencing any dissenting public opinion. Zionist Jews have played the role of a serial killer who kills and escapes justice. The serial killer continues to kill with impunity because he knows in advance that he will escape any punishment. Once the police are awakened and watchful, however, and begin to pursue the murderers, the killers must surely begin to realize that the game is over.

Judge Richard Goldstone touched on the heart of the problem. This culture of the powerful escaping any judgment has been predominant in the Middle East region for many years, and naturally Israel has been its prime beneficiary.

Zionist Jews were comfortable with the illusion that the policy of genocide would eradicate Palestinians’ hopes of freedom and scare Arabs off from pursuing any change in the status quo. The Zionists believed that by playing the role of watchdog in the region, they would be allowed forever to continue their genocidal policy, with the West’s financial and political support, in perpetuity.
The most horrible thing in this dark period was not only the way in which the Western states granted carte blanche to the Zionists to continue this genocidal policy, but the silence of the public internationally and here I refer in particular to left wing parties, humanitarian bodies and human rights organizations etc.
This does not mean that there were not brave voices that did much to break the silence about the Zionist crimes.

But the reality is that the Public opinion moved slowly in realizing the fascist reality of Israel, compared for instance to its relatively swift reaction towards the apartheid regime of South Africa.

I predicted in the late eighties that South African liberation would be achieved before the liberation of Palestine. When the ANC’s representative in Norway asked me why I believed this, I responded that Zionist Jews are successfully playing the moral game, and effectively marketing and using the Holocaust, and anti-Semitic fairytales to shield and excuse their crimes. Here I am giving one of the major reasons why Zionists were cleverer than white South Africans, but there are other reasons, which are beyond the remit of this article.

I also expected and naturally hoped that there would come a time when public opinion would be fed up of the Zionist drama and fairy tales, but it was difficult to anticipate when this change would come about.

Indeed, the winds of change first began to blow with the increasingly informative period that began in the early ‘90s with the spread of satellite TV and the internet, which have made it ever more difficult for the Zionists to conceal their crimes. I was sure at that time that this would lead to the Zionists using many more deceptive strategies to mask the depths to which their hands were steeped in Palestinians’ blood, but it was beyond the capacity of any historian to anticipate the time needed for such change.

The second change came when the USA occupied Iraq. As I saw it in that period, it seemed that the direct regional military presence of the US might reduce its need for Israel, especially since the Cold War had ended by 1990, with one of the arguments put forward at that time being that this could mean that Israel’s historical role as a watchdog might not be needed any longer.

I was completely sure that the West would come to the conclusion someday that Israel is more of a burden than an ally. Today we see clear signs that the US and Europe have begun to realize that supporting the apartheid state of Israel is weakening their discourse on the issues of democracy and human rights and bringing them into conflict with the Islamic world, which views them as hypocritical states. And it is obvious to everybody that the public in the Western countries is learning more and more about the Zionist atrocities in Palestine.

Only last month, 20 Israeli diplomats in 20 countries were summoned by the foreign ministries of these nations to hear criticism of their state actions.

Last month, meanwhile, three Israeli ‘diplomats’ were dismissed by three Western nations and today there are a number of legal cases currently being brought against Israel in five countries due to its attack on peaceful activists participating in a humanitarian mission.

Therefore, it is important to put Helen Thomas’s recent speech in the context of these changing times. Thomas’s speech was not only a reflection of the personal views of a courageous reporter. The importance of her words, her assertion that Zionists should leave Palestine to its native people, is not only accurate in its diagnosis and solution, but is important in reflecting the change which is taking place at this particular time. Helen Thomas knew the truth a long time ago. But she said it publicly now because the political atmosphere allows it to be spoken aloud, which Palestinians have been hoping for a long time.

The warlord Ben-Gurion, who became the first prime minister of the state of Israel, said the same thing in his own way a long time before Helen Thomas: “If I were an Arab, I would not allow Jews to take my country.” Obviously, Palestinian and Arabs do not need a Polish infiltrator to Palestine to teach them patriotism because they rejected the Ashkenazi state in Palestine all along. I use his words, however, to confirm that Zionists knew from day one that the natives of Palestine resisted them just as they continue to do seven decades later.

These days the world has reversed the proverb which states that if speech is silver, silence is golden. At times when crimes are taking place, silence is not silver; it has no value at all. Silence is a crime of complicity that directly and indirectly helps the occupation to continue. If the world had reacted towards earlier Zionist war crimes it is doubtful that Zionist leaders, knowing that they would be held to account for their crimes, would have been able to repeat them.

The price of silence was that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced, expelled and murdered. The price of silence gave Zionist Jews the impression that they are uniquely above the law and need not worry about their crimes since they can act with impunity.

The price of silence is what encouraged Israel to commit all these crimes without being questioned or punished. The price of silence encouraged Israel’s murder of Palestinians, Lebanese, Jordanians, Syrians, Egyptians, Iraqis, Iranians, Sudanese, Tunisians, Americans, Swedish, Norwegians, British, etc…

The price of silence made Israel challenge the United Nations and encouraged it to falsify the passports of citizens of New Zealand, Canada, Britain, Australia, Ireland and France to commit murder around the world.

Nevertheless, one of the best things about the modern age is that Palestinians have begun to learn how to use the culture of law to sue Israel. Pursuing Israel leaders in several courts in several nations is a great achievement for both the international solidarity movement and, naturally, for the cause of Palestine. This conveys a solid message that the time of Zionist Jews playing the role of invincible earthly Gods has gone forever. It will also bring a great message of hope to Palestinians that Zionist war lords can no longer escape justice.

One of the best things about the current period is that the days of Israel escaping punishment for its crimes have gone for good. In recent times, Israeli war criminals have not dared to visit countries like France and Britain, knowing they would face legal action there.

This does not mean, however, that Zionists are weakened to a sufficient degree to make them change. Zionism is a psychopathic ideology, which could pose a grave danger to world peace due to its inherently inhuman supremacist philosophy. (Alan Hart article. http://mycatbirdseat.com/2010/06/alan-hart-zionism%e2%80%99s-colonial-enterprise-is-doomed-but%e2%80%a6/)

To conclude: all these changes seem to indicate a turnaround in public opinion, with most political analysts believing that the true picture of Israel as a state of terror is more obvious than at any time before. The important thing about this change is that the public silence, which was the Zionist state’s best ally, is no longer holding.

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Dr. Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian-Norwegian historian in the Middle East, who has written extensively on social and political issues in the region. - snazzal@ymail.com