As of the time of this seventh FPA statement, the number of murdered Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had reached at least 434 and those injured exceeded 2,280 with more than 200 in very critical conditions. Full families were slaughtered from infants to parents. Numerous mosques were obliterated as the indiscriminate assault continues unabated.
Today, all indications point to an imminent ground attack. It is likely that it will be intense and focused on specified areas with prescribed goals. Typical of the Zionist leadership, it remains focused on attaining its colonial goals with utter disregard to the popular international outcry that has erupted worldwide and continues to this day. Political and military Zionist leaders are encouraged by the complicit response from Arab regimes, especially Egypt. Israel correctly recognizes the silence and inaction on the part of the regimes as a green light to escalate.
The fact that the Egyptian regime would not open the Rafah crossing beyond limited medical needs, and that it would not even consider ending any of the numerous relationships it has with Israel, is enough signal for Israel to keep up the massacre and even escalate. What would have Egypt done had it not been run by the Mubarak despots? At a very minimum, it would have opened the Rafah crossing unconditionally. It would have cut all relationships with the Zionist polity and terminated the supply of natural gas to it. It would have championed a support bridge from around the Arab world to sustain the Palestinian people against one of the most equipped armies in the world. Egypt could have assumed a leading position among all Arab states in galvanizing an international diplomatic and political support against the barbaric Zionist actions that would have isolated the Zionist Apartheid state.
Very few have any expectations that the Egyptian regime would ever consider entering the fight in any way, but no one could have imagined that it would simply stand silent counting the dead, as it has thus far and as it has done in 2006 when Lebanon was attacked Other Arab regimes have similar and equal responsibilities that they are also abrogating, to the disdain and outrage of the entirety of the Arab people. But those regimes are of no use to the Palestinian or the Arab people. They could not even hold a summit or agree on a language of condemnation. Their only role is to implement their complicit function, and in that they excel. After all, their jails are filled with Arab political activists, teachers, union leaders, and community members who are being brutally muted for simply expressing a natural yearning for dignity and liberation.
While we strongly urge all to participate in all protest activities scheduled today and in the coming period, we especially ask our community to begin the process of internal evaluation. The likes of Mubarak, Abu Mazen, and the various despots that plague us as a people, are our responsibility. They have extensions in our midst that must be organizationally and politically opposed and exposed. They come in various forms, from presumed scholars and journalists to destructive organizations and funders. They are destroying our youth by normalizing within them the ideology of defeat and surrender. They are so hateful to all resistance movements and obedient to colonial masters, that they aid and abed in the destruction of these movements. They have been financed and paid for by monarchs and by questionable sources, to say the least. They are the fat cats that despise everything that is genuinely Arab. Here, we salute our community members who have spoken against these poisonous organizations and individuals.
As a community, we must be able to distinguish between our principled allies and those who preach to us in a patronizing scolding, explaining to us how we must accept partial rights, and how we must sit quietly as they find us a seat at the corner of the table with some leftovers to have. This is our time, and we must embrace it. This is a duty from which we must not walk away.
The Arab people are in the streets daily defying imprisonments, beatings, and interrogation by Arab regimes to call on their respective governments to stand in support of the Palestinian people. The least we can do is to do the same with organizations that claim to be our own or in our solidarity.
As the savagery of Zionism continues, there is no room for equating the victim with the victimizer, and there is no role for those who spread hate and false information about our people. They must be exposed for what they are: obedient servants to their funders and keepers. At the very least, they must not speak for us.
We have a duty as a community to embrace a consciousness that distinguishes between our constitutional belonging in the US and the manufactured ideological enslavement imposed on us by hand-picked functionaries. Opposing the Gaza Strip massacre is a moral obligation that transcends citizenship and nationality. It is based on its own merits and rooted in internationally recognized rights and principles. The only reason for any regime, entity, organization, or individual not to be able to fully take a clear position on this matter is due to their ideological and political allegiance. Such is the test today. Where do you stand on the Gaza Massacre and what are you doing to stop it?
The Free Palestine Alliance
January 2, 2009
