Since 1948, the Palestinians have been condemned to live in never-ending humiliation. They can’t even breathe without permission. They have lost their homeland, their lands, their water, their freedom, everything, even the right to elect their own government.

When they vote for whom they shouldn’t, they are punished. Gaza is being punished. It became a dead-end mousetrap since Hamas won the 2006 elections fairly. Something similar had happened in 1932, when the Communist Party won the elections in El Salvador: the people atoned for their misbehavior with a bloodbath and lived under military dictatorships from then on. Democracy is a luxury deserved by just a few. The homemade rockets that the Hamas combatants cornered in Gaza shoot with sloppy aim at formerly-Palestinian lands currently under Israeli rule are born out of helplessness.

And desperation, the kind that borders on suicidal madness, is the mother of the threats that deny Israel’s right to exist with ineffective cries while a very effective genocidal war has long denied Palestine’s right to life.

Very little is left of Palestine. Step by step, Israel is wiping it off the map. The settlers invade, followed by soldiers who retrace the borders. Bullets shot in self-defense consecrate the plundering. No aggression fails to claim it’s purposes are defensive. Hitler invaded Poland to prevent Poland from invading Germany. Bush invaded Iraq to prevent Iraq from invading the world. With each of its defensive wars, Israel swallows another piece of Palestine, and the feast goes on.

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