The

The Palestinian people have endured over five decades of Israeli occupation. That is the longest

belligerent occupation on the face of the earth. The land is been colonized in the West Bank by

illegal Israeli settlements and Gaza is under a perpetual siege. This is not just

occupation, siege and colonization. This is as human rights watch recently correctly described it

apartheid. Now in Israel proper, Palestinians are treated as third class citizens if that

a position which was formalized under the recent so-called nation-state law. Since 2000,

over 10,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed by the Israeli state. That's nearly eight

times the number of Israelis who've been killed in all of this. In the recent Israeli onslaught

against Gaza, 256 Palestinians were killed, 66 of them, children. While this conversation is

dominated by four words, Israel's right to exist. Palestine has no right whatsoever to exist

as an independent nation. It's it's right one of the most fundamental rights that is

for national self-determination is comprehensively and brutally denied. These gruesome facts

underlie why it is so grotesque, so wrong-headed, so deceitful to describe this as a conflict,

as though Mike Tyson punching a toddler could be described as a conflict. This is a military

superpower armed and backed by the West which is occupying and depressing and subjugating a

people denied their right to exist, a collection often of refugee camps with no ability whatsoever

to defend themselves given what they're up against. It's why the Israeli state not only thinks but

knows that it can get away with practically anything. They can kill Palestinians on mass including

last month Dr. Ayman Abu Al-Uf who is the head of internal medicine in Gaza's main hospital

along with 12 members of his extended family. It's why they know they can get away with expanding

their illegal settlements and increasingly openly talking about how they will deny the right of

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