Abu Walid, Welcome home


| by Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem
Views expressed in this article are author's own 

(December 10, 2012, Jerusalem, Sri Lanka Guardian) The homecoming of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal is undoubtedly a land-mark and morale-boosting event for all Palestinians and their supporters.

Indeed, this is what the entire Palestinian struggle is all, about, namely being able to return to one's homeland from which millions of our people were uprooted at the hands of Zionist savages.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians (and non-Palestinians) have sacrificed their lives for the sake of regaining the right to return home.

And there is little doubt that attaining this right in full will require still more Palestinians and Muslims to sacrifice their lives for their freedom and the freedom of their country.

I don't know Khaled Mashaal personally. But I do know, as an academic-journalist that his credentials are quite impeccable. He could have become a man of wealth, like other Palestinian "leaders" with morbid minds who used the national struggle against Zionism to swell their bank account and live luxurious lives at the expense of our people and enduring just cause.

The fact that the ghoul of corruption has been utterly unable to make a dent in Khaled Mashaal's integrity is a great moral asset for the man and the movement he represents and has been running.

Yes, a man shouldn't be praised for doing his duty even in the most exemplary manner. However, in an age where corruption is rampant, especially in the Palestinian context, Hamas's integrity stands out really as a matter of admiration and pride for Palestinian Islamists in particular and Palestinians in general.

Needless to Say, the Israeli and Western media, which often parrots the Israeli narrative rather sheepishly, has carefully avoided this particular dimension in Hamas's life and management of its financial resources. The reason for this is clear. The Israeli and Jewish media along with their numerous apologists, mouthpieces and barking dogs in the West don't like to highlight any positive feature about Hamas. For these Zionist propaganda organs, Hamas must be vilified, despised and hated, not admired, loved and praised.

Of course, people may legitimately differ on Hamas. However, what honest people shouldn't differ about is the fact that Hamas is a genuine liberation movement seeking liberation and freedom for the Palestinian people from the Nazi-like Israeli occupation that is hell-bent on completing and perfecting the decades-old ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians from their ancestral homeland.

Hamas did carry out acts of violence. It would be dishonest to deny this. However it would be likewise dishonest to deny the fact that whatever acts of violence committed by Hamas in the course of its noble struggle were consistently in reaction to incomparably massive and deadly violence perpetrated by Israel, using the most advanced American technology of death.

It is always lamentable to see innocent people killed especially deliberately in any conflict. However, when invaders from overseas invade a country and indulge in genocidal ethnic cleansing against its native inhabitants, the oppressed victims have a legitimate right, indeed a moral, national and even religious duty to fight back.

In the final analysis, Hamas didn't invade the former homelands of Jews in Poland, Khazaria and Russia. It was them who invaded Palestine, massacred its people, destroyed their homes and expelled the bulk of its inhabitants all over the globe. This is exactly what Hamas has been doing.

In addition, Hamas never really had an official policy of targeting Israeli civilians. None the less, one doesn't have to be really too smart to realize that the decades-old Israeli policy of knowingly and deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians, including children, makes the death and injury of some Israeli settlers inevitable.

At the end of the day, Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions cannot simply recline on a lazy-boy chair watching Israel's Judeo-Nazis slaughter Palestinian kids and their mothers at will, often by showering refugee barracks in Gaza with bombs, missiles and White Phosphorus and remain passive. No other resistance group or state under the sun could behave passively under such circumstances.

In a nutshell, Hamas and Palestinians in general can't be "terrorists" if only because they are victims of Judeo-Nazi terror.

Dignified return
Unlike PLO officials and operatives who returned to occupied Palestine in the shadow of Zionist rifles, Mashaal's arrival in the Gaza Strip has not been subject to Israel's consent. This is a significant aspect, especially in comparison to similar arrangements in the West Bank where no Palestinian can enter the occupied territory without Israeli permission.

Hence, the fact that brother Mashaal has been able to enter Gaza without having to pass through Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints, or, indeed through an Israeli manned-border terminal, is something that the Palestinian Islamic movement should be proud of.

We hope that the Zionist state will shun its characteristic insolence and arrogance of power and start viewing Palestinians as human beings whose lives are sacred and who deserve to be treated really humanely on equal footing with other human beings, including Jews.

This would be the first order of any possible de-escalation in the seemingly existential confrontation between Islam and Zionism in the Middle East. Otherwise, as long as Zionism clings to its supremacist and megalomaniac belief that Jews are superior to non-Jews and therefore should be given preferential treatment, there can be no respite in the strife.

Living Martyr
In 1997, Israel tried to murder Khaled Mashaal. However, the souls of men are in the hand of God, and the Almighty willed that Mashaal would still be living and able to anoint his face and eyes with the dust of the homeland.

Mashaal said, he was born three times, the natural birth in1956, the second when he narrowly escaped the Mossad's murder attempt on his life in Amman, and the third, yesterday, when he set foot on the soil of Palestine.

We pray Mashaal and all other Palestinian refugees will experience their ultimate rebirth when they return to their ancestral homeland, Palestine, and anoint their faces with a thanksgiving prostration at the Aqsa mosque. Amen.