The Gantt Report
By Lucius Gantt
I have not opined at all about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. I haven’t written anything because I have very close friends, and former high school classmates, who are Jewish and more than a few business associates that are Palestinian.
However, I believe civilians on both sides of the conflict have suffered enough, cried enough, and died enough!
To me, the conflict doesn’t look like a “war”, it looks more like a land grab.
I agree, the perpetrators of the mass killings that took place at a concert in Israel should be captured and appropriately sentenced but the hunt for terrorists should not include death sentences for innocent women, children, and non-combatants.
The columnists you love and enjoy, mostly rubber stamp the scenarios spread by political and religious spokespersons on both sides.
From my viewpoint, Gaza, the West Bank, and other areas where Palestinians currently live; have resembled how Black South Africans lived under the apartheid rule of Dutch colonizers.
In both cases, the land grabbers, colonialists, exploiters, and oppressors had rights that the victimized residents did not have and could not get.
They couldn’t complain about their subservient status, they couldn’t mount challenges about their living conditions, and they couldn’t legally organize to oppose or fight the powers that were in the country that treated them so terribly.
They couldn’t hold meaningful positions in the governments, they couldn’t decide what students could study and learn, they couldn’t travel freely in their homelands, they couldn’t vote for the political candidates of their choices, they couldn’t control their country’s mineral, agricultural and other natural resources in their occupied cities and/or tribal lands.
When South Africans got fed up with the apartheid governmental misconduct, Black South Africans rebelled and fought back in every way that they could.
I don’t agree with the tactics shown by members of Hamas that resulted in the deaths of Jewish concertgoers and I don’t agree with the response from the highly powerful Israeli military forces.
Young Americans have been encouraged to oppose the U.S. government’s actions, or non-actions, as it relates to the use of American weaponry in the Gaza “war” zones.
Well, TikToc and other social media sites are not the best place for young people to understand what Palestinians have experienced since 1948 when Western, and or, European governments arbitrarily decided to take a small part of Palestine and create what is now Israel.
The conflict discussed in today’s column is primarily about land. Palestinians had the land and Israel is taking the land from its original landowners.
Don’t get it twisted; most of my Jewish friends don’t hate Palestinians and most Jews in Israel don’t hate Palestinians.
Most of the Jews I know hate the way Israel leader Benjamin Netanyahu is bowing down to the members of the Zionist, right-wing members of his governmental cabinet.
The world will not know peace until the basic human rights in Israel are available to all people in conflicting areas without regard to race, religion, or national identity.
More and more non-combatant men, women, and children will continue to experience air strikes, cluster bombs, tank fires, and bullet fires as long as Netanyahu remains the Israeli government leader.
It’s time for Netanyahu to go!
Two states are the only solution.
