Hamas or an impossible peace
By Guy Senbel for Guysen International News
Mercredi 28 novembre 2007 à 09:43
Editorial for the week of 11/17/2007
This week, we wish to draw our readers’ attention on Palestinian violence and the sorrows and deadlocks – both political and diplomatic – it generates.
Guysen TV will not release the footage that our brave reporters managed to film and smuggle into Guysen’s Jerusalem headquarters.
The rules of the French broadcasting authorities, the “CSA,” are scrupulously observed. Faced with atrocity and horror, the oft-criticized censure does make sense in the present case.
Neither will we broadcast on Guysen TV the horrid images of the massacre of men lying down with their heads deep in the dust that will soon cover them completely. There are at least thirty – Fatah members accused of betraying their homeland, who await death, petrified with fear.
The technique used by Hamas militiamen is not new: anyone who tries to move or run away will be executed. So they wait and wait, those who wished to partake in dialogue. And when their groans die out, when the hands of the poor condemned men cover their deafened heads, their executors appear, opening fire. Their only crime was to believe that it was possible to negotiate with Israelis and discuss their future, to talk of peace, independence and hope.
The scene is horrendous. The automatic weapon help by a man masked with the colors of Islam fires its deadly bullets from right to left, up and down. All those who did not die under this first round are critically wounded. Every man lying on the floor is hit. If he isn’t dead, he is suffering from a bullet wound in the back or in the leg, a wound foreboding a certain death. It is now impossible to escape the madness of the two executioners who, Kalashnikov in hand, go hopping through the dead and the dying. No one among the fathers, brothers, sons and husbands lying down there and condemned, survives.
Hamas is executing. In front of a camera, Hamas is shooting a movie which will be sent to the victims’ families to make them understand that in Gaza, revenge is unlikely, challenge impossible and courage undreamed-of. It is hard to believe that this cold-blood and inhuman footage did not make its way to other media outlets. Since we cannot show barbarity, we will describe it.
Ten days before the Annapolis conference, whose stakes are hard to define, Mahmoud Abbas is raising the tone. He is the first to be notified of the atrocities committed by Hamas against his people. He is aware that the savagery of his political enemies may bring the region back to bloodshed and hatred.
During a speech in Ramallah for the 19th anniversary of the symbolic proclamation of the Palestinian State, he called on the people to “topple” Hamas and claimed that the Palestinians were ready for a “real peace” with Israel: “We must topple this gang that took control of the Gaza strip by force of arms and that is exploiting the suffering and tragedies of our people,” he said Thursday (Nov. 15).
That is why Hamas imposed new restrictions to reporters in the Gaza Strip. They claimed that these were necessary measures following the violence that erupted Monday in Gaza during the gathering in memory of Yasser Arafat.
Under the new decree, the government will not allow journalists and photographers to work if they do not hold a press pass issued by the authorities. In the same breath, Hamas police arrested Sawwah Abou Sayef, a cameraman working for the German TV channel ARD.
The journalist will not be able to relay broadcast of inter-Palestinian atrocities. He will not be able to show the dozens of Qassam rockets fired by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip that land on Sderot and in neighboring areas. Neither will he show Israelis in shock or the damages in the streets, houses and buildings.
The German reporter, like his fellow reporters, will not show the images of the 36 year-old Israeli stabbed to death on November 15 by Palestinians near the town of Porat.
While the truth on the al Dura case is soon to be unveiled, there is in Jerusalem a tangible breath of misinformation blowing on the freedom to inform and the right to know.
The Hamas’ murderous folly is preventing peace, but it won’t prevent hope. In Kfar Kassem, dozens of Israeli Arabs took part this Wednesday (Nov 14) in a demonstration for the abducted Israeli soldiers. The father of soldier Gilad, Noam Shalit, gave a speech of hope, a prayer of sorts.
Tonight since 510 days, we are thinking of Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, hostages of Hamas and Hezbollah, two radical Islamic movements which are depriving them of their freedom and preventing peace.
