By Dr. Fayez Rasheed
They’re killing our people in genocides, they’re torturing and arresting our children and they’re burning them alive. Israelis wish for the Palestinians to disappear from the face of the earth, so that they may rest, but we will not grant them any of their wishes. They hate Arabs and Muslims and the whole religion of Islam. They even tried to exploit the terrorist attack that hit Paris. A spokeswoman for Israeli Minister of Housing, Nira Yadin, attacked the holy Qur’an, desecrated and abused it verbally, connecting one of its verses to the events in Paris.
The Palestinian Mizan organisation for human rights called for an investigation of Yadin and for her to be fired from her position for her racist anti-Muslim remarks and slander against the Qur’an in saying that its verses are an incitement to violence. “Nira Yadin, journalist and spokeswoman for Minister of Housing Yoav Galant, said on social media that ‘what happened in France comes from chapter number 18 of the Koran’ [sic],” said Mizan. “We condemn such hateful statements and the underestimating of the Qur’an, and we consider these statements to be racist, exceeding all red lines when it comes to freedom of expression.” The Mizan statement added the group’s belief that Yadin’s statements violate the religion of Islam and the emotions of Muslims.
The budget for the Israeli army takes up a huge portion of government spending, at the expense of public services. The published general budget of the state of Israel reveals the ongoing racial discrimination against Palestinian citizens. Representatives of Arab municipal and rural councils are expected to demonstrate in front of the Knesset against the financial crisis from which they are suffering. Israel’s general budget for the current year and next is between $93 and 96 billion, of which $16 billion is allocated to the ministry of defence. Further millions are spent on border guards, who are part of the police and thus come under the ministry of the interior. Illegal settlers and the settlements take another large slice of public money. According to recent research, one third of the Israeli budget is usually spent on war and occupation policies.
Israeli sources reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used his visit to Washington last week to lobby for an increase in US military aid from next year instead of 2019. The sources claim that the official US response is “positive”. Israel receives $3.1 billion annually from the United States as fixed military support; this does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars that Washington spends on the projects to develop weapons and military equipment. Israel is now demanding an increase to $5 billion per annum.
Meanwhile, other official statistics report that 4,597 births were registered in the Gaza Strip during the month of October; an average of 148 babies a day. Figures released by the Interior Ministry in Gaza show that the distribution of births is greater in the Gaza governorate, at 2,092, and Khan Younis governorate, with 971. The Middle, Rafah and Norther governorates had 575, 537 and 422 births respectively.
People should take note of all of this information. For while the Israelis and their allies seek to wipe the Palestinians off the face of the earth, and are spending huge sums on genocidal massacres and ethnic cleansing in order to do so, our people keep producing babies. Our numbers continue to grow as we continue to struggle for our rights, despite the best efforts of Israel and the billions it allocates towards its wars and occupation.
