Royal Statement: it's ok to use 'raghead' for those bad guys in the Middle East

photo from Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. Palestinian human rights. You would think all people deserve this basic recognition. But, no, the Conservative Canadian government of Stephen Harper refuses to recognize Palestinian Human Rights (see my last post).

Interviewed today at Nasser Hospital in northwest Gaza City where she was trying to find her injured relatives, Zakaya testifies of the chaos that ensued from the Israeli bombs dropped on her neighbourhood:

"The smoke was spreading so fast; we couldn't see through it. We couldn't see, but we could hear.” From the windows of the burning home the cries of her children and cousins filled the streets. “The cries were not just from my home, but from the neighbors' house too."

Zakayah's relative, Fadia, also at the hospital running between wards caring for her husband, a paramedic who had been badly burned while trying to care for others, and her children, who had also been burned, tells us that

"The shelling with phosphorous bombs started in Khaza'a. Two of the bombs hit the area around our house,” Fadia explained. She recalled how the fire spread quickly throughout the home, and white smoke billowed out the windows.

"Neighbors were screaming, asking for help; the fire was changing," she remembers. "I woke up my kids, got them to my parents’ house, hoping to find a safer place."

The haunting of Zakaya's and Fadia's memories are inevitable; their trauma travels across cyberspace to tell us that "We could hear their bodies burning."


Blessed be, sweet baby. One of the "prettier" photos of dead children from Palestine Centre for Human Rights website. The photos of the burned children and other residents of Gaza City, who have been horrendously injured and killed by made-in-the-USA Israeli bombs that have been raining down on them and turning the entire landscape into an inferno are very troubling.

The Human Rights of Palestinians. Stephen Harper, are you blind, ignorant, weak, or just plain old evil? With access to internet and the evil crimes happening in Gaza available at our fingertips, I have to conclude, Mr. Prime Minister, that you are evil. You will be recorded in history as one of the cruelest prime ministers in Canada. Bringing our foreign relations to a new low, a new disturbing low that smells of death.



Remember the black and white photo of the little burned Vietnamese girl running for her life that shocked the world? She had been burned by napalm bombs dropped by the South Vietnamese army in coordination with the American army. Kim Phuc Phan Thi was one of the lucky ones. She survived. She is now living in Canada.

Yesterday as we watched the heart-breaking news on Al-Arabiya I told my husband that if we lived in Gaza now, our boys would be resistance fighters. The young men of Gaza have no choice but to defend their neighbourhoods, their relatives. Is that cowardly? To protect your grandparents? Your neighbours' children? Most the resistance fighters are young. Young men. Our sons, our brothers. All our relations. Like my two sons, 24 and 26.

Resistance fighters killed from Tel Al-Hawwa neighborhood today:

Muhammad Nader Abu Sha’ban, 17,
Fathi Yousef Al-Mazny, 18,
Hatem Dib Abu Daf, 23,
Bilal Muhammad Deibeh, 19,
Ala Munther Abdel Shafe’y, 37,
Mahmoud Ahmad Juha, 19,
Saed Muhammad Hassan, 21,
Muhammad Hazem Abu Labad, 20.

Resistance fighters killed from Jabaliya neighborhood:

Hassan Muhammad Abu Zamar, 22,
Muhammad Khalil Ibrahim Abu Leila, 20,
Nael Mahmoud Ali, 25,
Ibrahim Ismael Dababesh, 22,
Usama Ahmad Al-Absy, 24,
Hamad Hassan Al-Barawi, 25,
Kamel Jamil As-Sarhi, 22,
Yousef Muhammad Ash-Sharbasy, 27,
Yousef Ummar Labad, 23,
Khaled Sa’dy Al-Abed, 22,
As’ad Sa’dy Ahmad, 24,
Ali At-Tanany, 26, and
Ahmad Kamal Ad-Dalo, 27.

I don't know if I should laugh or cry at Ban Ki-moon's, secretary-general of the UN, latest statement:

"My message is simple, direct, and to the point: the fighting must stop. To both sides, I say: Just stop now."

Mr. Ki-moon, what would your neighbourhood boys do if bombs, tanks, snipers, bulldozers, and the full might of the Israeli army were hammering, destroying, bulldozing your neighbourhood and killing innocent people? Would you run out into the streets and tell them to put down their home-made arms?

Oh, I forgot, your neighbourhood, like that of US, Israeli and Canadian decision makers, isn't one of "those kinds of neighbourhoods". You have the privilege of money and status to choose not to live there.

You are not Palestinian which is why you can be the secretary-general hand-picked by the USA.

They, meaning the corporate media, the Canadian and American governments, and the uninformed, will shout at me and say: "These men are not resistance fighters. These are terrorists! They are extremists! They want to destroy Israel. Israel has to go and kill as many of these terrorists so, as Tzipi Livni, Israeli foreign minister explains, the international community can be safe."

They are extremists, says the upcoming secretary of state, Hilarious Clinton.

Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq. Breeding grounds for extremist terrorists, they all say.

These young sons and brothers who have laid down their lives for the people of their neighbourhoods are not young sons and brothers who have laid down their lives for the people of their neighbourhoods, they are terrorists! Suicide bombers! Rocket launchers!

They deserve to die, they would say to me. And say to the world.

They say, to use the words of a British royal spokesman who excused the racism of Prince Harry, Prince Charles' youngest son, who told one of his army buddies that "you look like a raghead", by explaining that

"Prince Harry used the term 'raghead' to mean Taliban or Iraqi insurgent."

Oh, I see. So, if "we" label them insurgents and Taliban (read: terrorists) then it is OK TO USE THE WORD RAGHEAD!!!!!!

I guess all those raghead insurgents in Gaza, as the "us" part of the us/them folks like Prime Minister Stephen Harper believe, just don't deserve human rights.