Juan David Latorre
The Plataforma de Mujeres Artistas contra la Violencia de Género and the Asociación Hispano Palestina Jerusalén presented yesterday, at the headquarters of the Embassy of Palestine and together with Ambassador Husni Abdel Wahed, the Manifesto of the Spanish cultural world condemning the massacre in Gaza and the inaction in the face of the genocide against the Palestinian people.
The Palestinian Head of Mission indicated that “our people have for so long been the object of a war of extermination, of a genocide in which, unfortunately, many of the great powers are not simply accomplices, but often participants. Therefore, such pronouncements restore not only our hope, but also our faith in humanity.”
“Our people are today being slaughtered live and direct,” Husni Abdel Wahed continued, “and these people, even in their death, die with dignity. But we are seeing that our friends in the West measure with different yardsticks. They apply different criteria to similar cases. While they support and applaud the struggle of some for fighting against an invader, in the case of Palestine they condemn us and ask us to simply submit to the occupation.”
“Mr Netanyahu has maintained that he will make the Gaza Strip a place unfit for human life, the Palestinian ambassador continued, along with the point made by senior members of the Israeli cabinet that “we Palestinians have three alternatives: one is to leave Palestine; the second is to submit to the occupation, and the third is to die. And they are doing it. Since 2007 Israel has imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip. Not a fly enters or leaves without the authorisation of the Israeli occupation troops. Mr Yoav Galant, the Israeli defence minister, bans the entry of water, food, medicine and fuel, and claims that there are animals there'”.
Ambassador Husni Abdel Wahed wanted to convey a final message. “Those who were responsible for the Holocaust, he said, for the persecution and killing of all that is different, need to be asked: ‘Does it take another genocide to free them from their guilt complex? They are condoning this genocide against the Palestinian people to make their conscience feel good, because they have committed the same crime, the same crime against others. We believe in humanity, we believe in justice, we believe in freedom, and we will not give up our rights or our homeland. We have been extremely generous in accepting Israel over 78% of our historic homeland. We have accepted the establishment of a Palestinian state on only 22% of historic Palestine. Please do not leave us alone. Please do not make this a religious conflict or a confrontation between East and West. This is a political problem, it is a foreign occupation, it is colonialism, and the solution is political”.
The Manifesto of Spanish Artists against the Massacre in Gaza and the Inaction in the Face of Apartheid and Genocide in Palestine begins by stressing that “we the undersigned address the Government of Spain to request a ceasefire and the immediate opening of humanitarian corridors in Gaza. The fact that we strongly condemn the death of innocent Israeli civilians by the Hamas operation precedes in its expression the demand to stop the indiscriminate destruction that the Israeli army is once again carrying out”.
“Likewise,” the manifesto continues, “we call for an end to the attacks by heavily armed settlers in the occupied territories of the West Bank who harass, assault and shoot at the Palestinian population. We enunciate the assassinations which, although they have been commonplace in recent years, have increased alarmingly in recent months in the face of the helplessness of defenceless Palestinian civilians. Here too, silence becomes complicity when systematic violations of human rights take place and, for this reason, we firmly and forcefully denounce the continuous violations that the state of Israel is carrying out against the Palestinian population”.
The communiqué goes on to list the “catalogue of violations in the face of the state’s and Israel’s “consensual impunity by the international community” and ends by pointing out that “If the world had raised its voice against Nazi Germany, against Apartheid in South Africa…. We would have saved millions of human lives, so now more than ever it is imperative that we stand up to the Apartheid state of Israel, and stand up for human rights because as Martin Luther King said: ‘The acts of bad people don’t hurt, the indifference of good people hurts.
Among the signatories of the Manifesto are famous faces of the Spanish scene such as Ana Fernández, Beatriz Rico, Juan Diego Botto, Alberto San Juan, Ramón J. Márquez (Ramoncín), Cristina del Valle, Marwan, Miguel Ríos, Marisa Paredes, Rozalen, Montxo Armendáriz and Silvia Marsó, among many others.
