OCCUPY, kill and demolish is now the declared policy of Israel's Zionist regime. This isn't something new, only that it is being made public by the Palestinian-hating regime of a dangerous trio: Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
The policy, undeclared though then, was already there when the first Zionist from Europe set foot on Palestinian soil in the 19th century.
Tel Aviv's continuing impunity is a direct result of its Western allies' unqualified support for the Israelisation of Palestine. Britain, the United States, and later, the European Union, helped weaponise the Zionist regime to achieve the goal.
They still do. Tel Aviv will not rest until Palestine is without a single Palestinian. "I-am-a-Zionist-now" US President Joe Biden is only too happy to see the situation in Palestine continue to deteriorate. After all, Israel was created to see the national interests of the US fulfilled there. Make that Western national interests.
Don't be fooled by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to Tel Aviv on Jan 31. He was not there to ask Israel to stop persecuting the Palestinians. He was there to ask Netanyahu to give his full support to Ukraine.
Two different medicines for the same disease. What else can you expect from a "I-am-a-Zionist-now" medicine man.
France isn't any different. It secretly helped Tel Aviv become a nuclear power. Yet when persecuted Palestinians defend themselves by pelting the attacking soldiers with stones, Paris joins the chorus of the rest of the West, yelling: "Tel Aviv has the right to defend itself".
Never mind if it is Goliath that is bullying David. David's narrative never makes it to the Western press. Ponder for a moment the Jan 15 story of The Guardian, an occasional critic of Tel Aviv.
Israeli soldiers broke into Samir Aslan's home in the early days of last month to arrest his son. Naturally, Aslan rushed to protect him but the soldiers shot him dead. And The Guardian's rare verdict? "His death received scant notice, so frequent are such incidents." What receives notice, though, is "Tel Aviv has a right to defend itself". The Zionists and their Western allies surely know how to turn the bully into the bullied. Call it Western human rights.
Take last Friday's killing of seven Israelis by a Palestinian in the illegal Neve Yaakov settlement in occupied East Jerusalem. Why the attack? The answer is as old as 24 hours.
On Thursday, an Israeli occupation army killed nine Palestinians in the West Bank city of Jenin. A 10th victim succumbed to bullet injury on Sunday, bringing the Palestinian death toll to 33 this year. And the year is just a month old. Last year, according to The Guardian, 224 Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank, which suffered almost daily army raids.
Feras Abu Helal of Arabi 21 news website writing in the Middle East Eye, a regional news portal, puts it thus: "As long as there is occupation and there is no hope for the Palestinians, there will be resistance." How could there be no resistance when a Palestinian has to get past 174 Israeli military checkpoints daily in the occupied West Bank?
And in between faces death by the bullets of the occupation army and those of the illegal settlers. There will never be peace in the Middle East so long as the West looks the other way.