“God Sees the Truth, but Waits”

In the middle of April—springtime—in which the flowers bloom and most of the northern hemisphere basks in the promised renewal of plant and animal life, we must pause to remember one whose eyes were closed forever to that beauty: Vittorio Arrigoni. Yes, even among the ruins of the Gaza strip, the signs of spring will adorn the shattered walls and perhaps give a breath of hope to desperate lives distorted by the circumstance of their fate: they happen to be Palestinians. Like the Jews and Gypsies trapped in the Nazi Germany of the last century, they are victims because of their race and national identity. As the “Jewish problem” was largely ignored by the great powers until other events brought them to war, so the existence of the Palestinians is an historical inconvenience to the ambitions of the present-day great powers, to be ignored as long as possible.

The first war to end all wars, World War I (1914-1918), ended with the establishment of the League of Nations based in Geneva, Switzerland. It was unable to stop the ethnic cleansing in Germany or the brutal subjugation of Ethiopia by Fascist Italy. In fact, most of the members, including Britain, endorsed Italy’s conquest! Mussolini famously said of it, “The League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out.”

So much for the little guy under the League of Nations.

The second war to end all wars, World War II (1939-1945), ended with the establishment of the United Nations, based in New York, USA. Having learned very little from the failure of the League of Nations, the United Nations immediately blundered by giving veto power to the five big guns among the victors. Just as the cries of the ravaged Ethiopians were ignored by the League, so too the UN has turned a deaf ear to injustices inflicted upon helpless peoples when they interfere or obstruct some vision of world hegemony espoused by the ruling elite of a big-gun power.

Today, the Palestinians are one such people. According to the Bible, when Joshua conquered the Canaanites and occupied the territory called “Palestine” from the time of the Romans to the end of the British mandate, he condemned the Canaanites to being “hewers of wood and drawers of water”—in other words, serfs or slaves—for the victorious Israelites (Jgs. 9:21,23). Do we see a contemporary analogy in this? According to BBC statistics, Israeli per capita income is twenty times that of the Palestinians whom they dominate.

The recent International Criminal Court’s rejection of the Palestinian request for an investigation of the war crimes allegedly committed by the Israelis against Palestinians in Gaza in 2008 because of their lack of UN membership has many scratching their heads about the relevance of the UN. The UN seems to have no problem if a major power or one of its allies launches an aggression against helpless peoples, but can spend a lot of effort participating in the big-gun siege of Iran on the pretext of preventing the Iranians from making atomic weapons, which no reliable source says they are doing.

So much for the little guy under the United Nations.

Where does a non-people go in this world for justice?

A growing number of individuals are taking the challenge posed by this question upon themselves. When the courts fail, there is only public opinion left, if it can be roused from its slumber and apathy. Some view these activists in such “lost” causes as heroes and heroines; others understand the threat they pose to the favorable status quo and vilify them. Several can be found in the ranks of TJP: Ken O’Keefe, Gilad Atzmon, and their associates. And some are martyred; among them, Vittorio, on April 15, 2011. The song “Lions of Palestine” commemorates these heroes.

Among the works of the great Leo Tolstoy, the author of that cathedral of a book War and Peace, are a number of short stories. One of these is God Sees the Truth, but Waits, in which justice is finally done, but only when the victim is at the point of his death. We can only pray that He not wait too long for His justice to be done for the Palestinians and other oppressed peoples around the world.

Let the lions roar!

JRC/MN Ph. D.