(Editors note: The number of genocidal murders and atrocities mentioned here will have increased since this speech)
Israel…(some audio confusion). has acted with disregard and disdain.
Why are they getting away with murder at this unprecedented scale?
Because they were never held accountable.
That is why they confess to their crime
That is why they steal our lives. our land, our resources, our money, our past, our present and our future in broad daylight.
Mr President, one day the massacres will stop but how will we get over it? How will we get over the mass graves? The inability to bury our loved ones? To offer them a dignified burial – seeing them in plastic bags.
How will we get over 1000 palestinian children amputated without anaesthetics? Can you ear their screams? can you feel their pain? Can you imagine if they were your own children?
How we can get over 8000 palestinians under the rubble?
Those who were blessed to die quickly and those who endured a terrible and terrifying slow death while we were unable to save them?
How do you get over a genocide?
We will be asked nevertheless despite all that we are enduring – and all that we have endured for 74 years – to move on, to count our dead one more time, to count our wounded, our permanently disabled, the people scarred for life, the millions of victims, and move on.
We will be asked to be peaceful. We will be asked to be grateful, that this horrible chapter amongst so many other chapters – even though this one is the worst one we have gone through – is over until the next one begins.
This is the ultimate expression of double standards.
The other side is never asked to move on if Israelis are killed, never asked to be peaceful in such situations.
This is the ultimate expression of racism, of dehumanisation of our nation. We shall all be subject to the same rules, to the same expectations, we should all have our humanity recognised and respected. Those who have dared until now to find a way or another to justify what is happening in the Gaza Strip will have to endure shame forever
For those people calling on our people not to seek vengeance, not to resort to violence, they must support our efforts to deliver justice. That is the path we have chosen, justice not vengeance but still now that path has been obstructed in the face of the Palestinian people and no one has ever been held accountable for the crimes committed against us.
Israeli impunity cannot be allowed to survive this assault so finally Palestinian survivors can live with the sense that the massacres will not resume. The horrors this impunity has led to will continue occuring until this is brought to an end.
Mr President, the world is discovering the true Gaza while Israel is destroying it.
They discover as Israel destroys our university and schools that we have one of the highest literacy rates in the world.
They discover, as Israel destroys our historic mosques and churches, that we have religious diversity and a Christian community in Gaza that is an integral part of our history, our present and our future.
The world discovers the name of brave Palestinian journalists and doctors as they learn they were killed.
They discover about a young Palestinian generation that was able to be creative and to perform and to try to lead a life in impossible circumstances only to face death once again.
The world discovers human beings, despite repeated assaults and a decade and a half of blockade, have somehow preserved hope, cultivated it, built their homes to see them destroyed, built them once more, saw them destroyed once more, built them again, built their lives despite loss and suffering from within the wounds they were able to rise again, only to face death, once again.
They found a way back to life only to see death and destruction haunting them once more. Until when?
That is what Israel is attacking. Hope. That is its greatest enemy. The fact that the Palestinian people have not relinquished hope, the ability of our people to resurrect. They want to make sure the Palestinians in Gaza have no homes to return to. They want to make sure they have no life to return to. They want to make sure that life in Gaza is no longer possible with one aim, what they call voluntary migration. Voluntary?. 21,000 people killed, half of them almost children. And by the way we mention the children and the women, many innocent men have been killed.
Voluntary migrations, the code name for forced displacement.
These are the options for Palestinians. Destruction or displacement. Death or displacement.