Today in History

The 28th of September. Hm, what makes this date so darn significant? Oh, pick me pick me! That's the day William the Conqueror invaded England! Wait, no...that's not quite it. Oh, the Beatles' "Hey Jude" peaked at number 1 on the charts! No, still not it. And who cares if Napoleon Bonaparte graduated at 16 from military school this day hundreds of years ago. Today, ten years ago exactly, we were a couple of kids in 5th grade. We went home to eat and indulge in family activities (such as merciless teasing and fights over who gets the chipped dinner plate) when the TV was turned on. Ariel Terrorist Sharon's bloated face filled up the screen as he gloated and waddled into the Al-Aqsa compound with his security forces, a site that is sacred to Muslims in Jerusalem. His provocative visit sparked this anniversary. Two days later, we found our parents hooked on to the tube. On the screen, a boy not much older than us was crouching behind his father's back while Israeli bullets bombarded them. That boy, Muhammad Al-Durra, became the first martyr of the 2nd Palestinian Intifada. The quisling Old Man has since stated that the 2nd Intifada was "one of our worst mistakes." The sooner he brain haemorrhages the better, what a tool. More than 7 thousand Palestinians have been killed so far, and the road map to peace (har har) has never looked so...promising! Good God, Fayyadism has effectively wiped out any resistance to the Occupier, and Palestinian thus are oppressed twice. One, by Israel, and another by the quisling's regime. The result is a desperate acceptance from the Palestinians of their situation, in that they don't agree with the present reality but are powerless to do anything because of a lack of a unified representative voice to convey to the world what they initially want and have sacrificed so much for.

The first Intifada differed in that it was a wholly nationalistic movement. Palestinians were a united front against the enemy, and decisive tactics such as boycotting Israel and refusing to pay their taxes aggravated Israel beyond means, hence their brutal retaliation. The second Intifada was more faction-oriented. Each political group or movement had their own armed wing that carried out various operations. Most important was the posters of the martyrs belonging to their respective group, (well not really.) Israel assassinated and detained charismatic and spiritual leaders, paving the way for the Old Man to take up power. Since then, Palestinian history has witnessed its worst events ever, as civil fighting between Fateh and Hamas, set up by the concerned American government, claimed more than 600 lives. Politics then became solely focused on Fateh and Hamas, with the idiots in charge aggravating the situation even more and not calling attention to the real problem, Israel. And now we have the present, a comically despairing one ruled by a dictator who is more of a dick then a ruler. We need to awaken the resistance again, starting with the ever so impressionable youth, the university students. We need to be united once again. We need to start caring more. We have to galvanize our resistance.