Friday, November 28, 2014

Walking a Mile in Palestinian Shoes

There is this English proverb: “You can't understand a man unless you walk a mile in his shoes.” You see the meaning of this proverb come to life every time that a jury comes down with a decision that is “for” or that is “against” the defendant. This is when the family of the victim – one that may have been severely injured or murdered – weeps with disappointment at the decision, or celebrates the fact that justice was done.

Sure, as spectators we do sympathize with these people, but to understand them fully will necessitate that we walk a mile in their shoes. Since we do not want to see something bad happen to a loved one to understand what these people go through, we can approximate the feel of walking in their shoes by going over a situation in which we were treated unfairly – perhaps by the system of justice itself doing nothing less than obstructing justice.

Well, I witnessed instances when the system of justice delivered injustice to people I knew and to people I did not know. And it happened to me when I had experiences from which I pick the one that comes close to what the people of Palestine must be experiencing. Bad things happen to these people all the time when they see the self-designated democracies of America, Canada and Australia behave not like jurisdictions where the rule of law reigns supreme, but jurisdictions where the law that reigns supreme is that the Jewish serial murderer must be shielded and given help to continue murdering Palestinians and looting their properties.

Something happened to me when I was suing a publication for participating in the act of blacklisting me. I am not going to discuss the trial itself but the motions that are done before the trial begins in order to prepare for it. Having made the point in my statement of complaint that the editors of the publication in question interfered with my effort to get published by other organizations, those editors denied they even knew who I was, having never heard of me. Well, luckily I had enough evidence in writing to prove otherwise, and the trial judge did eventually believe me, having rejected the silly stuff mouthed off by the lawyer for the editors.

However, not knowing that this will happen at the trial, I presented the court with a motion – one among several – in which another judge ruled against me. What I had done was to subpoena a representative of the telephone company to testify to the fact that long distance calls were made from the office of the editors in Toronto to my residence in Montreal. This would have proved they were lying, and I believed that this will be enough to guarantee that I shall win at the trial.

Surprise, surprise, the judge denied my motion – and guess why. The lawyer for the publication I was suing said that I was on a fishing expedition, which would violate the confidentiality of his client. Since I was conducting my own case, I told the judge I am only going to ask the witness if calls were made to me not to someone else. Still, the lawyer protested that this would constitute a fishing expedition, and the judge agreed. He denied the motion, and left me with the feeling that the system of justice had impeded justice. This, in my opinion, would have been a crime if committed by someone else, which led me to the idea that it is not enough to have the right to appeal bad judgments, it must be that judges are held liable for outrageous rulings they make and cannot justify.

And this is where I begin to feel like I'm walking in the shoes of the Palestinians. Time after time, these people have tried to take their case before a judicial or a quasi-judicial body so as to “have their day in court” but time after time, America, Canada and Australia obstructed that process, knowing that their doing will give the Jewish serial murderers a license to continue murdering and looting their Palestinian victims, who are kept disarmed and helpless to facilitate their victimization.

This time, Switzerland is trying to convene a Geneva Convention conference to look into the Israeli occupation of Palestine where crimes against humanity are committed continually, and a determination needs to be made one way or the other so as to move the process forward and put an end to this stain against civilized human behavior. But who would stand against this and do all that they can to obstruct justice? None other than those who call themselves democratic systems that abide by the rule of law. They are America, Canada and Australia.

What a bunch of fakes! What an insult to civilized human behavior! These are not humans; they are animals.