For the last few days I've been stumped. Try as I could to transliterate the Arabic verb yishmat into English, I was unable to find the proper equivalent. And because of the richness of Arabic connotative terminology, I was incapable of finding precise synonyms.
Arabic-speaking sources netted the following approximate meanings: a verb that means "to gloat," "to malign," "celebrate one's loss," "to lose respect for someone." Another proposed a noun that suggesting "wishful harm." A good analog might be "karma": be careful what you might wish for.
Since 2008, Israel violated international law and thumbed its nose at the UN and the world, by brutalizing Occupied Palestine and Gaza's populations with Putin-like brazen arrogance and impunity.
Consider that Arkansas' Pulaski County is 808 square miles, while Gaza is merely 140 square miles. And, while Arkansas' population is a little over three million, Gaza's harbors 2.4 million people, 80 percent of whom are refugees. Considered by some to be an open-air prison, Gaza has the largest population density in the world.
And unemployment there is a staggering 65 percent.
Israel's assaults on Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021 were no different from Russia's brutal assault on Ukraine. Killing and maiming thousands of people and the deliberate bombing and destruction of entire neighborhoods are war crimes. But this is where the similarities end.
The world has rightfully expressed its revulsion at Russia's crimes, imposing crippling sanctions and providing defensive weaponry, food, moral and political support to Ukraine. The media has presented 24/7 wall-to-wall coverage of how Ukrainians are being brutalized, dispossessed, and forced to flee. But Palestinians in Occupied Palestine and Gaza, especially Gazans, are being killed and maimed in the tens of thousands.
No one pays attention, not even their greedy and corrupt so-called Arab brethren.
From their reclining chairs on Tel Aviv's beach, Israelis have been treated to three Netanyahu and one Bennet assaults on Gaza. Of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds, crowds of equal male-to-female bloodthirsty spectators, as they have always done, chanted "death to Arabs" and cheered as Israeli jets hailed bloody carnage on starved, dispossessed and malnourished refugees.
And as high-rise buildings, mosques, hospitals, schools, public spaces, cemeteries, playgrounds and infrastructure (electric grids, water and water recycling plants) were leveled to rubble from incendiary and phosphorus bombs and other munitions provided by the two Bushes, Clinton, Obama, Trump, "My name is Joe Biden and I am a Zionist," and a pliant and servile U.S. Congress, Palestinians have been blamed for their misery. After all, Israel was defending itself from the danger posed by fanatical Muslim terrorists.
Entire neighborhoods were pulverized, and entire families were butchered, some crushed beneath crumpled cold steel and flattened concrete.
Under the title "Gaza Lives Erased: Israel Wiping Out Entire Palestinian Families on Purpose," on May 19, 2021, Israeli reporter Amira Hass wrote the following for the progressive Haaretz Israeli newspaper:
"The numerous incidents of killing entire families in Israeli bombings in Gaza--parents and children, babies, grandparents, siblings--attest that these were not mistakes. The bombings follow a decision from higher up, backed by the approval of military jurists....
"[T]he names of 12 families who were killed, each one at its home, each one in a single bombing," have been documented. And "in one air raid before dawn on Sunday, which lasted 70 minutes and was directed at three houses on Al Wehda Street in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza, three families numbering 38 people in total were killed."
Haas concludes that "wiping out entire families in Israeli bombings was one of the characteristics of the war in 2014. In the roughly 50 days of the war then, UN figures say that 142 Palestinian families were erased (742 people in total)."
This barbarity did not stop at exterminating civilians; it was also on display as "the most moral army in the world" attacked animals in Gaza's zoo. For sport, Israeli soldiers went about shooting Muslim lions, tigers, and other defenseless members of God's creation.
I don't believe that the Yahweh intended to give cauterized souls such as these that kind of Book of Genesis dominion over beasts.
What did the world, and especially the U.S. and NATO, do? Nothing. Where were the civilized voices of the Western world's humane societies? Are these miserable Palestinian animals, like their Palestinian owners, also creations of a lesser God?
The Israelis called their habitual attacks on Gaza "mowing the grass."
Israel mowing the Gaza grass is equivalent to Russia bush hogging, plowing and pulverizing Ukraine.
In a recent article titled "Navigating Our Humanity: Lessons from Ukraine," Exeter University professor, "self-hating Jew" and acclaimed author Ilan Pappe ("The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine"), made several observations and comparisons between Russia's assault on Ukraine and Israel's assaults on Gaza.
He chided Zelenskyy's 2021 support and defense of Israel's serial horrific assault on the caged Gazans. Pappe charged that Zelenskyy had had no sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian refugees, nor did he consider them to be victims of any crime.
"Zelenskyy is not alone," Pappe wrote. "When it comes to Palestine, the hypocrisy reaches a new level. One empty high-rise hit in the Ukraine dominated the news and prompted deep analysis about human brutality, Putin inhumanity.
"... these bombings should be condemned, of course, but it seems that those leading the condemnation among world leaders were silent when Israel flattened the town of Jenin in 2000, the Al-Dahaya neighborhood in Beirut in 2006 and the city of Gaza in one brutal wave after the other over the past 15 years. No sanctions, whatsoever, were even discussed, let alone imposed, on Israel for its war crimes in 1948 and ever since.
"In fact, in most of the Western countries which are leading the sanctions against Russia today, even mentioning the possibility of imposing sanctions against Israel is illegal and framed as antisemitic."
I do not wish to yishmat President Zelenskyy and Ukraine's falling into the abyss of horror, nor do I want to admonish them to be careful for what they wish for.
Raouf J. Halaby is a Professor Emeritus of English and art. He is a writer, photographer, sculptor, an avid gardener, and a peace activist. halabys7181@outlook.com.