The use by Israeli deputy defence minister of "bigger Shoah", Hebrew for Holocaust, in threatening the Palestinians was not just a slip of the tongue as the Israeli public diplomacy tried to say in a damage containment campaign. Even before the declaration of Israel in 1948 - with US president Bush coming to the region in May to celebrate its 60th anniversary - on Palestinian land, Zionist terrorist groups were committing genocide against the Palestinian population under the British mandate. This has not stopped since then, apart from traditional wars between Arab armies and the Israeli army.
The latest Israeli attack on Gaza is just another step in a continuous onslaught on the original people of the land by migrant gangs from central Europe and elsewhere. Israel did not manage in more than 60 years to do what the Anglo-Saxons did in North America and Australia - wipe out the native Indians and Aborigines, in its case the Palestinians.
Along these years of struggle, between the occupiers and the native people, Arab and Palestinian resistance to the Jewish state adopted many different colours and traits. From hardcore leftist movements to Islamist groups, a considerable phase was dominated by nationalist movements.
Gaza retreat
Populist uprisings dotted the line of Palestinian resistance, even before the more famous so-called uprising at the end of the 1980s, and mostly started from Gaza. So far, the mighty propaganda machine failed to convince the world of any link between the Palestinian resistance and the so-called "Al Qaida" as it did with the insurgents in Iraq.
When I first, and last, visited Gaza in 1995 after the Oslo agreement and the return of Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) from Tunisia to Palestine, I witnessed the fact that the Israeli army never occupied the Gaza Strip fully since 1967, until it withdrew in 2005. Its presence was mainly by day, and during the nights of occupation it retreated to safe bases in the strip. That left a bitter feeling and a will of revenge being executed since then through siege and attacks from the skies or by tank shells from the border of the strip.
It is almost the same motive for the Israeli military against Hezbollah of Lebanon after the humiliation it suffered in its failed attack on Lebanon in 2006, due to the strong resistance of Hezbollah fighters.
To regain its hurt pride, the Israeli military is preparing to attack Gaza and Hezbollah again. A concerted regional effort is under way to finalise pretexts for getting rid of resistance spots. But is it possible? I think not.
Resistance everywhere has been historically accused of being the stretched claws of other powers competing with the aggressor. In the middle of the last century, resistance to Western colonial powers (British, French, and the like) was labelled by English-speaking media as a client of the Soviets in the cold war.
Then, Baathists and Nasserites were fuelling the nationalist-tainted resistance, and finally Iran is spreading revolutionary Islamism by supporting resistance in Palestine and Lebanon. The Soviet Union disappeared and resistance went on, the nationalist movement weakened but resistance did not fade. Now, Iran - if we accept the Franco-American argument of today - might lose its struggle with the West, but this does not necessarily mean that resistance will disappear.
Resistance cannot be uprooted as long as there is still injustice, oppression and hegemony. It is more or less like the laws of physics, every action has a reaction - it might not be equal to it in force and attitude due to different factors controlling the equation, but it is still there.
What is weak today might gain momentum tomorrow and you can never predict how. Sometimes the wind blows from the least expected direction.
Coverage
Regional and international political settlement processes might sort out differences between states for a while, but the people are slow in digesting atrocities. Israeli massacres in Gaza might not get the best coverage on Fox News or the BBC, but people from Rabat to Manama have better memories.
There are more and more people comparing the indifference towards killing Palestinians in cold blood and the political and media heat if an American or French citizen is arrested in Yemen or Sudan dealing in drugs or prostitution - until unlawfully released and flown back home. Such small injustices build up, and they are the eternal seeds of resistance.
Dr Ahmad Mustafa is a London-based Arab writer.
