TBA News

By Dr. Fatima Ibrahim Al Menoufy

History defines people, defines nations and defines armies. If any army is established on terrorist groups, what shall be expected from it?! The Israeli Military forces were established on systematic terrorism carried out by the Zionist terrorist militias in Palestine in1920s according to Britanica. They carried out a chain of massacres in the 1940s, the most famous is the massacre of Deir Yassin. The terrorist Zionist militia Irgun seized 250 children, women, and elderly people, murdered and slaughtered the children, stabbed pregnant women in their bellies, raped women and girls, dismembered the bodies of their victims and threw them in the village, all these atrocities were in front of the children’s parents. The aim was to terrorise the indigenous population to flee their land so it could be taken over by Jewish immigrants. Later these terrorist militias disbanded in 1948, and integrated into the IDF shortly after the establishment of Israel.

Yet, amid the silence of our history books, and as an Egyptian, I carry the weight of an unmarked history that repeats itself now. What happens to Palestinians now, happened to my own people, to our children, to our brothers some decades ago. 

On April 8, 1970, Israeli warplanes bombed Bahr al-Baqar primary school in Egypt, killing 46 children and injuring dozens. The Israeli Air Force dropped bombs on a primary school in an Egyptian village. 46 children were torn apart in their classrooms. The walls collapsed on their tiny bodies. For what sin were they killed? What threat did a primary school pose to Israel? Israel claimed it was a “mistake as it does now everyday in Gaza.

In June 2000, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Wafd reported that a mass grave was discovered in Ras Sedr, containing remains of 52 war prisoners who surrendered, who raised their hands in defeat. The soldiers surrendered trusting the world’s pledge that war prisoners have rights, and there are rules for war, but they were killed by Israeli paratroopers in cold blood. The report said that some skulls had bullet holes in them, indicating execution. Initial reports in Israeli newspaper Haaretz were censored.

In June 2022, an Israeli journalist specializing in security affairs revealed that at least 20 Egyptian soldiers were burnt alive by the Israeli army during the 1967 war. In a series of tweets, journalist Yossi Melman wrote: “After 55 years of heavy censorship, I can reveal that at least 20 Egyptian soldiers were burnt alive and buried by the IDF in a mass grave, which wasn’t marked and without being identified contrary to war laws, in Latrun. It happened during the Six-Day War.”

Also there were reports of wartime executions in the Sinai peninsula. Israeli military historian Arieh Yitzhaki said that his research showed Israeli troops killed 300 Egyptian prisoners of war in 1967.

The screams of wounded Egyptian soldiers at Al Arish Airport were not heard, hundreds of brothers of my blood, were buried alive in cold blood regardless of international laws, Geneva convention, or what is called rights of war prisoners. Israeli Bulldozers piled sand over their wounded bodies alive as they cried out for help without any answer. The wind that blows through Sinai still carries their screams.

On the grounds of the park is the unmarked mass grave of about 80 Egyptian commandos who were burnt alive nearby during the 1967 Six-Day War. The commanders included 25 who were burnt to death in a wildfire. Kibbutz Nahshon, a place where Israeli authorities buried 80 charred Egyptian bodies into an unnamed hidden grave, only to later build a tourist park over their corpses. “Mini Israel,” they called it. When residents tried to expose the truth in the 1990s, the Israeli military silenced them, erased them,  as they erased our soldiers, just as they erase Palestine.

Israel has been killing our children, destroying our schools, burning war prisoners alive, burying civilians and soldiers alive, bombing civilians and dare to call themselves victims. They say, all were done by mistake! Where are international laws and Geneva conventions? Were there any trials? Nothing happened. Only deafening silence.

Israel has killed all of us. Palestinians in Gaza are still tasting the same poison, with the partnership of the west and now with complicity of brothers in blood and religion.

They try to erase our history to let the past die. But we will not forget our history, we will not bury our history in graves as they buried our soldiers alive. Our history is written in the DNA of every newborn Egyptian baby, in the DNA of every Palestinian child. They screams of Palestinian children will not let them move on.

We are fed up from screaming in despair, but we will not stop. We will dig and bring these truths into the light, whatever happens, we will expose them until the right prevails.