أشـرف عاشــــــور

I was amazed and pained by what news agencies iterated yesterday of President Hosny Mubarak congratulating the Israeli president on the country’s Independence Day.

The truth is I can’t find the right words to convey my feelings about the headline.

The idea that overcame me was how to say what I felt so that the whole world would hear:

“Not in my name.” Not in my name, Mr. President. And if you do this, you do not represent me. I wash my hands of your actions.

What they call their Independence Day, is our day of Catastrophe.

The greatest catastrophe to befall Egyptians, Palestinians, and Arabs in their modern history, and perhaps, their whole history.

What they call their Independence Day is a day that saw one of the greatest crimes in humanity’s history, one of the worst injustices: The uprooting of a people from their land.

They are celebrating their raping of Palestine and the displacement of its nationals, after committing crimes of terrorism leading to one of the largest genocide and ethnic cleansing operations in history, turning 750 thousand Palestinians into refugees. The operation included the destruction and removal of 400 Palestinian villages as part of a methodological and calculated plan by Israel’s Zionist leaders, and was carried out by its war criminals.

They are celebrating their successful lies, deception, charlatanry, and extortion. Deceiving the entire world and pulling its leg, deluding it to believe that they have the right to that land, and that they were an occupied nation struggling to gain its independence.

Their success in immigrating nearly 500 thousand Jews, the majority from Eastern Europe, in the period starting from the ill-fated Belfour Declaration in 1917 and until that miserable day in 1948. And their claim that those who never set foot on the land before are the more entitled to it, that they have roots in that land stretching two thousand years back, and that the land’s true people, its true owners, are to leave.

Their anniversary commemorates the success of their gang of terrorist in creating their racist, expansionist nation.

I am against Zionist presence in Palestine…in any part of Palestine, until rights are returned to their owners. I am against any cooperation with or appeasement of the war criminals that lead that entity, against any who stands with them, encourages or supports them.

Not in my name…Mr. President. You do not represent me nor do you reflect my stance nor opinion. I am still holding on to my rights and the rights of my Palestinian brother, which we fought for, and for which many died defending. And this day shall remain his only celebration as a painful memorial. As a day of The Catastrophe.