Is it Justice or 'Just Us?'

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"In America justice means "just us' white folk." That's a quote from H. Rap Brown, one of the leaders of the Black movement for justice in the 1960s and 70s in the United States. After the Rodney King verdict it seems more apt than ever. All over the world there are Rodney Kings being ground down into the dirt, beaten, kicked and brutalized by "official" law and order thugs. In Israel, justice for Palestinians means "just us" Zionists. In South Africa, justice, again, means "just us" white folk. In Northern Ireland, justice means "just us" proEnglish Protestants.

The police represent an occupying army in the Black communities of the United States. They are there not to protect African American citizens from crime, but to repress any attempt by them to resist criminal capitalist persecution, exploitation, and oppression. At the same time that the mouthBy pieces of the oppressive system cry crocodile tears over the poverty and the racial injustice in America's central cities, they seek to drown out the cries of pain with the loudest denunciations against "violence as a means of righting wrongs."

Israeli "just us" is another example of oppression of a people by a racist oppressor. The Zionists are trying to solve the "Palestinian problem" just as Hitler tried to solve the "Jewish problem." There is a difference in scale. But that's only because Palestinians are the great majority and a final solution is not within the capability of Zionism.

Just a look at the May 1992 murders of Palestinians by the Zionist settler-state will reveal Israel's hidden agenda against a whole people. Since the beginning of the Intifada over 1,064 Palestinians have been killed.

MAY 2: Antone Louis Shoumali, 22, from Beit Shour nin maim. was shot and killed by Israeli border guards in the Bethlehem area. Shoumali was a business administration student at Bethlehem University. He died from three bullet wounds to his chest.

MAY 3: Majed Muhammad Nahhal, 14, from Jabalya refugee. camp in Gaza, died of gunshot wounds in the head from Israeli soldiers who were in the camp.

MAY 4: Basem Abdel Hafez Awwad, 17, in Deir al-balah, Gaza Strip was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. Awwad was killed by two bullets and his body was taken from the hospital and buried at a mass funeral.

MAY 5: Zakaria Mahmoud one of the ideological functions in this struggle. The ruling class forces its ends upon society and habituates it to considering all those means which contradict its Mushtahi, 44, a resident of Shajaiyeh quarter of Gaza City, died in Barzali Hospital from gunshot wounds sustained after being shot by Israeli soldiers. Ahmad Mubammad Barakat, 25 from Ein Beit Elma refugee camp was shot and killed by an Israeli prison guard.

MAY 7: Israeli soldiers shot and critically wounded two Palestinians in Sa'ir, Hebron area. The two injured Palestinians will be arrested after they leave the Ramallah Hospital.

MAY 8: Mahmoud Issa al-Shalaldeh, 23, from Sa'ir, died in Ramallah Hospital from wounds sustained the day before when Georgo Baramkl Azar of the families. Plus, by paying benefits below the poverty level, the system forces people to cheat to survive, and then it punishes the victims it catches in the act Israeli soldiers shot him. Sadeq Ramadan Da'na, 16, was shot and killed in Hebron by Israeli soldiers.

These are Palestinian people who were murdered by Israeli soldiers from May 2 through May 8. But this only scratches the surface of Israeli version of "just us."

There is first and foremost the economic crimes against the Palestinian people, the unemployment imposed on this people, the second-tier wage status imposed on them, the curfews, the homes destroyed and the unrecorded number of Palestinians killed and wounded during the same period. And just as in the case of Rodney King, each brutal murder is blamed upon the victim.

Whenever an oppressed people fight their oppressors this kind of "justice" will prevail. But there will come a time when the oppressed will turn the tables. It will be our turn, no matter whether it will be begun by Palestinians in Israel; Blacks in South Africa; Blacks, Latinos and women in this country; or whether it will begin by a generalized rebellion of the working class somewhere in the world.

Don't give up. Do not despair. We will prevail. We will win because there are more of us than them. That's why their guiding strategy is "Divide and Rule! and ours is "An injury to one is an injury to all!" forces to protect the sacred shrine of private property. That's why Quayle didn't voice one regret for the lives lost in the L.A. rebellion; he only mourned the