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Posted by Lynette
4/26/2002 (24:06) |
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too easy ...too simple...and too sad
'A monstrous transformation of an entire people by the most formidable and feared propaganda machine in the world into little more than 'militants' and 'terrorists' has allowed not just Israel's military but its fleet of writers and defenders to efface a terrible history of suffering and abuse in order to destroy the civil existence of the Palestinian people with impunity. Gone from public memory are the destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 and the creation of a dispossessed people; the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza and their military occupation since 1967; the invasion of 1982 with its 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinian dead and the Sabra and Shatila massacres; the continuous assault on Palestinian schools, refugee camps, hospitals, civil installations of every kind. What anti-terrorist purpose is served by destroying the building and then removing the records of the Ministry of Education, the Ramallah Municipality, the Central Bureau of Statistics, various institutes specialising in civil rights, health and economic development, hospitals, radio and television stations? Is it not clear that Sharon is bent not only on 'breaking' the Palestinians, but on trying to eliminate them as a people with national institutions?
In such a context of disparity and asymmetrical power, it seems deranged to keep asking the Palestinians, who have neither army, nor air force, nor tanks, nor defences of any kind, nor functioning leadership, to 'renounce' violence, and to require no comparable limitation on Israel's actions. Even the matter of suicide bombers, which I have always opposed, cannot be examined from a view point that permits a hidden racist standard to value Israeli lives over the many more Palestinian lives that have been lost, maimed, distorted and foreshortened by long- standing Israeli military occupation, and the systematic barbarity openly used by Sharon against Palestinians from the beginning of his career in the 1950s until now. '
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