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Topic: My letter to Salon.com

topic by Sandra 12/4/2001 (12:18)

reply top I sent this letter to the editor in response to the Salon interview with Mark Tessler. ---------------------- As a student of Middle Eastern history who lived in the region for some years, I essentially agree with Mark Tessler's conclusions. But more needs to be said. On the morning of December 3rd, the BBC World Service interviewed Rolf Mayer, a former minister in the last Apartheid government of South Africa. He was asked if, from his experience, he believed that the onus was on the Israeli government or the Palestinians to act to end this conflict. Mayer's response was simple common sense to anyone who sees the roots of this conflict without ideological and racist blinders. He said that it was not until the party with all the power on its side--the Apartheid government--gave up the dream of perpetuating white rule that South Africa could move forward. Therefore, he concluded, it was up to Israel--the side with all the power--to decide to end its occupation. Mayer explained that peace negotiations take place in the context of conflict and therefore the demand that all violence be stopped as a precondition for negotiations was one which would have doomed the South African peace talks to failure. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Apartheid South Africa and Israel were close military and political allies (not surprising, since Israel has always been and continues to be a racist apartheid state). So it is quite telling when even Israel's former Apartheid friends are telling it to see reality in a different way. It is remarkable that while everyone in the world sees things clearly, only the United States government and media pretend they do not. Instead, we get the clear racist message that Israeli Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives. There is no worldwide media and government outrage to Israeli use of F-16s on civilian populations, Israeli soldiers deliberately targeting children, Israeli police firing into peaceful demonstrations of Israeli Arabs and killing several, Israeli massacres, IDF planting of mines for Palestinian schoolchildren to step on, Israeli ethnic cleansing, nightly Jewish settler pogroms in the territories and so on. (Where is the worldwide outrage toward Jewish racist pogroms against Palestinian Muslims and Christians in the territories and inside Israel proper?) This is a message that the west has been drumming home to Palestinians and Arabs for 50 years now. The people of the region have understood it quite clearly and that is the essential root of the deep anger and distrust in the region toward Israel, the US and Europe. Both Christian and Muslim Arabs all over the region remember Madeleine Albright on 60 Minutes say quite clearly that the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children were 'worth' the US sanctions on that government. The essential moral hypocrisy of the US-Israeli position makes even moderate, rational people in the region deeply offended. They know Israel's history extremely well, even if it is white- washed in the US media. Israel is a state founded on terrorism. It was Zionist terror gangs who introduced the car bomb to the region. It was Zionist terror groups who committed the first terrorist hijacking in the region when, in December of 1954, they hijacked a Syrian civilian airliner. It was Zionist terrorist gangs who regularly bombed Arab marketplaces, homes and businesses, the King David Hotel, British installations and so on. Many civilians--Jew, Arab and British citizens--were wantonly slaughtered in this carnage. Many of these terrorist leaders went on to become Israeli government leaders--Begin, Shamir, Rabin, Sharon, etc. When Palestinian terrorists bomb Israeli civilians, they are simply borrowing from Israel's own tactical history. And it was Israel that fostered and encouraged the growth of the Hamas movement in the territories throughout the 80s as a counterpoint to the secular PLO. Like the US in Afghanistan during the 80s, Israel made the conscious policy choice to use religious fundamentalism against secular nationalism. Israel cynically allowed Hamas to organize and attack the Arafat crowd for their weakness, failures and secular values. The stragegy worked, such that today Hamas has far more organizational coherence and support inside the territories than does Arafat's Fatah. The only reason that the secular Palestinian groups still survive is that they have not opposed Hamas. Now, Israel faces a far more vicious and implacable enemy than it ever did in the PLO. It was not Arafat who brought Hamas to the territories. It was not Arafat who allowed them to prosper. Indeed, today it is Hamas that threatens the existence of his leadership, and it is only the common enemy--the Israeli occupation--that keeps Hamas from opposing him outright. Yet Zionist orthodoxy in the United States, enforced by Israel's intransigent and powerful lobby, demands that all the ugly symptoms of 53 years of relentless and unspeakably brutal dispossession and repression of millions of people by Israel, and decades of US collusion and support for these policies, be blamed on one man. Contrary to the popular belief that this conflict is intractable, to quote the fine organization Jews For Justice (www.jewsforjustice.com), 'Israel could resolve this conflict tomorrow.' Indeed, it has *always* been within Israel's power to end this conflict: Get the Hell Out. Take out every single tank, every single soldier, every single settler from the territories, declare Jerusalem a multi-religional protectorte administered by both parties and the UN, and begin serious negotiations on compensating the refugees. Such measures would not be a panacea, but they would de-escalate the conflict and delegitimize the extremists who say Arafat's error was to give up on all of Palestine. Palestinians are an exhausted, weary, brutalized people, some of whom have been driven to near-insanity by the daily sadism that is the Israeli occupation. No thinking human soul can spend 2 hours in Gaza and leave unchanged. It is, quite literally, hell on earth. If Israel took the above measures, Palestinians would cry out in joy and gladly accept the tiny amount of land that Israel has left them. At the Oslo accords, Palestinians made the historic compromise by agreeing to recognize Israel and finally giving up any dreams of reclaiming all of their homeland. In essence, they said to Israel: Yes, we give up 78% our homeland that you stole and expelled us from. All we ask is what is left---22%. And Barak's and Clinton's response? Surrender East Jersualem, continue to live with IDF soldiers and fanatical Jewish fundamentalist settlers all around you, and we will control all water resources. In essence, Barak's 'generosity' amounted to a rump bantustan, a 'statelet' still controlled by Israel. No people would *ever* accept such a contemptible, racist offer. The moral degeneracy of the Barak position is astounding when one actually looks at Palestinian demands and realizes that they are quite modest. Since 1967, the Arabs and Palestinians in general have demanded the fulfillment of UN resolutions that require the security of all states in the region--hardly a radical position, yet one which Israel refuses to acknowledge. During the Oslo period, Israelis had a taste of what it would be like to live in peace with Palestinians. Arafat aggressively jailed Hamas militants while Israeli citizens (many of them for the first time) crossed over from Israel to buy cheap goods, visit casinos and so forth. But all the while Palestinian life worsened due to the growth of settlements, increasing attacks by Jewish settlers and Arafat's authoritarian, corrupt regime. So now Israel is at war again. In fact, it always has been at war and always will be. Not once in its existence has it ever tried to befriend its neighbors, treat them with respect and sensitivity. Israel is in the Middle East but not *of* the Middle East. It has never acted as a beacon of religious or secular democracy in the region, it has never tried to build ties to the *peoples* of the region, many of whom would welcome the support of a regional progressive democracy to improve their own lot. And (except for a minority of activists and historians), it has never once examined its own conduct and its own history. The horrific reality is that Israeli civilians will continue to die in such murderous attacks as we saw last weekend. Israel will never be at peace until it finally understands that the occupation is a profound evil, that it must end *completely* and *immediately*, and that a democracy for Jews only is a democracy in name only.

reply by Barb 12/4/2001 (14:26)

reply top 'occupation is an evil.' Couldn't disagree more. These Israelites need a place to live, as do the Palestinians. Neither one is 'entitled' to the land. Both Jews and Arabs have lived in that area for thousands of years. And it doesn't matter who was there first! BOTH sides must stop their childish and horrific fighting (that ends up hurting innocents, women, and children!) and try to live in peace together as we have in the U.S.

reply by Sandra 12/4/2001 (14:54)

reply top >>'occupation is an evil.' Couldn't disagree more.>> So you think it's a good thing to live under foreign occupation without the right to organize your own gov't, to work, go to school, live normally and constantly be attacked by foreign soldiers, have your homes and farms destroyed at their whim. Barb, you're completely confused. You don't know what you're talking about. I guess you wouldn't mind it if a foreign military occupied your neighborhood and controlled your movements and your entire society? What do you think the American Revolution fought against? The occupation of a foreign power! The *occupied territories* are NOT Israel, they are land illegally occupied in the aftermath of the 1967 war. Palestinians are fighting for their own state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem: those areas are NOT Israel, Barb, they're lands belonging to Palestinians illegally taken by Israel. Israel is a state that includes 78% of what was once Palestine. The occupied territories are not included in that 78%. >>These Israelites need a place to live,>> They HAVE a place to live, stupid, they have Israel! You're so unbelievably confused, what an idiotic statement! Palestinians are saying: keep your country, let us have ours. Israel refuses to leave the territories and let them have their own state. >>Both Jews and Arabs have lived in that area for thousands of years. >> Exactly, then why does Israel insist on having an exclusively Jewish state? Why does it refuse to organize its society into a multi-national multi-religional state? Why did it expel so many Arabs from their villages? But Palestinians are willing to recognize that Israel exists in that fashion, an exclusive Jewish state---all they ask is that the territories (which are NOT Israel) relieved of the occupation. Israel always *HAS* 78% of Palestine, and in the Oslo accords Palestinians gave up their claim to it. Just what do you think occupation means, Barb? Just what do you think it means to live under foreign military occupation by a state that treats you like animals? Sandra

reply by nemesis 12/4/2001 (15:58)

reply top Give Barb a break, folks. I am sure it was a typo. She could not have meant 'couldn't disagree more'. No one could have meant that!

reply by D 12/5/2001 (3:01)

reply top Well Barb - did you really mean what you said? I suspect you did going on previous postings. You always manage to wind people up! I think you want to listen, learn and debate - just like most others on this board - but unfortunately you don't seem to be very critical in your reasoning. It's only black and white on CNN/BBC - try to look beyond the headlines and put yourself in the position others before responding. Statements like =='occupation is an evil.' Couldn't disagree more== don't do you any credit whatever.

reply by Anne 12/5/2001 (12:25)

reply top I couldn't agree more. It has ALWAYS been in Israel's power to cease the occupation and disantle the settlements. But,sadly she is on a crusade to 'restore Bibical Israel's borders' in a Greater Israel. A pure Jewish State, for Jews only. But someone 'forgot' to tell the Jews that these borders only exisited some 3,000 years ago!!!!There are 3.5 million Palestinians that say they will NOT be expelled to make way for Jews! Israel has NO right to treat these people like dirt, and subject them to their 'superior intelligenge'. As each day passes the Israeli's are seen as brutal overseerers of a beleagered people. Personally, I don't think the Jews deserve their so-called UN/Western made State that came into been in 1948. Not content to have Israel Proper as their homeland, they want to EXPAND it over the top of the Palestinian presence!!

reply by Barb 12/7/2001 (2:20)

reply top 'Stupid.' Ha-ha, LOL. Sandra, you could NEVER be an attorney with insults like that. No one would tolerate it. Yes, I do like getting Sandra wound up because she acts like it is happening to her PERSONALLY -- like her own life is depending on every thing that goes on in the mideast.

reply by Barb 12/7/2001 (2:35)

reply top I meant I couldn't AGREE more -- YES, it was a typo. Do you guys shoot first, then ask questions? Israelites should leave Palestinians alone and vice-versa! Stop putting words into my mouth, Sandra.

reply by libre 12/7/2001 (23:36)

reply top Let me just say that Palestine and Israel BOTH have the right to exist and there's no doubt in my mind that BOTH sides are guilty of committing atrocities. But perhaps the U.S. would be more sympathetic to Palestine's cause if they wouldn't unabashedly support terrorist groups like Hamas and Hizbollah. How does one justify suicide bombers going into shopping malls and pizzerias and blowing themselves up while taking down innocent people with them? Everytime someone straps a bomb on himself to kill civilians thinking that he'll soon be meeting his precious Allah and seventy virgins is only damning his cause. Anyone can see why someone would be angered with Israeli occupation but that gives no one the right to take his own life away and the lives of innocent people by blowing himself up.

reply by DJFLux 12/8/2001 (1:28)

reply top Typo or no typo, occupation is wrong! Whether Barb actually made that typo and then decided to say it was a typo doesn't matter. Funny how you see Israeli media experts go tv and say the whole issue could've been solved had Arrafat declared the 'state' of Palestine last year. Keep in mind he was also entitled to East Jerusalem as it's capital. But here's when things aren't told to the public, Arafat refused simply becuase of one factor that was not resolved, had they accepted the state, THEY STILL WOULD'VE BEEN UNDER OCCUPATION! No wonder he refused. On the Oslo agreement the Palestinians were to be on Occupation free land, plain and simple. There's always an exception for Israel in the politics of today, and the media is thriving with zionist friendly individuals, mostly because they are getting paid by 'unknown' sources to 'their' jobs. Yet people can sometimes think that they can one side of the news and look at the other side of the news when it comes to the middle east( hoping to avoid some media bias) but truth of the matter is, alot of todays news revolves around this zionism, but isn't really clear for prople to see. Alot of these cases also lead to buildng up the main headlines of tommorow. While America fights their 'war' on terrorism, the media is now beginning to critize the Rebels in Chechnya for acting with terrorism ,while just around 2 years ago, the world was condemning Russia of causing the trouble in the breakaway state, and their continous human rights violations( all of which are documented). Now the media turned the tables and sooner or later, America will see the rebillion as a 'terrorist' group an eventually try and have some action, yet Putin and company are somewhat against it, considering they are still paying their loyalties to Russia.