topic by
real watcher
8/31/2002 (16:08) |
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The growing clamor for ethnic cleansing
by Ali Abunimah
Vice-president of the Arab-American Action Network and a well-known media analyst,
Abunimah regularly writes public letters to the media, coordinates campaigns, and
appears on a variety of national and international news programs as a commentator
on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is one of the founders of The Electronic
Intifada. Ali Abunimah contributed to 'The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's
Apartheid' (Verso Books, 2001).
(AMMAN -- August 27, 2002) -- An Israeli organization has published detailed
plans for the 'complete elimination of the Arab demographic threat to Israel'
by forcibly expelling all Palestinians, including Palestinians in the occupied
territories and Palestinian citizens of Israel from the area between the Jordan
River and the Mediterranean Sea within a 3-5 year period.
Gamla, a group founded by
former Israeli military officers
and settlers, published these
recommendations on its website
in a nine thousand word
manifesto titled 'The logistics of
transfer,' penned by Boris
Shusteff last July 3. The mass
ethnic cleansing of every
Palestinian, the author argues, is
'the only possible solution' to
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
and is 'substantiated by the
Torah.'
(www.gamla.org.il/english) Gamla
receives tax deductible
contributions from a New
York-based charity that claims
that its goal is greater
Arab-Jewish tolerance.
The manifesto recognizes that Israel will never win widespread support for
expulsion, but argues that it needs 'only a modicum of support from its closest
ally -- the United States,' in order to carry out the plan.
Under the plan, Israel would launch an information campaign and increase
economic strangulation of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza
Strip to force them to leave 'voluntarily.' One measure would be to deprive
Palestinians of employment, literally starving them out (one could say that this
policy is already being implemented). Palestinian citizens of Israel would face
complete apartheid and religious coercion as Israel would 'pass a law that will
stipulate in some form that non-Jewish citizens of the state, while retaining full
and irrevocable civil rights, will have no ability to participate in Israeli political
life.' Failing that, the paper continues, 'Israeli Arabs can be given one more
option - to convert to Judaism if they prefer to stay put.'
At the same time, Israel will try to convince the international community to
establish a Palestinian state far away from Israel and the occupied territories
(in Iraq or Saudi Arabia). The author writes that:
'Israel must make clear to the world community that, if a
decision cannot be made within 3 to 5 years to establish a state
for the Palestinian Arabs in some viable location, she will be
forced to start the forced expulsion of Arabs into Jordan and the
Sinai.'
The expulsion plan provides details about how this will be done, in lightning
military strikes:
'As an example, the relocation of a small settlement (1,000
people) can be completed within a 48-hour period, similarly to a
military border-crossing operation. Israel will supply the relocated
community with temporary housing, water and electricity
(providing tents, a generator, water cisterns, etc.). The
abandoned settlement must be completely demolished level with
the ground.'
While Israel moves to implement the complete annexation of all the occupied
territories, it would, according to the plan, have to subdue the population by
carrying out war crimes and crimes against humanity if any Palestinians try to
resist:
'Any attempts on the part of the Arabs [Palestinians] to carry out
sabotage or terrorist activity must be immediately suppressed in
the most brutal way. It is possible, for example, to implement a
suggestion by Harvard Professor Alan Derschowitz, an American
liberal lawyer. With slight modification, it works as follows: Israel
issues a warning that, in a response to any terrorist attack, she
will immediately completely level an Arab village or settlement,
randomly chosen by a computer from a published list. The
essence of the idea is to make the Arabs completely responsible
for their own fate, and to make it clear that terrorism will not be
merely tolerated, but will be harshly punished. Along with the
world community, the Arabs will know precisely what will result if
they attack Jews. The use of a computer to select the place of
the Israeli response will put the Arabs and the Jews on a level
footing. The Jews do not know where the terrorists will strike, and
the Arabs will not know which one of their villages or settlements
will be erased in retaliation. The word 'erased' very precisely
reflects the force of Israel's response. The Arabs residing there
will be evicted without compensation, all houses and buildings
completely demolished, and the settlement itself, with the help
of bulldozers and any other necessary equipment, will be leveled
into a large field. After the appearance of several such fields the
Arabs will lose any desire to commit terrorist attacks and the
number of Arabs wanting to leave Eretz Yisrael will certainly
increase.'
The only precedent for such a chilling and methodical approach to ethnic
cleansing would be the industrialized elimination of Jews planned and carried
out by Nazi Germany.
Are these words merely the ramblings of an extremist group carrying no wide
influence, or do they represent another step in legitimizing discussion of a once
taboo idea gaining broad-based support in Israel and amongst some American
Jewish organizations?
Gamla claims that it is 'in the forefront of the battle for the land of Israel,
organizes activities, participates in demonstrations, and publishes articles,
posters and stickers for that cause,' and that 'most of its activities are
coordinated and joined with other grassroots organizations of the national
camp.'
One of the group's three founders is Elyakim Haetzni, one of the first and most
prominent West Bank settlers who lives in Kiryat Arba settlement near Hebron.
Another was the late Lt. Colonel Shlomo Baum, a founder of Israel's notorious
Unit 101, which with the young Ariel Sharon as its leader carried out the brutal
massacre of dozens of civilians in the Palestinian village of Qibya in 1953,
among other atrocities. The third, retired Colonel Moshe Leshem, also a
longtime spokesman for the settlers, has a show on Israel's settler radio
network 'Arutz 7' along with Haetzni.
Gamla receives tax-deductible contributions from Americans through a New
York-based charity called PEF Israel Endowment Funds (www.pefisrael.org) which
states that its was established in 1922 by Justice Louis Brandeis and Rabbi
Stephen Wise. Among its stated purposes is 'promoting greater tolerance and
understanding between religious and secular communities and between Arabs
and Jews.' Under this liberal guise, the organization appears to be channeling
funds to a group advocating the total destruction of a nation -- in other words,
genocide.
The Gamla website also frequently publishes and promotes the writings of
Daniel Pipes, a professional Arab-basher, and ubiquitous guest on American
television talk shows.
Within Israel, Palestinians are viewed as a 'demographic threat' across the
political spectrum, the only difference being on how to deal with this threat. For
traditional leftists, 'separation' is the preferred option, while among the
right-wing outright expulsion is gaining support. The debate about the
'demographic threat' is carried out in overtly racist terms. In summer 2001,
Haifa University professor Arnon Sofer, renewed Israeli anxieties about the
fertility of Palestinian women with a study predicting that by 2020 non-Jews will
be a majority west of the Jordan River. 'Some Israelis say,' according to The
Chicago Tribune, 'that ticking below the surface of the violent confrontation
between Arab and Jew is a silent bomb, a demographic bomb.' Their solution is
to adopt a 'Chinese rule' limiting the number of children Palestinians are
allowed to have. ('Birthrates alarm Israel,' Chicago Tribune, April 21, 2002)
While lamenting that only the Moledet party, founded by the assassinated
Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi, openly advocates expulsion, the
Gamla paper takes heart that recent opinion polls in Israel put support for
some form of 'transfer' at 46% and in some cases 60% depending on how the
question is posed.
According to Professor Majid Al-Haj of Haifa University, the struggle of
Palestinian citizens of Israel is no longer primarily about achieving equality with
Jews within Israeli society, but has reverted to a more basic struggle simply to
remain in their homeland against a rising tide of pro-transfer sentiment being
freely expressed in Israeli Jewish society. Al-Haj, one of the few true Arab
experts on Israeli society, speaking recently at the Jordan University Center for
Strategic Studies, cited as an example the infamous conference in the Israeli
town of Herzliya in November 2000, just months into the Intifada. At that
meeting, more than three hundred prominent Israeli intellectuals, former and
sitting generals and politicians, former prime ministers, and Israel's past and
sitting president openly discussed ideas including 'exchanges of population,'
limiting the democratic rights of Palestinian citizens, forcing Palestinian citizens
to sign a document recognizing Israel as a Jewish state as a condition of
retaining their citizenship, and the primacy of Israel's 'Jewish' over its
'democratic' character.
The transfer idea is gaining ground because the common conception that Jews
should live separately from everyone else provides room for it to flourish.
Today there are almost no Jewish voices in Israel calling for Palestinian-Israeli
coexistence on the basis of full equality regardless of religion or ethnic
affiliation. One of Israel's leading lights on the left, novelist A.B. Yehoshua,
while not supporting transfer, regards co-existence between Palestinians and
Israelis as a thing to behold with horror. 'Two people in one state,' Yehoshua
warned, 'is a threat to our existence. Anyway, we did not come to Israel to live
in a bi-national state, but in a Jewish state.' ('Israel is losing the demographic
race,' Israeltoday.co.il) This view is typical of the Israeli left, the vast majority
of which only supports some form of Palestinian statehood as a mechanism to
preserve Jewish primacy. While in most countries that practice it, democracy is
understood as a mechanism to protect minorities from the tyranny of the
majority, among Israeli liberals democracy is only valuable as a tool to
maintain the tyranny of a Jewish majority over a Palestinian minority without
the embarrassment of having to adopt formal apartheid or advocate ethnic
cleansing. We must be clear that the concern for maintaining a Jewish majority
is about preserving power and privilege, not about protecting cultural identity,
heritage and religious practice. Those can be much better protected, and
enhanced in a multi-ethnic society where freedom of religion, speech and
association are guaranteed to all. At least that is what good Americans are
brought up to believe.
The 'demographic threat' comes not only from Muslim Palestinians, but also
from Christians. Last June Haaretz reported that Dr. Asher Cohen of Bar-Ilan
University had discovered that already Israel's Jewish majority is 'only' seventy
two percent, far less than the eighty one percent claimed by official figures.
This difference is accounted for by the high rate and relative ease of
assimilation of Christians from the former Soviet Union and guest-workers into
Israeli society, something that in most other countries claiming to be liberal
democracies would be seen as a desirable trend. In response to Cohen's
findings Israel's Interior Minister Eli Yishai declared that 'Clearly it's impossible
to bar the arrival of couples in which one of the members is Jewish, but we
should see to it that families that are completely Christian do not come here
--including people who go to church on a regular basis.' ('Demographic
balancing acts,' Haaretz, June 13, 2002)
This anti-Christian war cry was recently taken up by Israel's Sephardi Chief
Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron and his Ashkenazi counterpart Rabbi Israel Meir
Lau, who warned that 'seventy percent of the new immigrants to Israel are
professed non-Jews, with no connection to Judaism.' In a joint statement, the
two clerics concluded, 'We cannot continue to bring entire Christian families to
Israel.' (Chief rabbis call for revision to be made in Law of Return,' Haaretz,
August 25, 2002)
The view that non-Jews, including the indigenous Palestinians, are a mortal
threat, a cancer, a bomb to be defused, echoes precisely the language of
racists and ethno-nationalists everywhere. Only the claim of Israeli
exceptionalism, and misuse of the memory of the Nazi holocaust, has
protected Israel from the censure it deserves for allowing such views to flourish.
The sheer breath-taking hypocrisy is encapsulated by the Israeli government
with Moledet ethnic cleansing advocates amongst its ranks condemning
European countries like France and Austria for allowing racist parties to grow too
powerful.
A few years ago it would have been easy to dismiss the Gamla document as
the work of marginal extremists. But in today's Israel, where
pro-ethnic-cleansing ministers sit in the cabinet, and even those who would not
support transfer are opposed to co-existence and equality, it is a worrying sign.
Most of the brutal measures Israel carries out today with nary a word of concern
from the outside world would have been unthinkable two years ago, including
the mass starvation of millions of besieged Palestinians. It would not be
surprising to see some of the measures proposed in the expulsion manifesto
adopted piecemeal as Israel's swing to the far right continues unchecked.
The Gamla document is notable not because it raises ideas that no one else in
Israel is talking about, but rather because it tries to take a generalized and
growing clamor for transfer to the next level -- detailed formulation of a specific
program for the expulsion of the Palestinians around which political support and
action can be organized. Extremists such as Gamla are closely tied with
'mainstream' politicians, and by running ahead of them can test the waters and
introduce ideas that the mainstream is not yet ready to fully embrace.
It may not even be necessary for a majority of Israelis to support expulsion for
it to be carried out since the settler movement -- from which Gamla emerges --
has managed to wield disproportionate influence on all Israeli governments,
especially that of Sharon. For example, while polls show that the majority of
Israelis are in favor of removing settlements in the occupied territories, the
settlements continue to grow, absorbing a disproportionate chunk of Israel's
budget even while unemployment and poverty within Israel itself are spiraling.
Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is waiting in the wings for
Sharon to fall, has mortgaged himself even more to these elements.
The expulsion plan's author may not be entirely deluded either, when he banks
on American support. Last May, Dick Armey the most senior Republican in the
United States Congress openly advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
on MSNBC's Hardball, while the usually bland USA Today newspaper published a
February op-ed by one Emanuel Winston calling for the 'resettling' of the
Palestinians in Jordan. Neither of these calls elicited the slightest protest from
mainstream commentators and politicians in the United States. As extreme as
President Bush's support for Israel has become, it appears moderate next to
that of so-called Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who stated recently
that Israel should be able to keep the 'so-called occupied territories' because
it won them fair and square in a war. When Hillary Clinton, New York's 'liberal'
Senator, visited Israel earlier this year, she was hosted by and warmly
embraced Benny Elon, the leader of the Moledet ethnic cleansing party.
The Sharon government's egging on of the United States to bring forward its
attack on Iraq cannot be motivated solely by fear of Iraqi 'weapons of mass
destruction,' since Israeli intelligence assessments downplay the actual threat
from the devastated Iraqi armed forces. It may not be far-fetched to speculate
that some within Israel would see a regional war as the only opportunity to carry
out a round of expulsions, and delay the day when the 'demographic bomb'
explodes.
Theodor Herzl, writing Zionism's founding tract, 'The Jewish State' recognized
that his dream of taking over Palestine could not be fulfilled without transfer.
Herzl famously declared 'We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population
across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while
denying it employment in our country.' Recent scholarship by Israelis and
others, and fifty four years of the lived reality of Palestinians bear
uncontestable witness to the fact that mass expulsion has always been part of
Israel's strategy and practice. Whether it will become so again is anybody's
guess, but the warning signs are there to be heeded.
Ali Abunimah
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