May 16, 2006
"Iman
was not the only one. Mohammed Aaraj was eating a sandwich in front of
his house, the last house before the cemetery of the Balata refugee
camp, in Nablus, when a soldier shot him to death at fairly close
range. He was six at the time of his death. Kristen Saada was in her
parents’ car, on the way home from a family visit, when soldiers
sprayed the car with bullets. She was 12 at the time of her death. The
brothers Jamil and Ahmed Abu Aziz were riding their bicycles in full
daylight, on their way to buy sweets, when they sustained a direct hit
from a shell fired by an Israeli tank crew. Jamil was 13, Ahmed six, at
the time of their deaths". [1]
Israel’s-state
violence has the advantage to be condone by Western (US and EU)
governments and ignored or distorted by all mainstream media. Yet,
Palestinian self-defence and miniscule retaliations, including
resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation is magnified and condemned as
"terrorism".
To show who has the uncontested monopoly on violence, a comparison
of the situation on the ground is necessary. According to the
International Middle East Media Centre (IMEMC), the month of April has
been the bloodiest month since August 2005. The Israeli Occupation
Forces (IOF) murdered 36 Palestinian civilians, including three
children in the West Bank and Gaza; more than 300 Palestinian civilians
were arrested. Since last January, the IOF killed more than 50
Palestinians, including several children in cold blood and wounded
many. Indeed, "over 22 times more Palestinian children were killed [by
Israelis soldiers] than Israeli children [killed by Palestinians]" [2]. According to Israeli human-rights group B'Tselem,
since autumn 2000, the number of Israelis killed by Palestinians has
totalled 998 and the number of Palestinians killed by Israelis has
totalled 3,466.
In addition, Palestinians are portrayed as cold-blooded suicide bombers by the Western media around the world in order to distort the facts and
depict Palestinian self-defence as "terrorism", while avoid associating
Israel’s greater crimes against the Palestinian civilians with
terrorism. This distortion of facts has concealed and covered Israeli
crimes against the Palestinian people and Israel’s serious threat to
peace in the region.
In
the West, the US in particular, Israel is portrayed as the victim of
terrorism not the perpetuator of terrorism. Many of the Palestinian
attacks were Resistance operations against Israeli soldiers and
involved no suicides at all. Suicide bombing is used as a form of
desperate retaliation. Other attacks were with harmless home-made
rockets (the Qassam Rockets). Israeli strikes were with U.S.-made F16
and thousands of bombs dropped on towns and villages indiscriminately
killing innocent Palestinian civilians. Everyday, Israeli Occupation
forces kill Palestinians, demolished their houses steal their land and
increase the size of the "Jewish-only state" with tacit support of
Western governments. Israel is not fighting terrorism; Israel is the mother of all acts of terrorism.
Resistance
by 'all means available’ is legitimate right of self-defence enshrined
in the right of people aspiring for liberation and national
independence. In other words, the Palestinian resistance against
Israel’s daily terror is legitimate resistance. The Israeli are the
aggressors and the occupiers, and they have no right to terrorise the
defenceless Palestinian population. For nearly forty years,
Palestinians have been living under Israel’s brutal occupation. It is
the longest and most brutal military occupation in history. Israel can
end the violence by simply ending the occupation and removing the
illegal colonies (settlements) from Palestinian land.
In
addition to Israel’s daily terror against the Palestinians, Israel
forces continue to annex more Palestinian land and water resources. The
Jordan
Valley (30% of the West Bank), the most fertile land in the West Bank
with massive underground water reserves is now almost entirely annexed
by Israel. Unfortunately, Western governments remain mute while the new
Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has openly declared that he wants
to annex the Jordan Valley and make it part of Israel. The Palestinians
are resisting the violent occupation and the theft of their land. The
Arab rulers should be shamed for their passivity to Zionism expansion
and crimes against the Palestinian people.
In
a recent visit to the Palestinian Occupied Territories, Chris Davies, a
North West representative who is leader of the British Liberal
Democrats in the European Parliament, said that he had been shocked by
what he had seen in Palestine. He told the Oldham Evening Chronicle
(18 April 2006) that the; "Hopes of creating a viable, independent
Palestinian state are being destroyed on the ground by Israeli
bulldozers, barbed wire and concrete walls". He continues; "Palestinian
land is being carved up and communities isolated. The people compare
themselves to hamsters kept in cages connected by tubes that are opened
and shut at the whim of their Israeli masters. Economic progress is
impossible. Towns are being physically divided and people denied the
right to travel between them. Israel continues to steal land to expand
illegal settlements served by roads that Palestinians are forbidden to
use". Davies added; "We should be honest. These are the racist policies
of apartheid yet Israel continues to pose as a victim …. I visited
Auschwitz last year, and it is very difficult to understand why those
whose history is one of such terrible oppression appear not to care
that they have themselves become oppressors" by pursuing an analogous
holocaust, the Palestinian Holocaust. It is nearly forty years of
illegal occupation and colonisation of the Palestinian people. The
entire Palestinian population are imprisoned and at mercy of Israel’s
daily terror.
Although many people are happy to equate Israel with Judaism, it
is now widely acknowledged that Israel is committing gross crimes
against the Palestinians and Jews around the world are unhappy to
associate Judaism with Israel’s crimes. They feel associating Judaism
or Jews with the crimes of Israel is bad for Jews. However, one has to
ask who are the Israelis? Aren’t Israelis Jews? Isn’t Israel strife to
be a "Jewish-only state"? All Israeli leaders have publicly stated that
what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, is doing it for all Jews.
The
propaganda is design to obfuscate and blame the crimes on some phantom.
Israel is considered by most Jews as the new "home" for Jews. The
majority of Israeli Jews and Jews around the world are in favour of the
expulsion (ethnic cleansing) of all Palestinians from their homeland.
It is true that there are few progressive Jews who support the
Palestinians, but those are marginalised and depicted as "self-hating
Jews". Criticising Israel’s brutal policies in Palestine and its crimes
against the Palestinian people can lead to serious consequences.
Journalists, academics and 'liberal’ politicians are afraid and do all
possible to avoid showing sympathy toward the Palestinian people.
Defending Palestinian rights is like criticising Israel. Anyone who dares defending Palestinian rights is accused of "anti-Semitism". It is a political suicide.
The
recent elections in Palestine are an opportunity for peace and
recognition. Instead, Western governments not only condemn and reject
the democratically elected Hamas Government they have also imposed
inhumane and deadly "collective punishments" on the entire Palestinian
civilian population. In addition to the Israeli blockades, Western
governments have cut aid to the Palestinians. The Dutch foreign
minister Ben Bot cowardly announced
that: "The Palestinian people have opted for this government, so they
will have to bear the consequences". The EU demands that the
Palestinian victims bear responsibility for the crimes committed
against them by the Israeli forces. The democracy that the West
continues to use as political tool turned out to be the precursor for
mass starvation.
It
should be noted that the same Western governments have ignored the
inclusion of the Shas Party in the newly formed Israeli Government. The
Shas Party ideology is built on Fascism ideology. It openly advocates
extreme violence against the Palestinians, and its main "policy" is the
ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from their land. It is clear that,
the aim of the US and the EU is to encourage more violence and more
misery.
According
to Sara Roy, a scholar on Middle East at Harvard University, the
restrictions imposed on the population of Gaza by Israeli forces
"resulted in unprecedented levels of unemployment of 35 to 40 per cent.
Some 65 to 75 per cent of Gazans are impoverished (compared to 30 per
cent in 2000); many are hungry". This was before Western governments
imposed their deadly "collective punishment" on the Palestinian people
as a result of exercising their democratic right. The World Bank said
that the humanitarian crisis among Palestinians is worsening. The Bank
gave a conservative estimate in March that poverty and unemployment
levels among the Palestinian population would rise to 67 percent and 40
per cent respectively. Palestinian personal incomes would drop by
30 per cent, according to the Bank.
The
consequence of putting pressure on Hamas and denying the Palestinian
people their democratic right is predictable. In 1992 the Algerian
military cancelled the democratic elections that the Front Islamique de Salut
(FIS) seemed likely to win. As a result, Algeria’s society was
torn apart by a violent war in which 200,000 people died, and more than
8,000 disappeared. [3]
Western governments were happy to call the decade-long violence "civil
war", and wash their hands from the crimes they encouraged in order to
kill democracy. Although Algeria was not occupied by a foreign army,
the current situation in Palestine has many similarities with the
situation in Algeria in the cancellation of democratic elections. It is
clear that Western governments have very little concern for human
rights and democracy.
In
a recent interview, Palestinian leader Khalid Mashal clarifies Hamas
demands for peace with Israel and pledged that Hams will recognise
Israel if Israel withdraw its forces from the Occupied Territories,
release all (about 10,000) Palestinian prisoners, and recognise the
rights of all Palestinians to return to their land. Earlier, the
newly elected Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya, said: "If
Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, then we will establish a peace in
stages. We will establish a situation of stability and calm, which will
bring safety for our people. We do not have any feelings of animosity
towards Jews. We do not wish to throw them into the sea. All we seek is
to be given our land back, not to harm anybody". The Palestinian made
the offer to recognise Israel, despite that Israel’s borders are not
set – Israel is a newly created expansionist state – and Israel
continues the illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
As usual, Israel
has dismissed Hamas offer as a non-starter because Israel is not
interested in peace and security, but in violence, conquest of
Palestinian land and Zionist expansion. Israel has a history of
rejecting of all peaceful solutions proposed by the Arabs and the
Palestinians. In contrast, Israel offered no peace. The so-called "Camp
David generous offer" was a fraud and designed to distort reality and
discredit the Palestinians. It was an orchestrated propaganda campaign
by Israel and supported by Israel Zionist backers. It
is not surprising that Barak's foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, who
was a key participant at Camp David, later admitted: "If I were a
Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David as well". Camp David was a
trap for the late Yasser Arafat to surrender Palestinian rights.
Finally,
many years ago, the Jewish sociologist and historian, Maxime Rodinson
wrote: "It is 1967. Israel should start looking for an agreement with
the Arabs from whom they took their land. Not with some fantasy Arab
people made just the way it would like them: miraculously converted to
Israeli ideas by the world’s pro-Zionist lobbying, or by moral
lecturing or readings in the Old Testament and the classics of Marxism
and Leninism, but with Arabs as they are: unwilling to accept the
uncompensated seizure of their lands. We may denounce the Arab
attitude, but that is just a waste of time".
In
1992 the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) recognised the State
of Israel at the time of the signing of the so-called "Oslo Peace
Accord". By contrast, the Israelis only recognised a Palestinian people
to be represented by the PLO, which was not the same as recognising
Palestinian statehood. Recognising Israel as an ethnic entity illegally
occupying Palestinian land is a Palestinian national suicide.
Hamas
should follow the principle of mutual recognition. Hamas should not
recognise Israel unless Israel recognises the rights of Palestinian
national independence, including the 'Rights of Return’. Hamas must
insist on the end to Israel’s Occupation of Palestinian land and
Israeli violence against the Palestinian people.
If
Israelis and Jews (collectively) want to live in peace and safety, they
have to choose between two options: either continue the illegal
occupation of Palestinian land, injustice and violence against the
Palestinian people, or renounce violence and pursue the path to
peaceful coexistence.
Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia.
Endnotes:
[1] Gideon Levy, "Killing Children is no longer a big deal", Ha’aretz, 17 October 2004.
[2] Alison Weir, Deadly Distortion, 31 December 2004
[3] Wendy Kristianasen, "Algeria: the women speak", Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2006.
© Copyright 2006 by AxisofLogic.com
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