peacepalestine

At the left, Ms Hass when interviewed recently in Italy.

The fall of the Rafah wall was a fitting combination of planning and the precise reading of the social and political map by the Hamas government, mixed with a mass response to the dictates of the overlord, Israel.

Quite a few people in Rafah knew that "anonymous figures" had secretly been destabilizing the foundations of the wall for several months, so that it would be possible to knock it down easily when the time came - but the secret didn't leak. The hundreds of people who began leaving Palestinian Rafah right after the wall was breached did so despite the risk, and the precedent of the Egyptians shooting at those who infiltrate through the border.

The leadership and public of Gaza, as two elements of the occupied people, were partners in the courageous and necessary step of breaking the Israeli rules of the game. The breach of the wall is a clear manifestation of the conception and temperament of a popular resistance among the Palestinian people, which for various reasons, were dormant in recent years.

The Palestine Liberation Organization is concerned, and rightly so, that the collapse of the wall will provide Israel with an additional excuse to finalize the separation of Gaza from the West Bank. There is nothing new in this tendency: The Israeli siege of Gaza has been developing radually and persistently since 1991, and intensified during the Oslo years. But the PLO leadership then did not have the necessary creativity to lay down in time a practical challenge to Israel's consistent, destructive and strangling policy of restricting Palestinian freedom of movement.

No wonder. Then, like today, Israel worked to heap privileges on senior Palestinian Authority officials and their associates, granting them some freedom of movement. The officials publicly condemned the restrictions on the movement of the general public, while submissively accepting their privileges. Therefore, their political imagination was unable to provide practical plans of action against the separation of Gaza from the West Bank, and against the reality of incarceration faced by the majority of their people.

The chance of using the achievement of having breached the wall as a way of moving forward and developing the tactics of a popular struggle is hampered by two primary obstacles. One is what's called the "armed struggle" - such as rocket fire from Gaza targeting Israeli towns, or a suicide bombing in Israel. The Palestinian mantra that an occupied nation has the right "to fight using all means" rings hollow, since what's at stake is not a right, but the effectiveness of the struggle.

It has been proven that through popular disobedience, the Palestinians manage to break the Israeli rules of the game and bring their concerns back to the centre of global attention - as well as intensifying criticism of Israel. The "armed struggle," especially when it is aimed at civilians, achieves the opposite: It presents the Palestinians as the aggressor, not as the occupied party under attack, thereby weakening their global standing.

If the Gaza government does not want to lose the momentum of the wall's fall, it must not make do with just having its own militants desist from firing Qassams: it must make it clear to other organizations that they are hindering a successful move of resistance.
The second obstacle is the Ramallah government's entrenched refusal to speak with Hamas. These are, after all, two quasi governments whose legality is questionable from the perspective of the Palestinian Authority's basic law. But both represent the same occupied people and the same tract of land subject to an accelerated process of colonization - and that overcomes all legal quibbling. Mahmoud Abbas met with Ehud Olmert without preconditions during the same weekend when Israel imposed the cruelest siege yet on Gaza, but Abbas can't speak to Ismail Haniyeh without the Hamas leader accepting his preconditions?

This boycott contributes to the severance that Israel works so diligently to intensify. The longer the delay in direct talks between the two leaderships over practical ways of lifting the siege of Gaza, the greater the concern that indeed, as Hamas officials argue, the Ramallah government listens to the United States and to Israel - but not to the will of its own people.
from http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/949361.html

Labels: Gaza, Israel, journalism, occupation, Palestine, Palestinian politicians, somoud, Wall

Infopalestina writes:
Rafah. A great victory of the Palestinian people. That cursed wall has been broken. The Palestinian people have demonstrated, once again, to never be resigned to their fate or defeated. No one can close them in a cage or a prison. The struggle of the Palestinians deserves all of our support, all of our respect and the trust that they merit.

Rafah. Una grande vittoria del popolo palestinese
Quel maledetto muro è stato rotto. Il popolo palestinese ha dimostrato, ancora una volta, di non essere mai rassegnato nè sconfitto. Nessuno può chiuderlo dentro una gabbia o una prigione. La lotta dei palestinesi merita ancora tutto il sostegno, il rispetto e la fiducia che gli sono dovuti

VEDI FOTO CLICCANDO QUI

Domenica 3 febbraio, ore 10.30 riunione nazionale
della Campagna "2008 anno della Palestina"
Roma, via Giolitti 231

info: www.forumpalestina.org

Labels: Arab countries, Gaza, good news, human rights violations, occupation, Palestine, somoud, Wall

Illustration “The Memory of Land” by Juan Kalvellido for Tlaxcala and Peacepalestine

Zionism is a total disaster. It is a colonial, expansionist, nationalist philosophy based on racial chauvinism. Those who take its precepts to the letter have been robbing the land of the indigenous Palestinian people in the name of the Jewish people. It is regarded by many of us as a major threat to world peace. Its devoted supportive lobbies around the world call for more and more bloodshed in the name of ‘liberalism’, ‘democracy’, 'freedom’ and even in the name of the ‘Judeo-Christian’ alliance. Yet, Zionism, and we better admit it, has managed to do something that even God has failed to do: it united the Jews. Zionism has become the Jewish symbolic identifier.

In a recent paper of mine, The Politics Of Anti-Semitism, I explored the role of Zionism as the cultural identifier of the contemporary Diaspora Jew. I argued that Zionism has managed to win its ideological foes by offering a transparent collective structural set of symbolic identifiers. Rather than ideology and politics, it was a Zionist fetish and Hebraic paraphernalia that made Zionism into a success story. Accordingly, it established a language (Hebrew), it provided the Jew with a concrete geographical orientation (Eretz Israel), it conveyed an image of a culture (the new Hebraic folklore), it even managed to present a false image of political and ethical polarity (left and right). If the founders of Zionism set about to save the Diaspora Jew from his anomalous condition, we then have to confess that it has fulfilled its mission. Zionism’s success has nothing to do with its ideology, politics or even with its devastating practices. Clearly, not many Jews understand what Zionism stands for (ideologically, politically, ethically and practically). Not many Diaspora Jews openly succumb to the Zionist school of thought nor to its non-ethical praxis. Instead, they subscribe to ‘Israeli folklore’, the odd Hebrew word, the falafel and the humus which they mistakenly identify with Israel (rather than Palestine). They sing along to Israeli music whether it is Hava Nagila, Yafa Yarkoni or Yeuda Poliker. For those who fail to see it, ‘Israeli culture’ is a direct product of the Zionist project. Clearly, modern Hebraic culture has managed to hijack the world of Jewish symbolism. Zionism established a new form of Jewish tribal belonging.

Yet, as much as Zionism conveys a cultural success story within the Jewish Diaspora discourse, it is rather meaningless as far as Israelis are concerned. The Tzabar, native-born Israeli Jew, does not benefit at all from Zionism being a structural set of symbolic identifiers. In fact, the Tzabar doesn’t need to identify with any symbolic structure based on geographical aspiration. He or she is born into a self-sufficient brand i.e., Israeliness. Similarly, the Tzabars do not need the Hebrew language as a means of identification, they use it as a means of communication. Nor does the Tzabar need a geographical orientation, he or she is orientated by birth. The Tzabar doesn’t even subscribe to Israeli folklore, in fact, most Israelis can’t stand Israeli folklore and they by far prefer foreign pop, rock, Turkish and Greek music and even some wild free jazz.

As funny as it may sound, that which is taken by the Diaspora Jew as a structural symbolic identifier, i.e., the Hebraic fetish, means very little to the Israelis. By the same token, as much as the Diaspora Jew subscribes to ‘Israeliness’, that very ‘Israeliness’ means very little to the Israelis. This shouldn’t take us very much by surprise: the notion of ‘Americanism’ means far more to non-Americans than it does to Americans. Similarly, the tendency to drop the odd French word, a habit that is apparently so common amongst British or American pseudo-intellectuals, is a reflection of a similar fetish. ‘Frenchness’ attributes very unique meaning to those who know only very little about France. Yet, not a single French person thinks that speaking French is something astonishingly clever. Likewise, the Diaspora Jew may use the odd Hebrew word to ascertain his tribal belonging, however, it would take more than just a single Hebrew word for the Israelis to feel at home on a stolen land, namely Palestine.

Memory and Nostalgia

"I am a human being, I am a Jew and I am an Israeli. Zionism was an instrument to move me from the Jewish state of being to the Israeli state of being. I think it was Ben-Gurion who said that the Zionist movement was the scaffolding to build the home, and that after the state's establishment it should be dismantled." Ari Shavit’s interview with Avrum Burg Interview: Leaving the Zionist Ghetto, Haaretz.
What is left for the Tzabar to identify with? Not much, so it seems: the land on which he lives belongs to some other people. The food which makes him feel at home (humus and falafel) is hijacked from those same other people, i.e., the Palestinians. The language which he employs when he is emotionally moved (either very happy or very angry) is Arabic and it is borrowed again from - guess who? - the very same ‘other people’, the Palestinians. The home in which he dwells was built by those other people…I think you know who they are, yes, the Palestinians.

It is rather apparent that the core of the Hebraic cultural realty, the slang, the food, the blue sky, the sea, the desert, the spring and the autumn, the hills and the valleys, the olive trees… all belong to the land (Palestine) rather than the swelling apartheid State that seized it momentarily (Israel).

What could the Israelis do to escape their fragmented unauthentic reality in which everything that may look like ‘home’ actually belongs to those ‘other people’?

Those who visit Israel learn the answer just a few minutes after they land in Tel Aviv: cosmopolitanism and Western liberal glamour is the Israeli answer. The Israelis deal with their hopeless craving for authenticity by multiplying the symptoms of their inherent detachment.

New visitors to Tel Aviv are occasionally astonished by the cultural multiple choice the town is there to offer. Tel Aviv is indeed one of the most ‘open’ cities in the world. You can find every Western fashion brand and American food chain there. Every rock star and pop act integrates Israel into its world tour schedule. In some of Tel Aviv’s leading restaurants you can have Sushi for a starter, Hungarian Goulash as a secondo, French entrecote for the main course and Baklava for desert. I learned recently that Tel Aviv is not only a ‘sex attraction’ but as well the next “gay capital of the world”. This is indeed very encouraging to learn that in between the humus and the falafel the Tzabar can grab a sashimi and indulge in some highly advanced socio-erotic activity according to his very personal choice. This may as well be the ultimate form of freedom that the ‘Jews-only State’ can offer: cosmopolitanism soaked in some advanced Western libidinal liberalism.

Yet, Israel, the libidinal, liberal, ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ is engaged as well in some very different sinister practices. In spite of the Israelis embodying the ultimate manifestation of Western broadmindedness, in spite of their ‘culinary openness’, they are also starving millions of human beings to death, namely the Palestinian people. In spite of the fact that the Israelis invested some real effort into turning Tel Aviv, their cultural capital, into a ‘town with no boundaries’, Gaza City is a now a boundary with no town. It is a huge concentration camp, held back by repeated curfews and shattered by constant artillery barrages and military raids. Israel has turned Palestinian towns into large urban prisons that are surrounded by barbed wire, watchtowers and guard posts.

We are left to ask ourselves, how is it that the people who are so immersed in ‘cosmopolitanism’, ‘multi-culturalism’ and Western liberal ideology are so sinister towards the indigenous population of the land? How should we fit the exclusive inclination towards segregation reflected by a gigantic apartheid wall together with the liberal self-image peppered with ‘culinary openness’? How do we fit the devious tactics employed against the Palestinians together with the poetic Israeli self-image of being an enlightened humanist nation? How do we fit the ‘Israeli Shalom seeking’ together with ‘security walls’?

We may have to admit that we are dealing here with a severe form of fragmentation that is on the verge of collective Schizophrenia. I would argue that here we are confronting an inevitable collision between ‘Memory’ and ‘Nostalgia’.

Memory is realised as the ability to store, retain and retrieve information. Memory refers to the factual recognised past and its actual interpretation. Nostalgia, on the other hand, is the wish of returning to the ‘native land’. Nostalgia is usually accompanied by the fear of never seeing it again. To a certain extent, Nostalgia is the yearning for the unfulfilled past.

The clash between Memory and Nostalgia is of the essence of the Israeli fragmented reality. The Tzabar is torn between the inclination to see himself as the protagonist in the serial episode of “Sex and the City”, as much as his memory takes him to his last visit to London, Paris, New York and Tokyo. Nostalgically, he is back in the Ghetto, surrounded by ‘security walls’ and soaked in chicken soup.

The yearning for the Ghetto could be explored in what the Israelis regard as ‘Shalom seeking’. Though Shalom is often translated into ‘peace’, it has almost nothing in common with peace. When Israelis talk about ‘Shalom’ they do not refer to reconciliation, harmony or the transformation of their society into an ecumenical community based on universal values. When Israelis seek ‘Shalom’ what they mean is (their) ‘security’. This is why Israelis and their supporters in the West interpret ‘unilateral disengagement’ as a ‘Shalom seeking’ move. While peace refers to the genuine search for love, harmony and brotherhood, Shalom means pretty much the opposite: separation and segregation. While peace means coming out of one’s shell and opening one’s heart to one’s neighbour, Shalom means the erection of a ‘security fence’ and the emergence of some deep collective loathing towards the rest of the universe.

Yet, this bizarre Hebraic interpretation of the notion of Shalom is far from being an Israeli creation. As I mentioned before, Shalom expresses the nostalgic yearning for the European Ghetto.

Already in 1897, in his famous speech to the First Zionist Congress, Max Nordau conveyed some real explicit longing for the ‘long lost Ghetto’:

“The Ghetto…was for the Jew of the past not a prison, but a refuge. …In the Ghetto, the Jew had his own world; it was to him the sure refuge which had for him the spiritual and moral value of a parental home. Here were associates by whom one wished to be valued, and also could be valued; here was the public opinion to be acknowledged by which was the aim of the Jew's ambition….Here all specific Jewish qualities were esteemed, and through their special development that admiration was to be obtained which is the sharpest spur to the human mind. ….The opinion of the outside world had no influence, because it was the opinion of ignorant enemies. One tried to please one's co-religionists, and their applause was the worthy contentment of his life. So did the Ghetto Jews live, in a moral respect, in a real full life. Their external situation was insecure, often seriously endangered. But internally they achieved a complete development of their specific qualities. They were human beings in harmony, who were not in want of the elements of normal social life. They also felt instinctively the whole importance of the Ghetto for their inner life, and therefore, they had the one sole care: to make its existence secure through invisible walls which were much thicker and higher than the stone walls that visibly shut them in. All Jewish buildings and habits unconsciously pursued only one purpose: to keep up Judaism by separation from the other people and to make the individual Jew constantly aware of the fact that he was lost and would perish if he gave up his specific character.”

Clearly, this old speech expresses the current Israeli innermost desire.

For the Israeli, living within ‘security walls’ is “not a prison, but a refuge”. …In Israel, the Tzabar has “his own world”. In Israel, the opinion of the “outside world” has “no influence”, because it is the “opinion of ignorant enemies”. Nordau expresses the exact spirit that led Ben-Gurion half a century later to say “It doesn’t matter what the Gentiles say, what matters is what the Jews do.”

In his speech, Nordau speaks about the spiritual asset of the Ghetto, which makes Jew feel “secure through invisible walls which were much thicker and higher than the stone walls that visibly shut them in.” May I suggest here that it is this very insight that explains the astonishing physical measures of the Israeli ‘apartheid wall’? Yet, while Nordau referrers to ‘invisible’ walls, the Israeli ‘defence wall’ is rather visible and it is made out of grey reinforced concrete.

As much as the Israeli craves celebrating his imaginary cosmopolitan liberal reality, as much as he wants to enjoy sex in a big city by recalling his short-term memory, the nostalgic yearning drops him back into a bowl of steaming ‘chicken soup’ in a very small Shtetl. He is longing for a ‘secure’ Jewish life and it is this yearning that transforms the ‘Jews-only State’ into an inflammatory Ghetto. Yet, unlike the old European Ghetto, where Jews were rather timid, our contemporary Israeli Shtetl is a belligerent, expansionist, nuclear superpower.

We may also have to admit that the Tzabar has failed to generate a homogeneous reality in which a new civilized being is reclaiming his place in humanity based on harmony and peace. As much as Zionism was there to create a new authentic Jew, it led to the emergence of a commune of fragmented beings shattered by the inevitable collision between the short-term cosmopolitan memory and the tribal clannish nostalgia.

The Tzabar and the Sabbar

A friend who returned from Palestine a few weeks ago was kind enough to share his impressions with me. On his journey from Jerusalem to Ramallah he noticed that the Israelis invested some real effort into turning the Israeli side the wall into an ‘architectural feature’. In places it was largely tiled and decorated with Jerusalem stone and with flowers, in other parts artists created some pastoral imagery of landscapes, lakes and olive trees. The Israelis also raised the ground near to the wall on their side just to make the wall look smaller and friendly. However, once my friend crossed the checkpoint towards the Palestinian side, the full disturbing physical scale of the wall was impossible to ignore. He saw a gigantic grey concrete wall measuring eight to ten meters high now invading the skyline of what is left of Palestine.

I thought about it for a while. I basically reflected about Nordau’s notion of the Ghetto and his duality between ‘prison’ and ‘refuge’. And I grasped that as much as the Israelis are inclined to lock the Palestinians behind walls, the Israeli apartheid wall was also nothing less than a self-inflicted imprisonment that the Jewish State imposed upon itself. Within the Zio-centric discourse set by Nordau: prison equals refuge.

Consequently, the Tzabar is nothing less than a tragedy. He was doomed to failure. The Tzabar was there to erect the new Hebraic Ghetto, he was there to repair the trauma of abandonment of the old Jewish Ghetto which was a result of European enlightenment and the trend towards Jewish emancipation. The Tzabar was set to become a new ‘civilized being’. Indeed mission impossible, it aimed simultaneously towards two polar opposites: universalism as well hardcore tribalism. Apparently, the seeds of the Israeli apartheid and the foundations of the ‘security wall’ were established already in the First Zionist Congress.

However, as much as the Tzabar exposes himself as an aggressor and as a self-inflicted historical tragic entity, it is pretty clear that not many people fully understand the conceptual and ideological depth behind that deeply charged word, namely Tzabar. The Hebrew word tzabar is derived from the Arabic word Sabbar, which is the name for the "prickly pear" cactus that is scattered all over rural Palestine. The allusion is to a tenacious, thorny desert plant with a thick hide that conceals a sweet, softer juicy and tasty interior. Israeli-born Jews who call themselves Tzabars are there to insist upon regarding themselves as ‘tough on the outside, yet sweet and tender on the inside’.

The Memory of Land

This very image of the Israeli native Jew as a duality between ‘toughness’ and ‘sweetness’ is now reflected in the topography of the region. The prickly walls that shred Palestine into Bantustans are there to protect the sweet juicy image of ‘cosmopolitan’ Tel Aviv. Tragically, the landscape of shredded Palestine is now a reflection of the Tzabar self-image and an extension of his identity. Israeli aggression towards its neighbours together with self-proclaimed righteousness is nothing but a reflection of the ‘tough and the sweet’ fantasy.

Seemingly, Israelis insist upon regarding themselves as ‘sweet and juicy’. At the end of the day, self-loving has made it into the Jewish common stereotype more than a while ago (as opposed to self-hating, a quality that is attributed solely to the odd Jewish humanists and thinkers). Yet, out of Israel, some people share some serious doubts regarding the sweetness and the juiciness of the Israeli and the Tzabar. We have recently learned that Israeli ministers and IDF officers are now formally advised to refrain from making overseas journeys just to avoid arrests for crimes against humanity.

However, there is something that even the majority of the Tzabars don’t know. It is all about the symbolism of the cactus they are so happy to be called after. This very prickly pear cactus, actually symbolises the Israeli robbery of Palestine.

The Sabbar cactus is actually one of the last remnants of old Palestine on the ground. The Sabbar cactus grows in proximity to areas of human settlement, it is nourished by human waste. The Sabbar was an integral part of the Palestinian villages’ rustic landscape. It was an inherent part of the Palestinian life cycle. Though Israel has managed to erase the traces of the entirety of pre-1948 Palestinian villages and rural life, the Sabbars came back soon after. Wherever you see a cactus in this land, you are more than entitled to deduce that a Palestinian village, farm or a house had been wiped out. The Sabbars are indeed prickly. Yet, their spikes are pointing at the Tzabars who colonise the land and erased its history in the name of Jewish history.

For Palestine (the Land) and Palestinians (the People), the Sabbars are far from being nostalgia, they are subject to short memory and a lively present. They are there on the stolen land craving for the Palestinian Falahs who nourished them all throughout history. They are there on the land maintaining the history of the Palestinian villages. They are there loaded with fruit, awaiting Palestinian kids to come and grab their pears.

As much as the Tzabar proclaims to be ‘tough and sweet’, the Sabbar is there to depict the facts on the ground:

Palestine is a piece of Land, Israel and the Tzabar are just another passing moment in a phantasmic Jewish heroic phase. This phase is now entering its final stage and it will be coming to an end very soon.

The musician, writer and activist, Israeli-born Gilad Atzmon, lives permanently in Great Britain, where he defends the cause of the liberation of the Palestinian people. His most recent novel is My One and Only Love and his most recent recording is Refuge. His site is http://www.gilad.co.uk.

The illustrator of “The Memory of Land”, Spanish-born Juan Kalvellido is a member of Cubadebate, Rebelión and Tlaxcala. His site is http://www.kalvellido.net.

This article is also available on Tlaxcala in an Italian translation by Diego Traversa and a Spanish translation by Manuel Talens also on Rebelion.

SEE GILAD SPEAK ON MONDAY! http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2008/01/gilad-atzmon-event-doesnt-cave-in-just.html

Labels: Atzmon, Israel, jewish identity politics, occupation, Palestine, Tlaxcala, Wall, Zionism

Joharah Baker MIFTAH

There is a consistent thread, a pattern, which designs Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories. Any scrutinizing observer will notice how Israel first pitches an idea to the public – however preposterous – then allows the Palestinians and the international community to absorb it before putting it into action. This way, policies and measures are less shocking and seem more acceptable once the dust has been allowed to settle. We have all seen it time and time again.

When the Aqsa Intifada first broke out, there was no Qalandia or Huwwara checkpoint and there was no separation wall. Jerusalem, although technically closed off to the West Bank by ineffective and extremely liquid checkpoints, was more or less accessible to most Palestinians. Not that the situation was ideal for the Palestinians because if this were the case, there would never have been an Intifada. Still, there is a world of difference between the situation prior to September 29, 2000 and the present, this new reality creeping up on us like slow-growing cancer. Today, the tumor has grown to exponential proportions and will be extremely difficult to excise.

Early on, in March 2001, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proposed a 100-day plan for quelling the Palestinian uprising, which included a labyrinth of checkpoints throughout the West Bank, curfews, military operations and the isolation of the Gaza Strip. A crude makeshift checkpoint at Qalandiya went up almost immediately, foreshadowing the ominous structure that was to come.

That checkpoint is a mere shadow of what it is today, with its elaborate terminals, holding rooms, turnstiles and Israeli soldiers. Qalandiya has become a landmark, one that is no longer even called a checkpoint – it is now a “border crossing” between the West Bank and Jerusalem. There are similar checkpoints throughout the West Bank, in all totaling over 500. Israel, with its baby steps and smokescreen pretexts, yet again succeeded in creating major facts on the ground.

The same can be said for the separation wall, which is now a hideously permanent fixture in the Palestinian territories. The Palestinians and later, much of the international community were up in arms at the racist idea of a separation wall. It was not that long ago when the world brought down the last wall built for similar purposes. Who would have fathomed that the Berlin Wall would be torn down only to rise from its ashes here in Palestine?

Protests ensued, both on the ground and in international tribunals. The International Court of Justice in The Hague even issued an advisory opinion deeming the wall illegal and recommending that it be dismantled. Today, not only has it remained, the Israeli government has changed its course in a way that, when completed, it would have cut into 40 percent of West Bank land. In the end, the wall, ostensibly constructed for Israel’s “security” against potential Palestinian suicide bombers, serves as a de facto border between Israel and the West Bank and will certainly be instrumental in designating any permanent borders in a final settlement with the Palestinians.

Then of course, there is the heart of the conflict, Jerusalem. For the Palestinians, no other spot on this earth can invoke such passionate emotions, or such fierce loyalty and patriotism than this holy city. Unfortunately, Israel insists it has the “holier” claim to Jerusalem and will in no way relinquish control over it.

According to agreements signed between Israel and the PLO, neither side – in this case Israel – should take any unilateral steps in Jerusalem that might compromise final status negotiations once that time comes. Yet again, Israel is way ahead of the game, taking baby steps before going in for the kill.

It is no secret that Israel is not interested in dividing Jerusalem or allowing the Palestinians to claim any part of it as their future capital. However, east Jerusalem remains occupied territory and Israel’s unilateral annexation of it has yet to be officially recognized by the world community. In order for any agreement to be a win-win situation for Israel, over the years it has taken unilateral steps in the city – settlement expansion and constructing the wall around Jerusalem – to ensure that Jerusalem remains in its hands in any final settlement, even if some areas – unimportant to Israel – are returned to the Palestinians.

Hence, according to this logic, it is no coincidence that just days before US Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice arrives in the area and a mere month before the long-awaited Washington peace summit, Israel announced the confiscation of 1,100 dunams of land from east Jerusalem villages. The land was supposedly confiscated to construct a road connecting Jerusalem to Jericho for the Palestinians. However, the real intention of the confiscation is to grab more Palestinian land in Jerusalem to build even more houses in the already mammoth settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim. Lo and behold, more unilateral facts on the ground.

This is all part of the so-called E1 plan for Jerusalem, which is designed to expand this settlement bloc and cut off Jerusalem completely from the northern West Bank. When the plan was first announced in 2004, Israel came against resistance from the United States and the plan was temporarily scratched. However, Israeli officials now maintain the new Jerusalem-Jericho road would create contiguity between Palestinian areas in Jerusalem and the West Bank, thus nullifying the former claim that it would sever the capital from the West Bank. Even if this were true in the strictest of technical senses, the fact remains that Israel is continuing its plan to expand the Jewish areas of Jerusalem while pushing out as many Palestinians as possible. Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land are deemed illegitimate by international law, partially because they are built on illegally expropriated Palestinian land.

Still, Israel has succeeded in turning these settlements into a bargaining chip for final negotiations. The Ma’aleh Adumim settlement is the largest settlement bloc in the territories and one which Israel has made clear it will not relinquish in any final settlement. Now, not only has Ma’aleh Adumim been made a permanent dot on the map, there are plans to expand this already monstrous colony by 3,500 housing units and an industrial park.

So, let us debunk some of Israel’s most common arguments. The 100-day plan to quell “Palestinian violence” has turned into years, the separation wall constructed for “security purposes” has become a de facto border and in Jerusalem, there are more unilateral and expansionist measures than in any other area of Palestine. Perhaps when the parties involved in peace efforts begin to look at the conflict in this light, the demand for an end to the Israeli occupation over all occupied Palestinian territory will present itself as the only solution.

Labels: hasbara, Israel, occupation, Palestine, Wall

In the first picture, a mass grave for the indigenous Indians who were massacred at Wounded Knee (their home) in 1890. Victims of Colonialist Expansionism and disregard for the lives of the indigenous population. In the second picture, some of the civilians who were victims of the Qana Massacre, killed (in their homes) in 2006. They too were victims of the ideology of Colonialist Expansionism and racism.
By: Adib S. Kawar
Beirut - Lebanon

“And finally, as the dead and dying lay in the makeshift hospital in the Episcopal Church in Pine Ridge Village, Dr. Eastman paused to read the sign above the entrance that read: "Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men!!!”

A little history about the Massacre at Wounded Knee Dec. 29, 1890: 116 Years Ago Today: By TIM GIAGO (NANWICA KCIJI) a Special to McClatchy Tribune written under the title: “Never Forget, Today marks 116 years since the massacre at Wounded Knee” the last genocide against the Native Americans.” But unfortunately, Zionist massacres shall never end until the last Palestinian is uprooted from his land and/or massacred on it, or the last Zionist understands that this land is not his, it belongs to its owners who are free to accept whoever they want to live with them in peace or not…

They, both the colonizers of Palestine and the Americans, like those of the rest of colonized world, grant themselves cart blanche to exterminate and/or transfer the respective indigenous populations of the targeted lands, because the colonizers consider them “barbarians” thus they are not worthy of own their lands.

Zionist racist historian, Benny Morris, like the colonizers of the Americas, considers Arabs to be Barbarians. He replied to Ari Shavit’s question during an interview for the Zionist daily, Haaretz, entitled Survival of the Fittest? January 16, 2004: Are you a neo-conservative? Do you read the current historical reality in the terms of Samuel Huntington? Morris replied: “I think there is a clash between civilizations here [as Huntington argues]. I think the West today resembles the Roman Empire of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries: The barbarians are attacking it and they may also destroy it." (Noting that those who attacked the Roman Empire are the Nordics who came from northern Europe to attack the Roman Empire, that is exactly like the European Zionists who came to Palestine to colonize it, both had no roots in the invaded lands.)

Shavit asked: The Muslims are barbarians, then? Morris replied: "I think the values I mentioned earlier are values of barbarians—the attitude toward democracy, freedom, openness; the attitude toward human life. In that sense they are barbarians. The Arab world as it is today is barbarian.”

One of the earlier ideologists of Zionism, Vladimir Jabotinsky, who was an inspirational figure of Morris, contradicted his claim that Arabs and Moslems are barbarians, he said: “Any native people view their country as their national home, of which they will be complete masters. They will never voluntarily allow a new master. So it is for the Arabs. Compromisers among us try to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can be tricked with hidden formulations of our basic goals. I flatly refuse to accept this view of the Palestinian Arabs.” This doesn’t mean that Jabotinsky is not a racist, but he said so to justify the use of force to uproot Palestinian Arabs from their land, and as he rightly said they will never willingly give up their land, as they are not fools to be tricked with hidden formulas…

Jabotinsky proceeded saying: “They have the precise psychology that we have. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux upon his prairie. Each people will struggle against colonizers until the last spark of hope that they can avoid the dangers of conquest and colonization is extinguished. The Palestinians will struggle in this way until there is hardly a spark of hope”. (Actually they will fight up to the last drop of blood in their veins, which was proved by their continuous resistance against Zionist and British colonization for a century and a quarter.)

Massacres

Shavit asked Morris: Are you trying to argue that Palestinian terrorism derives from some sort of deep cultural problem? He replied: “There is a deep problem in Islam. It’s a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn’t have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien.”

Morris, although considered by some as a prominent historian, but he still adopts unfounded Zionist propaganda, which he could possibly not be convinced of. What he considered as values of democracy, freedom, openness is simply a twisted meaning of Democracy, freedom and openness, which cannot be monopolized and denied to others, somebody who denies them to others cannot be democratic, a believer in freedom and open minded.

Colonialists are supremacist, they have convinced themselves that it is their right to sail to a land and tell its people: We want this land, because we are civilized and you are barbarians; so you have to get the hell out of it, don’t argue, otherwise you will be uprooted from it by hook or by crook. If they refuse to accept this illogic they are slaughtered and/or kicked out. A European colonialist “civilization” cannot but clash with the local’s so-called “barbarism”. The first prime minister of the Zionist entity, David Ben-Gurion argued: “that the Arabs understand only force and that ultimate force is the one thing that will persuade them to accept our presence here.” And as per Morris “Ben-Gurion was right..” No, in spite of a continued Palestinian holocaust for a century and a quarter, Palestinian Arabs are continuing their resistance to Zionist occupation and massacres, which means they are civilized or else they do not understand the meaning of freedom and patriotism.

The tragedy of the so-called “Red Indians”, the indigenous population of the Americas has a stunning similarity with the Palestinian Nakbah; both are stories of invasions of foreigners to lands that belong to their indigenous populations with the aim of uprooting and/or massacring them.

In both cases the invaders came to these lands with the intention of ethnically cleansing them by means of terror and the force of arms to uproot or commit massacres against them, and in both cases their villages and towns were demolished to be replaced by colonies for the invaders, that is as Morris called them, the white Europeans.

Jabotinsky referred to the “Red Indians”: “The natives will always struggle obstinately against the colonists – and it is all the same whether they are cultured or uncultured. The comrades in arms of [Hernan] Cortez or [Francisco] Pizarro conducted themselves like brigands. The Redskins fought with uncompromising fervor against both evil and good-hearted colonizers. The natives struggled because any kind of colonization anywhere at anytime is inadmissible to any native people.”

The story of the massacre at Wounded Knee gives an example of many, many, many “Red Indian” villages that were demolished by the white European invaders unnecessarily - to create space for their colonies and express their racism. Zionist racist historian, professor Benny Morris of the David Ben-Gurion University in “Beer Sheba”, who dug the details of Zionist massacres, rape and ethnic cleansing out of the archives of the Haganah, gave the example of the creation of the United States of America as an example of Zionist ethnic cleansing, massacres and rape of Palestinian Arabs to “justify” their uprooting from their ancestral land.

Benny Morris replied in answer to the question: "And morally speaking, you have no problem with that deed (massacring the Palestinians." "That is correct. Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians, there are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history." Morris added in relation to the Algerian war of independence, which, according to him should not be compared with the so-called Zionist so-called "war of independence," stated: "I am trying to be realistic. I know it doesn't always sound politically correct, but correctness poisons history in any case(!), it impedes our ability to see the truth. And I identify with Albert Camus... He was considered left-winger and a person of high morals, but when he referred to the Algerian problem he placed his mother ahead of morality. Preserving my people is more important than universal moral concepts." Thus he supports the “morality” of European colonialism of the rest of the world, as we quoted him here above, to commit war crimes. “The massacre at Wounded Knee” is but one example out of hundreds if not thousands atrocities of various types that European colonizers committed in the Americas, not to speak about the rest of the world.

In both cases racist colonizers of both the Americas and Palestine and other Arab lands, the destruction of both the people and civilization were the aim practiced by people of European extract against the owners of the land. Both European colonizers of the Americas and the mostly European Zionists who were encouraged, assisted and armed by colonialist European nations committed ethnic cleansing, and practiced massacred and demolition of a whole society.

For Morris and his Zionist predecessors, as well as all other colonialists, ethics and morality is nonsense, the aim justifies the means: “Whether through the Balfour Declaration or the Mandate, external force is a necessity for establishing in the country conditions of rule and defense through which the local population, regardless of what it wishes, will be deprived of the possibility of impeding our colonization, administratively or physically. Force must play its role – with strength and without indulgence. In this, there are no meaningful differences between our militarists and our vegetarians. One prefers an Iron Wall of Jewish bayonets; the other an Iron Wall of English bayonets.

To the hackneyed reproach that this point of view is unethical, I answer, 'absolutely untrue.' This is our ethic. There is no other ethic. As long as there is the faintest spark of hope for the Arabs to impede us, they will not sell these hopes – not for any sweet words nor for any tasty morsel, because this is not a rabble but a people, a living people. And no people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions, except when there is no hope left, until we have removed every opening visible in the Iron Wall”. The Iron Wall – "O Zheleznoi Stene" – Rassvet, November 4, 1923.

Wounded Knee, as we said above, is but one example of the atrocities committed during the colonization of America, and likewise during the so-called Zionist “war of Liberation” in Palestine, hundreds of Palestinian villages were demolished and leveled to the ground; so as to leave no place for Palestinian Arabs to ever think of returning to their land, but this was no hindrance to Palestinian Arab resistance to fight for this goal, to return to their land and rebuild their demolished homes, towns and villages. Zionist colonialist ambitions are unlimited. They were not satisfied with what their 1948 leader, Ben-Gurion, accomplished, namely occupying 78% of Palestine, they occupied the rest of it in 1967 and they are trying to fully uproot those who remained of them in historic Palestine; Morris was speaking on their behalf when he replied to Ari Shavit’s question saying: “But I do not identify with Ben-Gurion. I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948. Even though he understood the demographic issue and the need to establish a Jewish state without a large Arab minority, he got cold feet during the war. In the end, he faltered.” Meaning that he blames Ben-Gurion for not completing his full ethnic cleansing of Palestine. And I don’t think that at least the early colonialists of the Americas did not regret such a “mistake”, although as lip service some U.S. officials apologized for the crimes committed against the so-called “Red Indians” leaving only a few alive.

Tim Giago gave the following example about the savageness of the European colonizers: “When a soldier of George Armstrong Custer's former troop, the 7th Cavalry, tried to wrest a hidden rifle from a deaf Lakota warrior after all of the other weapons had already been confiscated from Sitanka's (Big Foot) band of Lakota people, the deafening report of that single shot caused pandemonium among the soldiers and they opened up with their Hotchkiss machine guns upon the unarmed men, women and children.”

Zionist fighters of the so-called “war of independence” of the Zionist entity, which is actually the war of stealing and colonization of Palestine, did not need to have a deaf indigenous fighter nor surrender his rifle to slaughter him and the rest of his tribe. For Zionists it was enough for an uprooted Palestinian from the city of Al-Lid, like the rest of the uprooted 750,000 Palestinian Arabs, to try to prevent the invaders from stealing the valuables he had on him to be shot dead by Zionist invaders. George Habash, a medical student at the time, said in an interview: “While thousands of men and women of all ages including babies and old men and women uprooted from our hometown, Al-Lid, were ordered by the invaders to run eastward up the hills leading to the Jordan River. We didn't know where we were going, the soldiers were telling us walk, and we walked, it was a hot Ramadan day, some of the people around us were saying this is the end of time, this is hell. We reached the outskirts of the town where there was a Zionist checkpoint for searching the flood of uprooted human beings, we didn't have arms. It seems that our neighbor, Amin Hanhan, was hiding some money; so he didn't accept to be searched. A soldier shot him dead in front of us. His mother and sister ran to him weeping, his younger brother was my classmate, and we used to study together..."

TIM GIAGO (NANWICA KCIJI) told us the story of the band of racist soldiers who were decorated with the nation’s highest Medal of Honor!: "The Massacre at Wounded Knee was called the last great battle between the United States and the Indians. The true version of the events of that day were polished and sanitized for the consumption of most Americans. Twenty-three soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were awarded this nation's highest honor, the Medal of Honor, for the murder of nearly 300 innocent and unarmed men, women and children." Benny Morris, who calls himself a leftist, and blamed the Zionist leader, David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of the Zionist entity, for not fully exterminating and uprooting Palestinian Arabs once and for all, replied to Ari Shavit’s question: According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948?

Morris replied: “Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.

“The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was an unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion.” (Still the so-called historian calls Palestinians “serial killers"!!!)

“That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads (and Zionist propaganda claims that Palestinian Arabs deserted their homes and land by order of their leaders and those of Arab rulers). The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres.”

It ought to be noted that the claimed number of massacres, twenty-four, committed during the so-called “War of Independence” as per Morris, were preceded and followed by hundreds of other massacres, and the list is too long to give in this article. Even during 1948 at least one or more massacres had been committed in every Palestinian village, town and city that was overcome by the invaders and demolished. As mentioned elsewhere in this article, Dr. Walid Al-Khalidi listed in his book “All That Remains” 418 villages were leveled to the ground; so a massacre in each of them should be inevitable.

At Wounded Knee also great massacres were committed by the invaders, Giago related the following story: “She put her hands over their mouths to keep them quiet, but a mounted soldier spotted them. He fired a bullet into the head of one girl, then calmly reloaded his rifle and fired into the head of the other girl. He then fired into the body of the Lakota woman.”

Rape

Rape crimes were committed by European Zionists and the European invaders of the Americas. Giago related the following incident, which although not a full act of rape, it is not far from being so: “she feigned death and, although badly wounded, lived long enough to relate her terrible ordeal to Dr. Eastman. She said that as she lay there pretending to be dead, the soldier leaned down from his horse, used his rifle to lift up her dress in order to see her private parts, then snickered and rode off.”

On the other end, and as far as we know the rape crimes during the so-called “War of Independence” were by far worse, as they had committed actual rape crimes and murdered their victims. Ari Shavit of Haaretz asked Morris: According to your new findings, how many cases of Israeli rape were there in 1948?

“About a dozen. In Acre four soldiers raped a girl and murdered her and her father. In Jaffa, soldiers of the Kiryati Brigade raped one girl and tried to rape several more. At Hunin, which is in the Galilee, two girls were raped and then murdered. There were one or two cases of rape at Tantura, south of Haifa. There was one case of rape at Qula, in the center of the country. At the village of Abu Shusha, near Kibbutz Gezer [in the Ramle area] there were four female prisoners, one of whom was raped a number of times. And there were other cases. Usually more than one soldier was involved. Usually there were one or two Palestinian girls. In a large proportion of the cases the event ended with murder. Because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg.” Massacres, rape and transfer crimes are all justified for establishing the only democracy in the Middle East, as he claims were justifiable to create the “great American democracy”! The two “democracies”, which committed an endless chain of wars throughout their histories, both were established by the force of arms and terror?

Both invaders of the Americas and Zionists looked down at the indigenous populations as fit only to serve them and do their dirty jobs. The American missionaries were no better than their armed soldiers. The first who were supposed to help the “Red Indians”, and introduce them to Christianity, the religion of love and tolerance, were completely something else. Tim Giango wrote: “As the shooting subsided, units of the 7th Cavalry rode off toward White Clay Creek near Pine Ridge Village on a search-and-destroy mission. When they rode onto the grounds of Holy Rosary Indian Mission, my grandmother Sophie, a student at the mission school, and the other Lakota children, were forced by the Jesuit priests to feed and water their horses.”

The uprooted Palestinian activist Ahmad Al-Yamani, who insisted on staying in his land, and if necessary, to die on it, rather than desert it and leave it to the Zionist enemy, wrote in his memoirs “My experience with life”: “As soon as the senior officer left the office a new meal of beating, kicking and cursing of our fathers, mothers, sisters…and the people was renewed, and up till then no enemy soldier had asked us any questions… The soldiers were practicing their malicious sovereignty… matters continued till the evening when I was taken to a dark room where I stayed till the morning without bed, cover, food and not even a drop of water… torturing was continued in the morning, I was led to the courtyard of the center, barefooted and without a shirt, and was ordered to sweep the floor while being beaten, knocked, cursed and still without food nor water. This was a daily procedure along with… sweeping, cleaning especially toilets!!!”

“I, with my fellow detainees, were led to the police headquarters, which became an intelligence center. We were whipped while on our way to the detention compound, which was a camp of open sided tents, surrounded with barbed wires and guarded by venomous soldiers, where we found a number of detained Palestinian Arabs. Each of us was given a couple of blankets that was of course not enough in this stormy weather, and we were fed with the same utility meals that never changed… a crumb of bread and boiled potatoes three times a day, with of course the usual daily desert of beating, kicking and cursing…”

THE BARBARIANS SHOULD BE EXTERMINATED:

Ralph Schoenman wrote in his book “The Hidden History of Zionism” http://www.takingaim.info/

“What distinguishes Zionism from other colonial movements is the relationship between the settlers and the people to be conquered. The avowed purpose of the Zionist movement was not merely to exploit the Palestinian people but to disperse and dispossess them. The intent was to replace the indigenous population with a new settler community, to eradicate the farmers, artisans and town-dwellers of Palestine and substitute an entirely new workforce composed of the settler population.”

“In denying the existence of the Palestinian people, Zionism sought to create the political climate for their removal, not only from their land but from history.” It seems that Benny Morris copied his description of Arabs including Palestinians as “barbarians” from his Zionist predecessors: “When acknowledged at all, the Palestinians were re-invented as a semi-savage, nomadic remnant. Historical records were falsified – a procedure begun during the last quarter of the 19th century but continuing to this day in such pseudo-historical writings as Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial.”

Ralph Schoenman proceeded in exposing the criminal racist colonialist Zionist plans for Palestinian Arabs by saying: “The Zionist movement would seek alternative imperial sponsors for this bloody enterprise; among them the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Germany, the British Raj, French colonialism and Czarist Russia. Zionist plans for the Palestinian people anticipated the Ottoman solution for the Armenians, who would be slaughtered in the first sustained genocide of the 20th century.”

And continued saying: “From its inception, the Zionist movement sought the "Armenianization" of the Palestinian people. Like the Native Americans, the Palestinians were regarded as "a people too many". The logic was elimination; the record was to be one of genocide.”
Both invaders of the Americas and Palestine called for the extermination of the indigenous populations of the lands they sailed to colonize, which were preferably, as we read in the above quotes, cleansed in one way or another of what they called their “Barbarian” inhabitants. The barbarians are the Palestinian Arabs and the original Americans and the rest of what they call now the “third world”. Unlike the colonizers in other parts of the “third world” such as in Africa and Asia, where they wanted to economically exploit the land and the people and not to displace and replace them: "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilizations, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth." (Civilization!!!)

It is surprising to see the similarity between the invasion of Iraq, as the American president George W. Bush called it, the liberation and democratization, of that land, one of the earliest civilizations in the history of mankind, and the colonization of the Americas. What was the result? More then two and a quarter million Iraqis died between the reigns of Bush senior and Bush junior, that is between 1990 and 2007, the country was divided into splinters of sectarian and ethnic entities, it is swimming in a swamp of blood, chaos, destruction of the infrastructure: water and electricity supplies, communications, health and educational systems, the oil industry… and the learned and professional elites are being targeted and murdered, thus they are fleeing with their lives from the country that was one of the most advanced in all these fields in the area.

Shavit asked Morris: Yet we, too, bear responsibility for the violence and the hatred: the occupation, the roadblocks, the closures, maybe even the Nakbah itself. That is in occupied Palestine, to which he replied: “You don’t have to tell me that. I have researched Palestinian history. I understand the reasons for the hatred very well. The Palestinians are retaliating now not only for yesterday’s closure but for the Nakbah as well. But that is not a sufficient explanation. The peoples of Africa were oppressed by the European powers no less than the Palestinians were oppressed by us, but nevertheless I don’t see African terrorism in London, Paris or Brussels. The Germans killed far more of us than we killed the Palestinians, but we aren’t blowing up buses in Munich and Nuremberg. So there is something else here, something deeper, that has to do with Islam and Arab culture.” Of course Palestinians would not possibly forget their Nakbah, the continuous holocaust that started a century and quarter ago, their ethnic cleansing that Zionism is working hard to sooner or later complete. But we believe that it is not possible for the racist colonialism and racism to understand what they are committing - is the contrary to civilization… Colonialists and especially Zionists cannot understand that no civilization or goodwill ever justify massacres, rape, ethnic cleansing, racism… ancient old and modern Arabs are not barbarians; they have a history and civilization… Palestinian Arabs had built their own land, and in their diaspora in whatever land they are presently living, they contributed a lot in advancing these lands from the first to the third world… Barbarians are those who justify their war crimes whether in Palestine or in the Americas.

Morris continues to mention that Arabs are full of hatred for the Zionist entity and Zionism, which in my opinion is fully justified, but why doesn’t he and his co-Zionist conduct a simple study of the explosive hatred that boils in the hearts of the “Israelis” towards the people they uprooted from their land and homes and persecuted? A poll of students that was published in January 2007 suggests that racism is even stronger among young Jews. Three-quarters believed Palestinian citizens are uneducated, uncivilized and unclean, and a third are frightened of them. Richard Kupermintz of Haifa Univ., who conducted the survey more than two years ago, believes the responses would be even more extreme today.

As for the why Africans are not still retaliating against their former colonizers, the answer is clear. Africans were not ethnically cleansed from their lands, colonialism ended and their colonizers apologized to their African victims for the crimes they committed against them… That is why, but the Palestinian holocaust is still in progress.

The number of the victims of the colonizers does not matter, it is the crime that matters. Morris doesn’t realize who the victim is and who the murderer is, he said: “In comparison to the massacres the Russians perpetrated against the Germans at Stalingrad, that’s chicken feed.” What a joke?! Who was the invader and who was the invaded? Jews were the victims of Nazi Germany; so the post-war Germans had to be sucked by Zionism and are still being sucked by hundreds of billions of dollars in “compensation”, but when it comes to invaded Russia where the invading Nazis murdered more than ten million Russians, and destroyed everything in the invaded land, here comes the Zionist Morris to tell us: “In comparison to the massacres the Russians perpetrated against the Germans at Stalingrad, that’s chicken feed.” Is Stalingrad an German city invaded by the Russians or a Russian one invaded by the Germans? Russians fought the most heroic battle to liberate it… What percentage of the Russian population was lost as a result of this invasion? Certainly more than the 1% the colonizing Zionists Morris claimed that they have lost during their colonization of Palestine!

Shavit replied to Morris: I want to insist on my point: A large part of the responsibility for the hatred of the Palestinians rests with us. After all, you yourself showed us that the Palestinians experienced a historical catastrophe.

Morris replied: “True. But when one has to deal with a serial killer, it’s not so important to discover why he became a serial killer. What’s important is to imprison the murderer or to execute him.” Serial killer!!! Morris the “historian” justified all the war crimes of European colonialism and called the defenders of their land “serial killers”. As for only 800 Palestinians being killed in 1948, is a big lie, but anyhow whether one or a million, it is a crime to murder a soul especially if they are defending their land and people. During the 1982 invasion of Lebanon more than 22,000 Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians Arabs were massacred in Lebanon by the invading Zionist army. In the June/July Zionist invasion of Lebanon about 1,200 Lebanese were murdered in addition to the vast destruction the Zionist air raids and other war tools inflicted all over Lebanon.

If Jewish blood is sacred for us Arab blood is more sacred…

Shavit proceeded with his questions: Explain the image: Who is the serial killer in the analogy?

Without shame Morris replied: “The barbarians who want to take our lives. The people the Palestinian society sends to carry out the terrorist attacks, and in some way the Palestinian society itself as well. At the moment, that society is in the state of being a serial killer. It is a very sick society. It should be treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers.” Why do those Arabs want to take the lives of the barbarian Zionists? Zionists wage an endless series of wars to uproot a people from their land and homes and replace them in it, with the excuse that they want a new land to be colonized by white Europeans. The serial killers are the Zionists. The Zionist rogue state of “Israel” is the one that contains the very sick society that rejected all Arab peace initiatives, because they want to proceed with their expansionist wars, and ethnically cleanse every Arab soul from Palestine and its surroundings. Arabs should be in a very sick society if they don’t defend themselves against the invaders. Morris and other Zionists call Palestinians “suicide bombers”. What about this rogue state, which imports young men and women, puts them in military fatigues, trains them and arms them to kill and be killed, aren’t they “serial killers” and suicide bombers?! During the Zionist invasions of the Egyptian Sinai peninsula soldiers were ordered “don’t take prisoners” wounded or not, just kill anything that breathes!!!

Cage them

One of the most striking similarities between the colonizers of the Americas and Palestine is their plan to cage the indigenous populations of the colonized lands, with the aim of exterminating them or at least uprooting them from their land. Black Elk of Lakota wrote: “My people looked pitiful. There was a big drought, and the rivers and creeks seemed to be dying. Nothing would grow that the people had planted, and the Wasichus had been sending less cattle and other food than ever before. The Wasichus had slaughtered all the bison and shut us up in pens. It looked as if we might all starve to death. We could not eat lies, and there was nothing we could do.." L. Frank Baum - Editor and Publisher, “The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer” December 1890

Up till today “Red Indians” are caged in reserves, which are not far from being Zoos, true they are not actual zoos, and “Red Indians” have the privilege of running gambling casinos, and have some tax free commodities, but still they are caged, they are as Black Elk said, they “shut us up in pens”, and they are there so that tourists will come to see the few remaining living specimens of the indigenous “Red Indians”.

On the other side the barbarian “historian”, Benny Morris responded to Shavit’s question: What does that mean? What should we do tomorrow morning? “We have to try to heal the Palestinians. Maybe over the years the establishment of a Palestinian state will help in the healing process. But in the meantime, until the medicine is found, they have to be contained so that they will not succeed in murdering us.” (!) Heal the Palestinians, does this mean subjugate them to be healed!? Palestinians were living in peace, prosperity and tranquility till they were invaded and their slaughter was started first with the help of British colonialism to be followed by American/Zionist colonialism. These parties are experienced in running slaughterhouses in the Americas; so they didn’t need any further training to run it in Palestine.

And in reply to a further question: To fence them in? To place them under closure? Morris responded: “Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another.”

Benny Morris, like his co-racist Zionists, were inspired by their tutor Jabotinsky who was described by Ralph Schoenman for the idea of whatever you call it Iron fence, iron cage, concrete wall, barbed wire and/or electrified fence, or as we may read below: “the iron law”, "Iron Hand" are nothing but to fence the Palestinians in, "the siren of 'an iron wall, “Iron Brain” through which the local population can not break through" and of "the iron law of every colonizing movement ... armed force', found his call echoed in major Zionist forays against victim peoples in the decades to come."

Schoenman proceeded: "Israel's current Minister of Defense (1988), Yitzhak Rabin, launched the 1967 war as Chief of Staff with "Iron Will". As Prime Minister in 1975 and 1976 he declared the policy of Hayad Barzel, the "Iron Hand", in the West Bank. Over 300,000 Palestinians were to pass through Israeli prisons under conditions of sustained and institutionalized torture exposed by the Sunday Times of London and denounced by Amnesty International”. Just as a reminder, more then half of the Palestinians presently living in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem spent some time in “Israeli” prisons and detention camps.

"His successor as Chief of Staff, Raphael Eitan, imposed the "Iron Arm" – Zro'aa Barzel – on the West Bank, and assassination was added to the repressive arsenal. On July 17, 1982, the Israeli cabinet met to prepare what the London Sunday Times would term "this carefully pre-planned military operation to purge the camps, called Moah Barzel or 'Iron Brain'". The camps were Sabra and Shatila and the operation "was familiar to Sharon and Begin, part of Sharon's larger plan discussed by the Israeli cabinet". [*] London Sunday Times, September 26, 1982."

Targeted assassinations of Palestinian resistance and other Arab activists reached its peak during the Sharon era to be followed by the Zionist troika Olmert/Peretz and their scapegoat resigned/fired chief of staff, Halutz. Palestinian resistance men are being assassinated, mostly targeted by air strikes. A big number of civilian bystanders fell victims of these racist war crimes.

Schoenman continued: "When Yitzhak Rabin, who had supported the Revisionist Likud in Lebanon during the war, became Shimon Peres' Minister of Defense in the current "national unity" government, he launched in Lebanon and the West Bank the policy of Egrouf Barzel, the "Iron Fist". It is the "Iron Fist" which Rabin again cited as the basis for his policy of allout repression and collective punishment during the 1987-1988 Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza."

The cage suggested by Morris and his fellow Zionists is about to be completed by the racist Zionist rogue state of “Israel”. Isn’t it that eight meters high and 650 kilometers long concrete wall with barbed and electrified fences Morris is talking about? Zionists hope that their project of ethnic cleansing shall be enforced when they imprison about four million Palestinian Arabs in walled enclaves, open air prisons, or cages, practically without any means of livelihood, all the agricultural land is confiscated, and all water resources are stolen, no free exit or return to and from the outside world… Definitely Palestinian Arabs who are adamant to stick their feet deep in their land will not quit it under any circumstances. Barbaric Zionism is creating national resistance that Morris likes to call “serial killers”, and as Morris predicted in reply to Shavit’s question: The situation as you describe it is extremely harsh. You are not entirely convinced that we can survive here, are you?

“The possibility of annihilation exists.” Morris is right to be pessimistic about the future of an artificial state and its people, which can only survive as long as it continues to commit war crimes and targeted assassination against the tough resistance of the willful indigenous population.

Shavit continued asking: Would you describe yourself as an apocalyptic person?

“The whole Zionist project is apocalyptic. It exists within hostile surroundings and in a certain sense its existence is unreasonable.” Zionists willingly and by the use of terror put themselves in hostile surroundings, and they should be fools to think that they will be welcomed with love and kisses by Arabs, they created a hateful environment, and implanted themselves in its midst…

Shavit asked Morris, So what you are telling me is that you live the Palestinian Nakbah of the past less than you live the possible Jewish Nakbah of the future?

“Yes. Destruction could be the end of this process. It could be the end of the Zionist experiment. And that’s what really depresses and scares me.” Morris is reasonable enough to realize the fate of a racist entity established, we repeat, by the force of arms and state terror, which is as he put it, destruction and annihilation, unless they give up their racist Zionism.

If Palestinian Arabs surrender and raise the white flag their fate will be like that of “the Red Indians”, total extermination or close to it: “A detachment of soldiers was sent into the camp to search for any arms remaining there, and it was reported that their rudeness frightened the women and children. It was also reported that a remark was made by one of the soldiers that "when we get the arms away from them we can do as we please with them," indicating that they were to be destroyed. Some of the Indians could understand English. This and other things alarmed the Indians and [a] scuffle occurred between one warrior who had [a] rifle in his hand and two soldiers. The rifle was discharged and a massacre occurred, not only the warriors but the sick Chief Big Foot, and a large number of women and children who tried to escape by running and scattering over the prairie were hunted down and killed." Thomas H. Tibbles Omaha World Herald

CONCLUSION:

One difference between the two acts of colonization in Palestine and the Americas, namely, nobody volunteered to coin a term for those who defend the “Red Indians”. As Zionists, and unfortunately, many Americans and Europeans do when somebody defends the Palestinian cause, and condemns Zionist crimes, those people are called “anti-Semites”, and if they happen to be of the Jewish faith, they are called “self hating Jews”.

Labels: documents, human rights violations, Israel, Palestine, Wall, war, Zionism

by Umberto De Giovannangeli
l’Unità 05/03/07

It’s not a warning cry. It’s much more. It’s an X-ray of a situation that is by now far beyond the humanitarian crisis. It’s a figure-summarized account about over 800 thousand human beings, women, children, men whose daily survival and sustenance are today totally dependent on international aid. This is what is reported by the last account about the Gaza Strip that has been conceived by the UN’s World Food Program and that “l’Unità” has been able to preview.

Labels: documents, human rights violations, Israel, Palestine, Wall

from the Palestine Chronicle (thanks to Les for the hat tip!)

Indifference is the essence of inhumanity; it is worse than hatred precisely because it does not recognize the living, breathing brother and sister who suffers the agony inflicted on them by a people who proclaim to be civilized even as they inflict bestial and barbaric acts on the helpless.

“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that’s the essence of inhumanity.” -- (George Bernard Shaw, The Devil’s Disciple, ACT II)

Terrorists struck once again in Jenin this past week killing four, wounding twenty-eight civilians, including two journalists and four children and women. Fifty-five civilians were kidnapped including six children. Three buildings used for agriculture were destroyed and 199 donums of agricultural land confiscated. Other attacks occurred in Far’oun village where six homes were demolished that stood too close to the Wall. Terrorists beat civilians in Bal’ein village, west of Ramallah who were protesting the demolitions and the extension of the Wall. The attacks continue, unreported in the United States since they are carried out by our allies, the Israeli Defense Forces.

Despite the deafening silence that accompanies the on-going construction of the illegal Wall, declared such by the International Court of Justice, despite staged non violent demonstrations in Bal’ein, Jayous, Bethlehem, Ramallah’s Bil’in village and elsewhere through out the West Bank, despite the outcry this week raised by Sinn Fein’s International Affairs spokesperson, Aengus O Snodeigh against the mounting atrocities committed by the Jews on the Palestinians, those who have a conscience, both international and Israeli, stand in the streets chanting and singing that the wall will fall and freedom will come to the Palestinian people. But no one listens. Instead, “a large contingent of Israeli forces, including soldiers, police and border guards, began assaulting the nonviolent demonstrators with rifle butts and truncheons.” (Palestinian Center for Human Rights, 22-24 February, 2007).

Indifference, Shaw tells us, is the essence of inhumanity; it is worse than hatred precisely because it does not recognize the living, breathing brother and sister who suffers the agony inflicted on them by a people who proclaim to be civilized even as they inflict bestial and barbaric acts on the helpless. That makes the citizens of the world worse sinners than the IDF and the Jews in Israel who tolerate the racist hatred that drives their government. Indifference costs nothing, requires no judgment, raises no principles, imposes no action, causes no discomfort; it is the void that rests in a soul that cares only for self and nothing for its fellow man. It is the beast that John describes in The Secret Book (11:4-5): “The rulers brought Adam into the shadow of death so that they might produce a figure again, but now from earth, water, fire, and the spirit that comes from matter, that is, from the ignorance of darkness, and desire, and their own contrary spirit. This figure is the tomb, the newly created body that these criminals put on the human as a fetter of forgetfulness.” The indifferent finds recourse in all that satisfies self, all that pleases the body – drink, food, pandering – and all that pleases the desires – gold, silver, presents – and so isolates self from the world that might disturb that absorption lost in forgetfulness. Should that isolated world be threatened, the fear aroused against such a person – terror, servility, anguish and shame – locks them in even more.

That fear can be triggered by those in power. It is a tool used to control the conscience of a people. Arthur Miller wrote about it in The Crucible, a play about the Salem witch trials of 1692. Citizens threatened by fear for self, even in the form of invisible forces determined to exist by their ministers, blindly accept what they cannot know and become accomplices to the criminal acts of their leaders. They have literally turned their individual consciences over to their government. That is the case in Israel. The Wall is the visible icon of an invisible threat created by Sharon’s administration to accomplish a political end, the confiscation of Palestinian land and the psychological death of the Palestinian people. The Wall is built of fear in order to engender fear in both the Israelis who see themselves as victims once more, and in the Palestinians who see themselves entombed, without hope, without compassion, without justice. Indeed, the Wall rises in all its grotesque greyness like the cement box into which a coffin is placed, and in its image casts a pall over the people of Palestine that suffocates their spirit even as it separates brothers from sisters, children from parents, friends from families, making impossible a normal life. How can one people inflict such heinous conditions on another? How can the people of America sit idly by while their representatives cow-tow to the dictates of AIPAC and the world looks on in disbelief. What has become of the America that cares for the tired and the poor?

Consider what Sharon and now Olmert have constructed. The Wall rests entirely within Palestine while it snakes over hills and valleys, down the middle of streets, carves towns and villages into parts separating people who have lived together for decades, centuries even, confiscates to the Israeli side the aquifers and wells belonging to the people of Palestine, as well as the olive groves and crops belonging to the people, and the arable land that will become the settlers fields and additional settlements for those who never lived a day in Palestine and have no history here, no memories, no culture that is indigenous if two thousand years is considered a measure. Completely surrounded, without access to their fields or mosques or friends or hospitals or employment, they have but two choices, leave or die. They are indeed buried alive by the Jews, a fate less absolute than the gas chamber since they can choose to leave, and leave behind two thousand years of history and land that has given life to generations of family embodied in 1000 year old olive trees summarily ripped from the ground by Israeli bulldozers, leave mosques in which they have worshiped decade upon decade, and leave their memories as those driven from their homes in 1947 lost theirs when their towns were razed and all that had been was no more.

Or they die; a living death that drags on day after day in poverty and need, dependent on those not indifferent to their plight: Israelis that have not capitulated to the wanton waste of human life because they know what victim hood is and recognize it; friends from all countries of the world who care enough to come as witnesses to the humiliation, the degradation, the racism that permeates the settlers and is embodied in the Israeli government; Jews from around the world who decry the inhumanity inflicted by their own on another; and Americans who care because they have faced the same threatened fear that enabled a corrupt and amoral administration to invade and occupy countries against international law. That is their fate.

Ironically, the conditions imposed on the Palestinians in their tomb, the benumbed state of their being, the years upon years of isolation and alienation, the loss of sensitivity to the rising and setting of the sun, the loss of friends and family, the loss of consciousness to all that surrounds them since it has been turned to ashes and waste, the loss of memory that gave identity to their being since none know now that they even exist behind the Wall, the loss of their very purpose to live, the loss of hope that has been entombed with them, their dependency on strangers to sustain what life breathes in their lungs is mirrored in the metaphor of Sharon lying in his sheeted shroud as day crowds on day, unable to respond to anyone or anything, entombed in his own flesh, unconscious, as the indifferent are unconscious, to his own plight or that of those he has buried alive.

-William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His book, Psalms for the 21st Century, was published by Mellen Press. His newest book, Tracking Depception, will be released next month. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU

Labels: human rights violations, Palestine, Wall