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The elephant in the room
:
Why Palestine should concern all Americans
one American's thoughts
Injustice can be found all too easily around the world
-- in Darfur, Burma, Timor, Tibet, Haiti,
Diego Garcia, to note but a few. What separates Palestine from these?
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the extent to which extreme injustice and suffering is wholly dependent on US complicity
-
what that complicity
symbolizes globally about our country
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how that complicity is corrupting United States internal
affairs and damaging our nation.
Palestine is about
much more than
just Palestine.
As most of the world sees it, what we cause in Palestine is counter to
every value for which we claim to stand. For much of the world, Palestine
is the symbol of American colonialism in what professes to be a
post-colonial world. Palestine has become iconographic of the abyss
between what we say and what we do, of what is seen as the immorality and
dishonesty of US foreign policy. For Americans who are bewildered at the
hatred against our country in much of the world, answers are most obvious
in Palestine.
Reconsidering Assumptions
1
The
Palestinians created this quagmire by not accepting the original partition.
Firstly, what is often forgotten is that the
Zionists refused a proposal for a bi-national state before the
Palestinians refused to accept the partition.
The creation of Israel in 1948 was predicated on a
1947 UN mandate which would have given about 45% of Palestine to the
Palestinians, and about 55% to the new state of Israel
(U.N. history). The Arabs'
refusal to accept this plan is often cited as the origins of the
conflict. But one needs to ask, then, Why should Palestinians
have forfeited more than half their country at the pressure of political
groups such as Irgun and
Lehi, both of which were considered terrorist organizations? To
achieve their goal, these groups used violence against three main targets:
-- terrorism against the
West, most notoriously Menachem Begin's
bombing of the King David Hotel
-- terrorism against
Palestinians, most notoriously the
April 9, 1948
massacre in Dayr Yassin by Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin, and the
Stern Gang.
-- terrorism against Jews to force them from surrounding regions to emigrate
to Israel. To quote
one such displaced Jew, an Iraqi, "Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to
Israel... to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and to buy time
to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected
genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors."
And since Nazi atrocities were said to be
a principal rationale for the creation of Israel, one needs also to ask,
Why would Palestinians, innocent of any complicity in the Holocaust, be
the ones to give up their land, rather than Germany or another involved
nation? In truth, of course, the origins of the nation of Israel predate
the Holocaust, dating back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
Influential people such as Alan Dershowitz
(allegedly plagiarizing Joan Peters) have popularized notions
of an Israel founded on an essentially uninhabited region, or of land
vacated as a result of an Arab radio broadcast instructing listeners to
flee, or land purchased legally
from willing parties. No serious scholar, including Israeli, believe such
myths. Where the government of Israel claims to have "made the desert
bloom", were in truth Palestinian villages with centuries-old agriculture, villages that
were leveled and whose very names have now been erased from maps.
2
This issue is too
complicated for non-experts. We don't really know what's going on there.
If this is so, one should be able to
examine the "complications" and be satisfied that they are actually
integral to the problem, rather than being used to obfuscate it. In
fact, the "complications" prove either to be irrelevant, or a direct
result of the injustice. The core issue is remarkably simple.
The claim that we lack reliable knowledge of what is happening in
the Occupied Territories is a great irony, because the reason there
are no interenational observers is that Israel will not let them in.
Palestine has for years implored the world community for such monitors,
but Israel steadfastly refuses to allow them. Why?
Further, the independent international witnesses and human rights
workers who are in the Occupied Territories are remarkably consistent in
what they report.
3
Why can't
the Palestinians just compromise?
Rather, the Palestinians are the only ones ever to
have compromised, because negotiations have always been framed around
their getting less than what is legally theirs under international law,
and Israel giving up nothing to which it is legally not entitled. It
is important to understand that Palestine is not "disputed" territory, as
we often hear in the US media. It is
occupied. This is not a
partisan judgment, but a simple matter of international law. Negotiations
between Israel and Palestine have never involved Israel returning all it
illegally holds, yet for the word "compromise" to have any meaning, that
would have to be the mere starting point. Though framed as "concessions" by
Israel, its proposals have been a matter of how much stolen land it will, or will not, return,
and how much Palestinian control over its own water sources and
internal affairs it
will, or will not, allow.
Even with such compromise from the Palestinians, Israel has never lived up to its
obligations in any peace plan. As but one example, whereas under the Oslo accords
Israel agreed to halt the growth of their illegal settlements, the number of settlers instead accelerated (graph).
Perhaps the most publicized Israeli "concession" was
Ariel Sharon's dismantling of the settlements in the Gaza Strip. This
however was nothing but a strategic move in a cynical chess game; not only were these settlements illegal anyway, but they had become a
logistical liability, and the fanfare accompanying
their dismantling provided cover for the taking of far more new land in
the West Bank than that left behind in Gaza. When 7000 settlers left the
Gaza Strip, 15,000 moved into the West Bank.
Israel has for decades operated in violation of
international laws, human rights conventions, and sundry United Nations
resolutions, most famously the 1967 UN
Security Council Resolution 242, which calls, among other measures,
for Israel's immediate vacating of Palestinian land and its permitting of
freedom of navigation through international waterways.
See also
UN Resolutions, and
United States Security Council Vetoes.
4
Israel has repeatedly
offered the Palestinians their own nation.
In stark contrast to the general perception in the
United States, Palestinians have never been offered their own viable nation. Even one of Israel's chief negotiators,
Schlomo Ben-Ami,
has conceded this. For example, under the much-touted Camp David accord (2000), Palestinians
were offered a series of disconnected strips of land that would be
dissected with extensions of Israel. Palestine would not have had actual
national autonomy, nor control of its own borders, nor control of its
water supply, nor air space, nor would Palestinians have unfettered travel from one
disconnected segment of Palestine to another, and Israeli-controlled roads
would traverse their land. This was heralded in the United States as a dramatic
gesture by Israel that was foiled by an unappreciative Arafat.
Watch this analysis by the Israeli human rights organization, Gush
Shalom, or
read an analysis in FAIR.
To cite the scholars
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt :
"not even Yitzhak Rabin was willing to offer the Palestinians a viable
state. Ehud Barak’s purportedly generous offer at Camp David would have
given them only a disarmed set of Bantustans under de facto Israeli
control." (Rabin, assassinated by an
Israeli for signing the Oslo Accords, was often regarded as a peace-maker.
5
But shouldn't
Israel have the right to defend itself?
To nip this mantra in the bud, of
course Israel, like all nations, has every right to defend itself. But to
say that Israel is defending itself against Palestine is to say that
Palestine is attacking Israel. Quite the opposite, of course, is the case.
This is an important legal and moral point: Israeli retribution against
Palestinian self-defense is not Israel defending itself. Further, many of
Israel's policies serve no defensive purpose whatsoever, having no
possible motivation but to oppress and demoralize the Palestine
population.
Ongoing sonic booms, indiscriminate bombings, razing of villages,
bulldozing of homes, destruction of olive trees, webs of crippling
check-points, forced break-up of families, implicit tolerance of settler
violence, dumping of sewage into the Palestinians' water supply, the
kidnapping and
torture of citizens and elected officials, theft of its
government's till, and the attempts to erase their history and very
identity, render life among Palestinians a living hell that has ravaged
every aspect of Palestinian life except its peoples' will to resist. So
what, then, does Israel claim to be defending itself against? Israel
claims to be defending itself against the low-tech missiles fired into its
territory from Gaza or, occasionally, the West Bank, and from suicide
bombers. But these are reactions to the occupation, not visa-versa.
Israel's military endeavors are to acquire yet more land, and have nothing
to do with defense. Even its apartheid wall is routed not for protection,
but to annex more of Palestine and to render the rest unlivable; that is,
preparing it future annexation.
6
Israeli soldiers kill
civilians only in self-defense, or when militants use civilians as
shields.
We saw above that since Israel is
the aggressor, civilian deaths would be culpable even if ostensibly in
self-defense. But in addition, the Israeli military's deliberate targeting of
civilians, including children, is well-documented (see, for example,
Chris Hedges,
a journalist who "watched [Israeli] soldiers entice [Palestinian] children
like mice into a trap and murder them for sport," or the reports of
various human rights groups). The charge that Palestinian fighters use civilians as shields is invoked habitually
without evidence, and quite to the contrary Israeli human
rights organizations have witnessed the Israeli military's use of
Palestinian civilians as human shields. In all the years of its occupation, Israel has
steadfastly refused to allow UN or other international observers, despite
Palestinian pleas. Why? While this has limited outside witnesses in Palestine,
one need only look at Lebanon, in particular the village of Qana, to find
overwhelming first-hand witness to deliberate Israeli targeting of civilians
and use of weapons banned by civilized nations.
7
Palestine
precipitated the conflicts of the summer of 2006 by kidnapping an Israeli soldier.
Palestine, at this writing, holds
one Israeli soldier. Israel illegally holds ten
thousand Palestinian political prisoners, including children, democratically elected members of the Palestinian government,
and mere family members of those sought. Many of
these prisoners are
tortured, and some "disappear". The US media remain mute about this.
Whereas these kidnappings are contrary to international law, Palestine's
holding of one Israeli soldier is in fact legal, as he is a soldier in an
occupying military.
8
Palestinian militant
organizations refuse to recognize Israel.
One must ask why the occupied are
expected to recognize the occupiers before the occupiers recognize the
occupied. Formal recognition of Israel is about the only bargaining chip
Palestinians have. Yet Hamas, to take the most visible example, has
explicitly stated that it will recognize a "permanent peace" with Israel, but
this is not mentioned in the mainstream American press. Here it should be
mentioned that the United States does not recognize Taiwan, but this is
hardly a problem in the two countries' peaceful relations.
Further, Israel
refuses to define its own borders; what country could possibly be expected
to recognize a neighboring country that will not commit to where its
borders lie? Once Israel ends the occupation, recognizes Palestine, and
defines its own borders, Palestinian political organizations may
fairly be asked to address recognition of Israel.
In 2002, all 22 members of the Arab League approved a
Saudi plan that offered not just full recognition, but indeed "normal relations" with Israel,
and asked only for a "just solution", not right of return, for Palestinian
refugees. Though this exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Palestine was
very similar to what Barack publicly claimed to have offered at Camp
David two years earlier, it was ignored by the Israeli Government.
9
Historically, there has never been peace between Arabs and Jews.
Quite the contrary, the historical evidence
demonstrates that Islamic lands were frequently a refuge for Jews
persecuted in Europe. While one certainly can find instances of conflict between any two groups
coexisting in the same region, Jews and Arabs (whether Muslim or other
faiths) have lived together in relative peace for centuries. Indeed, were
this not the case even in the 1940s, Israel's architects would not have
had to resort to intimidation and violence to get many
Jews in neighboring Arab lands to emigrate to the new Jewish state.
10
What about terrorism?
Let's define terrorism as deliberate violence against civilians
for political ends,
and agree that it needs to be condemned unconditionally, no matter who the victims and who the
killers.
Who, then, are terrorists? The Arab youth who straps explosives to her
body and boards
a civilian bus in Tel Aviv? The Zionist extremists who murdered
Palestinians, Jews, and Westerners to force the creation of Israel? The Israeli soldier who daily fires on unarmed
Gazans in the knowledge that his actions will be tacitly condoned? The fundamentalist settler
in Hebron who with impunity "cleanses" a neighborhood of its
people? The occupation army that
demolishes
houses and levels villages? The government that then denies they ever
existed? Are all terrorism, but only Palestinian terrorism is labeled as
such by the American media.
Governments and media harness the power of selective
language to subliminally pre-empt logical conclusions. Code words keep us from critical thought. Strip away this veneer,
and this more honest world may look astonishingly topsy-turvy.
Still, it is true that Palestinians have killed and
maimed innocent Israelis. In any substantial population, there will be good people, bad
people, and every shade in between, and among three million people living
in intolerable oppression, it is inevitable that some will turn to
irrational means. Contrary to stereotypes, suicide bombers are not
necessarily religious fanatics, nor Muslim. Some are Christian, and many have been educated
people leading largely secular lives. There has, however, been one common
denominator -- desperation. (Read,
for example, Amira Haas' "Not
an Internal Palestinian Matter".)
That some members of any
particular group resort to such crimes, has no bearing on justice for the
rest. People thrown off their land and living in squalor are not any less deserving of repatriation and reparation because of the
crimes of anyone else, whether in their ethnic/national group or not. Nothing
here is to excuse anyone's violence against any country's civilians, but
rather to dismiss the straw issue of terrorism as a mark against Palestinian
aspirations for justice.
11
About the notion that
anti-Semitism plays a role
in criticism of Israel...
To make an implicit link between bigotry against
Jews and the actions of the government of the nation-state
of Israel, is not only intellectually preposterous, but indeed, as we will
see, is itself anti-Jewish, and
trivializes true anti-Semitism. The
facts and arguments of the political situation either stand or fall on their own
merits, period.
Those who attempt to silence criticism of Israel by
stigmatizing it as anti-Semitic corner themselves into a quandary, because if Judaism and
the government of Israel are implicitly linked, then Judaism is also culpable for any crimes committed by Israel. In other words,
to link criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism is to engage in precisely
the same racist logic as the bigots who blame Jews, rather than Israel, for the
actions of that government. Shielding Israel's
leaders from legitimate criticism is also harmful to Israel itself, as it
enables them to drag their nation further into strategic and moral
catastrophe.
It should also be noted that some of the most vocal
opponents of Israeli policy, most important scholars, human rights
workers, and witnesses, are Jews and Israelis, including the children of Holocaust
survivors. The prejudicing of honest debate about Israel and Palestine by
labeling defenders of Palestine as anti-Semitic must be exposed for the
cheap political ploy it is.
12
Right or wrong, Israel
is our ally, and
US-Israel policy is in the US national interest
Two scholars, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, recently
examined the US-Israeli relationship and
concluded that it is harmful to the United States. The United States gives more than fifteen millions
dollars a day to Israel, and does so under favorable terms not
afforded any other country. US foriegn policy has long been molded around
the interests of the Israeli government. Its
lobbyists support US lawmakers who do their bidding in Congress and
wage attack campaigns against those who resist.
Yet we have fought wars against nations for committing
a fraction of the crimes that Israel commits every day. We have attacked
nations in the belief that they might in the future develop an atomic
bomb, yet we helped Israel, which refuses to allow inspectors or to be
party to nuclear treaties, to make them. We have attacked nations for
defying United Nations Security Council resolutions, yet Israel has
flaunted them for decades. We have formed international coalitions to
fight countries that attack their neighbors, yet we repeatedly block
international condemnation of Israel for doing the same. We have put
leaders on trial for using banned weapons, yet Israel routinely commits
such war crimes with our money and support.
Israeli espionage in the US is tolerated as no other country's would
be. A four-part report by Fox News about the extent of Israel's spying on
the United States, and that the Israeli government had, but did
not share, prior knowledge of the September 11th attacks against us (not complicity
in, but intelligence of) were quickly pulled from that news site.
The videos were however archived by outside sources and can been viewed
here
(click "ok" to run active-x control if your browser asks).
As recorded in this
Library of Congress document (red highlighting added), in the
1960s Israel is believed to have stolen about 220 pounds of eriched
uranium from the United States, and 200 tons of ore from a
German ship in the Mediterranean. The US material was stolen
from an Apollo, Pennsylvania facility.
Not even
a deliberate, unprovoked act of war by Israel against a US naval vessel was sufficient to
stop this corruption of US self-interest and US morality. On June 8, 1967,
"Israel attacked our proud naval ship — the USS Liberty — killing 34
American servicemen and wounding 172. Those men were then betrayed and
left to die by our own government." These are the words of Adm. Thomas
Moorer, who was commander of the 7th Fleet and later chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. What did the US government do in response to this attack
by Israel against the United States? Adm. Moorer's testimony is that "U.S.
military rescue aircraft were recalled — not once, but twice — through
direct intervention by the Johnson administration. Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara’s cancellation of the Navy’s attempt to rescue the
Liberty, which I confirmed from the commanders of the aircraft carriers
America and Saratoga, was the most disgraceful act I witnessed in my
entire military career." We would assume that in our open society, such an
act of war, and our government's deliberate delaying of help to our
troops, would warrant the full, immediate attention of Congress. Instead, "Congress, to this day, has failed to hold formal
hearings on Israel’s attack on this American ship. No official
investigation of the attack has ever permitted the testimony of the
surviving crewmembers" (-Adm. Moorer).
Why did Israel attack a US vessel? There are three
theories, none mutally exclusive.
-- to keep the US from observing Israel's attack on the Golan Heights. The
Golan offensive was delayed when the Liberty arrived in the area, then took
place the day after the Liberty was crippled. The coincidence of timing
supports this theory.
-- because Israel was then conducting mass executions of Egyptians in El
Arish, onshore 13 miles from the Liberty. Bedouin villagers claim to have
witnessed the executions, and the
mass graves discovered there, along with the later admission of such
atrocities by Israeli officers, support this theory.
-- Israel's intention of framing Egypt
for the attack.
The testimony of the surviving United
States crew, along with evidence and documnets,
is available online. But just as the Israeli government's account of
its actions in Palestine are always accepted against those of
Palestinians and human rights workers, so was its claim of an "accidental"
attack on the Liberty taken above those of every witness, the
preponderance of evidence, and every major official privy to the case
except one -- Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who twice stopped
assistance from reaching the ship.
Our alliance to Israel has damaged our security, our
economy, the integrity of our institutions, our freedom, and our national
soul. With our complicity in Israel's destruction of Palestine, we have
been destroying ourselves.
Selected Introductions -- Films
Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land
--
U.S. Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
(Ratzkoff & Jhally)
Palestine is
Still the Issue (John Pilger)
Selected Introductions --
Web Sites
If Americans Knew
Vermonters
for a Just Peace in Palestine /Israel
An Introduction to the Israel-Palestine Conflict (Norman Finkelstein)
Sunni, Shi'a, & other branches of Islam
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