The Palestinian Problem
1.
A sad case of Sam Bahour not understanding the conflict - does he not know he is
a Semite? His world view is therefore rather limited and totally compliant with
that of the Jews whom he wishes to oppose, and so he fumbles with particulars
only.
2. There is a problem, but don't blame the Jews, blame those that bend to their physical and mental pressure! The power of the Jews rests on generating fear - the fear of fear, which is a childish thing- and conceptual confusion.
3. Bahour's mindset - his conceptual world - is controlled by Jewish thinking and so he will never gain that longed-for freedom for the Palestinians. He will forever be a lesser version of someone dependent upon the Jews, a lesser version of what he actually should be as a Palestinian.
4.
Note his sentence mentions the usual mantra: "There has been
anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler,
5.
What about getting the facts straight on the big lie called the 'Holocaust'? Not
until Palestinians realize they must fight the 'Holocaust'
lie will they liberate themselves from this European colonial, apartheid,
Zionist and racist entity called
6. Contrast what Sam Bahour says, below, and what Professor Patrick H McNally, with some humour, puts so clearly at- Why Israel and Tony Judt Cannot Grow Up!
7. Perhaps someone can send this on to Sam because he has blocked mail from Adelaide Institute.
________________________________________
Israel at 58: A Failing Experiment
15 May 2006
|
One of Israel's founding Ministers
of Education and Culture, Professor Ben-Zion Dinur (1954), said it
most sharply; “In our country there is room only for the Jews.
We shall say to the Arabs: Get out! If they don't agree, if they
resist, we shall drive them out by force." (History of the
Haganah.) With this theme as the explicit backdrop of a
newly established State, it is no wonder that Israel, 58 years
later, has had little chance of being a normal member of the state
of nations.
Individual Israeli achievements in
fields like science and technology are impressive. However, for
all modern intent and purpose, the State of Israel, as a state
building model, is a failing experience -- ideologically,
religiously, politically, socially and, if US favorite nation
status were removed, possibly economically as well. Without
immediate and decisive intervention from the world community to
stop the ongoing Israeli aggression on Palestinians, Israel’s
intransigence and US-equipped regional hegemony will not only fuel
another generation of Palestinians willing to sacrifice their
lives to achieve their freedom and independence, but will also
further jeopardize Israel’s basic premise that explicit
religious discrimination, namely a Jewish-only state, is an
accepted basis for statehood in modern times.
In spite of the above comments by
Israel's First Minister of Education (and reinforced by many other
Israeli leaders), Israel was founded on the infamous fallacy that
it was built on a ‘land with no people, for a people with no
land’. Israel has utterly failed to persuade the world, and more
recently more of its own people, that this was a valid premise for
statehood. Also, given the fact that historic Palestine was
inhabited prior to Israel being created, Israel has been unable to
ignore that this very same fallacy is a raw form of outright
racism.
Israel expelled more than one half
of the indigenous Palestinian population in 1948. Ever
since, Israel has assumed a policy of civil discrimination,
political imprisonment, torture, deportations, beatings,
collective punishment, political assassinations, settlement
building, economic dominance; the list is endless and intensified
after the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip
and East Jerusalem in 1967. For being an ‘empty’ land,
the complications that Palestinians posed to the implantation of a
Western state in the midst of the Middle East were overwhelming.
Since its inception, Israel has
arrogantly refused to address the most crucial prerequisite of its
establishment as a conventional State -- accepting the
Palestinians -- those people that just happened to be living in
that ‘empty’ land of Israel. The Palestinians, those
that were forcefully expelled from their homes in 1948, 1967, and
more recently in 2001, have been living in squalid refugee camps
throughout the region. The Palestinians, those that did not
flee Israel-proper in 1948 are today fourth class Israeli
citizens. The Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and
East Jerusalem that have lived under Israeli military occupation
for 40 years, to the day, will continue to haunt the international
community until justice is served and the Israeli occupation is
ended, in its entirety.
After nearly six decades of
conflict, and after a decade of Palestinian political recognition
of Israel on part of their lands, the Israeli people choose to
sustain the conflict and elected another of its most notorious war
criminals, Ariel Sharon. Sharon was charged, as captain of
the vanguard, to lead Israel into its sixth decade of conflict.
However, Sharon’s illness and incapacitation cut his personal
involvement short, but his master plans are alive and well under
the leadership of the recently elected Israel Prime Minister, Ehud
Olmert. Today, Israel seems determined more than ever to
forcefully prove the original premise of its statehood – an
Israel with moveable, unilaterally-defined borders and a
Jewish-only population. Eleven Israeli Prime Ministers
before Olmert, five of them after the signing of the Oslo
agreements, failed. Prime Minister Olmert will fail as well.
If Israel can not produce a leader to move the country from a
pariah state to a member state of the Middle East, no one will be
to blame for the consequences, no matter how severe, but the
Israeli people themselves.
This should not come as a surprise
for Israelis who have studied their own history. Israel’s
founding Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, understood it well when
he said, "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab
leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we
have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what
does that matter to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis,
Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one
thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they
accept that? (David Ben-Gurion quoted in "The Jewish
Paradox" by Nahum Goldmann, former president of the World
Jewish Congress.)
Similarly, it should be no surprise
that past Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, rushed to sign
the now failed Oslo Peace Accords after calculating the historic
ramifications of the political earthquake that took place when the
Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, politically recognized the State
of Israel. Rabin paid for that signature with his life,
which was taken by one of his own citizens, a fanatic Jewish
student. This was as close as Israel has ever been in
closing the last chapter of its establishment. It was
totally in Israel’s – the occupying power’s – hands then,
as it is today, to end the occupation of the Palestinians and
start the bitter process of reconciliation.
Every step of the way, as Israel
further entrenched its illegal occupation of the Palestinians, it
has been continuously rewarded by the United States of America.
Israel has been propped up, financially and politically, by every
single US administration at the expense of internationally
unconscious US taxpayers, fully obedient to the direction of the
far-reaching Israeli lobby and narrow commercial interests.
What started as a US strategic ally in one of the most sensitive
spots in the world during a Cold War that marred common sense, has
rapidly digressed into a liability in an age of globalization that
the United States alone is spearheading.
While the Bush Administration
continues to ignorantly turn a blind eye to Israel’s blatant
violations of international law and human rights, the United
States runs the fear that the globalized world will start to
question the moral authority inherent in the US’s unfettered
support of an Israel that publicly pursues a policy that only has
the intransigence to move an entire region into long-term
political and economic turmoil. Countries that have bought
into the New World Order of Globalization should start to
internalize the consequences to themselves, if the US, in a world
it single-handily runs, chooses to defend the wrong side of
history at its will.
Today, on the 58th remembrance of
the Palestinian Nakba (translated Catastrophe) Israel must choose
between continuing an illegal occupation and preserving the
self-defined, albeit discriminatory, nature of the State of
Israel. To think that both can peacefully co-exist, or
possibly even singly exist, is utter ignorance of history and
human development. Also, for Israel to believe that the US
will continue to jeopardize its New World Order of Globalization
for the sake of fulfilling an Israeli illusion of Palestinian
submission is a miscalculation to the nth degree.
The writer is a
Palestinian-American living in the besieged Palestinian City of
El-Bireh in the West Bank. He is co-author of HOMELAND: Oral
Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (1994) and can be reached
at sbahour@palnet.com.
PHOTO CAPTION: U.S. Letter of
Recognition of the State of Israel, with the word “Jewish
state” omitted by President Truman (Source: Harry S. Truman
Library, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/photos/israel.jpg).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything about this list:
To unsubscribe, send mail to:
To subscribe, send mail to:
|
©-free 2006 Adelaide Institute
