As corporate media keeps calling for Putin's trial as a war criminal while it carries on its propaganda against Russia's military campaign in Ukraine, nothing is said about Israel's long brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Now that the Palestinians are uprising, once again, Western press keeps siding with the oppressor, although in Ukraine, they don't even show Russia's side.
There is a reason why Israel is insistent on linking the series of
attacks carried out by Palestinians recently to a specific location, namely the
Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. By doing so, the embattled
Naftali Bennett’s government can simply order another deadly military operation
in Jenin to reassure its citizens that the situation is under control.
Indeed, on April 9, the Israeli army has stormed the Jenin refugee camp, killing a Palestinian and wounding ten
others. However, Israel’s problem is much bigger than Jenin.
If we examine the events starting with the March 22 stabbing attack in the southern city of Beersheba (Bir Al Saba’) – which resulted
in the death of four – and ending with the killing of three Israelis in Tel Aviv – including two army officers – we
will reach an obvious conclusion: these attacks must have been, to some extent,
coordinated.
Spontaneous Palestinian retaliation to the violence of the Israeli
occupation rarely follows this pattern in terms of timing or style. All the attacks, with the
exception of Beersheba, were carried out using firearms. The shooters, as indicated by the amateur videos of some of the events
and statements by Israeli eyewitnesses, were well-trained and were acting with
great composure.
An example was the March 27 Hadera event, carried out by two cousins,
Ayman and Ibrahim Ighbariah, from the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, inside Israel.
Israeli media reported of the unmistakable skills of the attackers, armed with
weapons that, according to the Israeli news agency, Tazpit Press Service, cost more than $30,000.
Unlike Palestinian attacks carried out during the Second Palestinian Intifada (2000-05) in response to Israeli violence in the occupied
territories, the latest attacks are generally more pinpointed, seek police and
military personnel and clearly aimed at shaking Israel’s false sense of
security and undermining the country’s intelligence services. In the Bnei Brak attack, on March
29, for example, an Israeli woman who was at the scene told reporters that “the militant
asked us to move away from the place because he did not want to target women or
children.”
While Israeli intelligence reports have recently warned of a
“wave of terrorism” ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, they
clearly had little conception of what type of violence, or where and how
Palestinians would strike.
Following the Beersheba attack, Israeli officials referred to Daesh’s
responsibility, a convenient claim considering that Daesh had also claimed
responsibility. This theory was quickly marginalized, as it became obvious that
the other Palestinian attackers had other political affiliations or, as in the
Bnei Brak case, no known affiliation at all.
The confusion and misinformation continued for days. Shortly after the Tel Aviv attack,
Israeli media, citing official sources, spoke of two attackers, alleging that
one was trapped in a nearby building. This was
untrue as there was only one attacker and he was killed, though hours later in
a different city.
A number of Palestinian workers were quickly rounded up in Tel Aviv on
suspicion of being the attackers simply because they looked Arab, evidence of
the chaotic Israeli approach. Indeed, following each event, total mayhem ensued, with large mobs of armed Israelis taking to the streets
looking for anyone with Arab features to apprehend or to beat senseless.
Israeli officials contributed to the frenzy, with far-right politicians,
such as the extremist Itamar Ben Gvir, leading hordes of other extremists in rampages in occupied Jerusalem.
Instead of urging calm and displaying confidence, the country’s own
Prime Minister called, on March 30, on ordinary Israelis to arm themselves. “Whoever has a gun license, this
is the time to carry it,” he said in a video statement. However, if Israel’s solution to any form of Palestinian resistance was
more guns, Palestinians would have been pacified long ago.
To placate angry Israelis, the Israeli military raided the city and
refugee camp of Jenin on many occasions, each time leaving several dead and
wounded Palestinians behind, including many civilians. They include the child Imad
Hashash, 15, killed on August 24 while filming the invasion on his mobile
phone. The exact same scenario played out on April 9.
However, it was an exercise in futility, as it was Israeli violence in
Jenin throughout the years that led to the armed resistance that continues to
emanate from the camp. Palestinians, whether in Jenin or elsewhere, fight back
because they are denied basic human rights, have no political horizon, live in
extreme poverty, have no true leadership and feel abandoned by the so-called
international community.
The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas seems to be entirely removed
from the masses. Statements
by Abbas reflect his detachment from the reality of Israeli violence, military
occupation and apartheid throughout Palestine. True to
form, Abbas quickly condemned the
Tel Aviv attack, as he did the previous ones, making the same reference every
time regarding the need to maintain “stability” and to prevent “further
deterioration of the situation”, according to the official Wafa news
agency.
What stability is Abbas referring to, when Palestinian suffering has
been compounded by growing settler violence, illegal settlement expansion, land
theft, and, thanks to recent international events, food insecurity as well?
Israeli officials and media are, once again, conveniently placing the
blame largely on Jenin, a tiny stretch of an overpopulated area. By doing so,
Israel wants to give the impression that the new phenomenon of Palestinian
retaliatory attacks is confined to a single place, one that is adjacent to the
Israeli border and can be easily ‘dealt with’.
An Israeli military operation in the camp may serve Bennett’s political
agenda, convey a sense of strength, and win back some in his disenchanted
political constituency. But it is all a temporary fix. Attacking Jenin now will make no
difference in the long run. After all, the camp rose
from the ashes of its near-total destruction by the Israeli military in April
2002.
The renewed Palestinian defensive attacks speak of a much wider geography: Naqab,
Umm Al Fahm, the West Bank. The seeds of this territorial connectivity are
linked to the Israeli war of last May and the subsequent Palestinian rebellion,
which erupted in every part of Palestine, including Palestinian communities
inside Israel.
Israel’s problem is its insistence on providing short-term military
solutions to a long-term problem, itself resulting from these very ‘military
solutions’. If Israel
continues to commit war crimes subjugating and brutalizing the Palestinian people under the current system of
military occupation and deepening apartheid, Palestinians will surely continue
to respond until their oppressive reality is changed. No amount of Israeli violence can alter this truth.
Even though the USA & OTAN condone Israel's unforgivable recurrent War Crimes.
Had she not been murdered in Gaza
by the IDF Israeli Occupation Forces on March 13, 2003, today Rachel Corrie would have
been 43 years old.
Born on April 10, 1979, in
Olympia, Washington, USA, Rachel Corrie, a liberal arts major, a peace
activist, and a human rights volunteer/observer was brutally murdered by IDF
(Israeli Occupation Army) in Gaza on March 16, 2003.
A graduate of The Evergreen State
College, Rachel’s brief life will go down in the annals of history as an
exemplary testament to that rare human spirit of preached and lived by Jesus
Christ, the Jewish born Palestinian who preached sacrifice, altruism,
loving one’s neighbor, standing up for injustice, sharing one’s
resources, and giving up one’s life in defense of the dispossessed, the
weak, and the oppressed.
Rachel was killed [at the age of
24] on March 16, 2003, in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, when she was crushed to
death under an armored Caterpillar D-9R bulldozer operated by members of Israeli
amoral Army.
Attempts to seek justice in
Israeli and American courts (Caterpillar) did not go anywhere. Further,
American politicians, including Washington State Congressmen, did, as they
usually do when it comes to Israeli criminal behavior, swept the matter under
the rug.
Alaska composer Philip Munger
wrote a cantata (The Skies are Weeping) in 2004 to honor Rachel’s memory.
The performance was scheduled for an April 27, 2004 presentation at the
University of Alaska Anchorage. “After objections to the upcoming
performance were received, including from members of the Jewish community, a
forum was held co-chaired by Munger and a local rabbi who claimed the work
‘romanticized terrorism.’
How tragic it is that any and all
supporters of Palestinian rights are labelled terrorists? And, “after the forum
‘disintegrate[d]’, Munger announced, ‘I cannot subject 16 students … to any
possibility of physical harm or to the type of character assassination some of
us are already undergoing. Hence, ‘Performance of The Skies are Weeping at
this time and place is withdrawn for the safety of the student performers.’”
And later “Munger related that he had received threatening e-mails whose
content he considered was [just] ‘short of what you’d take to the troopers’,
and that some of his students had received similar communications. The cantata
was eventually performed at the Hackney Empire theatre in London, premiering on
November 1, 2005.” (Anchorage Daily News)
Other tributes to Rachel Corrie
included My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play based on Rachel’s diary of her
life In Gaza. The play was presented in London with scheduled follow up
performances in New York. As usual, politics interfered and the play was
postponed indefinitely, a decision denounced by the British producers.
Singer Billy Bragg wrote The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie, a song
styled after Bob Dylan’s The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. In
early 2005, My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play composed from
Corrie’s journals and emails from Gaza and compiled by actor Alan
Rickman and journalist Katharine
Viner, in a production directed by Rickman, was presented in London.
The play was to be transferred to the New York Theatre Workshop, but when it was
postponed indefinitely, the British producers denounced the decision as
censorship and withdrew the show. It finally opened Off-Broadway on
October 15, 2006, for an initial run of 48 performances. In the same
year, My Name is Rachel Corrie was shown at the Pleasance theatre as
part of the Edinburgh (Fringe) Festival. The play has also been published as
a paperback, and performed in ten countries, including Israel. (Rachel
Foundation for Peace and Justice).
Since 2004 there have been three deadly
Israeli assaults on Gaza, each one more brutal and heinous than the previous
ones. And, while the world has condemned Putin’s assault on Ukraine, precious
little has been uttered about the Yemenis and Palestinians, victims of Saudi
Arabian and Israeli recurrent brutalities.
Albeit tragic, please read the
beautifully illustrated book by Rachel Corrie. Let Me Stand Alone ».
It surely is a treasured addition to every library.
And please observe one minute of
silence to honor Rachel Corrie’s memory and the memory of all the Rachel
Corries of this world who’ve stood up for human decency in the service of
Justice and the cause of Peace.
What about Israel's Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine?
As today begins the annual Israeli Apartheid Week, I decided to give myself a little break from Ukraine to come back to my fight for Palestinian
human rights, as most of my colleagues seem to believe that the Palestinians belong to the
class of “unworthy” people. With no rights.
The proof is the
marginalization of Russian Artists and Sport women and men. (It broke my heart
to watch the pressure, and further, banishement, of my favourite opera singers,
classical musicians, maestros and stage directors from European scene, for the
momente. Only because they happen to be Russians and refuse to become renegades.).
In 40 years doing this job, I had never seen something like that. Not even
during the time of support of South Africa’s struggle against apartheid. Which
was, I can assure you, mild compared to what Israel is doing in Palestine.
Ignorance, and
double standards, seem to have no limit in the «civilized» West.
Israel’s war on Palestinian sports is as old as the Israeli state
itself.
For Palestinians, sport is a
critical aspect of their popular culture, and since Palestinian culture itself
is a target for the ongoing Israeli attack on Palestinian life in all of its
manifestations, sports and athletes have been purposely targeted as well. Yet,
the world’s main football governing body, FIFA, along with other international
sports organizations, has done nothing to hold Israel accountable for its
crimes against Palestinian sports.
Now that FIFA, along with UEFA,
the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and others have swiftly joined the West’s anti-Russia measures as
a result of the latter’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24,
Palestinians and their supporters are puzzled. Years of relentless advocacy to
sanction Israel at international sports competitions have paid little or no dividends.
This has continued to be the case, despite the numerous documented facts of
Israel’s intentional targeting of Palestinian stadiums,
travel restrictions on athletes, the cancelation of sports events, the arrest
and even killing of Palestinian footballers.
Many Palestinians, Arabs and
international activists have already highlighted the issue of western hypocrisy
in the case of the Israeli military occupation of Palestine by apartheid Israel
within hours of the start of the Russian military operations. Almost
immediately, an unprecedented wave of boycotts and sanctions of
everything Russian, including music, art, theater, literature and, of course,
sports, kicked in. What took the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa
decades to achieve was carried out against Russia in a matter of hours and days.
Palestinians are justified to be
baffled, since they have been informed by FIFA, time and again, that
“sports and politics don’t mix”. Marvel at this hypocrisy to truly appreciate
Palestinian frustration: “The FIFA Council acknowledges that the current
situation (in Palestine and Israel) is, for reasons that have nothing to do
with football, characterized by an exceptional complexity and sensitivity and
by certain de facto circumstances that can neither be ignored nor changed
unilaterally by non-governmental organizations such as FIFA.”
That was, in part, the official
FIFA position declared in October 2017, in
response to a Palestinian request that the “six Israeli football clubs based in
illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories should either
relocate to Israel or be banned from FIFA-recognized competitions”.
Two years later, Israel so
callously canceled the FIFA Palestine Cup that was
meant to bring Gaza’s top football team, Khadamat Rafah Club, and the West
Bank’s FC Balata together in a dramatic final.
Palestinians perceive football as
a respite from the hardship of life under siege and occupation. The highly
anticipated event would have been a moment of precious unity among Palestinians
and would have been followed by a large number of people, regardless of their
political affiliation or geographic location. But, and “for no apparent
reason”, as reported in the Nation, Israel decided to
deny Palestinians that brief moment of joy.
Even then, FIFA did nothing,
despite the fact that the event itself carried the name ‘FIFA’.
Meanwhile, outright racist Israeli football teams,
the likes of Beitar Jerusalem Football Club, are allowed to play unhindered, to
travel unrestricted and to echo their favorite racist cheers, “Death to the Arabs,” as if racism in
sports is the accepted routine.
FIFA’s double standards are abhorrent, to say
the least. But FIFA is not the only hypocrite. On March 3, the International
Paralympics Committee (IPC) went as far as denying athletes from Russia and Belarus
the right to compete at this year’s Winter Paralympics held in Beijing. The
decision was justified on the basis that having these athletes participate in
the Games was “jeopardizing the viability” of the events and, supposedly,
making the safety of the athletes “untenable,” despite the fact that the
Russian and Belarusian athletes were, due to the political context, set to take
part as ‘neutrals.’Not only are Israeli athletes welcomed in all international
sports events, the mere attempt by individual athletes to register a moral
stance in support of Palestinians, by refusing to compete against Israelis, can
be very costly. Algerian Judoka Fehi Nourine, for example, was suspended along with his coach for 10
years for withdrawing from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to avoid meeting an Israeli
opponent. The same course of action was taken against other players and teams for displaying symbolic solidarity
with Palestine, or even fans for merely raising Palestinian flags
or chanting for Palestinian freedom.
Mohammed Aboutrika, the former
Captain of the Egyptian National Football Team, was censured by
FIFA in 2009 for merely displaying a shirt that read, in both Arabic and
English, “Sympathize with Gaza”. For that supposedly egregious act, the
Confederation of African Football (CAF) – a branch of FIFA – warned him against
“mixing politics with sports”.
About the double standards of FIFA,
Aboutrika recently said in a media interview that the
“decision to suspend Russian clubs and teams from all competitions must be
accompanied by a ban on those affiliated with Israel (because Israel) has been
killing children and women in Palestine for years.”
It must be stated that the
hypocrisy here goes well beyond Palestine and Israel, into numerous situations
where those demanding justice and accountability are often affiliated with poor
nations from the Global South, or causes that challenge the status quo, such as
the Black Lives Matter movement, among others.
But there is much more that can be
done aside from merely delineating the double standards or decrying the
hypocrisy. True, it took the South African Anti-Apartheid movement many years
to isolate the
racist Apartheid government in Pretoria at international sports platforms
around the world, but that seemingly impossible task was eventually achieved.
Palestinians, too, must now use
these channels and platforms to continue pushing for justice and
accountability. It will not take days, as is the case with Russia and Ukraine,
but they will eventually succeed in isolating Israel, for, as it turned out,
politics and sports do mix after all.
Jonathan Cook: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-israel-facebook-hate-speech-silence-critics
In a 2000 interview for the Israeli daily Haaretz, journalist Ari Shavit
asks Palestinian great scholar and author Edward Said whether he thinks “the
idea of a Jewish state is flawed”.
In response, Said asks his own questions about the notions of “Jewishness”
and “who is a Jew” in this state. Shavit abruptly stops that line of thinking,
stating “But that’s an internal Jewish question. The question for you is
whether the Jews are a people who have a right to a state of their own?”
Shavit’s argument asserts that the very foundation of the Jewish state as a
state for Jews is a matter only for Jews to debate and critically discuss. The
only point of entry into this discussion for non-Jews, like Edward Said, is to
accept the non-negotiability of that foundation: namely, that Jews have the
right to their own Jewish state. What this argument omits is that this state
was established on a land that was already a Nation, Palestine, inhabited by a People, the Palestinians. This
argument, and the omission of Palestine and Palestinian life from it, precedes
Shavit by decades, and 21 years later, it persists.
Today, we are in the midst of a wave of definitions of antisemitism that
are determined to protect the validity of the idea of the Jewish state from any
serious critique coming from anti-Zionist Jews (whose Jewishness is
increasingly questioned) and non-Jews, foremost among the latter being
Palestinians like Said.
The infamous Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) illustrates this point.
This document situates itself as the «liberal» replacement to the
conservative International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) Working
Definition of Antisemitism. Like the IHRA definition, the JDA sets for itself
the task of determining which kinds of anti-Zionist critiques and views
constitute antisemitism and which do not. As one of its signatories, Yair
Wallach, recently put it, “The JDA pays special attention to antisemitism in
anti-Zionist veneer.”
As a «liberal» document, the JDA shows tolerance for the diversity of views
and perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian question. But like all liberal
documents that have been produced in the thick of a colonial or settler
colonial moment, this document keeps intact the colonial contract whereby the
colonial masters retain the position of privilege and supremacy in voice and
status over the colonised.
The JDA is a text that fails to produce true opposition to the core problem
of the IHRA definition: the silencing and erasure of Palestine and Palestinians.
Part A of the document is the only segment that is worthy of praise, though
the anti-racist and anti-colonial intersectional framework could have been
employed in much more depth in its formation. Putting that aside, let us focus
on the Preamble and sections B and C.
Edward Said’s seminal work, Orientalism, did not become a classic only
because it critiqued avowedly imperial and explicitly racist texts and authors.
It gained widespread acclaim because it showed how imperialist and racist world
views can also remain intact in texts that profess liberal and even
anti-colonial positions.
Whereas the IHRA definition is an overtly conservative, settler colonial
and racist text, the JDA casts itself as a liberal, tolerant and anti-racist
document. I need not repeat the critiques of the IHRA definition here, which
are plentiful. But the relatively covert orientalism of the JDA requires
further explanation and critique.
Two main features of the JDA text clearly illustrate its Orientalism as viewed by Edward Said..
The first feature concerns the positionality of the Palestinians in the
document. Palestinians and the Palestinian critique of Israel appear in two
main ways in the JDA.
First, near the end of the Preamble, the JDA states: “[H]ostility to Israel
could be an expression of an antisemitic animus, or it could be a reaction to a
human rights violation, or it could be the emotion that a Palestinian
person feels on account of their experience at the hands of the State [emphases
added].”
In supposed opposition to the IHRA definition’s blanket claim that
“anti-Zionism is antisemitism”, the JDA tells its intended audience, the
Euro-American world, that even though hostile, reactionary, and emotional, the
anti-Zionism of the Palestinian can be, in some cases, tolerable. Thus, what is
going to save Palestinians from the charge of antisemitism is not a fair hearing
of the substance of their claims, statements, and campaigns which have always
emphasised that their opposition is not to Jews but to a state that has
committed acts of violence against them. Rather, what will save Palestinians is
the idea that gentle hearts in the “civilised West” can appreciate that the
Orient is an emotional subject whose irrational exaggerations are based on
experiences of brutal eliminatory violence and therefore should be tolerated.
Pardon me, I meant based on experiences “at the hands of the State.”
Second, precisely because they are so reactionary, emotional, and hostile,
the document claims, the Palestinians are a source of statements and campaigns
that Euro-Americans should tolerate but also remain vigilant against. This
position is clear in the Preamble where it is stated, “Determining that a
controversial view or action is not antisemitic implies neither that we endorse
it nor that we do not.” Already Palestinian critique of the state of Israel is
marred in “controversy”, whereas debates about the Jewish nature of the Jewish
state are not. The JDA continues along this path.
The heading of section C states, “Israel and Palestine: examples that, on
the face of it, are not antisemitic [whether or not one approves of the view or
action]”. The brackets here are key. They are the warning label that appears in
the document only when it is about to identify Palestinian critiques and
campaigns (such as the BDS movement). No
vigilance is required from Euro-Americans when Jews debate what they claim to
be an internal Jewish question. But when it comes to
Palestinians and their critiques, the message is to stay on guard, because
these pesky Palestinians will make unsubstantiated statements as they are so
emotional on account of their experiences “at the hands of the State”.
And just in case there was any remaining doubt about the out of control,
emotional, and disproportionate responses of the Palestinians, guideline #15
under section C eradicates it: “Political speech does not have to be measured,
proportional, tempered, or reasonable … Criticism that some may see as
excessive or contentious … is not, in and of itself, antisemitic. In general,
the line between antisemitic and non-antisemitic speech is different from the
line between unreasonable and reasonable speech.”
The coup de grâce: the JDA gets that questioning the reasonableness and
lack thereof of Palestinians is appropriate, especially when they oppose
“Zionism as a form of nationalism”, demand justice, ask for full equality in
one state, compare Israel with other settler colonial and apartheid states, or
when they advance and promote BDS, but that does not mean they are antisemitic.
So, bear with and tolerate their emotional outbursts, despite their
unreasonableness.
The second feature that illustrates the text’s orientalism is the framing
as essentially antisemitic a core feature of the Palestinian critique of
Zionism and Israel.
The JDA provides two sets of guidelines to determine what constitutes
antisemitism. Section B lists five guidelines on Israel and Palestine where we
find “examples that, on the face of it, are antisemitic” and section C lists
five guidelines where the examples are not, on the face of it, antisemitic. And
in guideline number 10 under section B, the JDA declares the following as
antisemitic: “Denying the right of Jews in the State of Israel to exist and
flourish, collectively and individually, as Jews, in accordance with the
principle of equality.”
What are the boundaries of the State of Israel when it is a state that is
engaged in an ongoing project of annexation that has no end in sight? At whose
expense is this “flourishing” taking place? The Zionist project advances a
zero-sum worldview: either Jews or non-Jews will be sovereign in the land of
historic Palestine, there is no compromise. So how is this “principle of
equality” to be secured in a context where the Israeli state must maintain
Jewish sovereignty for a Jewish majority at all costs? Are Palestinians
supposed to accept that the right of Jews in the State of Israel ought to take
precedence over their own sovereign rights? According to the JDA, Palestinians
are not allowed to answer these questions or any other questions about the
Jewish right to a Jewish state by saying “not at my expense”.
Rhetorical sophistication aside, there is very little substantive
difference between this guideline and the IHRA definition’s claim that arguing
that Israel is a racist endeavour constitutes antisemitism. This probably
explains why the JDA is so timid in its declared opposition to the IHRA
definition, where instead of unequivocally opposing its adoption, it states,
“Institutions that have already adopted the IHRA Definition can use our text as
a tool for interpreting it.” And based on guideline number 10, I have full
faith that such an interpretation is not only possible but also acceptable to
the authors and promoters of the IHRA definition.
The colonial contract is merely repackaged in the JDA: should any
Palestinian question the validity of the idea of a Jewish State for a Jewish
majority [on the land of historic Palestine and at the expense of
Palestinians], then they are at best unreasonable and at worst antisemitic. And
the omission of the section in brackets seals and secures the contract, all
under the rubric of liberal tolerance. Orientalism at its best.
The JDA’s preamble states, “There is a widely-felt need for clarity on the
limits of legitimate political speech and action concerning Zionism, Israel,
and Palestine.”
The issue here is not that there are not any cases of antisemitism
appearing in the veneer of anti-Zionism. These incidents are rare, but certainly
exist. But not only do similar deplorable and racist incidents often exist
against Palestinians, but Palestinians also have to contend with systemic
anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism in diplomatic and allegedly peace-oriented
discourses and processes, which dehumanise Palestinians and deny them their
right to sovereignty.
The dehumanisation, dispossession, and erasure of Palestine and
Palestinians is never properly situated in the JDA’s guidelines on the question
of Palestine, Israel, and Zionism. Much like Israel’s unilateral annexation of
Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Declaration unilaterally determines what constitutes
legitimate political speech and action without the slightest consideration of
the Palestinian experience of Zionism as integral to the framing of the
discussion. That is the epistemic violence of orientalist texts such as the
JDA.
In the interview cited in the beginning, Edward Said stressed the
connections between the Palestinian and Jewish experiences of exile,
dispossession, and statelessness. When Zionism initiated and commenced a
political project to colonise Palestine, it destroyed Palestinian society and
life and created a Jewish state on top of it. The destruction of Jewish life in
Europe was dealt with by destroying Palestinian life in Palestine, and
thereafter, the Jewish question ceased to be an internal Jewish question and
became intertwined with the Palestinian question. To properly name and tackle
antisemitism means properly naming and tackling colonial modernity and the
settler colonisation of Palestine and the following ethnic cleansing of historical
Palestine.
Anything short of that is bound to replicate colonial orientalist discourse,
perpetuate colonial modernity and a crime against humanity.
PALESTINA
In the Civil Rights movement of the Fifties and Sixties in the United
States, a gospel song “I Shall Not Be Moved” became popular as “We Shall Not Be
Moved”. The songs were based on Jeremiah 17:7-8, “…he shall be as a tree
planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall
not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful
in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.” The
song signified the steadfastness of African Americans in their struggle to gain
their rights. It was no coincidence that black leaders like Martin Luther King
and Malcom X were among the first Americans to recognize the Palestinian
struggle as akin to theirs.
Since that time the resolve of the indigenous Palestinians to live on the
land that is rightly theirs, despite all the Israeli efforts to dislodge them
and drive them out, has never wavered. Just as the long struggle of African
Americans has persisted since in the face white resistance which has employed
an evolving array of tactics to block their way, ‘voting reform, being only the
last.
For both peoples their simple determination to win their rights remains
their greatest strength.
Since 2010-2011the Palestinian struggle has been overshadowed by the
upheavals in the Middle East that began then, the revolutions, stalled revolutions,
and civil wars. Now, with what seem to be likely the first Palestinian
elections in fifteen years—and the recent still inconclusive Israeli
elections—that conflict is back in the news. Intractable, it is often called.
But recent events, both inside the region and outside it, suggest that
significant changes in that conflict may be coming. A change in the
long-stalled situation may be as significant as those that followed the Ramadan
War of 1973 or the Intifadas of the 1990s.
A number of articles about the upcoming elections have focused on the
political divisions among the Palestinians. Without a doubt, those
divisions—foremost, the Fatah-Hamas divide—have hobbled their cause. Those
divisions are real and complicated. The essay that follows is an attempt to
consider recent events in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza in light of
regional and international events that may be changing the terms of conflict
and working in favor of the Palestinian cause. Recent events show that Israeli
actions show increasing desperation because Israeli politicians recognize that
the tide of history is turning against them. Time is running out for the
Zionist project.
One of these events was the Israeli military obliteratin a nature reserve
that Palestinians created eight years ago. The ninety-eight acre reserve is—or
was located until January 27—in Ainun which is part of Tubas a town in the
northeastern West Bank. The nature reserve was a “Greening of Palestine”
project overseen by the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture. Palestinians had
planted the 400 dunams—about 98 acres, that is—with over 10,000 trees. Among
them were several hundred olive trees. Olive oil is the main source of income
in the West Bank, and olive trees have a special significance in Palestinian
society. They take a long time to mature and bear olives, and they live a long
time. Sometimes for hundreds of years.
On January 27 the Israeli military bulldozed and uprooted the trees. The
reason given by the Israeli military was that the reserve was on land classed
as a “military zone.” How that distinguishes that 98 acres from the rest of the
West Bank that has been under military occupation since 1967 is unclear. One
thing that is clear is why the IDF chose that date. The UN has designated
January 27 as Holocaust Remembrance Day. (And Nakba’s day ?)
Accomplices of Israel’x ethnic cleansing, who over the years have heaped
all the blame for conflict on the Palestinians. Nothing could be further from
the truth. What is true is that no Israeli government—Labor or Likud or
whatever—has ever ceased to take every opportunity to frustrate the
Palestinians’ cause and to obfuscate the basic issue of the conflict. Israel
wants the Palestinians’ land. And no matter what treaties, protocols,
agreements, memoranda Israel has signed since 1976, it has continued to steal
their land in the hope that the Palestinians will at some point simply throw up
their hands and abandon their land. The
means Israel has used to do so are various: ideological, judicial, economic,
civil and military. The assault on the Palestinians’
rights is done against them en masse and as individuals—no prick or slight is
too trivial.
The IDF destroys farms to steal land. But it goes further by uprooting and
destroying the trees, especially olive trees. The goal is not merely to destroy
people’s income but to violate their identity. As though by uprooting olive
trees from the earth they can obliterate the very word ‘Palestine’ from
people’s minds and therefore that it is a place where a people live and lived
before there was a state called ‘Israel.’
The world outside takes little notice but small towns and villages are
likewise being destroyed and recently the pace of destruction has quickened. In
November the military destroyed an entire village. Like the nature reserve it
was designated by the IDF as a “military area.” According to B’Tselem, an
Israeli peace group, a total of 74 people were displaced, more than half of
them minors. The bulldozers and diggers also demolished sheds used as livestock
enclosures, portable toilets, water containers and solar panels, on top of
confiscating vehicles and tractors belonging to some of the residents.
On the other hand, the lengths the Israeli military will go to in order to
punish even a single person is worth mentioning. Last May the IDF raided the
West Bank village of Yabed in a routine sweep. The soldiers came—as they
usually do—in armored cars, wearing bulletproof vests, helmets and carrying
guns. And the villagers responded as they usually do by throwing bricks and stones.
According to the IDF a Palestinian named Nazmi Abu Bakr threw a brick which hit
an Israeli soldier Amit Ben-Ygal in the head and he later died in a hospital.
The IDF wanted to demolish Abu Bakr’s house, but an Israeli court refused
permission saying that his wife and eight children should not also be punished.
This is unusual. Collective punishment is a war crime but Israel has employed
it except for a period when they suspended it between 2005 and 2008. So in this
case, being unable to destroy the house, the Israeli military devised a new
punishment. They decided to fill Abu Bakr’s bedroom with concrete.
To understand the current context in which these punishments and thefts
take place, it is necessary to understand something of what is known as the Oslo
II agreement, of chich I’ve been speaking ever since it was imposed on the
Palestinians.
In 1995 the Oslo II agreement between Israel and the PLO divided the West
Bank into three zones, A, B and C. A is under extensive civil and security
control of the Palestinian Authority. As of 2013 it comprised about 18% of the
West Bank. B is under Palestinian civil control and in theory joint
Israeli-Palestinian security control. As of 2013, it comprised about 22% of the
West Bank. C is under full Israeli civil and security control. The difference
between “full” control and “extensive” control will soon become apparent. Abu
Bakr’s house in Yabed is in area B in the northwestern corner of the West Bank.
Whereas the nature reserve in Tubas has since 1995 been in Zone A.
Nevertheless, the IDF can still designate tracts of land as under military
control, although nominally they are under Palestinian security control. In
practical terms this means that under some circumstances when the military
wants to punish people in a certain area it must resort to civil courts,
whereas they can always resort to the possibility of claiming an area for
military use—in which case the Palestinians cannot hope to get a building
permit. What this all boils down to is that the Israeli military can destroy
damn near anything they want in the West Bank.
Despite the fact that Abu Bakr will be sleeping in a prison cell anyway,
and despite the bother for the Israeli military to pour the concrete into his
room, it seems no deed that harms a Palestinian is too gratuitous or bothersome
for the IDF. Possibly their calculation is that very gratuitousness of the act
assures that it will get some attention. Knocking down a house or uprooting
olive trees are things the IDF does every day, but how often do they fill up a
bedroom with cement? Then again it may simply be the boredom of military life
that calls upon their ingenuity.
Destroying a house is not always a one and done matter. On March 1, Israeli
authorities destroyed the home of Hatem Hussein Abu Rayaleh in occupied East
Jerusalem. It was the fourth time since 1999. Abu Rayaleh was partially
paralyzed during the third demolition of his home in 2009, when he fell and
broke his spine. That he rebuilt his house a fourth time says something about
the Palestinian determination to stay—come what may.
The reason given in each instance was that Abu Rayaleh did not have a
building permit. The chances of a Palestinian being granted a building permit
in Area C are nil, needless to say. But I’m tired of dealing with the rigmarole
of these ABCs—they hardly matter. The only person or agency acting illegally in
this case is the Israeli government. It has no more authority to issue building
permits in East Jerusalem than it does in East Orange, New Jersey. No country in
the world—not even the ever-indulgent US—recognizes East Jerusalem as part of
Israel.
Israeli harassment of Palestinians goes to lengths that must seem even to
the perpetrators ludicrous and embarrassing. On March 10, Israeli soldiers
arrested five Palestinian children near Hebron for picking a wild vegetable
akoub. The children ranged from seven to eleven in age. A photo accompanied
this article in the Palestine Chronicle on March 10. An Israeli soldier in full
combat gear—and wearing a covid mask—hauls away a tiny terrorist who threatens
the security of Israel for weaponizing an herb. It is difficult to believe the
Palestinians who have shown their resilience and resourcefulness through
decades of occupation will be defeated by such stupidity.
So much for crimes against Palestinian property. Or mostly against property
since, as the case of Abu Rayaleh shows, sometimes people get hurt when the IDF
knocks their homes down. Crimes against individuals should be considered,
though here I’ll only take up detention and imprisonment for two reasons.
Episodes of violence in any conflict can always be contested. But the fact that
Israel imprisons people for years without charges or trials cannot be
contested. What’s more, a recent flurry of detentions seems connected with the
coming elections.
Stated Israeli policy concerning detentions is that detention without
charge or trial is allowed for renewable periods of three to six months. The
usual reason given to the press by Israeli authorities is the person is a threat
to the security of Israel. Detainees cannot appeal or know what if any specific
accusations are being levelled against them. So much for statutes. In fact the
supposedly statutory renewal periods are usually ignored and the brute reality
is that Palestinians can be imprisoned for the rest of their lives without
charges or trials. Imprisonment is meted out in piecemeal extensions. The lives
of the detainees are stolen from them in weeks and months even as their country
is being stolen from them in parcels of homes, shops, farms and towns.
This is seen in case of Khalida Jarrar. Jarrar is a prominent Palestinian
activist and politician. She is a member of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, the PFLP, which was founded George Habash in 1967. The
PFLP is a Marxist group that has all along rejected the so-called ‘two-state
solution’ to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in favor of a single secular
socialist state for all the inhabitants of The West Bank, Gaza and Israel. In
the 1970s it carried out terrorist acts—notably a series of hijackings. Though
it has not carried out any attacks that killed civilians since 2004, it is
still listed as a terrorist group by a number of countries, Israel and the US
among them of course. Here I will only note that both of those countries have
carried many attacks that are terrorist according to international conventions.
Khalida Jarrar is a ‘recidivist’ even by the generous standards of
Israel—she has been arrested fourteen times. She was first arrested in 1989 when
she was twenty-six for participating in a demonstration of International
Women’s Day. I’ll only mention in passing the irony of this. A constant piece
of Israeli propaganda is its progressive attitude about women’s rights as
opposed to that of Arab societies. Since that day in 1989 Jarrar has spent at least
ten or eleven years in prison.
Her last arrest was in October 2019 and she has been in detention since
then. On March 1, a military court extended her imprisonment for two more years
for “inciting violence” and “belonging to a terrorist organization.” For good
measure she was also ordered to pay a fine of $1300—presumably as a down
payment towards the costs of her further detention. She has often been fined
even when her appeal to a civilian court has been upheld.
Jarrar’s sentencing this month comes as the Palestinians prepare for their
elections, and it seems to be linked to that prospect since she is also a
member of the Palestinian parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council
(PLC), which has been suspended for fifteen years. Presumably the Israeli
calculation is that her detention will limit her influence on the elections.
But it’s unlikely to prevent her from winning a seat on the Council. But so
many Palestinian leaders are in prison that it plays no role in whether people
will vote for them or not.
A similar case concerns the administrative detention of Khaled Abu Arafa,
the former Palestinian minister of Jerusalem affairs. Israeli security arrested
Abu Arafa in November last year after summoning him for interrogation at the
Ofer detention center near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. Now, on March 4
an Israeli court extended his detention for four more months.
As for the elections, much of the coverage so far focuses, as I’ve said, on
the divisions among the Palestinians, not only between Hamas and Fatah, but
more importantly within Fatah also. Yet the elections may well prove to be the
way that those divisions are overcome. And on this subject one Palestinian
leader above all must be mentioned, Marwan Barghouti.
Marwan Barghouti has languished in an Israeli prison since the Second
Intifada in 2002 when he was convicted of murder by Israel—Marwan presented no
defense since he said the trial itself was illegal. Even in prison Marwan has
exercised his influence on Palestinian politics, and indeed prison has probably
increased his credibility and popularity. The reasons for his popularity are
several, but the main one may be the way that his career reflects the entire
trajectory of Palestinians under the occupation since 1967. For years Marwan Barghouti
backed the so-called peace process based on the two-state solution. He
supported the Oslo II talks but when the “final status” Camp David talks in
2000 failed, he decided—as many if not most Palestinians did—that negotiation
with Israel was pointless. Israeli would never agree to a Palestinian state and
had merely used negotiations since the 1970s to stall while it stole piece by
piece more Palestinian land. At that point Marwan backed the Intifadas and
resistance to the occupation as the only possible way forward. In his initial
hope for a negotiated solution and his turn in 2000 to uprisings and resistance
he seems to reflect the changing attitudes over time of many if not most
Palestinians. Hence the respect he still has. Polls in recent years show him
easily defeating Abbas and there are rumors that should he run in the coming
presidential election, Hamas would not field a candidate. In that case his
victory would be assured. For Palestinians, should he remain in prison, he
could appoint a deputy. And what’s more, it would increase pressure on Israel
to release him. The EU and Israeli peace groups have already called for his
release.
In February, another development rattled the Israeli government. The
International Criminal Court in The Hague ruled its jurisdiction extended to
war crimes committed in the Occupied Territories. Now on March 3, the chief
prosecutor Fatmou Bensouda opened a formal investigation into war crimes in the
Occupied Territories and Gaza. The Zionist Kamala Harris called Netanyahu that
same day to reassure Israel of it “unwavering commitment” to its security. That
was probably wasn’t much comfort to Netanyahu. His address to Congress in
2015—without an invitation from Obama—in which he tried to torpedo the Iran
nuclear deal still sticks in the craw of Democrats, and now Biden is attempting
to rescue the Iran deal.
The ICC’s actions disturb to Israeli politicians
and for good reason. The government has already warned a number of officials
high and low against traveling outside of the country lest they be arrested and
brought before the ICC. Like Israel, the US is not a
member state of the ICC and for the same reasons. That it has obviously
committed war crimes. Here again there are recent developments that suggest
changes are in the offing. As Ramzy Baroud noted in an article here January 29,
B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization has for the first time
declared that on the basis of those violations of human rights Israel can no
longer be considered a democracy.[1] More
surprising is the about-face of Ami Ayalon, the former head of Shin Bet. In a
new book Friendly Fire Ayalon writes: “The more we employed our vast
military superiority to pound the Palestinian population,” he writes, “the more
Hamas grew in strength. It was a variation on the old dilemma of winning every
battle and losing the war. We Israelis had become like the ancient Egyptians
facing our own biblical ancestors in the Book of Exodus: ‘The more they
afflicted them, the more they multiplied.’ … The irony … overwhelmed me.”
This sounds like what a number of American military leaders said of the
Vietnam War, and of course Ayalon is now retired. But better late than never.
The recent Israeli election also put further distance between Israel and
mainstream views in the US. Netanyahu’s push for a deal with the racist Otzma
Yehudit which is labeled a terrorist group by the US makes it harder for its
American advocates to keep peddling the democracy line. One US rabbi, Rabbi
Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism said, “I don’t
think it’s an exaggeration to say it’s the equivalent in the United States of
the KKK being welcomed into the corridors of power. It’s not a close
call…” Even Israel’s Zionist lobby in the USA, AIPAC, has denounced Netanyahu’s
new ally. AIPAC said it would refuse to meet with “members of this racist and
reprehensible” party.
The conflict over Palestine began between Zionist colonists and the native
Palestinian population under a British land-grab and became after 1948 a
conflict between a new, expansionist Zionist state and—the native Palestinian
population. For many decades the state of Israel masked its land-grab as “the
only democracy in the Middle East.” The contradiction between Israel’s Zionist
foundation and its pretenses to democracy is increasingly exposed.
A sample of 2,194 American adults taken through Google Survey between March
22-25 asked whether Israel should be a leading US aid recipient. A 38.1 percent
plurality said it should not. A similar plurality of Americans polled in 2020,
37.3%, opposed US recognition of Israeli West Bank annexation. This signals a
significant shift in American attitudes. That change is the result of the
stories about Israeli crimes against Palestinians like the ones I mentioned
earlier in this essay. While the vast number of those events never appear in
the mainstream media, their coverage elsewhere has over the years had a slow
cumulative effect on American attitudes towards Israel. And the attitudes are
changing most among younger Americans, who are now similar to the views Martin
Luther King and Malcolm X voiced seventy years ago.
For this reason the relationship between the US government and Israel is
not what it once was. This is seen in an increasing willingness in Congress to
speak out against Israel’s actions. When Netanyahu denounced Biden’s order to
reinstate Palestinian aid cancelled by Trump, his prime support in the US came
from Ted Cruz, who has not quite come back from Cancun. Then on April 7, Israel
announced plans to build hundreds of more units in two Palestinian districts in
East Jerusalem—the first such announcement since Biden took office. The next
day, 19 Senate Democrats led by Senators Tim Kaine, Chris Murphy and Chris Van
Hollen sent a letter to Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Benn Gantz about the
recent Israeli government agreement to consider further and much larger
annexation of Palestinian territory beginning in July. In their letter the
senators said, “Such an action would mark a dramatic reversal of decades of
shared understandings between the United States, Israel, the Palestinians and the
international community, and would have a clear impact on both Israel’s future
and our vital bilateral and bipartisan relationship.”
In addition to the erosion of once unconditional support for Israel in
Washington, there is the fact that US support, even if it were what it was ten
or twenty years ago, would no longer mean as much. Because the brute reality is
that the US is no longer respected the way it was ten or twenty years ago. Even
by its friends. This has been a long process and Trump’s buffoonery only made
it obvious.
With its major ally weakened, Israel is increasingly being seen by Europe
and China as an arrogant pariah state that mostly causes headaches and
problems. Seven million Israeli Jews live surrounded by three hundred and
thirty million Arabs. Their back-channel contacts with retrogrades like
Mohammed Bin Salman and the Gulf Arab states are trifles in that context. That
the Arab states from Morocco to Iraq are roiled and weakened by unrest does not
help Israel either. The emergence of more democratic governments that really
reflected the popular will would be so much the worse for Israel. The example
of Egypt, the largest Arab state shows this. After forty years of peace with
Israel the mass of Egyptians—whether Muslim or Christian, Islamist or
secular—despise Israel the same way they despise Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
States. All of these things can only help the Palestinian cause. Despite all
the internal divisions and problems among the Palestinians, despite the
unrelenting Israeli campaign of crimes against them, the changes around the
globe have strengthened the Palestinian position.
In August 1973 Moshe Dayan – major general of
the Zionist terrorist milicia Haganah in 1949 during the Nakaba, and Israeli « war »
hero –, said, “There is no more Palestine. Finished.” Dayan’s words were shown
to be folly by the October War of that year. The fools are not the Palestinians,
but those Israelis who think that their continued assaults on the
Palestinians—uprooting their orchards, razing their villages, humiliating, imprisoning
and killing them—will make the Palestinians simply throw up their hands and go
away. That will never happen. The Palestinians will win by their simple resolve
to stay where they are, in their historical homeland. Like a
tree, with deep roots, beside the waters.
