From CounterPunch : December 8, 2015
In his novel
1984
George Orwell introduced the lexicon of Big Brother’s Doublespeak in which “War
is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.” In today’s Western
political circles and mainstream media coverage of Palestine/Israel and
political Zionism, one may add a host of other phrases to this Orwellian
Newspeak. Expressions that would fittingly describe this coverage might include
“racism is democracy, resistance is terrorism, and occupation is bliss.”
If individuals were to rely solely on Western media outlets as their source
of information regarding the increasingly volatile situation in the occupied
Palestinian territories, especially Jerusalem,
they would not only be perplexed by the portrayals of victims and oppressors,
but also confused about the history and nature of the conflict itself. For
instance, in the past few weeks, in their coverage of the latest Palestinian
uprising, most Western mainstream media outlets, such as the New York Times,
CNN, FOX, and BBC,
virtually
omit the words “Israeli occupation,” or “illegal Israeli settlements.”
Seldom if ever do they mention the fact that Jerusalem has been under illegal
Israeli control for the past 48 years, or that the latest confrontations were
set off as a result of Israeli attempts to change the status quo and force a
joint jurisdiction of the Islamic holy sites within the walls of old Jerusalem.
Oftentimes Israel
and its enablers in the political and media arenas try to obfuscate basic facts
about the nature and history of the conflict. Despite these attempts, however,
the conflict is neither complicated nor has it existed for centuries. It is a
century-old modern phenomenon that emerged as a direct result of political
Zionism. This movement, founded by secular journalist Theodore Herzl in the
late 19
th century, has incessantly attempted to transform Judaism
from one of the world’s great religious traditions into a nationalistic ethnic
movement with the aim of transferring Jews around the world to Palestine,
while ethnically cleansing the indigenous Palestinian population from the land
of their ancestors. This is the essence of the conflict, and thus all of Israel’s
policies and actions can only be understood by acknowledging this reality.
It might be understandable, if detestable, for Israel
and its Zionist defenders to circulate false characterizations of history and
events to advance their political agenda. But it is incomprehensible for those
who claim to advocate the rule of law, believe in the principle of self-determination,
and call for freedom and justice to fall for this propaganda or to become its
willing accomplices. In following much of the media coverage or political
analyses of the conflict, one is struck by the lack of historical context, the
deliberate disregard of empirical facts, and the contempt for established legal
constructs and precedents. Are the Palestinian territories disputed or
occupied? Do Palestinians have a legal right, embedded in international law, to
resist their occupiers, including the use of armed struggle, or is every means
of resistance considered terrorism? Does Israel
have any right to old Jerusalem and
its historical and religious environs? Is the protraction of the so-called
“cycle of violence” really coming proportionally from both sides of the
conflict? Is Israel
a true democracy? Should political Zionism be treated as a legitimate national
liberation movement (from whom?) while ignoring its overwhelmingly racist
manifestations? Is Israel
genuine about seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict? Can the U.S.
really be an honest peace-broker between the two sides as it has persistently
promoted itself in the region? The factual answers to these questions would
undoubtedly clear the fog and lead objective observers not only to a full
understanding of the conflict, but also to a deep appreciation of the policies
and actions needed to bring it to an end.
Occupation, Self-Determination, and International Law
There should be no disputing that the territories seized by Israel
in June 1967, including east Jerusalem,
are occupied. Dozens of UN resolutions have passed since November 1967,
including binding Security Council resolutions calling on Israel
to withdraw from the occupied territories, which the Zionist
State has stubbornly refused to
comply with. In fact, if there were any “disputed” territories, they should be
those Palestinian territories that Israel
took
in 1948, through a campaign of
terror,
massacres,
and
military
conquests, which resulted in forcefully and illegally expelling over
800,000 Palestinians from their homes, villages, and towns, in order to make
room for thousands of Jews coming from Europe and other parts of the world.
Consequently,
UN
Resolution 194 mandated that these Palestinian “refugees wishing to return
to their homes … should be permitted to do so.” This resolution has now
remained unfulfilled for 67 years. There is also no dispute in international
law that Israel has been a
belligerent occupier
triggering the application of all the relevant Geneva Conventions as the
Palestinian people have been under occupation since their “territory is
actually placed under the authority of the
hostile
army.”
Furthermore, the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people and
their right to resist their occupiers by all means are well established in
international law. In 1960,
UN resolution 1514
adopted the “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries
and Peoples.” It stated that, “All peoples have the right to
self-determination”, and that, “the subjection of peoples to alien subjugation,
domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights
and is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations.” Ten years later the UN
adopted
Resolution 2625
which called on its members to support colonized people or people under
occupation against their colonizers and occupiers. In fact,
UN
Resolution 3246 reaffirmed in 1974 “the legitimacy of the peoples’ struggle
for liberation form colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by
all available means, including armed struggle.” Four years later
UN
Resolution 33/24 also strongly confirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle of
peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation
from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available
means, particularly armed struggle,” and “strongly condemned all governments”
that did not recognize “the right to self-determination to the Palestinian
people.”
As for occupied Jerusalem, the
UN Security Council adopted in 1980 two binding resolutions (
476
and
478)
by a vote of 14-0 (the US
abstained and did not veto either resolution.) Both resolutions condemned Israel’s
attempt to change “the physical character, demographic composition,
institutional structure, (and) the status of the Holy City of Jerusalem.” It
also reaffirmed “the overriding necessity to end the prolonged occupation of
Arab territories occupied by Israel
since 1967, including Jerusalem,”
and called out Israel
as “the occupying power.” It further considered any changes to the city of Jerusalem
as “a violation of international law.”
The Use of Violence, Resistance, and the Deceptive Peace Process
Living under brutal occupation for almost half a century without any
prospect for its end, the Palestinian people, particularly in Jerusalem,
have, since late September, embarked on new mass protests against the latest
Israeli incursions on their
holy sites and revolted once again against the ceaseless occupation. As a
consequence, the Israeli army, aided by thousands of
armed settlers roaming
the West Bank, have intensified their use of violence, which
resulted
in over
100
deaths, 2200 injuries, and 4000 arrests in less than two months. The
Israeli army and the settlements-based armed gangs, though forbidden under
international law and the Geneva
conventions, have regularly employed various violent means in order to force
Palestinian exile or compel submission to the occupation. The Israeli harsh
tactics include:
settler
violence and
provocation
under
full army protection,
targeting
children, including
kidnapping,
killing, as well as
arresting children as
young
as 5 ,
burning
infants alive, the constant use of
collective
punishment and
house
demolitions, the use of excessive
prison
sentences for any act of defiance including throwing rocks,
storming revered
religious sites, and the
deliberate
targeting
of journalists who dare to challenge Israeli hegemony.
The Palestinian people, whether under occupation or under siege, in exile
and blocked by Israel from returning to their homes, or denied their right to
self-determination, have the legitimate right to resist the military occupation
and its manifestations such as the denial of their freedom and human rights,
the confiscation of their lands, or the building and expansion of Israeli
colonies on their lands. Although most Palestinians opt for the use of
nonviolent resistance as a prudent tactic against the brutality of the
occupation, international law does not, however, limit their resistance only to
the use of peaceful means. In essence, the right to legitimate armed
resistance, subject to international humanitarian law, is enshrined in
international law and cannot be denied to any people including the Palestinians
in their struggle to gain their freedom and exercise their right to
self-determination. Furthermore, international law does not confer any right on
the occupying power to use any force against their occupied subjects, in order
to maintain and sustain their occupation, including in self-defense. In short,
aggressors and land usurpers
are
by definition denied the use of force to subjugate their victims.
Consequently, as a matter of principle embedded in international law and
regardless of any political viability, strikes against military targets
including soldiers, armed settlers, or other tools and institutions of the
occupation are legitimate and any action against them, non-violent or
otherwise, cannot be condemned or deemed terrorism.
Furthermore, the argument regarding the validity of using armed struggle
against oppression and denial of political rights by tyrannical and colonial
regimes is well established in its favor. Patriot Patrick Henry rallied his
countrymen prior to the American Revolution in 1775 in his famous call “give
liberty or give me death.” Civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. even
rejected pacifism in the face of aggression. He only questioned its tactical
significance when he stated “I contended that the debate over the question of
self-defense was unnecessary since few people suggested that Negroes should not
defend themselves as individuals when attacked. The question was not
whether one should use his gun when his home was attacked, but whether it was
tactically wise to use a gun while participating in an organized
demonstration.” Mahatma Gandhi saw active resistance as more honorable than
pacifism when he said “I would rather have India
resort to arms in order to defence her honour than that she would, in a
cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour.”
Nelson Mandela reflected on this debate when he asserted that he resorted to
armed struggle only when “all other forms of resistance were no longer open”,
and demanded that the Apartheid regime “guarantee free political activity”
to blacks before he would call on his compatriots to suspend armed struggle.
Accordingly, the debate over whether the use of armed resistance against
Israeli occupation advances the cause of justice for Palestinians is not a
question of legitimacy, but rather of sound political strategy in light of the
skewed balance of military power and massive public support from peoples around
the globe for their just struggle.
Yet, the reality of the conflict actually reveals that the Palestinian
people have overwhelmingly been at the receiving end of the use of ruthless
Israeli violence and aggression since 1948. With the exception of the 1973 war
(initiated by Egypt
and Syria to
regain the lands they lost in the 1967 war) every Arab-Israeli war in the past
seven decades (‘48, ’56, ‘67, ’78, ’82, ’02, etc.) was initiated by Israel
and resulted in more uprooting and misery to the Palestinians. Still, since
2008 Israel
launched
three
brutal wars against Gaza with devastating consequences. In the 2008/2009
war, Israel
killed 1417 Palestinians and lost 13 people including 9 soldiers. In the 2012
war, Israel
killed 167 Palestinians and lost 6 including 2 soldiers. And in the 2014 war, Israel
killed 2104 Palestinians, including 539 children, with 475,000 people made
homeless, 17,500 homes destroyed, while 244 schools and scores of hospitals and
mosques damaged. In that war Israel
lost 72 including 66 soldiers. In short, since late 2008 Israel
killed 3688 Palestinians in its three declared wars and lost 91 including 77
soldiers. Shamefully the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children has been
amply documented
as over
two thousand have been
killed by Israel
since 2000. This massive Israeli intentional use of violence against the
Palestinians, especially in Gaza (which has been under a crippling siege since
2007) was investigated, determined to constitute war crimes, and condemned by
the UN in the
Goldstone
Report, as well as by other human rights groups such as
Amnesty
International and
Human
Rights Watch.
The 1993 Oslo process gave rise
to the promise of ending decades of Israeli occupation. But the process was
rigged
from the start as many of its participants have recently
admitted.
It was an Israeli ploy to halt the first Palestinian uprising and give Israel
the breathing room it needed to aggressively and
permanently colonize the West
Bank including East Jerusalem. It was an
accord with a lopsided balance of power, as one side held all the cards and
gave no real concessions, and a much weaker side stripped of all its bargaining
chips. During this period the number of settlements in the West Bank
more than
doubled
and the number of settlers increased by more than seven fold to over 600
thousand including in East Jerusalem.
The world has none other than Benjamin Netanyahu to acknowledge that Israel
has no intention of withdrawing or ending its occupation. After serving his
first stint as a prime minister, Netanyahu (shown here in a
leaked video) while
visiting a settlement in 2001, admitted to his true intention of grabbing as
much as 98 percent of Palestinian territories in the West Bank
and halting the fraudulent Oslo
process. Believing that the camera was off, he spoke candidly to a group of
settlers about his strategic vision, plans, and tactics.
On his vision he assured them that “The settlements are here. They are
everywhere.” He stated, “I halted the fulfillment of the Oslo
agreements. It’s better to give two percent than 100 percent. You gave two
percent but you stopped the withdrawal.” He later added, “I gave my own
interpretation to the agreements in such a way that will allow me to stop the
race back towards the 1967 borders.” As for the tactics, Netanyahu freely
confessed his strategy of causing so much pain to the Palestinians that they
would submit to the occupation rather than resist. He said, “The main thing is
to strike them not once but several times so painfully that the price they pay
will be unbearable causing them to fear that everything is about to collapse.”
When he was challenged that such a strategy might cause the world to consider Israel
as the aggressor, he dismissively said, “They can say whatever they want.” He
also implied how he was not concerned about American pressure.
To the contrary
he asserted that he could easily manipulate Israel’s
main benefactor when he stated “America
is something you can easily maneuver and move in the right direction. I wasn’t
afraid to confront Clinton. I
wasn’t afraid to go against the UN.” Even though world leaders consider
Netanyahu a “liar” and they “can’t stand him” as shown in this
exchange between former
French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Barak Obama, no Western leader has stood
up to Israel, even though a
British
parliamentarian stated that 70 percent of Europeans consider it a “danger
to world’s peace.” But the obstructionist posture and expansionist policies of
Israeli leaders are not restricted to the Israeli right. Former Labor leader
Ehud Barak was as much determined in 2000 at
Camp
David not to withdraw from the West Bank, Jerusalem,
or dismantle the settlements.
For decades the world waited for Israel
to decide its destiny by choosing two out of three defining elements: its
Jewish character, its claim to democracy, and the lands of so-called “greater Israel.”
If it chose to retain its Jewish majority and claim to be democratic, it had to
withdraw from the lands it occupied in 1967. If it insists on incorporating the
lands and have a democracy it would have to integrate its Arab populations
while forsaking its Jewish exceptionalism in a secular state. Yet sadly but
true to its Zionist nature, Israel
chose to maintain its Jewish exclusiveness over all of historical Palestine
to transform itself into a manifestly
Apartheid
state.
Political Zionism and the True Nature of the Israeli
State
For over a century political Zionism has evoked intense passions and
emotions on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: its ardent
supporters as well as its critics and hapless victims. Zionists hail their
enterprise as a national liberation movement for the Jewish people while its
opponents condemn it as a racist ideology that practiced ethnic cleansing,
instituted racial and religious discrimination, and committed war crimes to
realize its goals.
On November 10, 1975
the United Nations General Assembly adopted
resolution
3379 that determined Zionism as a “form of racism and racial
discrimination.” However, it was
revoked
16 years later under tremendous pressure from the U.S.
and other Western countries in the aftermath of the first Gulf war in 1991.
Oftentimes, the public is denied unfiltered information about the true nature
of political Zionism and its declared state. And unfortunately the media
conglomerates rarely cover that aspect of the conflict, which contributes to
the public’s confusion and exasperation.
Since its creation in 1948, Israel
has passed laws and implemented policies that institutionalized discrimination
against its Arab Palestinian minority. In the aftermath of its 1967 invasion,
it instituted a military occupation regime that has denied basic human and
civil rights to millions of Palestinians whose population now exceeds the
number of Israeli Jews in the land within historical Palestine.
In addition, in defiance of international law, Israel
has obstinately refused to allow the descendants of the Palestinian people that
it expelled in 1948 and 1967 to return to their homes, while allowing millions
of people of other nationalities the right to become citizens of the Israeli
state upon arrival simply because they are Jewish.
Zionist leaders from Ben-Gurion to Netanyahu have always claimed that Israel
was a democracy similar to other Western liberal democracies. But perhaps the
best way to examine this claim and illustrate the nature of the modern Zionist
state is through a comparative analogy (a similar example could also be found
in Israeli historian
Shlomo
Sand’s book).
What if a Western country claiming to be a democracy, such as the U.S.
or the U.K.,
were officially to change its constitution and system to become the state of
the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs)? Even though its African, Hispanic,
Asian, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim citizens as well as other minorities would
still have the right to vote, hold political offices, and enjoy some civil and
social rights, they would have to submit to the new nature and exclusive
character of the WASP state. Moreover, with the exception of the WASP class of
citizens, no other citizen would be allowed to buy or sell any land, and there
would be permanent constitutional laws that would forbid any WASP from selling
any property to any members of other ethnicities or religions in the country.
Its Congress or parliament would pass laws that would also forbid any WASP from
marrying outside his or her social class, and if any such “illegal” marriage
were to take place, it would not be recognized by the state. As for
immigration, only WASPs from around the world would be welcome. In fact, there
would be no restrictions on their category as any WASP worldwide could claim
immediate citizenship upon arrival in the country with full economic and social
benefits granted by the state, while all other ethnicities are denied. Furthermore,
most of the existing minorities in the country would be subjected to certain
“security” policies in order to allow room for the WASPs coming from outside.
So in many parts of the country, there would be settlements and colonies
constructed only for the new WASP settlers and consequently some of the
non-WASP populations would have to be restricted or relocated. In these new
settlements the state would designate WASP-only roads, WASP-only schools,
WASP-only health clinics, WASP-only shopping malls, WASP-only parks or swimming
pools. There would also be a two-tier health care system, educational system,
criminal justice system, and social welfare system. In this dual system for
example, if a WASP assaults or kills a non-WASP he would receive a small fine
or a light sentence that would not exceed few years, while if a non-WASP
murders a WASP, even accidentally, he would receive a harsh or mandatory life
sentence. In this system, where the police is exclusively staffed by WASPs, the
Supreme Court would routinely sanction the use of torture against any non-WASP,
subject to the judgment of the security officers. Such a system would clearly
be so manifestly racist, patently criminal, and globally abhorred that no one
would stand by it or defend it. But could such a regime even exist or be
accepted in today’s world? (I realize that some people may argue that many of
these practices had actually occurred in the past against certain segments of
the population in some Western societies. But no government today would dare to
embrace this model or defend its policies.)
Yet, because of the Zionist nature of the Israeli state, this absurd example
is actually a reality with varying degrees for the daily lives of the
Palestinian people, whether they are nominal citizens of the state, live under
occupation or under siege, or have been blocked for decades from returning back
to their homes, towns, and villages. Such a system would not only be condemned
but no decent human being or a country that respects the rule of law would
associate with it or tolerate it.
From its early days, prominent
Jewish
intellectuals have condemned the racist nature of the Zionist state. Albert
Einstein and Hannah Arendt
wrote
in 1948 condemning Zionist leaders of Israel
who “openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state.” Israeli scientist and
thinker
Israel
Shahak considered Israel
as “a racist state in the full meaning of this term, where the Palestinians are
discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most
important areas of life, only because of their origin.” Renowned American
intellectual
Noam
Chomsky considers Israel’s
actions in Palestine as even “much
worse than Apartheid” ever was in South Africa.
Israeli historian
Ilan
Pappé argues that “The Zionist goal from the very beginning was to have as
much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians in it as possible,”
while American historian
Howard
Zinn thought that “Zionism is a mistake.” American academic and author
Norman Finkelstein has
often spoken out against the racist nature of the Zionist state and condemned
its manipulation of the Nazi Holocaust to justify its colonization of Palestine.
British historian
Tony
Judt described Israel
as “an anachronism” because of its exclusive nature in comparison to its
“non-Jewish citizens.” Former UN Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine
Professor
Richard
Falk called Israeli policies in the Occupied
Territories “a crime against
humanity” and compared Israel’s
treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi treatment of the Jews and has said,
“I think the Palestinians stand out as the most victimized people in the
world.” Very recently, prominent American Jewish academics
posed
the question: “Can we continue to embrace a state that permanently denies
basic rights to another people?” Their answer was an emphatic call for a
complete boycott against the Zionist state.
Furthermore, Israeli politicians and religious leaders regularly use racist
rhetoric to appeal to their constituents and articulate their policies. In the
last Israeli elections in March, Prime Minister Netanyahu
tweeted
to the Israeli public, “The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are
coming out in droves to the polls.” Former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman
advocated
new ethnic cleansing through “the transfer” of Palestinian citizens from the
state. One prominent Rabbi
considered
“killing Palestinians a religious duty,” while another
declared
that “It is not only desirable to do so, but it is a religious duty that you
hold his head down to the ground and hit him until his last breath.” Former
Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, one of the most senior religious
leaders in Israel
ruled
that “there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate
killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza.”
Racism in Israel is so pervasive that a Jewish settler
stabbed
another Jew, and another settler
killed
a fellow Jewish settler not because the perpetrators were threatened, but
because the victims looked Arab. Israeli racism is so widespread among its
population that noted journalist
Max
Blumenthal, who investigated the Israeli society’s attitudes towards the
Palestinians, was himself
surprised
to “the extent to which groups and figures, remarkably similar ideologically
and psychologically to the radical right in the US and to neo-fascist movements
across Europe, controlled the heart of Israeli society and the Israeli
government.”
In short, the ideology of political Zionism, as it has amply been
demonstrated within the state of Israel,
with its exclusionary vision and persistent policies of occupying the land and
subjugating its people, has proven without any doubt that it represents a relic
of a bygone era that utterly lacks civilized behavior or claims to a democratic
system. Therefore, any discussion, coverage, analysis, or debate of the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict that sidesteps the nature and ideology of the
Israeli state is not only disingenuous and lacks credibility, but also
contributes to the deepening of the conflict, the continuous suffering of its
victims, and the illusion of finding a potential just and peaceful outcome.
Dr. Sami Al-Arian is a
Palestinian academic and intellectual. He lived for four decades in the U.S.
before relocating to Turkey
in 2015. Because of his long activism for the Palestinian cause and defending
human and civil rights, he was a political prisoner in the U.S.
and spent over a decade in prison and under house arrest until the charges were
dropped in 2014. He can be contacted at nolandsman1948@gmail.com.
A newspaper cutting arrived in my post a few days ago from some South African friends. The story is below and is hilarious!
