Eyewitness from Ramallah
By Sam Bahour, Palestine Chronicle 12/4/2003
Last night was not a good night. We put our two girls to sleep at 9:00 am. My wife followed at 10. At around 11:30 pm, I was on the computer when out of nowhere Israeli IDF soldiers were yelling out of loudspeakers for our neighbors, two streets over, to exit their house with all kids. A few moments later the annoying whizzing sound of the unmanned plane started right over our house. It was an act all too familiar over the last three years. The Israelis were back in town, full force, going house-to-house, tanks and all.
My main concern was for my girls not to awake. I closed their bedroom door put on some music and closed tight all of our flat's windows. I knew the shooting would start and I could not let my girls go through this again...they are barely starting to forget last year when the IDF came twice and forced us out of the house to search our home.
It didn’t take 15 minutes and the shooting did start, followed by explosions, small ones, and then large ones. I could hear our neighbor's kids crying as the soldier yelled in the loudspeakers for the hands to go behind the head and for each parent to march single file to the road...this went on until 3:30 am.
Israeli People's Most Common Mistakes
By Gilad Atzmon, Jerusalemites 12/3/2003
The most common mistakes made by Israelis are as follows:
1. To fail to realize that there is no essential difference between Tel Aviv and a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
2. To believe that the creation of the state of Israel was an outcome of the Holocaust.
3. To regard themselves as innocent people and thus as victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
4. To believe that they live in a democracy and therefore that their atrocities are legitimate.
5. To be convinced that they live in an open society which enjoys political and ideological diversity.
6. To believe that the ghetto is behind them.
7. To be convinced that the 'Jewish state' is a legitimate concept.
8. To think that Israel is a shelter for the entire Jewish people and the best answer to anti-Semitism.
9. To regard themselves as humanists.
10. To be sure that Israel is immortal.
Throughout the relatively short history of Jewish nationalism many Jews have managed to find flaws within Zionist philosophy. Many have detached themselves from Zionism. Since the declaration of the Israeli state, numerous Israelis have left Israel and more than a few Jews around the world have joined forces with the Palestinian liberation movement. Israelis, on the other hand, are those who still fail to realize that the ten beliefs above are grave, indeed fatal, mistakes.
One could probably ask whether these essential mistakes are made by Zionists in particular rather than all Israelis. In response I would argue that Israeli people are Zionists even though they may only have a very little knowledge of what Zionism is. Most Israelis were born into a colonial and racist reality. They are educated to maintain Zionism rather than to question it. This blind acceptance of one of the most radically chauvinist worldviews turns the Israelis into an impossible candidate for any form of peaceful negotiation.
Geneva understandings promote a failing apartheid solution
By Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, Media Monitors Network 12/2/2003
Palestinian leader Arafat recognized Israel on 78% of the land of Palestine in hopes of being allowed an independent state on the remaining 22%. Many "deals" since then failed because as Amnesty International put it, they fail to recognize the importance of human rights. The media is now trumpeting the latest in this line of agreements: the Geneva understandings.Guided by an imbalance of power, Palestinians would be asked to abrogate the right of return to their homes and lands and to recognize Israel not as a state of its citizens but as a state "for the Jewish people." In short, this blatantly violates International Law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). What it means is that the victims of Israeli colonialism are expected to certify that it is OK for Israel to remain the only country in the world that identifies its lands as belonging not to its citizens but to "Jewish people everywhere". This means that the Palestinians accept that Israel caused the largest remaining refugee problem in the world and can break international law and basic human rights and refuse to allow them to return to their farms, businesses, homes and lands. The Palestinians must recognize that Israel can remain the only country in the world that gives members of a particular religion including converts automatic rights (citizenship, land, homes, subsidies) that supercede and mostly replace those of "citizens" and native people who belong to other religions. Israel grants automatic citizenship to any individual who has one Jewish grandparent while denying citizenship to native Christians and Muslims simply for being of the wrong religion.
Israel is the only country in the world whose legitimacy does not flow from rights of self-determination of natives but Zionist claim of biblical authority. Ofcourse there was a UN general assembly resolution in 1947 which called for partition of a native land to give 55% of the land to Jews who at the time represented 30% of the population and most of them new settlers/colonists and owned 7% of the land. Native Jews actually were not Zionists for the most part and rejected such partition. The resolution was unfair and could not be accepted any more than Algerians were willing to split their country with French colonists. It was accomplished by much arm-twisting by the US and the USSR. Yet, the resolution rejected any population transfer and included Internationalizing Jerusalem, on an economic union, and on free movement of people. All these provisions where unacceptable to the Zionist movement and are denied in the Geneva accords.
From Geneva with Hope
By Gila Svirsky, Media Monitors Network 12/2/2003
I wish I could have been in Geneva today, where hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians gathered to make public their demand for peace.
Sharon called them "subversive", two cabinet ministers called them "traitors - a crime punishable by death", but all the Israeli media still were there covering the event (with the exception of the Israeli Russian press, ferociously right wing), and it featured mightily on the prime time evening news.
Sharon, posing for 3 blood-drenched years as the man who would make peace, was furious to think he was being upstaged. In a desperate attempt at a diversionary tactic, he had the army pummel Ramallah today, killing 4 Palestinians including an 8 year-old boy, and demolishing a four-story building in the hope that a "wanted terrorist" was inside. We await reports of how many unwanted civilians were wounded and how many more homes destroyed in yet another colossal affront to human decency.
Last week's polls showed just over 50% of Israelis in support of the Geneva Accords. Today's Ha'aretz showed 31% in favor and 38% opposed (31% had no opinion at all). This is an amazing show of support for a leftwing platform condemned by the prime minister as subversive.
Independent: Noam Chomsky: You Ask The Questions
Middle East Peace/The Independent 12/4/2003
Such as: is human survival really under serious threat? And how easy is it for you, as a linguist, to understand teenage slang?) 04 December 2003
Professor Noam Chomsky, 74, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into the only Jewish family in a lower-middle-class neighbourhood. He took a degree and then a PhD in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. At the age of 29, he published Syntactic Structures, which revolutionised the study of language. In 1964, he began openly resisting the Vietnam War, and published his first collection of political writings five years later. He has remained a major authority on both linguistics and political theory ever since. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, Carol, and has three children.
If you had only one question to ask the Presidentof the United States, what would it be? Michael Kulas, by e-mail
Why doesn't he abdicate, thus doing the world a great favour?
What has been your biggest mistake, and would you make it again if you could relive your life? Steve Womble, Sunderland
The failure to do anywhere near enough to try to put an end to suffering and crimes for which I share responsibility as a citizen of a free country, enjoying unusual privilege and opportunity. But that is a mistake I make every day.
Is anti-Semitism on the increase? Ricardo Parreira, London
In the West, fortunately, it scarcely exists now, though it did in the past. There is, of course, what the Anti-Defamation League calls "the real anti-Semitism", more dangerous than the old-fashioned kind: criticism of policies of the state of Israel and US support for them, opposition to a vast US military budget, etc. In contrast, anti-Arab racism is rampant. The manifestations are shocking, in elite intellectual circles as well, but arouse little concern because they are considered legitimate: the most extreme form of racism.
An Interview with Norman Finkelstein
By M. Junaid Alam, CounterPunch 12/2/2003
M. Junaid Alam, co-editor and webmaster of the new leftist journal for American youth, Left Hook, recently had the opportunity to interview Norman Finkelstein, prominent and outspoken critic of Israel and son of Nazi holocaust survivors. Mr. Finkelstein is a professor of Political Science at DePaul University in Chicago and the author of the authoritative and controversial books Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and The Holocaust Industry.
Alam: Mr. Finkelstein, thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Israel was an enthusiastic supporter of America's war on Iraq, and the Sharon government viewed the removal of Hussein as complementary to his own efforts to topple Arafat. During the war, the New York Times ran an article about the sense of imminent victory over the Palestinians displayed by Israeli military leadership. Now, intense resistance has emerged in Iraq, the Abbas government has fallen apart, Arafat still controls the security forces, and a top Israeli officer admitted that Israeli tactics are only stiffening Palestinian resolve. Do you think this qualifies as a new political situation, and what does this mean for the US-sponsored 'road map'?
Finkelstein: The important thing about the roadmap was the symmetry. Right after the first destruction of Iraq in 1991 the US launched what eventually became known as the Oslo peace process; after the second destruction of Iraq, the US launched the roadmap. In both cases the hope and expectation was the same: Palestinians (and the Arab world generally) would be so "shocked and awed" by the massive display of US firepower that they would bow to US-Israeli diktat. The first time around it seemed to be going according to script, Arafat accepting his designated role as tribal chief. But in July 2000 at Camp David, when Arafat refused to sign on the dotted line for the Bantustan that he was offered, he was immediately branded a "terrorist" once again. Realizing that Arafat was hopeless, after the second destruction of Iraq, the US and Israel replaced him with Abu Mazen, who was just as corrupt and stupid as Arafat but, crucially, wasn't elected. Polls showed that he would get 3-5% of the vote in a Palestinian election--which means he was for the United States the perfect democratic leader of Palestine. But the Abu Mazen gambit also failed.
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