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The Times Argus, March 24, 2003

An act of criminal folly

By Mark L. Hage

There are approximately 380,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. And their numbers are growing. A Jew from any place in the world may settle on confiscated Arab land, receive Israeli citizenship, housing and government subsidies, and call on the Israel Defense Forces to seal off and terrorize 3 million Palestinians to ensure his or her comfort.

This has become so commonplace that many Americans don’t think about it, even when it takes on a surreal character. For example, the Journal of Palestine Studies has reported that the Ashkenazi Chief rabbinate of Israel dispatched a delegation of rabbis last May on a two-week mission to Peru to ferret out rural people who, in exchange for converting to Judaism, would be transported to Israel. About 90 Peruvians accepted the offer and were airlifted—not to Israel—but to Jewish colonies in the occupied territories. Without a trace of irony, Israel calls this “redeeming the land.”

The more Jews who settle in the West Bank and Gaza, the less likely it will be that Palestinians will achieve a territorially contiguous and economically viable state. Or be able to remain on their ancestral lands. This is why the Jewish state has spent vast sums since 1993 building new colonies or expanding old ones in the territories. It has doubled the settler population since the signing of the Oslo accords and built an extensive infrastructure of bypass roads and defense fortifications to support them.

I don’t care what god Peruvians worship but in this case we should all care where they do it and how they got there. I imagine most of them had a poor understanding of what their presence in the territories would mean in practical or symbolic terms, or of how they would be perceived by Palestinians who are becoming more ghettoized, impoverished and desperate with each passing day. But Israel knew what it was doing when it put these Peruvians (and other Jews before them) in harm’s way on land stolen from Palestinians and held by savage force. Tragically, everyone in the region will pay a high price in blood for this criminal folly.

Mark L. Hage
Montpelier, VT