[Dryerase] Alarm!--Israeli Security

[Alarm!Wires]

Israeli security, racism, and the question of liberation
by Chris Kortright
The Alarm! Newspaper Contributor

May the holy name visit retribution on the Arab’s heads, cause their 
seeds to be lost and annihilate them, cause them to be vanquished and 
cause them to be cast from the world. It is forbidden to be merciful to 
them. You must give them missiles, with relish. Annihilate them, the 
evil ones. — Rabbi Ouvadia Ben Yoysef, leader of the lsraeli Shas Party

Israeli Security and the War on Terror
When we in the United States discuss Palestine/Israel, the discussion is 
framed around both sides being caught in a “cycle of violence” that 
threatens Israel’s security. But in order to be a true “cycle” the two 
sides of the conflict would have to have some equality. In the 
Palestine/Israel “cycle,” only one side has a state, an army or even a 
country. The Palestinians have none of these. As Edward Said wrote in 
last week’s Al-Ahram the Palestinians are “a stateless dispossessed 
population of people without rights or any present way of securing 
them.” Also, the “cycle of violence” does not benefit both sides of the 
conflict. Violence is only legitimized when it is perpetrated by a 
state, and in this conflict Israel has a monopoly on legitimate violence.
On July 22, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered his F-16s to 
drop a one-ton bomb on a residential area in Gaza City, killing 
seventeen Palestinians, including eleven children. After the bombing, 
Sharon was quoted as congratulating the pilot. He boasted it was 
Israel’s greatest success. How are we to process Sharon’s proud 
statement? What tools are we really given to process it when Israel is 
supported by our media and government?
Here in the US, we have paid little attention to the occupation of the 
Palestinian territories. Instead we have been barraged by constant 
stories of Palestinian suicide bombers. These stories consistently 
ignore the government policies of Israel and Sharon, which have been 
carried out deliberately and methodically against the Palestinian people 
in the name of security. Suicide bombings are horrendous, but they take 
place in a too often forgotten historical context of years of abuse, 
powerlessness and despair.
The Israeli policy perpetrated by Sharon and his government needs to put 
in the context of global international policies like the US’s War on 
Terrorism, which Israel now uses as a justification for doing what it is 
doing. Sharon’s acts have been incorporated into George Bush’s War on 
Terrorism, which gladly ignores Israel’s persecution of Palestinians. 
Here in the US, there is a only a small contingent of people willing to 
speak out against Israel. The atrocities against the Palestinian people 
are rationalized in the name of both US and Israeli security.
Israel, with its nuclear arsenal, air force, army and endless supplies—
gifts from the US taxpayers—has wreaked havoc on the Arab world in 
general and the Palestinian people specifically. The US’s willful 
ignorance and support holds the Palestinians responsible for the daily 
atrocities committed by Israel in the name of security and the pursuit 
of terrorism. Our silence and/or support works perfectly for Sharon. 
Bush shocked the international media when he called Sharon a “man of 
peace.” Even Bill Clinton, who has been called a supporter of 
Palestinians and has claimed to be committed to the peace process, 
declared he would “be ready to die in Israel’s defense.” Secretary of 
Defense Donald Rumsfeld referred to the West Bank and Gaza as “so-called 
occupied territory.” He went on to discuss the 1967 War, and justified 
Israeli occupation because Israel defeated countries “who jumped in and 
lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in the 
conflict.”

The Occupation
As the Palestinian people are in a constant state of war, intellectuals, 
scholars, and politicians in the US and Israel discuss strategic 
withdrawal, incorporation of settlements, whether to keep building the 
fence, etc. Yet, at the same time, almost 100 Palestinians have been 
killed in “targeted” assassinations. Israeli soldiers have also rounded 
up thousands of “suspects” in the name of a war on terrorism. Nobody in 
the US asks whether these people killed or imprisoned were in fact 
terrorists, or proved to be terrorists, or were about to become 
terrorists.
Every Palestinian is a prisoner. Gaza is surrounded by an electrified 
wire fence on three sides. Gazans are unable to move, unable to work, 
unable to sell their vegetables or fruit, unable to go to school. 
Medical supplies are held up at the border, ambulances are fired upon or 
detained. Hundreds of houses are demolished, and hundreds of thousands 
of trees and acres of agricultural land destroyed. The West Bank is 
occupied by 1,000 Israeli tanks. Their purpose is to fire upon and 
terrorize Palestinians. Curfews are imposed for periods of up to two 
weeks. Schools and universities are either closed or impossible to get 
to. Two-thirds of the population lives below the poverty level of $2 a 
day. At this point most Palestinians are refugees from Israel’s 
destruction of their society in 1948.
At the center of the occupation is the Israeli government and their foot 
soldiers — the young Israeli conscripts who are allowed free rein with 
every known form of private torture and abjection at check-points. 
Palestinians need to face an onslaught of jeeps and soldiers while they 
wait their turn by the thousands at check points just in an attempt to 
live their lives. Soldiers regularly make dozens of youths kneel in the 
sun for hours. They force men to take off their clothes. There is a 
constant practice of insulting and humiliating parents in front of their 
children. All of this done for no other reason than personal whim 
reinforced by government policy.

Palestinian Liberation
There is no Palestinian army of occupation. There are no Palestinian 
tanks, no soldiers, no helicopter gun-ships, no artillery. There is no 
government to speak of. So when Sharon ordered his F-16s to drop a 
one-ton bomb on a residential area in Gaza City, it was understood by 
Sharon that Hamas, Jihad or the Al-Aqsa Brigades would send Israel the 
next martyr. The suicide bombings could not stop, or Sharon would not be 
able to justify his continued occupation of Palestinian territory. The 
attack on Gaza came on the heels of inter-Palestinian discussions on a 
cease-fire declaration in which they vowed “to do everything in our 
power to end attacks on Israeli civilians, on innocent men, women and 
children... without seeking or demanding any prior gains.”
The declaration was significant because it was the work of a grass-roots 
effort within Fatah and not a mythical deal struck by the Palestinian 
Authority under CIA manipulation. The declaration seemed to reflect a 
growing awareness within Palestinian ranks that so-called “martyrdom 
operations” had, at the very least, proven to be an exercise in futility.
Many Palestinians are fighting for genuine liberation and 
self-determination. They are looking for an independent, sovereign and 
democratic Palestinian state. This objective requires a  long-term 
strategy of struggle, which would have to incorporate more tactical and 
short-term objectives aimed at strengthening Palestinian solidarity and 
international support.
Hani Shukrallah wrote, “The experiences of Oslo and beyond have revealed 
that separation is an Israeli, not a Palestinian objective; its only 
possible realization is Apartheid.” The question is not only one state, 
two states or some compromised form of federalism. The state question is 
not the real question. If Palestinians are to attain 
self-determination,  they need to deliver a crushing blow to the racist 
and colonialist ideologies embedded in Jewish nationalism. This blow is 
impossible without an alliance between Palestinians on both sides of the 
Green Line and radical or anti-racist Israelis. There was a movement of 
class-conscious revolutionaries who existed before the formation of the 
Israeli state. They wanted to unite the working classes of both Arab and 
Jewish decent against the British occupying army. A similar type of 
cohesion needs to happen now. Palestinian liberation and Israeli 
security can only come at the same time, and they will not come from the 
likes of Sharon. There needs to be a cross-line class movement that will 
destroy the Israeli state and its racist ideology, while still leaving 
place for both groups now called Israelis and Palestinians.
 
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