[Peace-discuss] Response to Fred Jaher

[David Green]

Unsurprisingly, I couldn't get on with my day until responding to Fred Jaher's horrible commentary in the News-Gazette this morning. Fortunately or otherwise, his is not online. Mine is below.
 
The approach I've taken is largely not to address his specific points, but to use context and to educate. Please share any suggestions. Perhaps at the meeting this evening the merits of submitting this as also representing AWARE might be discussed--and I don't mean to assume that it does necessarily represent the views of the required majority of its members or attendees. I don't know if the N-G allows for that, or if that will improve its chances of being published. Obviously, that's my primary concern. I've kept it to 600 words. They gave Jaher at least that many, I think.
 
David
 
 
 
The conflict in Israel and Palestine has been unresolved for decades not for lack of a solution along the lines of U.N. Resolution 242 (1967) that is supported by international consensus—excluding the U.S. and Israel—but for two other primary reasons. First, Israel’s settler-colonialist project is incomplete, although nearing completion by the day. Second, Israel, as hyper-militarized state, is still of immense strategic value to the U.S. in relation to its geopolitical strategy to control Middle Eastern energy resources. 
 
The conflict is not rooted in religion or ancient ethnic hatreds. Nor is it rooted in the memory of the Holocaust among Jews or anti-Semitism among Arabs. It is rooted in the settler-colonialist project that was synonymous with the Zionist movement at its inception. The founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, wrote in his diary in 1895: "We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country.” And so it was: in 1948, 1967, and ongoing; a majority of Israeli Jews now support the idea that Arab citizens of Israel by encouraged to emigrate. 
 
As a settler-colonialist project, Zionism should not be hard for Americans to understand; to a certain extent, we have acknowledged if not repaired the original sins upon which this country was founded, including slavery. Israel, on the other hand, is being asked to actually abandon some of its ill-gotten gains, if only in the occupied territories, comprising 22% the total land. Israelis and their supporters in this country still cling to a colonialist mentality. They claim that they are exceptional, that their civilization accords them moral superiority.
 
As it has been for the entire history of this conflict, it is still ridiculous to argue recent events in terms of retaliation, as if the conquest of a land and the brutal expulsion and/or domination of its people by a well-armed settlement movement are matters of tit for tat. Since the early days of Zionist settlement, Jews have been able—with the indispensable assistance of Great Britain and the U.S.—to marshal resources, weaponry, and political organization in order to achieve and expand a Jewish state.
 
As a colonialist project, Israel’s economic domination of the Palestinians has been relentless. Harvard scholar Sara Roy writes: “By the time the second intifada (2000) broke out, Israel’s closure policy in Gaza had been in force for seven years, leading to levels of unemployment and poverty that were, until then, unprecedented. Yet the closure policy proved so destructive only because of the near 30-year process of integrating Gaza’s economy into Israel’s, which undermined the local economic base by making it deeply dependent on Israel, insuring that no viable economic (and hence, political) structure could emerge.”
 
Yet, the recent chronology merits attention, because it is so hideously distorted by supporters of Israel. Hamas has been willing to negotiate throughout. Hamas was elected in free and fair elections in 2005. Hamas legislators were immediately imprisoned. The U.S. and Israel supported Fatah’s violent and failed attempt to usurp Hamas. Hamas abided by the ceasefire during 2008. Israel violated the ceasefire by its continued blockade, and on November 4th with a lethal attack. Hamas expressed a willingness to extend the ceasefire, but only if the blockade was lifted. Israel refused and invaded Gaza on December 27th. All of what supporters of Israel claim in justifying the attack on Hamas fighters and on Palestinian civilians is grotesque and transparent nonsense—and racist. Israeli massacres should not be defined as disproportionate; they should be defined as murder.


      
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