[Peace-discuss] Response to Fred Jaher

[C. G. Estabrook]

I don't know if there's any advantage to submitting this as an AWARE commentary,
but it's too important to let languish. Maybe just send it as a "proposed guest
commentary" to Opinions Editor Tom Kacich, The News-Gazette
<tkacich at news-gazette.com>.  --CGE


David Green wrote:
> 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 4^th 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 27^th . 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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