Name:     Michael L. S.   [E-Mail]
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      Website:  Middle East Resource Center


 

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You know what they say: with friends like these... Get this: the general assembly of the US Presbyterian church has voted to divest from only one country in the world. No, it was not China, which has occupied Tibet for half a century and continues to deny basic human rights to its own citizens. No, it was not Iran, which threatens nuclear holocaust, executes dissenters and denies religious freedom to its minorities. No, it was not North Korea, Libya, Russia, Sudan, Cuba or Belarus. It was--you guessed it--Israel: the only democracy in the Middle East and America's most reliable ally in a troubled part of the world. Alan Dershowitz comments on this decision in his LA Times article.

Bear in mind that the Presbyterian church is one of the strongest Xian organizations in the US. When I rail against Xian fundamentalism and evangelical movements I am always reminded by readers how staunch allies of Tzion particularly these groups are. Well, in your face: this proves, for who knows which time, that we can NOT trust anyone but ourselves. It was ludicrous to think otherwise even while we and these particular fundamentalist Xians WERE bedfellows--after all, how can you trust someone whose ultimate wish/goal is to see you convert to Xianity?!? Yes, it is good to have supporters from various circles and we should welcome their support. But let's not get too cozy with them or forget that at the end of the day it is only "we and ourselves". If our supposed friends can buy the bullshit that "the occupation is the root of terrorism", never mind the crap Alan relates in his report, then is it any wonder the historically Jew-abhorring Europe or anti-Semite-saturated United Nations seemingly spend most of their time pillorying Israel?

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A privacy newsletter I've been receiving for years now carried a snippet last week about the ICJ's decision concerning Israel's anti-terrorist barrier (read MY comment on it here), and it ended the piece with it's own op-ed which I quote verbatim: "[The organization's] comment: And people wonder why some are blowing themselves and others up?"

Saying something like that is just so fucking stupid that I don't know where to BEGIN debunking that or similar remarks along the lines "Palestinians use terrorism [or even milder: "militancy"!!!] because they are desperate, poor, outgunned" or any number of affecting epithets. Cherie Blair said this a couple of years back, the ignorant cow. There are retards who go as far as comparing Palestinian terrorists to the French Resistance!

Somebody pass the sick bag and make it a super-size one. So, the Palestinians have to be the most woebegone, impecunious, oppressed, despondent, desolate, doomed and endangered nation ever to have existed on the face of this planet. Forget the starving Ethiopians, the Sierra Leonean amputees, the Sudanians who are exiled from their temporary homes several times a year, the abducted Ugandan children who are doped up and turned into child warriors, the Kashmiri women who have acid thrown in their faces if they don't cover the same, the Tibetans who've been living under real and UNPROVOKED occupation for much longer than the Palestinians, the Saudis who are lashed, mutilated or murdered by the state for the smallest and inadvertent infractions of the most punitive code ever to have been devised in the world, the rural Indians who have no choice but to work in sweatshops for 18 hours 365 days a year and STILL cannot feed themselves, let alone their families. No, forget all of them and many more, and let's talk about the Palestinians.

The Palestinians are a new concept: dating back to the late 1970s when it became obvious Israel would not be defeated militarily and that self-determination is a tried, tested and effective notion. If you look at all contemporary records in existence, you will see nowhere any mention of "Palestinians" as a nation or national group. Up to and in 1948 they were Arabs, just as were Egyptians, Syrians and Iraqi. The pan-Arabist conscience was very strong. Then seven Arab states attacked the nascent Medinat Yisrael thinking to obliterate it. They miscalculated, got burned and created several hundred thousand Arab refugees in the process. In the intervening years the fedayeen militiamen executed daily raids into Israel, killing, torching and abducting. Following incessant provocations from Syria, Egypt and the fedayeen, Israel conducted the Six-Day War and occupied Yesha. THAT is when the occupation began, in other words, twenty full years following the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and the Arab world. So no, you Presbyterian dickheads, terrorism did NOT start with the occupation and therefore the occupation is NOT the root of terrorism.

Fast forward thru the Arab aggression in 1972 when they thought they'd sneak one in on Yom Kipur, and Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon (which was already ravaged by a ten year civil war started by Arafat after he had been kicked out of Jordan where he had tried to stage a coup d'etat), and the period when the Arabs of Aza reached the second highest life-expectancy in the Arab world after Israeli Arabs, and we come to the Oslo Accords and, in particular, 1996. In 1996 Tzahal withdrew from ALL Palestinian authority areas, to wit, THE OCCUPATION ENDED. It was the first chance for the Palestinians to build that state of theirs they had so long supposedly longed for. To this end Arafat got billions of euros from the EU, US and other supranational associations. What did other nations do when they gained independence, especially after a long and hard struggle? Well, Slovenia just joined the EU and Croatia will do so in a couple of years' time. East Timor is silently building up its economy and society, following twenty-eight years of brutal repression. And the epitome of a long and hard struggle, Israel, grew into the most prosperous and advanced-in-every-respect country in the wider region. What did the Palestinians do, or more precisely, their leadership? They continued churning out hate-filled anti-Semitic rhetoric, arming the infinite terrorist factions, lining their own pockets with foreign donations and aid, denying the existence of Israel in schoolbooks and the media and generally acting as if nothing had changed. They did absolutely diddly-squat to improve the lot of Arabs living under PA rule, especially people who were existing as refugees in squalid camps for almost half a century. This was the time for the Palestinians and their elected leader, chairman Arafat, to show they are capable of extirpating terrorism and building a new state based on democracy (even if it be of the Arab type) and rule of law.

What happened instead? When push came to shove at Camp David and Arafat was given the opportunity to end the war, establish a sovereign Palestinian state and run it, he baulked. Running an actual country rather than a regime whose sole purpose is conducting warfare against Israel was something Arafat could not do. So he abandoned Camp David with the excuse that he didn't like then Rosh haMemshalah Barak's offer (he never tried to renegotiate or propose a counter offer though which is further evidence he was not interested in ending the conflict for good, there and then, and achieving what he SAYS has always been the Palestinian dream: a state in Yesha). He went back to Ramallah and itched to resume the conflict. For this he used the then retired politician Ariel Sharon's visit September 2000 to the holiest site of Judaism: the Temple Mount which is also the site of the al-Aqsa mosque. This visit was putatively a provocation which warranted the discontinuation of all negotiations with Israel and resumption of a veritable war which has claimed four thousand lives since. Before and since that September 2000, with and without the occupation, Arafat, his cronies and the entire PA has not done absolutely anything to help improve the lives of ordinary Palestinians. They have very slyly and calculatedly kept these people in penury, squalor and with their minds focused on nothing but the unnecessary conflict with Eretz Tzion and blamed the latter for the former.

So: first of all, the Palestinians are NOT the most desperate, oppressed, impoverished, blah, blah, blah people in the world--far from it. Secondly, Israel is NOT to blame for whatever state they are in. Thirdly, the conflict did NOT start with the occupation. Therefore, you have to be a mightily fucked-in-the-head imbecile to contend that homicide bombers and other terrorists murder innocent people in Israel because they are desperate by reason of the occupation. Either that, or you're an anti-Semite and biased against Jews whatever the actual state of affairs is.

As far as the French Resistance comparisons, puh-motherfucking-lease. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the French Resistance blew up bridges, railroad lines, factories, convoys and military installations, not pizzerias, cafes, kindergartens, shopping malls and buses in Berlin. Nor do I remember the French Resistance using 10-year-olds to smuggle explosives thru enemy checkpoints. Nor do I recall the French Resistance using children as human shields, getting them to "throw rocks at tanks" (as if) while the Resistance "fighters" (my ass) stood behind them and shot from real hardware. But hey, I could be wrong. Maybe the French Resistance WERE chickenshit cowards who sniped down babies in buggies, stole childhood from their offspring by inculcating lethal hatred in them and murdered civilians while forgoing obvious military targets.

Somehow, I don't think so.

Have a shavua tov l'hitraot.

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