Interesting read. There are many other informative articles at this site.
By Gabriel Ash
YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States) (YellowTimes.org) – How many
Palestinians are dead in Jenin? Dozens? Hundreds? How many hundreds? If the
number turns out to be exactly 641, or exactly 139, will that be a PR
"victory" for the Palestinians, or for the Israelis? As journalists are
lining up to declare the "victor," CNN runs a web poll about each side's
credibility. Soon we may see the dead jostling with the living in CNN's
sordidly named "crossfire." As a mental exercise, let each of us decide at
exactly how many deaths the scale tips from the Israeli side to the
Palestinian side, at what point an incursion becomes a slaughter, at what
point a slaughter becomes a massacre, at what point a massacre becomes a
genocide.
This is all very important, PR-wise. For eleven days, IDF soldiers have been
preventing journalists, medics, rescue teams and aid convoys from entering
Jenin. This is how they "protect" the truth inside from all those outside who
might want to "misuse" it against Israel. After all, the truth is such a
terrible weapon. It would be wrong to allow one side to have more of it than
the other. There must be balance. But only regarding the truth. There need
not be balance in firepower, for example. It is O.K. that Israel has nuclear
weapons and Apache helicopters, paid for by American taxpayers who can't
afford to pay for adequate health care, while Palestinians fight with rifles
and home-made explosives. There need not be balance about land either. It is
O.K. that Israelis control all the land and Palestinians none. Nor is balance
a requirement regarding liberty, or human rights, which Israelis enjoy and
Palestinians do not. But there must be balance in describing what happened in
Jenin. That is why accuracy is very important in Jenin. Was it exactly a
"massacre," as Perez called it and then denied, or a "devastation," or just
an "incursion" that used "minimal force" to achieve "necessary goals," such
as showing Palestinians who's the boss and what you get for upsetting him? If
you use too strong a word, if you match the expression to the stench of the
decomposing bodies, Israel will reprimand you, brand you an anti-Semite,
maybe even expel you. Be forewarned. But what can one do? Even the cautious
and pro-Israeli The Economist saw clear evidence of war crimes. U.N. envoy
Terje Roed-Larsen described the devastation in Jenin as "horrific beyond
belief," and said it was "morally repugnant" that Israel blocked humanitarian
emergency workers from entering Jenin for 11 days. Israel is still blocking
rescue teams, while Perez is pondering whether to send Roed-Lansen home with
a note to his parents or merely revoke his weekly allowance. The undiplomatic
words of the Norwegian diplomat, but not the undiplomatic reality these words
refer to, really hurt Israel's highly evolved moral sensibility. Having
agreed to it earlier, the government of Israel is now blocking the U.N.
fact-finding mission to Jenin. The problem, according to Israel, is that too
many of the members have "humanitarian" experience, and might not understand
the requirements of warfare. It is easy to imagine the people and the resumes
Israel would want to see instead: maybe a few Latin American death-squad
leaders; or Lt. William Calley, whose experience at Mai Lai could prove
invaluable in determining what is and what isn't a massacre; or perhaps the
French General Paul Aussaresses, commander of the 1957 French paratroopers'
attack on the Casbah of Algier. To top it all, war crimes connoisseur
Madeleine Albright, or even Henri Kissinger, could provide moral leadership,
as well as much needed verbal elasticity. As long as there is balance. For
the Israeli public and politicians, the widespread, and very unbalanced,
opprobrium is just one more affirmation that the "whole world is against us."
Echoing popular sentiment, Israel's President Moshe Katsav whines: "with all
due respect and esteem for people of conscience and the bleeding-heart
liberals of the world, I don't understand why they've clamped their mouths
shut for a year and a half while the cruelest of unprecedented terrorist acts
were committed against Israelis citizens everywhere." President Katsav, are
all the inhabitants of Jenin terrorists? Are most? Is God's own standard, of
requiring only ten righteous men to save a city, too lax for you? What part
of "collective punishment is a war crime" don't you understand? The fact that
the eruption of violence during the last eighteen months baffles you so much
makes me wonder, President Katsav. Do you understand the idea of liberty?
Have you ever read the universal declaration of human rights? Do you
understand that "universal" means "applies to everybody equally"? Does the
declination of possessive pronouns confuse you? Surely you are at ease with
"mine" and "ours." But do you also understand the concepts behind "yours,"
"his," "hers," and "theirs"? When I look at the map of the land grab for your
illegal settlements, I have serious doubts. Are you troubled why "people of
conscience" do not condemn terrorism? Even to make such an accusation you
must be living in an alternate universe. But I will answer your whining twice
nevertheless. The long answer, President Katsav, "with all due respect and
esteem," is that the suicide bombers did not land in Israel from outer space.
The explosive belts might as well carry a label that reads "made in the
Greater Eretz Israel." The suicide bombs are the mutant flowers of Israel's
brutalizing occupation, springing from the seeds of the 54-year-long
dehumanization of Palestinians. They are the ghosts of your brutality coming
back to haunt you, the mementos of your war against memory. The massive and
deliberate destruction of Palestinian civil records in the West Bank in the
last weeks is but the most recent chapter in a war against Palestinian memory
that began in 1948, with the annihilation of 400 Palestinian villages. But
you seem to learn nothing from history, indeed from your own history: ghosts
always return, each time more violently. For those ready to die, their
spiritless hatred towards you is what remains after you have bulldozed their
past and their future. Whether you like it or not, they are your bastard
offspring. Everything they know about hate, you taught them. Everything they
forgot about humanity, you made them forget. Give them a hug now, as they
have proven themselves worthy of their parents – you. The short answer,
President Katsav, is really short: just get out! Call the army home. Call the
occupation off. And get out of the Occupied Territories. Just get out! Don't
mumble about how "difficult" or "complex" the situation is. It isn't. You are
the oppressor. You are the occupier. You park your tanks on plundered land.
You fill your swimming pools with stolen water. You kill and destroy in order
to inherit. So don't bullshit about "the situation." Just get out! Stop
abusing people. Stop abusing language. Stop spinning your own moral cocoon.
Stop turning your country and your people into a metaphor of evil. Just get
out! Don't wait for Bush. Don't wait for Arafat. Don't wait to negotiate with
the mythical Palestinian leader who will finally accept your dominion. There
is nothing to negotiate about. Just get out! Take your rabid Jewish
fundamentalists from Kiriat Arba and Beit El with you. Load them on buses and
pump the gas pedal until the hills of the West Bank vanish in the rear
mirror. Just get out! Gather your thugs from the borderless "border police,"
give them scholarships and send them to school again. Let them discover there
is more to life than beating people to a pulp. Just get out! Take your
checkpoints, with all their petty humiliations and deadly snipers, with you.
And just get out! Send the Shin-Bet packing. After 35 years, the world had
enough of your clever jailers and torturers. Take them with you and just get
out! Let your hideous bulldozers loose on the illegal settlements of Ma'ale
Edomim, Har Homa and Gilo. There is plenty of demolition work for them there.
Let them continue until the mountain line bears no more memory of your rape.
Then just get out! Don't apologize. Don't justify. Don't explain. There is
nothing left to explain. Honestly. Just get out! Don't even worry about the
thousands of olive trees, symbols of peace, you uprooted. Someone will plant
them again. Just get out! Gabriel Ash encourages your comments: <A HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">
[log in to unmask]</A> YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be
reproduced, reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction must
identify the original source, http://www.YellowTimes.org. Internet web links
to http://www.YellowTimes.org are appreciated
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