Private Warriors
by Ken Silverstein
CounterPunch's Booktalk April 9, 2002
Israelis and Indians
By Michael Neumann
Palestinian tactics are often attacked or defended on dubious grounds.
Whether these tactics are terrorist is irrelevant; some terrorism is
defensible, some not. The same applies to whether the acts are murders.
Whether others are bigger terrorists or murderers is also irrelevant; two
wrongs don't make a right. Whether Israelis have committed crimes is not
directly relevant either; that they have committed crimes is not sufficient
to justify killing people, civilians, who have not committed them.
The problem, as anyone will tell you, is that Palestinians deliberately kill
civilians. You would think, then, that we would never do such a thing. Maybe
not. Those who conducted strategic bombing raids against Nazi Germany, or for
that matter those who set speed limits on our highways, did not. These
actions, it seems, were fine. Bombs would definitely stray into civilian
areas; lower speed limits would definitely mean fewer children killed and
maimed in accidents. We knew this with certainty, but we didn't *intend*
these consequences. Apparently this makes us far better than the
Palestinians. The scholastically fine distinction between deliberately
killing civilians and knowingly killing civilians has become, it seems, a
moral chasm.
Sometimes, though, we treat the deliberate killing of civilians with
reverence, or at least feel a special moral pride in our refusal to condemn
it. The best examples are from American history. We have not forgotten that
American Indians deliberately killed civilians, including children, and
sometimes as a policy. But no one demands an apology from contemporary
American Indian leaders; quite the reverse. Nor is this simply a matter of
the silly business of apologies or other manifestations of political
correctness. (If political correctness is involved, it comes from focusing on
the warfare of 1850-1890, when the whites were the worst killers, not on the
earlier periods when things were more even.) Why then, do we keep silent
about these presumably awful crimes? Why don't we rub them in the faces of
our children, so that they will never forget that such presumed evils
presumably tainted our land?
It is necessary to put the question more sharply to exclude weasely answers.
The Indians sometimes murdered innocent civilians, including children. These
acts were right, wrong, or morally indifferent. Which were they?
I can't see that they were morally indifferent, can you? Were they wrong? If
so, they must have been awfully wrong, because they involved murdering
children. Is that what we want to say?
I suggest not. I suggest the acts were terrible, cruel, and ultimately
justified. My reasons are familiar to everyone. The Indians' very existence
as a people was threatened. More than threatened; their society was doomed
without resistance. They had no alternative. Moreover, every single white
person, down to the children, was an enemy, a being which, allowed to live,
would contribute to the destruction of the Indians' collective existence.
The Indians had no chance of defeating the whites by conventional military
means. So their only resort was to hit soft targets and do the maximum
damage. That wasn't just the right thing to do from their point of view. It
was the right thing to do, period, because the whites had no business
whatever coming thousands of miles to destroy the Indian people.
The comparisons with the situation of the Palestinians are beyond obvious. To
start, what I have written sneaks in some misconceptions. There were no
people called "the Indians". They were diverse, as cultures and as
individuals, some peaceful, some warlike, some responsible for the massacres,
some not. It was, of course, the whites who lumped them together and
demonized them (just as this sentence does to the whites). The Israelis kind
of do that when they destroy the houses of old women and blockade cities to
the point of starvation and medical catastrophe. And when anyone supports the
Israelis, they are responsible for this sort of collective 'punishment', even
if they don't - as they often do - indulge in the same coarse
generalizations.
As for the other points of resemblance, not only Israeli, but much
non-Israeli Jewish propaganda does its best to conceal them. But concealment
is impossible. Guess what? The Palestinians didn't travel thousands of miles
to dispossess the Jews. It was the other way around. Often the Jews had very
pressing reasons to leave Europe. So did the whites who settled in North
America. And both groups of settlers couldn't quite take in what they saw:
that gee, there were other people already there, and the land was theirs.
When possible, both engaged in sleazy land deals to get their foothold; when
not, force was used. But always there was no question: the whole land would
be theirs, and the state to be constructed would be their state.
Both groups of settlers somehow contrived, despite these goals, to believe
that they wanted nothing but to live in peace with their 'neighbors'-
neighbors, of course, because they had already taken some of their land. And
sure, they did want peace, just as Hitler wanted peace: on his terms. The
most casual survey of Israeli politics indicates that mainstream, official,
respectable Jewish opinion asserts an absolute right to Israel's present
boundaries, and at the very least would never abandon the continually
expanding settlements. What is considered extreme Jewish opinion, which
asserts rights over the entire area occupied by Palestine, is not the Israeli
extreme. The far right in Israel claims a territory that stretches as far as
Kuwait and southern Turkey. This matters, because, given Israel's fragmented
politics, the extreme right wields a power out of proportion to its numbers.
The conclusion must be that Israel, as a collective entity, wants peace with
all the sincerity of, say, General Custer.
Like the Indians, the Palestinians have nowhere to go. All the Arab states
either hate them, or hate having them there. And, like Indians, Arabs and
Palestinians are not all alike: do we scratch our heads and wonder why, when
the Cherokee were kicked off their land, they didn't just join the Apache or
Navaho? Like the Indians, the Palestinians have not the slightest chance of
injuring, let alone defeating Israel through conventional military tactics.
Like the whites, every single Israeli Jew, down to and including the
children, are instruments wielded against the Palestinian people.
Of course the two situations aren't quite analogous. Things are clearer in
the case of Israel, where virtually every able-bodied adult civilian is at
least an army reservist, and every Jewish child will grow up to be one. And
the American settlers never spent years proclaiming how happy they would be
with the land they had before embarking on a campaign to take the rest of it.
One might add that the current situation of the Palestinians is more like
that of the Indians in 1880-1890 than earlier, because the Palestinians have
lost much more than half of their original land.
The Palestinians don't set out to massacre children, that is, they don't
target daycare centers. (Nor do they scalp children, but according to the
BBC, that's what Israel's clients did in Sabra and Shatila.) They merely hit
soft targets, and this sometimes involves the death of children. But, like
anyone, they will kill children to prevent the destruction of their society.
If peoples have any right of self-preservation, this is justified. Just as
Americans love to do, the Palestinians are "sending a message": you really
don't want to keep screwing with us. We will do anything to stop you. And if
the only effective way of stopping their mortal enemies involved targeting
daycare centers, that would be justified too. No people would do anything
less to see they did not vanish from the face of the earth.
Michael Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Ontario,
Canada. He can be reached at: [log in to unmask]
-------
To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go
to http://www.guardian.co.uk
Israel faces global wrath
Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Wednesday April 10 2002
The Guardian
Israel was in near diplomatic isolation yesterday as the US secretary of
state, Colin Powell, completed preparations to fly to Jerusalem this evening
to confront the prime minister, Ariel Sharon.
In a show of solidarity, the UN, the US, the European Union and Russia turned
up the heat on Mr Sharon by issuing a joint statement calling for an
immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian cities and towns.
Increasing the diplomatic pressure, Germany announced an arms embargo on
Israel.
The manoeuvring came as a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus
near Haifa, claiming eight lives and wounding 14 people.
Normally, such bombings bring expressions of US horror and condemnation.
Yesterday the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said: "It reinforces for
the president the need for all parties to step back, for Israel to withdraw,
and for the Palestinians and the Arabs to stop the violence."
Mr Sharon, seemingly unworried by the imminent arrival of Mr Powell, ignored
Washington and insisted that the Israeli offensive in the West Bank would
continue, although Israeli forces pulled out of the villages of Yatta,
Qabatya and Samua last night.
Visiting soldiers at Jenin, scene of the fiercest fighting of the two-week
offensive, Mr Sharon said he told President George Bush: "We are in the
middle of a battle. If we leave, we will have to return. Once we finish, we
are not going to stay here. But first we have to accomplish our mission."
Hours earlier, at an Israeli security cabinet meeting, Mr Sharon and his
ministers agreed to keep the offensive going, including maintaining the siege
of Palestinian gunmen sheltering in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
The Israeli government regards the offensive as a success because scores of
militants have been killed and more than 360 Palestinians on its wanted list
arrested.
But Israeli confidence was undermined yesterday by the Haifa bus blast. It
destroyed the argument of the chief of staff, Shaul Mofaz, that the offensive
had created a lull in suicide bombings. It also raised fears about the scale
of Palestinian revenge attacks when Israel does finally withdraw from the
West Bank.
Some cabinet ministers are pushing for Israel to unilaterally establish a
border with Palestine, building a wall or fence between the communities, a
view that is shared by Binyamin Netanyahu, the likeliest successor to Mr
Sharon as prime minister.
In a speech in Washington, Mr Netanyahu, who is even further to the right
than Mr Sharon, reiterated his call for the Palestinian leader, Yasser
Arafat, to be sent into exile. "Sooner or later [Arafat] will have to go," he
said.
He claimed that Mr Powell's mission was doomed. "It won't amount to
anything."
Mr Powell is scheduled to arrive in Israel from Spain this evening. He is due
to meet Mr Sharon tomorrow and there is a prospect of a tough exchange of
views. Israel's refusal is increasingly embarrassing to Mr Bush.
Mr Powell plans to follow up the talks with Mr Sharon with a trip to see Mr
Arafat on Saturday at his battered headquarters in Ramallah. In advance of
his visit, Palestinian officials in Bethlehem yesterday met the US envoy,
General Anthony Zinni.
The US secretary of state denied that Mr Sharon's refusal to withdraw his
troops meant that his visit to the Middle East was in danger of failing. "My
mission is not in the least in jeopardy," he said.
In Madrid yesterday Mr Powell met the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, the
Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, and Josep Pique, foreign minister of
Spain, which holds the EU's presidency.
They issued a joint statement calling for an immediate ceasefire and Israel's
immediate withdrawal. "There is no military solution to the conflict," the
statement said.
The so-called "quartet" of leaders are laying plans for a peace mission to
the region in the footsteps of Mr Powell.
In a statement to the Commons, Tony Blair offered to send British monitors to
the Palestinian Authority after an Israeli withdrawal to check that Mr Arafat
was honouring promises to lock up Palestinians wanted by Israel.
Mr Blair added to the international pressure on Israel: "No matter how strong
the feelings, no matter how deep the hatreds, now is the time to pull back,
to stop, to realise that the current strategy is going nowhere; that the time
for violence is over and the time to get a peace process going is overdue,"
he said.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
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