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Yesterday, on the anniversary of the Israeli attacks on Arab states in 1967, The Guardian published two op-eds, which really say it all.

In the first one, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh clearly sets out the Palestinians desire for peace. He said:

The first step to change this catastrophic climate is for the west to engage with the Palestinian National Unity government, which envisages the establishment of an independent state on all the Palestinian land occupied by Israel in 1967, the dismantling of all the settlements in the West Bank, the release of all 11,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the recognition of the right of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. If Israel is serious about peace, it has to recognize these basic rights of our people. The 1967 war remains an unfinished chapter. Nothing will stop our struggle for freedom and to have all our children reunited in a fully sovereign state of Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital.

All what Haniyeh is asking Israel for is to comply with the international law. As far back as 1988, the Palestinians accepted the two-state solution. They not only reversed their position on the original 1947 Partition Resolution, but they accepted Resolution 242 (which calls for a permanent peace and directs its attention to Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied as result of the 1967 war, but does not mention territory beyond the partition plan allocation, that Israel acquired as a result of the 1948 war). This offer that has been on the table since 1988 if not before, has been repeatedly rejected by Israel. In fact it is very clear now that Israel is not satisfied with the 78% of historic Palestine ceded in such offer and repeatedly denying the rights of the refugees because they are not Jews.

To add insult to injury, since Hamas won the majority vote in the last Palestinian elections, Israel, US and EU have repeatedly tried to demonize Haniyeh as a “terrorist”, apparently because he refuses to accept Israeli defiance of international law and is prepared to rely on rights to both armed and non-armed resistance to Israeli crimes. While these nations talks about “terrorism”, none of them applies the same standards on Israel. Last month’s Amnesty report showed that in 2006 alone Israel killed 650 Palestinians including some 120 children while the Palestinians killed less than 30 Israelis. In fact the report clearly points out to the fact that “increased violence between Israelis and Palestinians resulted in a threefold increase in killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces. The number of Israelis killed by Palestinian armed groups diminished by half.” Though killing more or less is not the right definition for terrorism, however the comparable figures for the past two months are 65+ Palestinians on one side and 2 Israelis on the other side. If all of that is not enough, what do you call shooting on head and killing a 67 years old Palestinian man and his 60 years old wife? It doesn’t take a mathematician to assess where the balance of terror overwhelmingly lies, except perhaps to those racists who consider Israeli lives of greater value such as Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu (former Sephardic Chief). Tragically, such people are not uncommon in US and EU.

The second op-ed was by Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and is true to type. In the first paragraph he said:

Six days, 40 years ago. Looking back to the weeks preceding the war, it may be difficult for you to imagine just how desperate life seemed for Israelis, ringed by peoples whose armies pointed their weapons towards us, whose leaders daily promised the imminent destruction of our state and whose newspapers carried crude cartoons of Jews being kicked off the face of the earth. As we consecrated mass graves in expectation of the worst, we were once again people facing annihilation. We had no alternative but to defend ourselves, no strategic allies to ensure our survival. We stood alone.

Olmert is doing nothing but repeats the long-discredited claim that in 1967 Israel was under threat although it has been admitted n number of times by contemporary Israeli leaders that there was no serious threat. This was naturally well known among Israel’s government and military leadership. As Israeli General Matitiahu Peled was later to put it,

“There is no reason to hide the fact that since 1949 no one has dared, or more precisely, no one was able, to threaten the very existence of Israel. In spite of that, we have continued to foster a sense of our own inferiority, as if we were a weak and insignificant people, which, in the midst of an anguished struggle for its existence, could be exterminated at any moment. … it is notorious that the Arab leaders themselves, thoroughly aware of their own impotence, did not believe in their own threats. … I am sure that our General Staff never told the government that the Egyptian military threat represented any danger to Israel or that we were unable to crush Nasser’s army, which, with unheard-of foolishness, had exposed itself to the devastating might of our army. … To claim that the Egyptian forces concentrated on our borders were capable of threatening Israel’s existence not only insults the intelligence of anyone capable of analysing this kind of situation, but is an insult to the Zahal [the Israeli army].” (Peled, Maariv, 24 March 1972, cited Hirst, pp. 336-7)

This claim has been repeatedly reinforced by the admissions of former cabinet members. “We had a choice,” as former prime minister Menachem Begin put it: “Egyptian troop concentrations“, he contended, “do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” (cited Finkelstein, pp. 134-5)

Similarly, former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was to remark within a year that “I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.” (Le Monde, 29 February 1968; cited Hirst, p. 337).

Former Commander of the Air Force General Ezer Weizmann claimed there was “no threat of destruction,” but that the attack was justified so that Israel could “exist according to the scale, spirit and quality she now embodies.” (Ha’aretz, March 29 1972; cited Chomsky, p. 100) [Source]

And yet, Olmert is still repeating this kind of propaganda in place of truth which inevitably leads to doubts on all such claims. But the propaganda does not stop there. In the second paragraph, he claims “today there are still leaders who call for Israel to be wiped off the map“. Another long-discredited piece of propaganda, arising from a total mistranslation of the words of President Ahmadinejad. It makes one wonder if Olmert is so ignorant and unaware of the status of such claim. But the truth is that this is nothing more a Zionist neo-con disinformation, designed to inspire fear that Iran’s nuclear program, which heads the long list of Washington’s charges against Iran, is really designed to annihilate Israel, and so forth keep the pan on fire.

Olmert then play the usual game that all Israeli leaders mastered by blaming the Palestinians for refusing to accept Israeli expropriation of Palestinian land and the denial of the rights of the refugees because they are not Jews. Ironically, he refers to the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan but completely fails to state that these were on the basis of Israeli compliance with the international law, no sacrifices. He then talks emotionally about such ’sacrifices’ Israel is willing to make for peace.

What we really want Israeli people to know is that we do not want any sacrifice, unless trivial compliance with international law can be described as a “sacrifice”.

The question remains: “Is Israel prepared for peace?” If the Israeli people share the same beliefs of Olmert, then it’s time for someone in Israel to start a national training project to teach how to distinguish between truth and fiction.

Next year in Jerusalem!

[Images by Ben Heine]

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