WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE

By Mantiq al-Tayr * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

1. Minnesota House member Erik Paulsen (Likud) continues his hasbara work on behalf of the State of Israel doing so via the funding of the AIEF which is a US tax-deductible arm of AIPAC. In his fifth post from Israel he writes approvingly of the views of an Israeli war criminal with whom he had apparently a lengthy discussion. Paulsen ought to be publicly tarred and feathered and his passport ought to be revoked before he can return to the United States. Fortunately some of the readers here at Mantiq al-Tayr have been posting comments to his ridiculous blog posts and have been making Paulsen and his Israel-first supporters a little uncomfortable.

So far Paulsen has made six daily posts, all of them utterly devoid of any substance and all of which could easily have been written by AIPAC staffers. Maybe they were. Pure unadulterated Zionist Bullshit, but I'll get to that later. First I'm going to quote in full from his website from a page called "Issues and Legislation". The first "issue" he lists is "Defending Our Homeland" and it reads like it could have been written by a Nazi. Maybe it was. Here's the whole thing. Note to Shas Party members, the red highlighting is mine. Second note to Shas Party members: Could you guys get Paulsen to join your party and run for the Knesset? But I digress.

"Our national sovereignty rests in our ability to defend the nation from those who want to harm us. Despite the fact that we've made great strides in terms of national security since 9/11, securing the safety of our nation and citizens remains our greatest duty. We are still facing a very real enemy - an enemy that will stop at nothing to bring harm to the American people.

"We must never relent in defending against this enemy and I support a strong national defense to ensure that the American people are safe and secure. A strong defense includes strong law enforcement, secure borders, a strong military and vigorous intelligence services. It also includes drastically reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

"As our brave men and women continue to serve in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world they deserve our full and unwavering support. The security we all enjoy is a direct result of their selfless sacrifice and I stand firmly behind these brave Americans, their families and their mission."

If that doesn't give you the creeps then you must be a Zionist.

Paulsen doesn't even mention who this enemy is that requires utterly bankrupting our country in order to defend ourselves against it. But the obvious enemy is them thar Moooooooooooselims.

It's interesting too that I can't seem to find any mention of his hasbara trip to Israel on his actual web site, his posts are put on the TC Jewfolk page instead. You'd think he'd want to proclaim his allegiances proudly on his own website too. But I digress.

So, let's look at one of his posts and seriously exam it and make endless fun of it in the process. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

Let's look at post number five because, well, because he meets an Israeli war-criminal who sometimes can't travel outside of Israel for fear of arrest. He seems to like this war criminal, Avi Dichter, very much. Let's see what Paulsen tells his "constituents," and I use that term loosely, about meeting Avi boy.

Oh wait, before I get to what Paulsen says, dig this picture of Avi.

Pretty cool, mish kida?

Anyway, let's see what good old Rep. Paulsen, in Israel on a trip paid-for by an arm of AIPAC that is recognized as a tax-deductable charity, has to say about Avi.

"Began the morning meeting with the opposition leader of parliament from the Kadima party, Avi Dichter. Avi is the former head of our FBI equivalent and gave an in depth briefing on a variety of security issues and the peace process."

Hold it, before I quote further I need to make a comment. Dichter is the "former head of our FBI equivalent"? Really? Let's be more specific. Avi Dichter is the former head of Shin Bet (aka Shabak), the Israeli "internal" security service that also is deeply involved in f***ing up Palestinians living under occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. In fact, it is because of his highly criminal activities while heading Shin Bet from 2000 to 2005 that Avi has a little trouble traveling – could not even go to Madrid last year for fear of being arrested. It's kind of like saying, "Began the morning meeting with O.J. Simpson, the former husband of Nicole Brown Simpson" and leaving it at that. But I digress. More on Avi later. Let's get back to the Zionist Bullshit from Paulsen.

"I found this particularly interesting not for the subject matter, but because as the leader of the opposition party I expected he would really spend his time with us discussing his party's policy differences with the ruling party. The fact that he used his time to share a united vision with the majority party really does demonstrate that Israelis are pretty unified on safety and security issues. Rockets were fired on his hometown early this morning."

Oh, poor baby, during a week in which Israeli killed at least 23 Palestinians from Gaza plus three Egyptian security officers, Paulsen bitches and moans about rockets being fired on Avi's home town – clearly doing so to show how the "enemy" is just plain evil.

What is Avi's hometown? Well, surprise, surprise it is Ashkelon which, when it was called al-Majdal, was largely ethnically cleansed by the Israelis in 1948 with the job being finished off in 1950. Many of its inhabitants were forcefully removed by Israel and the Haganah to Gaza. Think they might be pissed off by this?

Let's look at some of the lovely history of "Ashkelon" under the tender mercies of Zionism.

"In July 1950, Majdal - today Ashkelon – was still a mixed town. About 3,000 Palestinians lived there in a closed, fenced-off ghetto, next to the recently arrived Jewish residents. Before the 1948 war, Majdal had been a commercial and administrative center with a population of 12,000. It also had religious importance: nearby, amid the ruins of ancient Ashkelon, stood Mash'had Nabi Hussein, an 11th-century structure where, according to tradition, the head of Hussein Bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was interred; his death in Karbala, Iraq, marked the onset of the rift between Shi'ites and Sunnis. Muslim pilgrims, both Shi'ite and Sunni, would visit the site. But after July 1950, there was nothing left for them to visit: that's when the Israel Defense Forces blew up Mash'had Nabi Hussein."

Even the Zionist-infested Wikipedia shows just how wonderfully the Jews treated the town's original inhabitants.

"During the 1948 war, the Egyptian army occupied a large part of Gaza including Majdal. Over the next few months, the town was subjected to Israeli air-raids and shelling. All but about 1,000 of the town's residents were forced to leave by the time it was captured by Israeli forces as a sequel to Operation Yoav on November 4, 1948."

It gets better. Look at the wonderful treatment the Jews continued to give to the goddamn ungrateful terrorist Arabs.

"General Yigal Allon ordered the expulsion of the remaining Arabs but the local commanders did not do so and the Arab population soon recovered to more than 2,500 due mostly to refugees slipping back and also due to the transfer of Arabs from nearby villages. Most of them were elderly, women, or children. During the next year or so, the Arabs were held in a confined area surrounded by barbed wire, which became commonly known as the "ghetto". Moshe Dayan and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion were in favor of expulsion, while Mapam and the Israeli labor union Histadrut objected. The government offered the Arabs positive inducements to leave, including a favorable currency exchange, but also caused panic through night-time raids. The first group was deported to the Gaza Strip by truck on August 17, 1950 after an expulsion order had been served. The deportation was approved by Ben-Gurion and Dayan over the objections of Pinhas Lavon, secretary-general of the Histadrut, who envisioned the town as a productive example of equal opportunity. By October 1950, 20 Arab families remained, most of whom later moved to Lydda or Gaza.

After kicking the Arabs out the Jews then undertook a very-well organized campaign to fill the town with Jews. It was quite successful.

"Re-population of abandoned Arab dwellings by Jews became official policy by December 1948 but the process began slowly. The Israeli national plan of June 1949 designated Majdal as the site for a regional urban center of 20,000 people. From July 1949, new immigrants and demobilized soldiers moved to the new town, increasing the Jewish population to 2,500 within six months. The town was initially called Migdal Gaza, Migdal Gad and Migdal Ashkelon. In 1953, the nearby neighborhood of Afridar was incorporated and the name "Ashkelon" was adopted. By 1961, Ashkelon ranked 18th amongst Israeli urban centers with a population of 24,000.

And in that thoroughly ethnically cleansed place, war criminal Avi Dichter was born in 1952. And Paulsen has the nerve to mention those stupid rockets which seem to serve Israel's interests far more than those of the Palestinians for whom Paulsen cares nothing.

I guess Paulsen did do one good thing in this post. He unintentionally makes Salam Fayyad look like the sell-out that he is. But then, after a Zionist-Bullshit-filled reference to Hizbullah Paulsen moves on to how he ended the day.

"Arrived at the hotel and had a late dinner. The fun event for the day – a midnight swim in the Sea of Galilee!"

Fortunately for Paulsen, the area around the sea of Galilee was also ethnically cleansed by Israel back in 1948, so Paulsen could enjoy his swim.

"The Israeli military activities were confined to the Galilee and the sparsely populated Negev desert. It was clear to the villages in the Galilee, that if they left, return was far from imminent. Therefore, far fewer villages spontaneously depopulated than previously. Most of the Palestinian exodus was due to a clear, direct cause: expulsion and deliberate harassment, as Morris writes 'commanders were clearly bent on driving out the population in the area they were conquering'.

"During Operation Hiram in the upper Galilee, Israeli military commanders received the order: 'Do all you can to immediately and quickly purge the conquered territories of all hostile elements in accordance with the orders issued. The residents should be helped to leave the areas that have been conquered'. (31 October 1948, Moshe Carmel) The UN's acting Mediator, Ralph Bunche, reported that United Nations Observers had recorded extensive looting of villages in Galilee by Israeli forces, who carried away goats, sheep and mules. This looting, United Nations Observers report, appeared to have been systematic as army trucks were used for transportation. The situation, states the report, created a new influx of refugees into Lebanon. Israeli forces, he stated, have occupied the area in Galilee formerly occupied by Kaukji's forces, and have crossed the Lebanese frontier. Bunche goes on to say "that Israeli forces now hold positions inside the south-east corner of Lebanon, involving some fifteen Lebanese villages which are occupied by small Israeli detachments".

"According to Morris altogether 200,000–230,000 Palestinians left in this stage. According to Ilan Pappé, "In a matter of seven months, five hundred and thirty one villages were destroyed and eleven urban neighborhoods emptied [...] The mass expulsion was accompanied by massacres, rape and [the] imprisonment of men [...] in labor camps for periods [of] over a year".

Wherever Paulsen goes on his trip he is standing on stolen land belonging to the native population that has been under and endless onslaught by Israel's Jews for well over 60 years. Over six decades of pillage, murder, rape – you name it. Kind of like what's in the Bible, but I digress.

2. So just who is Avi Dichter and why is he so universally hated? The Center for Constitutional Rights is a good place to start. Turns out that Avi likes to kill lots of Arabs at a time no matter who they are. So in July of 2002, as head of Shin Bet, he decided to assassinate Salah Shehadah, the leader of Hamas' military wing at the time. In order to do this, he had a one-ton bomb dropped into a residential apartment building in Gaza city knowing that this would lead to killing and injuring countless others.

"Just before midnight on July 22, 2002, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) dropped a one-ton bomb on Al-Daraj, a densely-populated residential neighborhood in Gaza City in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Among the 15 people who were killed were 8 children, and more than 150 were injured in the aerial bombing. The attack completely destroyed 9 apartment buildings and partially destroyed or seriously damaged 30 more."

Killing Palestinians is the national pass-time in Israel, as I have documented more than once on this site. The more you kill the more pissed off the Palestinians get so they retaliate and Israel then uses Palestinian retaliation as an excuse to kill even more Palestinians, continue to steal their land, and to get aid and support from tools like Paulsen who are all too happy to have US blood shed on behalf of Israel and the phony war on terror. The Center for Constitutional Rights notes:

"According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), approximately 724 individuals were killed in these extrajudicial killings carried out by Israel between September 2000 and March 2008; the victims included 228 civilian bystanders, of whom 77 were children."

A law suit was filed in 2005 against Dichter on behalf of his victims in the 2002 bombing. Sadly, it was done in the Southern District of New York where it was virtually doomed to failure. And in fact, in 2007 Judge William Pauley dismissed the case on a technicality saying that Dichter was immune from prosecution because he was acting "in the course of his official duties" as the Center reports. The dismissal was appealed but Pauley's ruling was upheld. Therefore, according to US law, the deliberate murder of innocent civilians including children undertaken by someone on a government payroll at the time is not a crime that can be prosecuted. War crimes are now legal.

Let me digress. In 2009 Judge Pauley allowed Israeli spy Ben-Ami Kadish to walk free. Fining him 50 thousand dollars but no jail time. Okay, back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

Fortunately, many people in the US and around the world realize what bullshit this is and Dichter has trouble when he travels. Even in the Zionist bastion of Brandeis University students protested his appearing there in April of this year.

"In addition to ordering the torture of Palestinians during his tenure as the head of Israel's General Security Services, Dichter has been charged with possible war crimes for his part in the 2002 killing of Hamas member Salah Shehade and 14 other Palestinian civilians, including 9 children, who were in his Gaza Strip apartment building when a one-ton Israeli bomb was dropped on it.

"As Dicther was speaking at Brandeis, a dozen Brandeis students listed charges against Dichter, including torture and the bombing of civilians, distributed warrants for his arrest, and demanded he turn himself in to authorities,

"They ended their disruption by chanting in Hebrew "Don't worry Avi Dicther, we'll meet you in the Hague."

In 2007 Dichter had to cancel plans to go to the UK because of the likelihood that he could be arrested if a complaint were filed against him and in 2010 he had to cancel plans to go to Madrid for the same reason.

And then there is also the organization known as WANTED made up of anonymous Israelis who have created a website called wanted.org.il that contains bills of indictment against a number of Israeli past and present officials. Dichter is prominent among them and the photo insert near the top of this post is from their website.

Hey you good folks at WANTED how does this one look?

Courtesy of Skulz Fontaine

3. Okay, it's video time. Here's a short clip of the students at Brandeis.

Video link: http://youtu.be/tyH8iQByNlY

The video below shows that not all of Paulsen's constituents are morons. They also don't like his relationship with the Koch brothers. I love the woman who says: "And again it's always interesting that we never seem to be able to talk to Representative Paulsen, he's always gone or doing something else and yet we are all his constituents." She's right, presently he's off kissing Israel's ass and posting Zionist propaganda on a pro-Israeli website while saying nothing about the trip on his own website.

Video link: http://youtu.be/QiT2cjj68EA

A faithful reader, quite literally from down under going by the name of "bin dead awhile" has been requesting another Haifa video. This is a nice one.

Video link: http://youtu.be/PyppUVrcOY8

As the bird sang:

"خبيني عندك خبيني دخلك يا نونو"

The angelic voice of اميمة الخليل

Video link: http://youtu.be/OaGLNWyb5Lk

Here's a slightly edited comment from the youtube url above explaining the song for those of you who do not know the language.

"The song is a dialogue between a bird and a girl called Nunu. The bird arrives at Nunu's window seeking refuge; he explains that he comes from the borders of the skies, from the neighbours'; that he has escaped from his cage and asks Nunu to hide him. The bird is scared and weak; he has lost his feathers, and has lost all hope. Nunu shows the bird the rising sun and the nearby forest where other birds fly freely, and reassures him that he too will eventually gain his freedom."

* Mantiq al-Tayr is a blogger who is attempting to wake up other American citizens to the true dangers and challenges which face their country and is devoted to justice for the Palestinian people. Truth is his objective, satire is his tool. He also enjoys reading the Qur'an from time to time. See his website.

Related posts:

• Message to Congress: Take a Slow Boat to Gaza [Satire]
• Support Your Own Illegal Israeli Settlement [Satire]
• “Criminal pirate” Israel makes a fool of the OECD only days after it clasped the viper to its bosom

By William A. Cook* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Ben Gurion "...realized that the holy book could be made into a secular national text, serve as a central repository of ancient collective imagery, help forge the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants into a unified people, and tie the younger generation to the land." (Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, 108)

Of what possible significance has Sand's comment today as America watches in utter disbelief and dismay the demise of the President of Change and Hope into an obsequious and obedient Golem of Israel, subservient to Netanyahu and Lieberman? The great Golem of Prague in the 16th century, a mythological creature created of mud by incantations of the ancient Rabbi Loew to protect the walled ghetto of the Jews, lived without a soul but at the service of the Rabbi. So now, we watch in disbelief Obama bow before the scorn of Bibi and Avigdor as they mock the great agent of change, the bringer of peace to the world, and the savior of America from the ravages of Bush.

The answer lies in a study of mythistory and deception. Mythistory is the creation of historical fact out of ancient stories placing the accuracies of these stories before the evidence of scientific investigation or epistemological study. In 1936, Yitzhak Baer published Galut (exile) stating conclusively, "The Jewish revival of the present day is in its essence not determined by the national movements of Europe; it harks back to the ancient national consciousness of the Jews, which existed before the history of Europe and is the original sacred model for all the national ideas of Europe." For Baer, the Biblical myth that told of the giving of the land of Palestine to the chosen people gave them proprietary claim to it; indeed, Jewish history "was to be studied in isolation from the history of the gentiles, because the principles, tools, concepts and time frame of these studies were completely different" (Sand 102).

Ben Gurion ignored scientific evidence when it faulted the story of the Bible that recounted "the promise of the Land of Canaan to the seed of Abraham and Sarah." A necessity, since Ben Gurion was not of that seed, as Shlomo Sand's evidence demonstrates. Ben Gurion would not allow any external source to challenge the biblical author's "divine" source. Not even the logic of Thomas Paine, who noted that Abraham's visit with God in the bush, should it have happened in fact, could determine the existence of that promise since it was a revelation to Moses alone and only hearsay to those who followed him. But Ben Gurion's efforts prevailed throughout Israel as the Bible became the national textbook and "the creation of a common 'ethnic' origin for the religious communities scattered throughout the world, and (a means to) self-persuasion in the claiming of proprietary rights over the country" (Sand 111).

Unfortunately for Ben Gurion's protestation to the contrary, archeological and scientific evidence demonstrates that the genocide at Canaan never occurred, the Exodus never happened and the kingdoms of David and Solomon were and are but myths. One need only read The Bible Unearthed by Finkelstein and Silberman and The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives by Thompson, and the latest work by Dr. Sand among many to understand the reality. Unfortunately for the Palestinians and for the people of the mid-east, Ben Gurion's lies and deceptions have insulated Israel from censure for stealing the land of Palestine from its rightful indigenous population. As Sand puts it, "The book (Bible) was transferred from the shelf of theological tracts to the history section, and adherents of Jewish nationalism began to read it as if it were reliable testimony to processes and events" (127).

On May 14th of 1948, President Harry S. Truman received a letter from the Jewish Agency in Mandate Palestine seeking his support, indeed his recognition, of the newly declared State of Israel. In that letter the Jewish Agency declared in no uncertain terms that their government of the new state would bring peace to the area since it would abide by and uphold the United Nations Partition Plan that provided for two states in Palestine, one for the Palestinians and one for the Jews. What the letter did not say was that Jewish forces had been invading and destroying Palestinian villages and towns for the preceding months, most notably, and only a month before the letter, the village of Deir Yassin where a brutal massacre had been inflicted on its inhabitants. The consequence of this deception was the eradication and razing of 418 towns and villages by the combined Jewish forces, the ethnic cleansing of approximately 750,000 natives to refugee camps and to neighboring lands, and the annexation of their lands and homes to the new Israeli state. Yet another form of mythistory created by deception.

All of which brings us to Ben Gurion's "forging" of the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants into a unified people by means of a Mafia-like control over the masses of Jews brought to Palestine before 1947. The absoluteness of this control as established in documents seized by the Mandate Police and kept by Sir Richard Catling in the Rhodes House Archives at Oxford, included forced taxation to support the military arm of the Agency, the violence used to control "laggards," the availability of jobs once in Palestine, the network of Zionists in Europe and England to maintain control of desirable immigrants versus undesirable, as well as the control of politicians to enable the Zionist terror against the Mandate forces to continue unhindered, the means of communication within the Jewish community and of all external communication about the Jewish community especially in England and America, and the education of all youth followed by forced enlistment in the Jewish armed forces. Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine corroborates the documents secured by Catling.

Today that ethnic cleansing continues because the Mafia-like controls imposed on the Jews immigrating to Palestine in those early years still exists through the almost total control of the people of Israel by the Israeli military and by the Zionist government's control of the United States Congress through the coercion of the Jewish lobbies as noted by Mearsheimer and Walt as evidenced in the Congress' acquiescence to the dictates of AIPAC. One need only look at the most recent capitulation to Israel's demands by our Congress as it lobbied against the Goldstone Report (PDF).

Why should we care that Ben Gurion's deception became the fodder of the Jews brought to Palestine during the Mandate period? The answer is clear enough. The Zionists controlled all Jews entering Palestine as noted above including the molding of their minds to a religion that was a lie and rights to land that did not exist. That same mythistory was conveyed to the west in numerous books based on interpretations of the Bible as historically accurate renderings of a race of people that do not exist as a race but who believe in truths dependent on hearsay, the mythological flight of a people from Egypt and their wandering in the desert for forty years, an exodus that never happened, the conquering of the Canaanites that did not occur, and the existence of ancient kingdoms for which there is no evidence. Indoctrinated with those beliefs, the Jews under Ben Gurion's oligarchy believed that they were coming home to a land they had an historical right to regardless of the reality that it was inhabited by others for centuries. That belief allowed for no acceptance of others as neighbors on a land for believers alone, a strange definition of a democracy.

The horror of this deception cuts two ways: the innocent Jews fleeing Nazi Europe were commandeered for the Zionist cause which used their faith for both political and economic ends and the sympathetic allies of the west, conscious of the devastation wrought on the Jewish people by the Nazi regime and feeling guilt for allowing it to happen became innocent accomplices of those willing to manipulate truth to gain power, land, armaments, and wealth. As a result of this baptism in deceit, the Jewish state now grapples with hordes of fanatical "settlers" that firmly believe they have a right not only to the land of Palestine but to the killing of Palestinians because they live on the land given only to the Jews by G-d Himself. Even more horribly, the United States and the United Kingdom have been seized by the Zionist forces through the manipulations of the lobbies that control our representatives thus providing the means to sustain the brutality of the Israeli States' subjugation of the indigenous people of Palestine against the will of the citizens of these alleged democratic countries.

And this brings us to the Wall that has been built around Barak Obama. Obama is a captive of the Zionist forces that control America's representatives, its corporations and its mass communications. No one disputes the intent of the American people when they elected Obama as President. He was the man to bring change-to end the wars, to bring health care to all Americans, to fight for the environment, to expand educational opportunities for all-all promises that require the support of the Congress. Yet despite his overwhelming victory at the polls, he is a virtual lame duck President. Why?

Early in his Presidency, Obama made overtures to the Arab world and to Russia and the European Union asserting that America was no longer the pre-eminent world power that thirsted for world domination. His Cairo speech appeared to open a dialogue that suggested the possibility for peace through a return to the Saudi Prince's Plan based on the 1967 UN resolution, a plan that provided full recognition of the State of Israel by all Arab nations. Almost immediately, Israel reacted, questioning his faithfulness to the Jewish State. From that time to this, Obama's mid-east policies have towed the line even though he has had to bow before the likes of Netanyahu and Lieberman. Why?

The answer is simple enough. With the Congress controlled by AIPAC and its affiliates, Obama can do nothing requiring Congress' action if he opposes or even seems to oppose what the Zionists' dictate. Perhaps the most blatant decision by the Obama administration that confirms this perspective is the decision to object to the Goldstone Report that condemns Israel for crimes against humanity, crimes identified and confirmed by B'Tselem in Jerusalem, the Jewish states' Human Rights organization, the International Red Cross, and Amnesty International.

Now we know what Obama must have known these past few months, that the United Nations Human Rights Council has proposed a Resolution on "The Human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem." This resolution endorses unqualifiedly the "recommendations contained in the report, and calls upon all concerned parties including UN bodies, to ensure their immediate implementation in accordance with their respective mandates." But the Obama administration and our Congress has opposed what the world understands to be a valid and true account of the brutal actions of the Zionist government of Israel.

There is a wall around this President, a wall he did not know existed when he made his famous speech in Berlin when still a candidate; a wall he did not know he could not tear down even if he became President; a wall that has been built by powers that control America not by the people of America; a wall that uses fear as its mortar, bigotry and racism as its buttress, coercion as its cement, and money as its allurement to maintain control. It is a wall created out of myth twisted into history, taught repetitively as truth till it becomes truth, deceptively designed to drag this once free nation into the depths of darkness and despair that allow the few to control the multitude and in the process to enslave the minds that would be repulsed by what they support if they knew the truth behind the myths.

* William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of The Rape Of Palestine: Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied, Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy and The Chronicles Of Nefaria. He can be reached at: wcook@laverne.edu.
www.drwilliamacook.com

Related posts:

• William A. Cook – Where Is Frederick Douglass When You Need Him?
• William A. Cook – Zionist Control of Britain’s Government: 1940-2009
• TREASON, BETRAYAL AND DECEIT: THE ROAD TO 9/11 AND BEYOND

This is a true, amazing and shocking firsthand story that details the 'welcoming package' waiting for you at Israeli borders. (Try to imagine how Palestinians are treated at checkpoints!!!)

Stolen days in Israel

This is a long and mostly detailed rendition of what happened to me after my arrival in Tel Aviv. I would like to submit this information to the media and any NGOs or organizations that can use the information. By not doing anything I feel I will have more stolen from me. I hope you reading this can also use the information, submit it to the media, etc. I give you permission to do so, just do not use my full name and keep the integrity of the story. It would help me if you could spread this information around, submit it to organizations and the media and would make it easier for me.

I never anticipated these problems. I asked so many people, so many questions. When I entered Israel I thought I might be questioned because of my name but not what ended up happening. When I approached the non-Israel passport stand, the woman asked me my father's name, probably because I was born in Iran that questions started coming. When I said Mohammad Reza I was pretty sure I would be questioned further. She asked me my grandfather's name, I didn't know, I didn't have relations with him. She told me to stand on the side of the counter. I waited. Then I was taken to an office to be questioned. They asked me why I was coming there, where I was coming from, what I was doing there, who I knew here, how I knew them, did I have family here, what I studied, where I studied, my contact info, my friends' contact info. Then I was asked to wait in this room. I was then questioned again, this time more aggressively. The woman again asked me the same questions, asked me about my flights, then she saw my papers, some of my papers were about volunteering in Nablus. The woman accused me of lying, saying I wanted to volunteer instead of sight see or visit friends. She wanted me to log into my email so she could go through it because she didn't believe me and said since I emailed my friend that she wanted to see. I refused, saying I couldn't "as an American." This meant nothing here.

You mean nothing here. This was then followed by her taking my papers then me waiting more. Then I was taken to find my bag, they then went through all my things, x-rayed them, wiped them down for explosives, everything. They kept questioning me, the same questions, different people. Emptied my bags, excavated them. I was padded down, or frisked as well. They also x-rayed my jacket and shoes. Then after this humiliation I was made to wait again. I was told I wasn't getting into Israel. I asked them why and the woman said that I lied, when I asked what I lied about she just told me to sit in the room. There's a high arrogance about them. As if I was being let into the Garden of Eden or something. They are also extremely ignorant. For people with such official positions, I feel they barely had a high school degree. The women at the passport counters just looked like housewives. It is like a military state, where everyone has to run it, with no training except to intimidate and be aggressive. My mistake is to assume good, being naïve, being honest and open.

They fingerprinted me and photographed me at the airport. My other friend that I met in the cell didn't let them do that, I wish I hadn't either. But what did I know? I don't think I'll be allowed in ever now.

After waiting a long period we were taken to Tel Aviv immigration. I say we because there was also two girls from the U.S. that were Palestinian that weren't being let in and a tourist girl from Germany. During this time they really told us nothing, one of the American-Palestinian girls asked where we were going, that is how we found out we were going to Tel Aviv Immigration. It was supposedly still on the grounds of the Ben Gurion Airport. The German girl didn't want to go in because she knew they were going to lock us up. I was more naïve, thinking we were going to just get searched again and get released back to the airport. I wasn't expecting what happened. Fortunately for the Am-Pal girls their mother had called the airport and the place where we were and they were able to speak with her and were going to be flown out that day to London. They would send you back to where you flew to Tel Aviv from not where you came from, unless you were a migrant worker, apparently. We were made to put our bags in a room and we couldn't take any pens, cameras, glass objects, or our phones with us. At this point I still didn't understand, I was too naïve. They put us in a cell. I thought we would just have to wait at the most that day for our flights. By the way my flight landed at 5am on the 17th. I was interrogated for around 7 hours at the airport until I was taken to Tel Aviv immigration around 1pm. After the Am-Pal girls left I inquired about when my flight was. The guard told me I was to leave on the 20th. At this point I completely broke down because I did not want to be there for 3 days. By the way I thought it was the 16th because that is when I flew out, I forgot I had landed the next day, so I thought it was four days. I was a little relieved to find out later it was a day less but it didn't make much difference. The reason why I had to stay till the 20th was because they were only going to fly me back to the same city I came from on the same exact airline. Earlier flights were apparently booked. I asked them what about my rights; they didn't allow me to contact the US embassy or my mom. The woman said that I was arrested (even though I wasn't), not saying for what and I didn't have rights because I never entered Israel (I was still at the airport). It is quite strange being in that position, as this is stuff I have studied. To be living it is another thing. I said what about international law and I know people at the UN, she said go ahead and contact them if I wanted. She grabbed my arm and screamed to "put her back in her cell."

No one knew where I was. They knew I was supposed to be en route to Palestine. Some hopefully knew I had been detained. I texted some friends and my mom at the airport during my interrogation.

I had never felt so invisible, powerless and worthless, and so much hate.

I was never told why I was there, no one told me anything. I never felt so alone.

They treated us like criminals. Most or all don't seem educated past secondary school.

If we complained about our conditions they would scream at us. The cell was dirty, the blankets they gave us were old, and nothing was cleaned. They barely took out the trash. When someone complained about the dirty cell the "big boss," as they called him, started screaming at the woman and threw the broom and dust pan into the room and told her to clean it. There was a cleaning lady but she didn't really clean well and made the room dirtier. She was also yelled at. He said that he cleaned his office so we should clean up after ourselves. There was some kind of attitude that we were in some kind of hotel. Even one girl was told she was being taken to a "mini-hotel," another Am-Pal girl that came the night after the earlier ones left. Every night new people would come, 3-5 women. The room had 6 beds but often there would be 7 of us. It was a room of maybe 8×10, there was a bathroom and two showers. The bathroom looked like it hadn't been cleaned for a long time. There was little air circulation. There was a window but the way the building was made no breeze came in and it had two layers of "bars" that also impeded air circulation. They would put on the air conditioning at night, not during the day, and it would get so cold, like almost 50ºF, and caused us to get sick. I started getting sick, wanting to vomit, probably because of the stress, the conditions. The only time we were able to leave the cell was to smoke a cigarette, which would be at the most three times a day. No exercise, fresh air or sunshine. And we would just stand in the hallway in front of the cell, in front of open windows to smoke the cigarettes. I would just pretend to smoke just to leave the cell. The floor was dirty, the blankets and this thin mattress cover were old. They didn't change these things, and with people coming in and out from different countries who knows what was in the blankets. Sick people, bacteria. They gave some a toothbrush. This is about all we got.

The cells were mostly filled with migrant workers, with a few Palestinians who were trying to get to Palestine (who were coming from elsewhere). The migrant workers had come on different visas and would just overstay their time. There were women from the Philippines, Georgia, Russia, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, Moldova, Nepal etc. They were all shocked when I told them I was American and just a tourist. They wondered why I was there. A lot of the migrant workers would be sent to jail, or Ramle, before they came to the immigration detention center. A woman from Nepal stayed in Ramle for 6 months just because she was waiting to get paid by her employer, then she came to the detention center to get deported. She didn't want to leave. I doubt there are any inquiries as to what situation these people are deported back to, if their lives are at risk, from torture, etc. According to the migrant workers it appeared that Ramle was better than the detention center, as they had a small garden, and were allowed to walk around, and had better food.

A Filipino woman said: "This place makes you crazy. You'll see. They tell you that you will leave tomorrow, then two more days, then more. You go crazy in here." I probably would have gone crazy if I stayed any longer than I did.

They barely gave us water. They told us to drink from the tap when it didn't seem drinkable; it tasted like paint or something. They had intense lighting in the room. Three large circular lights on the ceiling, that were probably 1-1.5 feet in diameter, with a high intensity, almost as a fog light, and then by each bed there was a large light, the shape of a football, attached to the wall, twice as big as a football, also with a high intensity. They would leave these lights on into the night to maybe midnight or 2am, and sometimes during the day. They would also sometimes turn them on further in the middle of the night when they were bringing in new people. When I asked for a bandaid for a sore I had on my foot they gave me some tape and gauze that wasn't even packaged.

There was a consistent idea that we were in some kind of free hotel. One guard even said the cleaning was room service, even though my cellmate and I decided to clean just so we could have our door open and wait outside when the mopping was dry. When I asked if we could go outside to get sun I had to tap on the small window on the door and he said to stop tapping because it made him crazy, then yelled at me to open the window then walked away. We couldn't leave the windows open at night because of mosquitos. I have bites all over my body from them though, and maybe other bugs. The worst is that they didn't let us call anyone. No one knew we were there. The woman from the embassy was of no help, Eve Zukerman. My mom had called and emailed her because she received my text and didn't hear from me. All she would tell me was what Israel had the right to do; she didn't even help me speak to my mom. Although I told Eve what I was going through she said couldn't do anything besides look up flights, confirming that I had to leave on the 20th and stated that I had to go to Barcelona on the same airline because that was the policy in Israel.

I couldn't sleep because of lack of ventilation, unsanitary conditions. Whenever I put on the thick blankets they gave us, thick blankets for winter but given to us in the summer, I felt things crawling on my body and biting me. I couldn't eat because of depression and the circumstances. I had no appetite even though I was hungry. I would eat maybe once or twice a day. I ate just so the hunger pains wouldn't hurt as much. I saw about 18 people come and go because 6 new people would arrive every day and about the same number would leave that day. Some people were very depressing to be around. One lady wouldn't stop complaining, all day and all night. It was increasing my stress. They would constantly yell at us. Screaming at everyone.

When I asked to get a change of clothes because I couldn't keep wearing my shirt and jeans after two days, I couldn't sleep, the guard said, "this is not perfection" in terms of the conditions. Later I was allowed to get a change of clothes, this is when I smuggled my phone in my jacket sleeve back to my room, because they searched the things that we took from the bags. I then texted my mom and friend again, so they knew what was going on and could contact people if they kept me there longer. I also used my phone to take pictures. They have cameras in the room, I don't know how they didn't catch me, maybe because I was really discreet.

Other cells had tvs but for some reason ours didn't. Most of the people there were men. I think there were about 10 cells occupied. They would sometimes pack the cells with people. It made it hotter and loud.

I made some ‘friends' in this experience though, as I met an American-Palestinian girl who I got along with well and she being there made the time go by faster. Also she developed a good rapport with the guards and whatnot, even the "big boss" which was good to be attached to. She was let into Israel though before I left so I was pretty much alone the last night. Every day and night people came but they usually left quickly. I also met a Columbian-Palestinian who was staying there fore weeks for his court day. He wanted to enter Palestine because all his family was there.

When they took me to my flight to Barcelona neither men appeared to be very educated. The driver, who turned out to be a policeman escorted me onto the plane, then handed my passport to the male cabin crewmember and just said "deport." He was very ignorant and barely knew any English. He said who are you, and the guy said policeman, and he asked for id. The cabin crew person gave my passport to the captain, which furthered my treatment as if I was a criminal. Insult to injury. The cabin crewmember said he didn't know what to do because he wasn't given a letter and this had never happened before. It was all new to him, according to him.

The Israelis had a strong arrogance about their state; they acted like I wanted to stay. I am haunted by any Jewish symbolism and traumatized by these events. Who will compensate me for all the money I spent going home and getting there. I have spent basically $1,000 on this nightmare. Three days of my life have been taken away from me. How am I supposed to be compensated? Who will compensate me? No one should have to go through this, be treated like this. Not only did I pay around $600 for my ticket to Tel Aviv but also 247 euros to change my ticket as they only flew me back to Barcelona.

I was treated like an animal. Put in a cage, yelled at, not allowed out, not allowed to call anyone. They are the animals. Surrounded by such stupid people. They were like people off the street made policemen, made to guard immigrants. They treat the migrant workers like slaves, like dirt. To lock someone up like that.

I'll never travel alone again. I used to feel free to travel alone, and comfortable. I've done a lot of traveling by myself, even in Iran.

When I gave my passport to the woman at the airport I should have known. What a sick state. Illegal, built on blood and conducting genocide, acting with impunity. It is sick.

After being back and speaking to my friends and my mom I found out even more sick information. When my mom or my friend in Palestine would call any Israeli authority they would not tell them where I was or that I was even there. They told my friend in Palestine that I was not even there and they told my mom that I was no longer being detained. This makes me even sicker.

Source: http://stolendays.wordpress.com/stolen-days-in-israel/

The mini-hotel:

Related posts:

• The Problem with Israel
• Interrogation and Denial: How Israel Keeps Palestinians Down and Out
• For American Jews, Dissent Against Israel Has Become Mainstream

A warning to readers, the below article contains graphic passages.

In January of this year, my teenage daughter and I went to an event in Los Angeles sponsored by Women in Black at which Hedy Epstein^*, a Holocaust survivor, ardent anti-Zionist, human rights worker spoke. Hedy did not speak of her own biography today, but from her website I garnered the following information: Hedy was born August 14, 1924 in Freiburg, Germany. After Hitler came to power, Hedy's family tried unsuccessfully to leave Germany. She spoke today of remembering her parents saying they would go anywhere, but never to Palestine because they were ardent anti-Zionists. In May 1939 Hedy went to England on a children's transport, 500 children were on that transport, part of the almost 10,000 children that England took in between December 1938 and September 1939. Hedy never saw her parents again. Her parents were eventually sent to concentration camps. After the war, Hedy returned to Germany and worked for the US government. She became a participant in the Nuremburg Medical Trial at which the doctors who had experimented on humans were tried. Part of why she went back to Germany was to find her family. She was unsuccessful, her entire family had been sent to Auschwitz where they had been killed. In May 1948 she came to the US and became active professionally and personally in the causes of civil and human rights and social justice.

Hedy told us that day that when she was younger, she had mixed feelings about the state of Israel. On one hand she said, she was glad there was a place the Jews could go after the Holocaust. But always weighing on her thoughts, were the memories of her own parents anti-Zionism. Her mother, Hedy said, always said, "Zionism will come to no good". As the years passed by, Hedy worked in the field of human rights, but, she said, Israel was on the "back-burner of her mind". That changed for Hedy in 1982 when she heard of the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla. Shortly after this Hedy began a chapter of Women in Black in St. Louis, Missouri where she resides.

Five years ago a dear friend asked her, "Hedy, have you ever thought about going to Palestine?" Up til that moment she said, she had never put her desires in words or actions, but when asked this question by her friend, she immediately said, "Yes, I am going". Hedy did not know where the response came from, but at that very moment, Hedy set her mind on going to Palestine, and the manner in which she would venture there at age 78 would be as an ISM (International Solidarity Movement) volunteer.

Hedy spoke to us of her experience becoming an ISM worker, the vigorous training the volunteers must undergo in order to perfect non-violent protest. If a volunteer cannot perfect this art, then they are simply not accepted. In total, Hedy has been to the Occupied Territories four times, the first two times as an ISM volunteer, the third as a representative of her congressman, and the last time for the international meeting of Women in Black this last year in Jerusalem.

Hedy spoke of her first impressions of Palestine, how when she arrived, the ISM volunteer simply called a Palestinian family on the spot and said, "I have four women here, and they need a place to stay". Hedy told us this is normal for ISM, it works because there is NEVER a problem finding a home to take the volunteers in. No matter how poor the host family is, they welcome the volunteers with open arms, willing to share all they have. Hedy wanted us to know, she wanted to tell us, this is the culture and hospitality of the Palestinian people. From her own experience, her gentle voice, Hedy put the audience in that place.

She attended MANY protests, and was tear-gassed and shot at by the IOF many times. The first demonstration she attended, the IOF opened fire upon the crowd and her friend, an Israeli who had only four weeks before been released from the army but who himself felt he must stand against his own government's actions, was shot, only a few feet away from her. Her friend who came with her from the States, standing directly next to her was hit by shrapnel. Both the Israeli who had stood with ISM and Hedy's friend were taken by an old rickety car to the nearest hospital. Hedy's Israeli friend until this day cannot walk due to the wounds he sustained that day. Hedy attended many demonstrations, in Ramallah, Belin, Hebron, Beit Umar and other places in her two visits as an ISM volunteer. She also lost her hearing due to a sound bomb which exploded at her feet. But what happened to Hedy, at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, is almost impossible for her to speak about.

On returning home to the States after her second trip, Hedy and her friend were to fly out of Tel Aviv. When Hedy and Diane approached security, something happened, the officer split them up, Diane in one line, Hedy in another. Hedy didn't know what was happening at first. She thought to herself, "Well, Diane is Christian and I am Jewish, maybe they have separate lines for each". She was pulled aside as an officer flipped through her passport. Then, as if they came up out of the ground next to her, stood two men saying they were security and she must follow them. She was frightened, but when she went to pick up her bag the officer said, "No, we will carry that for you".

Hedy replied (because she was trying to make light of the situation) "Oh you are porters, I thought you said you were security." Sternly they led Hedy to a room in which she was interrogated about her time in the Occupied Territories for five hours.

Then the officer said to Hedy, "You must take off your clothes, we need to search you".

"No, I will not take off my clothes, I need to speak to an attorney" Hedy replied.

"What, you want to call an attorney? There is no phone. Take off your clothes NOW"

"No I will not do that, please, I won't do that" But then Hedy thought, "I need to get out of here, I need to cooperate to get out of here" So Hedy removed her clothes.

"Bend over" said the officer.

"What for, why do I need to bend over?"

"BEND OVER, it is for security!"

Afraid for her life, Hedy Epstein bent over to be searched, naked, in an interrogation room in Ben Gurion Airport.

What followed on the trip home was a fog for Hedy. She and Diane missed their flight. The next day they flew home on Elal which was not the airline they had reserved on. Hedy does not remember much of her flight home. Diane told her that the flight attendants treated Hedy very badly. Hedy does not remember this. All Hedy remembers is taking the magazines from the pocket in front of her and writing on every page, "I am a Holocaust survivor and I will NEVER return to Israel"

Hedy spent the next year receiving the counseling she needed to recover from the dehumanizing abuse she received in Israel. She has since been back twice, once as an aid to her congressman's office and again this last summer for the International Conference of Women in Black. Palestinians who receive this treatment on a constant basis do NOT receive counseling, nor do they have anywhere else to go.

When Hedy began to speak, she said, "First a little house keeping". Please reserve all questions for when I am done speaking. At the end, you may raise your hands and you can wait until I call on you. If you are disrespectful or try to make statements rather than asking questions, I will turn around and face my back to you. I have been speaking for many years now on this subject, and I find this is what works best for me"

My daughter and I were sitting in the middle of the room. In the row behind us, sat some people who could not stop speaking amongst themselves as Hedy spoke. Under their breath, but clearly audible to my ears I heard them over and over say, "Liar, liar, you are lying, you are an anti-Semite, you are a self-hating Jew, you love terrorists, you are a f--g bitch, you will die in hell for your lies". As my tears ran from Hedy's story, they were assaulted by the ugly voices behind me. I turned to them several times and glared. I turned and said "PLEASE be quiet and let her speak". I received nasty nasty glares in return. The hatred was seething behind my own back.
The very minute the moderator stood to say, "Now we are ready to...."

The man sitting directly behind me jumped into the aisle and shouted:

"You have said what you want to say, now I will say what I have to say. The Women in Black raised their voices for him to sit down but he shouted, "My fourteen year old son was involved in a double suicide bombing. He had to carry his friend out in his arms. His friend almost died from these TERRORISTS. Israel does NOT want to occupy, Israel NEEDS Security. You are a LIAR. You are here to LIE to these people and I will not let you do this'

Some men went over to him and ushered him back to the seat directly behind me. Hedy then addressed him, "I am against violence of any sort, no matter who does it. I did not come here to talk about what you are talking about, I came here to talk about my experiences in the Occupied Territories and what I had happen to ME and what I saw, how Israel treats the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. The world knows of your story and I am VERY sorry for what happened to you. I will never condone violence of any sort, and I also will not listen to shouting. The world will hear me TOO".

The words are not coming to my fingers of how I felt myself at that moment. Why did this man want to silence Hedy Epstein? I know why he did, because this is what they do best, try to silence people. Try to shout, try to intimidate, hell, the intimidation I felt at my own back as he sat there was absolutely chilling. I looked at my teenage daughter and she was visibly frightened from the venom released from these people surrounding us. It was TENSE.

More shouts from the audience in back of me came as Women in Black called on polite people willing to raise their hands to ask questions. The row in back of me kept muttering, "Liar, liar, she is a f----g liar"

Then Women in Black said that the questions were closed. Pretty much all hell broke loose as one woman yelled loudly, "You will NOT shut us up. This is America!! Go to hell, you are a LIAR!!"

Several people ushered her to the back corner as she continued to yell, "This is AMERICA, we do NOT live by SHARIA law here. You WILL NOT SHUT ME UP!!"

Eventually some people were able to quieten her as the rest of the audience got to go forward and speak to Hedy personally.

By the time I reached Hedy, I had already talked to Pat from Women in Black who I have been corresponding with the last week. I asked her if this was normal, since the last event they sponsored for Mohammed Omer was nothing like this. Pat told me "Yes, there is a group of them who come to most everything. We know who they are, and we know what to expect" I did NOT expect this. Call me naive, call me just a person who expects civilized behavior, but today was one of the most emotionally frightening two hours I have spent. And that was just here in a public library in Beverly Hills. For GOD's SAKE, what is it like to experience this on a daily basis. To be despised like the Palestinians are themselves by the Zionists. I cannot begin to put into any words, only tears streaming from my own eyes, even as I write. This is the gravest injustice, the GRAVEST injustice.

When I reached Hedy, I said, "Hedy, you are an angel"
She replied, "No I'm just Hedy"
I said, "Just Hedy, God bless you and may angels always be with you"

Palestine, one day soon, Inshallah, you WILL be free. May God lift you up to where you rightfully belong, and protect you from all harm. May you hold in your arms, YOUR people in YOUR land.

^*Hedy Epstein is also a member of Deir Yassin Remembered.

- Under the Holly Tree is where this post first appeared.

- About the author: I am a person who likes to make friends around the world and get to know other cultures. I lived in the Middle East from 1975-1980 and that is very much a part of the person I am today. My philosophy is to be open and respectful to others and to offer my own friendship to them. I truly believe that where there is a strong will there is a way to meet in mutual respect. Where there is suffering, I believe each one of us has the responsibilty and the gift of compassion from our creator to lend our help, from an open ear, to an open hand to lift up. Peace is my goal, and peace begins with me. My only request is for you to treat others and me the way you yourself wish to be treated. Robin's blog can be found here!

Related posts:

• Did you know?
• What does ‘Global Human Rights Day’ means to us?
• Weekend read: Biased Media, War Crimes, One-State Solution and ‘Right to Exist’

This is very long article, if you don't have the time to read it now, save it for other time as it is a "must read"!

The Problem with Israel

By Jeff Halper
Thursday, November 23, 2006

Let's be honest (for once): The problem in the Middle East is not the Palestinian people, not Hamas, not the Arabs, not Hezbollah or the Iranians or the entire Muslim world. It's us, the Israelis. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the single greatest cause of instability, extremism and violence in our region, is perhaps the simplest conflict in the world to resolve. For almost 20 years, since the PLO's recognition of Israel within the 1949 Armistice Lines (the "Green Line" separating Israel from the West Bank and Gaza), every Palestinian leader, backed by large majorities of the Palestinian population, has presented Israel with a most generous offer: A Jewish state on 78% of Israel/Palestine in return for a Palestinian state on just 22% – the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. In fact, this is a proposition supported by a large majority of both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples. As reported in Ha'aretz (January 18, 2005):

[Ben Heine © Cartoons]

Some 63 percent of the Palestinians support the proposal that after the establishment of the state of Palestine and a solution to all the outstanding issues - including the refugees and Jerusalem - a declaration will be issued recognizing the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people and the Palestinian state as the state of the Palestinian people...On the Israeli side, 70 percent supported the proposal for mutual recognition.

And if Taba and the Geneva Initiative are indicators, the Palestinians are even willing to "swap" some of the richest and most strategic land around Jerusalem and up through Modi'in for barren tracts of the Negev.

And what about the refugees, supposedly the hardest issue of all to tackle? It's true that the Palestinians want their right of return acknowledged. After all, it is their right under international law. They also want Israel to acknowledge its role in driving the refugees from the country in order that a healing process may begin (I don't have to remind anyone how important it is for us Jews that our suffering be acknowledged). But they have said repeatedly that when it comes to addressing the actual issue, a package of resettlement in Israel and the Palestinian state, plus compensation for those wishing to remain in the Arab countries, plus the possibility of resettlement in Canada, Australia and other countries would create solutions acceptable to all parties. Khalil Shkaki, a Palestinian sociologist who conducted an extensive survey among the refugees, estimates that only about 10%, mainly the aged, would choose to settle in Israel, a number (about 400,000) Israel could easily digest.

With an end to the Occupation and a win-win political arrangement that would satisfy the fundamental needs of both peoples, the Palestinians could make what would be perhaps the most significant contribution of all to peace and stability in the Middle East. Weak as they are, the Palestinians possess one source of tremendous power, one critical trump card: They are the gatekeepers to the Middle East. For the Palestinian conflict is emblematic in the Muslim world. It encapsulates the "clash of civilizations" from the Muslim point of view. Once the Palestinians signal the wider Arab and Muslim worlds that a political accommodation has been achieved that is acceptable to them, and that now is the time to normalize relations with Israel, it will significantly undercut the forces of fundamentalism, militarism and reaction, giving breathing space to those progressive voices that cannot be heard today – including those in Israel. Israel, of course, would also have to resolve the issue of the Golan Heights, which Syria has been asking it to do for years. Despite the neocon rhetoric to the contrary, anyone familiar with the Middle East knows that such a dynamic is not only possible but would progress at a surprisingly rapid pace.

The problem is Israel in both its pre- and post-state forms, which for the past 100 years has steadfastly refused to recognize the national existence and rights of self-determination of the Palestinian people. Time and again it has said "no" to any possibility of genuine peace making, and in the clearest of terms. The latest example is the Convergence Plan (or Realignment) of Ehud Olmert, which seeks to end the conflict forever by imposing Israeli control over a "sovereign" Palestinian pseudo-state. "Israel will maintain control over the security zones, the Jewish settlement blocs, and those places which have supreme national importance to the Jewish people, first and foremost a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty," Olmert declared at the January 2006 Herzliya Conference. "We will not allow the entry of Palestinian refugees into the State of Israel." Olmert's plan, which he had promised to implement just as soon as Hamas and Hezbollah were dispensed with, would have perpetuated Israeli control over the Occupied Territories. It could not possibly have given rise to a viable Palestinian state. While the "Separation Barrier," Israel's demographic border to the east, takes only 10-15% of the West Bank, it incorporates into Israel the major settlement blocs, carves the West Bank into small, disconnected, impoverished "cantons" (Sharon's word), removes from the Palestinians their richest agricultural land and one of the major sources of water. It also creates a "greater" Israeli Jerusalem over the entire central portion of the West Bank, thereby cutting the economic, cultural, religious and historic heart out of any Palestinian state. It then sandwiches the Palestinians between the Wall/border and yet another "security" border, the Jordan Valley, giving Israel two eastern borders. Israel would retain control of all the resources necessary for a viable Palestinian state, and for good measure Israel would appropriate the Palestinians' airspace, their communications sphere and even the right of a Palestinian state to conduct its own foreign policy.

This plan is obviously unacceptable to the Palestinians – a fact Olmert knows full well – so it must be imposed unilaterally, with American assistance. But who cares? We refused to talk genuinely with Arafat, refused to speak at all with Abu Mazen and currently boycott entirely the elected Hamas government, arresting or assassinating those associated with it. And if "Convergence" doesn't fly this time around, well, maintaining the status quo while building settlements has been an effective policy for the past four decades and can be extended indefinitely. True, Israel has descended into blind, pointless violence – the Lebanon War of 2006 and, as this is being written, an increasingly violent assault on Gaza. But the Israeli public has accepted Barak's line that there is no "partner for peace." So if there is any discontent among the voters, they are more likely to throw out the "bleeding heart" liberal left and bring in the right with its failed doctrine of military-based security.

Why? If Israelis truly crave peace and security – "the right to be normal," as Olmert put it recently – then why haven't they grabbed, or at least explored, each and every opportunity for resolving the conflict? Why do they continually elect governments that aggressively pursue settlement expansion and military confrontation with the Palestinians and Israel's neighbors even though they want to get the albatross of occupation off their necks? Why, if most Israelis truly yearn to "separate" from the Palestinians, do they offer the Palestinians so little that separation is simply not an option, even if the Palestinians are willing to make major concessions? "The files of the Israeli Foreign Ministry," writes the Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim in The Iron Wall (2001:49), "burst at the seams with evidence of Arab peace feelers and Arab readiness to negotiate with Israel from September 1948 on." To take just a few examples of opportunities deliberately rejected:

• In the spring and summer of 1949, Israel and the Arab states met under the auspices of the UN's Palestine Conciliation Committee (PCC) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Israel did not want to make any territorial concessions or take back 100,000 of the 700,000 refugees demanded by the Arabs. As much as anything else, however, was Ben Gurion's observation in a cabinet meeting that the Israeli public was "drunk with victory" and in no mood for concessions, "maximal or minimal," according to Israeli negotiator Elias Sasson.

• In 1949 Syria's leader Husni Zaim openly declared his readiness to be the first Arab leader to conclude a peace treaty with Israel – as well as to resettle half the Palestinian refugees in Syria. He repeatedly offered to meet with Ben Gurion, who steadfastly refused. In the end only an armistice agreement was signed.

• King Abdullah of Jordan engaged in two years of negotiations with Israel but was never able to make a meaningful breakthrough on any major matter before his assassination. His offer to meet with Ben Gurion was also refused. Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett commented tellingly: "Transjordan said – we are ready for peace immediately. We said – of course, we too want peace, but we cannot run, we have to walk." Three weeks before his assassination, King Abdullah said: "I could justify a peace by pointing to concessions made by the Jews. But without any concessions from them, I am defeated before I even start."

• In 1952-53 extensive negotiations were held with the Syrian government of Adib Shishakli, a pro-American leader who was eager for accommodation with Israel. Those talks failed because Israel insisted on exclusive control of the Sea of Galilee, Lake Huleh and the Jordan River.

• Nasser's repeated offers to talk peace with Ben Gurion, beginning soon after the 1952 Revolution, finally ended with the refusal of Ben Gurion's successor, Moshe Sharett, to continue the process and a devastating Israeli attack (led by Ariel Sharon) on an Egyptian military base in Gaza.

• In general, Israel's post-war inflexibility was due to its success in negotiating the armistice agreements, which left it in a politically, territorially and militarily superior position. "The renewed threat of war had been pushed back," writes Israeli historian Benny Morris in his book Righteous Victims. "So why strain to make a peace involving major territorial concessions?" In a cable to Sharett, Ben Gurion stated flatly what would become Israel's long-term policy, essentially valid until today: "Israel will not discuss a peace involving the concession of any piece of territory. The neighboring states do not deserve an inch of Israel's land…We are ready for peace in exchange for peace." ln July, 1949, he told a visiting American journalist, "I am not in a hurry and I can wait ten years. We are under no pressure whatsoever." Nonetheless, this period saw the emergence of the image of the Arab leaders as intractable enemies, curried so carefully by Israel and representing such a powerful part of the Israeli framing. Morris (1999: 268) summarizes it succinctly and bluntly:

For decades Ben-Gurion, and successive administrations after his, lied to the Israeli public about the post-1948 peace overtures and about Arab interest in a deal. The Arab leaders (with the possible exception of Abdullah) were presented, one and all, as a recalcitrant collection of warmongers, hell-bent on Israel's destruction. The recent opening of the Israeli archive offers a far more complex picture.

• In late 1965 Abdel Hakim Amer, the vice-president and deputy commander of the Egyptian army invited the head of the Mossad, Meir Amit, to come to Cairo. The visit was vetoed after stiff opposition from Isser Harel, Eshkol's intelligence advisor. Could the 1967 war have been avoided? We'll never know.

• Immediately after the 1967 war, Israel sent out feelers for an accommodation with both the Palestinians of the West Bank and with Jordan. The Palestinians were willing to enter into discussion over peace, but only if that meant an independent Palestinian state, an option Israel never even entertained. The Jordanians were also ready, but only if they received full control over the West Bank and, in particular, East Jerusalem and its holy places. King Hussein even held meetings with Israeli officials but Israel's refusal to contemplate a full return of the territories scuttled the process. The annexation of a "greater" Jerusalem area and immediate program of settlement construction foreclosed any chance for a full peace.

• In 1971 Sadat sent a letter to the UN Jarring Commission expressing Egypt's willingness to enter into a peace agreement with Israel. Israeli acceptance could have prevented the 1973 war. After the war Golda Meir summarily dismissed Sadat's renewed overtures of peace talks.

• Israel ignored numerous feelers put out by Arafat and other Palestinian leaders in the early 1970s expressing a readiness to discuss peace with Israel.

• Sadat's attempts in 1978 to resolve the Palestine issue as a part of the Israel-Egypt peace process that were rebuffed by Begin who refused to consider anything beyond Palestinian "autonomy."

• In 1988 in Algiers, as part of its declaration of Palestinian independence, the PLO recognized Israel within the Green Line and expressed a willingness to enter into discussions.

• In 1993, at the start of the Oslo process, Arafat and the PLO reiterated in writing their recognition of Israel within the 1967 borders (again, on 78% of historic Palestine). Although they recognized Israel as a "legitimate" state in the Middle East, Israel did not reciprocate. The Rabin government did not recognize the Palestinians' national right of self-determination, but was only willing to recognize the Palestinians as a negotiating partner. Not in Oslo nor subsequently has Israel ever agreed to relinquish the territory it conquered in 1967 in favor of a Palestinian state despite this being the position of the UN (Resolution 242), the international community (including, until Bush, the Americans), and since 1988, the Palestinians.

• Perhaps the greatest missed opportunity of all was the undermining by successive Labor and Likud governments of any viable Palestinian state by doubling Israel's settler population during the seven years of the Oslo "peace process" (1993-2000), thus effectively eliminating the two-state solution.

• In late 1995, Yossi Beilin, a key member of the Oslo negotiating team, presented Rabin with the "Stockholm document" (negotiated with Abu Mazen's team) for resolving the conflict. So promising was this agreements that Abu Mazen had tears in his eyes when he signed off on it. Rabin was assassinated a few days later and his successor, Shimon Peres, turned it down flat.

• Israel's dismissal of Syrian readiness to negotiate peace, repeated frequently until this day, if Israel will make concessions on the occupied Golan Heights.

• Sharon's complete disregard for the Arab League's 2002 offer of recognition, peace and regional integration in return for relinquishing the Occupation.

• Sharon's disqualification of Arafat, by far the most congenial and cooperative partner Israel ever had, and the last Palestinian leader who could "deliver," and his subsequent boycott of Abu Mazen.

• Olmert declared "irrelevant" the Prisoners' Document in which all Palestinian factions, including Hamas, agreed on a political program seeking a two-state solution – followed by attempts to destroy the democratically-elected government of Hamas by force; and on until this day when

• In September and October 2006 Bashar Assad made repeated overtures for peace with Israel, declaring in public: "I am ready for an immediate peace with Israel, with which we want to live in peace." On the day of Assad's first statement to that regard, Prime Minister Olmert declared, "We will never leave the Golan Heights," accused Syria of "harboring terrorists" and, together with his Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, announced that "conditions are not ripe for peace with Syria."

To all this we can add the unnecessary wars, more limited conflicts and the bloody attacks that served mainly to bolster Israel's position, directly or indirectly, in its attempt to extend its control over the entire land west of the Jordan: The systematic killing between 1948-1956 of 3000-5000 "infiltrators," Palestinian refugees, mainly unarmed, who sought mainly to return to their homes, to till their fields or to recover lost property; the 1956 war with Egypt, fought partly in order to prevent the reemergence onto the international agenda of the "Palestine Problem," as well as to strengthen Israel militarily, territorially and diplomatically; military operations against Palestinian civilians beginning with the infamous killings in Sharafat, Beit Jala and most notoriously Qibia, led by Sharon's Unit 101. These operations continue in the Occupied Territories and Lebanon until this day, mainly for purposes of collective punishment and "pacification." Others include the campaign, decades old, of systematically liquidating any effective Palestinian leader; the three wars in Lebanon (Operation Litani in 1978, Operation Peace for the Galilee in 1982 and the war of 2006); and more.

Lurking behind all these military actions, be they major wars or "targeted assassinations," is the consistent and steadfast Israeli refusal (in fact extending back to the pre-Zionist days of the 1880s) to deal directly and seriously with the Palestinians. Israel's strategy until today is to bypass and encircle them, making deals with governments that isolate and, unsuccessfully so far, neutralize the Palestinians as players. This was most tellingly shown in the Madrid peace talks, when Israel only allowed Palestinian participation as part of the Jordanian delegation. But it includes the Oslo "peace process" as well. While Israel insisted on a letter from Arafat explicitly recognizing Israel as a "legitimate construct" in the Middle East, and later demanded a specific statement recognizing Israel as a Jewish state (both of which it got), no Israeli government ever recognized the collective rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination. Rabin was forthright as to the reason: If Israel recognizes the Palestinians' right to self-determination, it means that a Palestinian state must by definition emerge – and Israel did not want to promise that (Savir 1998:47). So except for vague pronouncements about not wanting to rule over another people and "our hand outstretched in peace," Israel has never allowed the framework for genuine negotiations. The Palestinians must be taken into account, they may be asked to react to one or another of our proposals, but they are certainly not equal partners with claims to the country rivaling ours. Israel's fierce response to the eruption of the second Intifada, when it shot more than a million rounds, including missiles, into civilian centers in the West Bank and Gaza despite the complete lack of shooting from the Palestinian side during the Intifada's first five days, can only be explained as punishing them for rejecting what Barak tried to impose on them at Camp David, disabusing them of the notion that are equals in deciding the future of "our" country. We will beat them, Sharon used to say frequently, "until they get 'the message'." And what is the "message"? That this is our country and only we Israeli Jews have the prerogative of deciding whether and how we wish to divide it.

Non-Constraining Conflict Management

The irrelevance of the Palestinians to Israeli policy-makers is merely a localized expression of an overall assumption that has determined Israeli policy towards the Arabs since the founding of the state. Israel, Prime Ministers from Ben Gurion to Olmert have asserted, is simply too strong for the Arabs to ignore. We therefore cannot make peace too soon. Once we get everything we want, the Arabs will still be willing to sue for peace with us. The answer, then, to the apparent contradiction of why Israel claims it desires peace and security and yet pursues policies of conflict and expansion has four parts.

(1) Territory and hegemony trump peace. As Ben Gurion disclosed years ago, Israel's geo-political goals take precedence over peace with any Arab country. Since a state of non-conflict is even better than peace (Israel has such a relationship with Syria, with whom it hasn't fought for 34 years, and is thereby able to avoid the compromises associated with peace that might threaten its occupation of the Golan Heights), Israel makes "peace" only with countries that acquiescence to its expansionist agenda. Jordan gave up all claims to the West Bank and East Jerusalem and has even ceased to actively advocate for Palestinian rights. Peace with Egypt, it is true, cost Israel the Sinai Peninsula, but it left its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank intact. Differentiating between those parts of the Arab world with which it wants an actual peace agreement, those with which it needs merely a state of non-conflict and those which it believes it can control, isolate and defeat creates a situation of great flexibility, allows Israel to employ the carrot or the stick according to its particular agenda at any particular time.

Israel can pursue this strategy today only because of the umbrella, political, military and financial, provided by the United States. This is rooted in many different sources including the influence of the organized Jewish community and the Christian fundamentalists on domestic politics and the Congress most obviously. Bipartisan and unassailable support for Israel, however, arises from Israel's place in the American arms industry and the US' defense diplomacy. Since the mid-1990s Israel has specialized in developing hi-tech components for weapons systems, and in this way it has also gained a central place in the world's arms and security industries. One could look at Israel's suppression of the Intifadas, its attempted pacification of the Occupied Territories and occasional combat with the likes of Hezbollah as valuable opportunities in almost laboratory-like conditions to develop useful weaponry and tactics. This has made it extremely valuable to the West. In fact, Israel is among the five largest exporters of arms in the world, and is poised to overtake Russia as #2 in just a few years (based on Jane's assessment, May 2, 2006). The fact that it has discrete military ties with many Muslim countries, including Iran, adds another layer of rationality to its guiding assumption that a separate peace with Arab states is achievable without major concessions to the Palestinians. If any state significantly challenges Israeli positions, Israel can pull rank as the gatekeeper to American military programs, including to some degree the US defense industry, and thus to major sources of hi-tech research and development, a formidable position indeed.

(2) A militarily defined security doctrine. Israel's concept of "security" has always been so exaggerated that it leaves no breathing space whatsoever for the Palestinians, thus eliminating any viable resolution of the conflict. This reflects, of course, its traditional reliance on overwhelming military superiority (the "qualitative edge") over the Arabs. So overwhelming is it perceived – despite its near-disaster in the 1973 war, its failure to pacify the Occupied Territories and, most recently, its failure against Hezbollah in Lebanon – that it precludes any need for accommodation or genuine negotiations, let alone meaningful concessions to the Palestinians. Several Israel scholars, including ex-military officials, have written on the preponderance of the military in formulating government policy. Ben Gurion's linking the concept of nation building with that of a nation-in-arms, writes Yigal Levy (reviewing Yoram Peri's recent book Generals in the Cabinet Room: How the Military Shapes Israeli Policy), made the army an instrument for maintaining a social order that rested on keeping war a permanent fixture.

The centrality of the army depends on the centrality of war...But the moment the political leadership opted to create a 'mobilized,' disciplined and inequitable society by turning the army into the 'nation builder' and making war a constant, the politicians became dependent on the army. It was not just dependence on the army as an organization, but on military thinking. The military view of political reality has become the main anchor of Israeli statesmanship, from the victory of Ben Gurion and his allies over Moshe Sharett's more conciliatory policies in the 1950s, through the occupation as a fact of life from the 1960s, to the current preference for another war in Lebanon over the political option (Ha'aretz August 25, 2006).

Ze'ev Maoz, in an article entitled "Israel's Nonstrategy of Peace," argues that

Israel has a well-developed security doctrine [but] does not have a peace policy...Israel's history of peacemaking has been largely reactive, demonstrating a pattern of hesitancy, risk-avoidance, and gradualism that stands in stark contrast to its proactive, audacious, and trigger-happy strategic doctrine...The military is essentially the only government organization that offers policy options – typically military plans – at times of crisis. Israel's foreign ministry and diplomatic community are reduced to public relations functions, explaining why Israel is using force instead of diplomacy to deal with crisis situations (Tikkun 21(5), September 2006: 49-50).

Again, this approach to dealing with the Arabs is not recent: It is found throughout the entire history of Zionism and has been dominant in the Yishuv/Israeli leadership from the time of the Arab "riots" and the recommendations for partition from the Peel commission in 1937 until this day, with a few very brief interruptions: Sharett (1954-55), Levi Eshkol (1963-69) and, perhaps, Rabin in his Oslo phase (1992-95). Sharett labeled it the camp of the military "activists," and in 1957 described it as follows:

The activists believe that the Arabs understand only the language of force.....The State of Israel must, from time to time, prove clearly that is it strong, and able and willing to use force, in a devastating and highly effective way. If it does not prove this, it will be swallowed up, and perhaps wiped off the face of the earth. As to peace – this approach states – it is in any case doubtful; in any case very remote. If peace comes, it will come only if [the Arabs] are convinced that this country cannot be beaten...If [retaliatory] operations...rekindle the fires of hatred, that is no cause for fear for the fires will be fueled in any event (Morris, 1999: 280).

Feeling that its security is guaranteed by its military power and that a separate peace (or state of non-conflict) with each Arab state is sufficient, Israel allows itself an expanded concept of "security" that eliminates a negotiated settlement. Thus Israel defines the conflict with the Palestinians just as the US defines its War on Terror: As an us-or-them equation where "they" are fundamentally, irretrievably and permanently our enemies. It is no longer a political conflict, and thus it has no solution. Israel's security, in this view, can be guaranteed only in military terms, or until each and every one of "them" [the Palestinians] is either dead, in prison, driven out of the country or confined to a sealed enclave. This is why rational attempts to resolve the conflict based on mutual interests, identifying the sources of the conflict and negotiating solutions has proven futile all these years. Israel's guiding agenda and principles have nothing whatsoever to do with either the Palestinians or actual peace. They are rooted instead in an uncompromising project of creating a purely Jewish space in the entire Land of Israel, with closed islands of Palestinians. Even Israel's most ardent supporters – organized American Jewry, for instance – do not grasp this (Christian fundamentalists and neocons do, and its just fine with them). The claim made by these "pro-Israel" supporters and, indeed, by Israel itself, that Israel has always sought peace and has been rebuffed by Arab intransigence, is actually the opposite of the case. Again, Israel is seeking a proprietorship and regional hegemony that can only be achieved unilaterally, rendering negotiations superfluous and irrelevant. Like the Zionist ideology itself, Israel's security doctrine is self-contained, a closed circuit. That's why peace-making efforts over the years, Israeli as well as foreign, have failed miserably. If the assumption – encouraged by Israel – is that the conflict can be resolved through diplomatic means, then Israel can justly be accused of acting in bad faith. Israel and its interlocutors are essentially talking past each other.

The prominence (one is tempted to say "monopoly") of the military in political policy-making explains the mystery of why Labor in the post-Ben Gurion era chose territorial expansion over peace. Uri Savir, the head of Israel's Foreign Ministry under Rabin and Peres and a chief negotiator in the Oslo process, provides a glimpse into this dynamic in his book The Process (1998:81, 99, 207-208). After the Declaration of Principles between Israel and the Palestinians was signed on the White House lawn in September 1993

Rabin chose a new team of negotiators. Led by Deputy Chief of Staff Gen. Amnon Shahak, it was composed mostly of military officers. When the military grumbled bitterly at having been shut out of the Oslo talks, Rabin...did not reject the criticism...That Israel's approach should be dictated by the army invariably made immediate security considerations the dominant one, so that the fundamentally political process had been subordinated to short-term military needs.

In Grenada, Peres had painstakingly explained to Arafat Israel's stand on security, especially external security and the border passages. "Mr. Chairman, I'm going to give you the straight truth, without embellishment," he said...We will not compromise on the operational side of controlling the border passages [to Jordan and Egypt]. We're concerned about the smuggling of weapons. Ten pistols can make for many victims," he stressed. "This is absolutely vital to our security."

Arafat, who translated this straight talk into a vision of Palestinians caged in on all sides, replied: "I cannot go for a Bantustan..."

In the end, Israel's security doctrine generally prevailed. Would compliance with Arafat's demand for more power and responsibility have improved Israel's security? The truth is, we will never know...

Now the bureaucrats and the officers who ruled the Palestinians had been asked to pass on their powers to their "wards"...Some of these administrators found it almost unbearable to sit down in Eilat with representatives of their "subjects." We had been engaged in dehumanization for so long that we really thought ourselves "more equal" – and at the same time the threatened side, therefore justifiably hesitant. The group negotiating the transfer of civil powers did not rebel against their mandate, but whenever we offered a concession or a compromise, our people tended to begin by saying" "We have decided to allow you..."

"Security" became ever more constrictive as right-wing soldiers and security advisors began moving into the highest echelons of the military and political establishments during the years of Likud rule. Fourteen of the first fifteen Chiefs of Staff were associated with the Labor Party; the last three – Shaul Mofaz, Moshe Ya'alon and Dan Halutz – are associated with the right wing of the Likud, a mix of ideology and militarism that reinforces a concept of security that, even if sincerely held, cannot create the space needed for a viable Palestinian state.

(3) Israel as a self-defined bastion of the West in the Middle East. Israel's European orientation, including a view of the Arab world as a mere hinterland offering Israel little of value, explains why Israel does not place more importance pursuing peace with its neighbors. Israel does not consider itself a part of the Middle East and has no desire whatsoever to integrate into it. If anything, it sees itself as a Middle Eastern variation of Singapore. Like Singapore, it seeks a correct relationship with its hinterland, but views itself as a service center for the West, to which its economy and political affiliations are tied. (Israel, we might note, has built the Singaporean army into what it is today, the strongest military force in Southeast Asia.) That means it lacks the fundamental motivation to achieve any form of regional integration, as evidenced by its off-hand dismissal of the Saudi Initiative of 2002 that, with the backing of the Arab League, offered Israel recognition, peace and regional integration in return for relinquishing the Occupation. And finally,

(4) The immaterial Palestinians. Israel believes that it can achieve a separate peace with countries of the Arab and Muslim worlds (and maintain its overall strong international position) without reference to the Palestinians. Not with the peoples, it is true; that would require a degree of concession to the Palestinians "on the ground" beyond which Israel is willing to go. Knowing this yet having little interest in either the Palestinian people or the Muslim masses, Israel is willing to limit its state of peace/non-conflict with governments – Egypt, Jordan, an emerging Iraq (although Israel is arming the Kurds), the Gulf states, the countries of North Africa (Libya included), Pakistan, Indonesia and some Muslim African countries. In the view of Israeli leaders surveying with satisfaction the political landscape, the notion that Israel is too strong to ignore seems to hold true.

Though it has sustained some serious hits in Lebanon, at the moment Israel is flying high with its central place in the American neocon agenda of consolidating American Empire, its key role in what the Pentagon calls "The Long War" to ensure American hegemony, remains, despite growing doubts over Israel's ability to "deliver." Whether or not US policy has been "Israelized" or the "strategic alliance" between the two countries merely rests on perceived common interests and services Israel can offer the US, the Bush Administration has provided Israel with a window of opportunity it is exploiting to the hilt. Despite the Lebanese setback, Israeli leaders still believe they can "win," they can beat the Palestinians, engineer Israel's permanent control over the Occupied Territories and achieve enough peace with enough of the Arab and Muslim worlds. That is what Olmert's "Convergence Plan" (now temporarily shelved) is all about, and why he has resolved to implement it while Bush is still in office. Israel's security, then, rests in that broad sphere defined by military might, services provided to the US military, the uncritical support of the American Congress, its military diplomacy including arms sales, Israel's central role in the neocon agenda, its ability to parley European guilt over the Holocaust into political support, its ability to manipulate Arab and Muslim governments and its ability to suppress Palestinian resistance.

So what's wrong with this picture? Nothing, unless one truly wants peace, security and "the right to be normal" – and unless considerations such as justice and human rights enter into the equation. From a purely utilitarian perspective, Israel is a tremendous success. Perhaps the most hopeful sign of Israel's "normalization" is its acceptance by most of the Arab and Muslim world, best illustrated by the very Saudi Initiative Israel so summarily ignored. But this also pinpoints the problem. The Saudi/Arab League offer was contingent upon Israel's relinquishing the Occupation, something it is not prepared to do. True to form, Israel responded to the offer "on the ground" rather than through diplomatic channels. Sharon carried out his plan of "disengagement" from Gaza explicitly to ensure Israel's permanent and unassailable rule over the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while his successor Olmert vigorously pushed a plan under which the Occupation would be transformed into a permanent state of Israeli control. All this conforms to Israeli policy going back to Ben Gurion which asserts that if Israel limits its aim to achieving a modus vivendi with the Arab and Muslim worlds rather than full-fledged peace, it can ensure its security while retaining control over the land west of the Jordan River. To be sure, occasional spats will erupt such as those in Gaza or with the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel might even be called upon to do America's dirty work in Iran, as it played its role (limited as it was) in Iraq. But those (or at least this was the thinking before the Lebanese debacle) are easily contained, American co-opting of Egypt and Jordan providing the necessary cushion.

This Israeli realpolitik rests on an extremely pragmatic approach to the conflict akin to what the British termed "muddling through." If Israel's goal was to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians and seek genuine peace and regional integration, it could easily have adopted policies that would have achieved that, probably long ago. The goal, however, is conflict management, maintaining the "status quo" in perpetuity, and not conflict resolution. Muddling through well suits Israel's attempt to balance the unbalance-able: expanding territorially at the expense of the Palestinians while still maintaining an acceptable level of security and "quiet." It enables Israel to meet each challenge as it arises rather than to lock itself into a strategy or set of policies that fail to take into account unexpected developments. Yesterday we tried Oslo; today we'll hit Gaza and Lebanon, tomorrow "convergence."

It may not look rational or neat, but conflict management means going with the flow; staying on top of things, knowing where you are going and having contingency plans always at the ready to take advantage of any opening, and dealing with events as they happen. Not long-term strategies but a vision implemented in many often imperceptible stages over time, under the radar so as to attract as little attention or opposition as possible, realized through short-term initiatives like the Convergence Plan which progressively nail down gains "on the ground."

If this analysis is correct, Israel is willing to settle for peace-and-quiet rather than genuine peace, for management of the conflict rather than closure, for territorial gains that may perpetuate tensions and occasional conflicts in the region, but do not jeopardize Israel's essential security. Declaring "the right to be normal" becomes a PR move designed to blame the other side and cast Israel as the victim; it is not something that Israeli leaders sincerely expect. Indeed, their very policies are based on the assumption that functional normality – an acceptable level of "quiet," the economy doing well, a fairly normal existence for an insulated Israeli public most of the time – is a preferred status to the concessions required for a genuine, and attainable, peace.

What About the Battered And Exhausted Israeli Public?

The Jewish Israeli public only partially buys into all this. It would prefer actual peace and normalization to territorial gains in the Occupied Territories, though it definitely prefers separation from the Arab world to regional integration. If Israelis prefer peace to continued conflict with the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors, why, then, do they vote for governments that pursue the exact opposite, that prefer conflict management and territory to peace? Mystification of the conflict on the part of Israeli leaders plays a large role, just as it does in the "clash of civilizations" discourse in other Western countries. Since Israel's strategy of enduring a certain level of conflict as an acceptable price for territorial expansion would not be tolerated if it was stated in those terms, successive Israel governments from Ben Gurion to Olmert instead convinced the public that there is simply no political solution. The Arabs are our intransigent and permanent enemies; we Israeli Jews, the victims, have sought only peace and a normal existence, but in vain. And that's just the way it is. As Yitzhak Shamir put it so colorfully: "The Arabs are the same Arabs, the Jews are the same Jews and the sea [into which the former seek to throw the latter] is the same sea." Israel effectively adopted the clash of civilizations notion years before Samuel Huntington.
This manipulative framing of the conflict also fashions discourse in a way that prevents the public from "getting it." Israel's official national narrative supplies a coherent, compelling justification for doing whatever we like without being held accountable – indeed, it renders all criticism of us as "anti-Semitism." The self-evident framing which determines the parameters of all political, media and public discussion goes something like this:

The Land of Israel belongs exclusively to the Jewish people; Arabs (the term "Palestinian" is seldom used) reside there by sufferance and not by right. Since the problem is implacable Arab hatred and terrorism and the Palestinians are our permanent enemies, the conflict has no political solution. Israel's policies are based on concerns for security. The Arabs have rejected all our many peace offers; we are the victim fighting for our existence. Israel therefore is exempt from accountability for its actions under international law and covenants of human rights.

Any solution, then, must leave Israel in control of the entire country. Any Palestinian state will have to be truncated, non-viable and semi-sovereign. The conflict is a win-lose proposition: either we "win" or "they" do. The answer to Israel's security concerns is a militarily strong Israel aligned with the United States.

One of this framing's most glaring omissions is the very term "occupation." Without that, debate is reduced solely to what "they" are doing to us, in other words, to seemingly self-evident issues of terrorism and security. There are no "Occupied Territories" (in fact, Israel officially denies it even has an occupation), only Judea and Samaria, the heart of our historic homeland, or strangely disembodied but certainly hostile "territories." Quite deliberately, then, Israelis are studiously ignorant of what is going on in the Occupied Territories, whether in terms of settlement expansion and other "facts" on the ground or in terms of government policies. One can listen to the endless political talk shows and commentaries in the Israeli media without ever hearing a reference to the Occupation. Pieces of it yes: Settlements, perhaps; the Separation Barrier (called a "fence" in Israel) occasionally; almost never house demolitions or references to the massive system of Israel-only highways that have incorporated the West Bank irreversibly into Israel proper, never the Big Picture. Although Olmert's Convergence Plan, which is of fundamental importance to the future of Israelis, is based upon the annexation of Israel's major settlement blocs, the public has never been shown a map of those blocs and therefore has no clear idea of what is actually being proposed or its significance for any eventual peace. But that is considered irrelevant anyway. When, very occasionally, Israelis are confronted by the massive "facts of the ground," they invoke the mechanism of minimization: OK, they say, we know all that, but nothing is irreversible, the fence and the settlements can be dismantled, all options continue to be open. In this way they do not have to deal with the enormity of what they have created, one system for two peoples, which, if the status quo cannot be maintained forever, can only lead to a single bi-national state or to apartheid, confining the Palestinians to a truncated Bantustan. While the official narrative deflects public attention from the sources of the conflict, minimization relieves Israelis of responsibility for either perpetuating or resolving it.

Framing, then, becomes much more than a PR exercise. It becomes an essential element of defense in insulating the core of the conflict – the Occupation itself, the pro-active policies of settlement that belie the claims of "security," and Israel's responsibility as the occupying power – from both public scrutiny and public discussion. Defending that framing is therefore tantamount to defending Israel's very claim to the country, the very "moral basis" of Zionism we Israelis constantly invoke. No wonder it is impossible to engage even liberal “pro-Israeli” individuals and organizations in a substantive and genuine discussion of the issues at hand.

One result of such discursive processes is the disempowerment of the Israeli public. If, in fact, there is no solution, then all that's left is to hunker down and carve out as much normality as possible. For Israelis the entire conflict with the Arabs has been reduced to one technical issue: How do we ensure our personal security? Since conflict management assumes a certain level of violence, the public has entered into a kind of deal with the government: You reduce terrorism to "acceptable" levels, and we won't ask how you do it. In a sense the public extends to the government a line of credit. We don't care how you guarantee our personal security. Establish a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories if you think that will work; load the Arabs on trucks and transfer them out of the country; build a wall so high that, as someone said, even birds can't fly over it. We, the Israeli Jewish public, don't care how you do it. Just do it if you want to be re-elected.

This is what accounts for the apparent contradiction between the public will and the policies of the governments it elects. That explains how in 1999 Barak was elected with a clear mandate to end the conflict, and when he failed and the Intifada broke out, that same public, in early 2001, elected his mirror opposite, Ariel Sharon, the architect of Israel's settlement policies who eschewed any negotiations at all. Israelis are willing to sacrifice peace for security – and do not see the contradiction – because true "peace" is considered unattainable. In fact, "peace" carries a negative political connotation amongst most Israelis. It denotes concessions, weakness, increased vulnerability. Israel's unique electoral system, in which voters cast their ballots for parties rather than candidates and end up either with unwieldy coalition governments incapable of formulating and pursuing a coherent policy, only adds to the public's disempowerment and its unwillingness to entrust any government with a mandate to arrive at a final settlement with the Arabs.

Because the "situation," as we call it, has been reduced to a technical problem of personal security without political solution, Israelis have become passive, bordering on irresponsible. They have been removed from the political equation altogether. Any attempt to actually resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict (and its corollaries) will have to come from the outside; the Israeli public will simply not make a proactive move in that direction. While the government will obviously oppose such intervention, the Israeli public may actually welcome it – if it is announced by a friend (the US), pronounced authoritatively with little space for haggling (as Reagan did over the sale of AWACs surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s), and couched as originating out of concern for Israel's security. Israeli Jews may be likened to the whites of South Africa during the last phase of apartheid. The latter had grown accustomed to apartheid and would not themselves have risen up to abolish it. But when international and domestic pressures became unbearable and de Klerk finally said, "It's over," there was no uprising, even among the Afrikaners who constructed the regime. I sincerely believe that if cowboy Bush would get up one morning and say to Israel: "We love you, we will guarantee your security, but the Occupation has to end. Period," that you would hear the sigh of relief from Israelis all the way in Washington.

As it stands, the Israeli leadership thinks we are winning, the people are not so sure but are too disinformed and cowed by security threats (bogus and real) to act, and the peace movement has been reduced to a pariah few crying out in the wilderness. Given the support Israel receives from the US in return for services rendered to the Empire, Europe's quiescent complicity and Palestinian isolation, the question remains whether Israel's strategy of conflict management has not in fact succeeded – again, considerations of justice, genuine peace and human rights aside. Say what you will, the realists can point to almost sixty years during which Israel has emerged as a regional, if not global superpower in firm control of the greater Land of Israel. If Olmert succeeds in implementing his Convergence Plan, the conflict with the Palestinians is over from Israel’s point of view – and we've won.

Yet so overwhelming is our military might, so massive and permanent have we made our controlling presence in the Occupied Territories, that we have fatally overplayed our hand. Ben Gurion's formula worked. We now have everything we want – the entire Land of Israel west of the Jordan River – and the Arab governments have sued for peace. But four elements of the equation that Ben Gurion (or Meir or Peres, or Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, Olmert and all the rest) did not take into account have arisen to fundamentally challenge the paradigm of power:

(1) Demographics. Israel does not have enough Jews to sustain its control over the greater Land of Israel. (Indeed, whether Israel proper can remain "Jewish" is a question, with the Jewish majority down just under 75%, factoring in the Arab population, the non-Jewish Russians and emigration.) Zionism created a strong state, but it did not succeed in convincing Jews to settle it. The Jewish population of Israel represents less than a third of world Jewry; only 1% of American Jews made aliyah. In fact, whenever Jews had a choice – in North Africa, the former Soviet Union, Iraq, Iran, South Africa and Argentina, not to mention all the countries of Europe and North America – they chose not to come to Israel. And it is demographics that is driving Olmert's Convergence Plan. "It's only a matter of time before the Palestinians demand 'one man, one vote' - and then, what will we do?", he asked plaintively at the 2004 Herzilya conference. Olmert's scheme retains control of Israel and the Occupied Territories (in his terms Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem) while doing the only thing possible with the Palestinians who make up half the population – locking them into a truncated Bantustan on a sterile 15-20% of the country.

(2) Palestinians. Israel's historical policy of ignoring and bypassing the Palestinians can no longer work. Palestinians comprise about half the population of the land west of the Jordan River, all of which Israel seeks to control, and will be a clear majority if significant numbers of refugees are repatriated to the Palestinian Bantustan. Keeping that population under control means that Israel must adopt ever more repressive policies, whether prohibiting Israeli Arab citizens from bringing their spouses and children from the Occupied Territories to live with them in Israel, as recent legislation has decreed, or imprisoning an entire people behind 26-foot concrete walls. Despite Olmert's assertion that Israelis have a right to live a normal life, normalcy cannot be achieved unilaterally. Neither an Occupation nor a Bantustan nor any other form of oppression can be normalized or routinized; it will always be resisted by the oppressed. Strong as Israel is militarily, it has not succeeded in pacifying the Palestinians over the last 40 years of occupation, 60 years since the Naqba or century since the Zionist movement claimed exclusive patrimony over Palestine and begin to systematically dispossess the indigenous population. The Palestinians today possess one weapon that Israel cannot defeat, that it must one day deal with, and that is their position as gatekeepers. Until the Palestinians signal the wider Arab, Muslim and international communities that they have reached a satisfactory political accommodation with Israel, the conflict will continue and Israel will fail to achieve either closure or normalcy.

(3) The Arab/Muslim peoples. The role of Palestinians as gatekeepers reflects the rise in importance of civil society as a player in political affairs. Israel's lack of concern over the Arab and Muslim "streets," its reliance solely on peace-making with governments, indicates a major failure in Israel's strategic approach to the conflict: Its underestimation of the power of the people. Sentiments such as "We don't care about making peace with the Arab peoples; correct relations with their governments are enough," ignore the fragile state of Arab governments created by the rise of Muslim fundamentalism, which in turn has been fueled in large part (though not exclusively, of course) by the Occupation. If Hezbollah has the power to create the instability is has, imagine what will happen if the Muslim Brotherhood seizes power in Egypt. The disproportionate bias towards Israel in American and European policies only fuels and sharpens the "clash of civilizations," while Israel's Occupation effectively prevents progressive elements from emerging in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The strategic role played by Palestinians as gatekeepers has a significant effect upon the stability of the entire global system. The Israel-Palestine conflict is no longer a localized one.

(4) International civil society. As we have seen, Israeli leaders, surveying the international political landscape as elected officials do, take great comfort. They believe that, with uncritical and unlimited American support, their country is "winning" its conflict over the Palestinians (and Israel's other enemies, real and imagined). Like political leaders everywhere, they don't seriously take "the people" into account. Yet, The People – what is known as international civil society – have some achievements under their belt when it comes to defeating injustice. They forced the American government to enforce the civil rights of black people in the US and to abandon the war in Vietnam. They played major roles in the collapse of South African apartheid, of the Soviet Union and of the Shah's regime, among many others. Since governments will almost never do the right thing on their own, it was civil society, through the newly established UN, that forced them to accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions and a whole corpus of human rights and international law. With the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court at our disposal, as well as other instruments, and as civil society organizes into Social Forums and other forms of action coalitions, major cases of injustice, such as Israel's Occupation, are becoming less and less sustainable. As the Occupation assumes the proportions of an injustice on the scale of apartheid – a conflict with global implications – Olmert may convince Bush and Blair to support his plan, but the conflict will not be over until two gatekeepers say it is, the Palestinians and the people worldwide.

The Only Way Out: Forcing Israel To Take Responsibility

Israel has only one way out: It must take responsibility for its actions. No more blaming Arafat and Hamas and the Arabs in general. No more playing the victim. No more denying Occupation or the human rights of a people just as lodged into this land as the Jews, if not more so. No more using the military to ensure "our" security. No more unilateralism. Instead, Israel must work with the Palestinians to create a genuine two-state solution. No Geneva Initiative whereby the Palestinians get a non-viable 22% of the country; nor convergence nor realignment nor apartheid. Simply an end of Occupation and a return to the 1967 borders (in which Israel still retains 78% of the country) – or, if a just and viable two-state solution is in fact buried forever under massive Israeli settlement blocs and highways, then another solution. And a just solution to the refugee issue. Over time, the Palestinians – who are greater friends of Israel than any Israeli realizes – might even use their good offices to eventually enter into a regional confederation with the neighboring states (see my article in Tikkun 20[1)]17-21: "Israel in a Middle East Union: A 'Two-stage' Approach to the Conflict.").

This is a tall order, and it will not happen soon. The military's mobilization of Jewish Israelis has created a remarkably high consensus (85% support the construction of the Wall; 93% supported the recent war in Lebanon), making it impossible for truly divergent views to penetrate. Some of this has to do with overpowering feelings of self-righteousness, combined with the perception of Israel as the victim (and hence having no responsibility for what happens, a party that cannot be held accountable). Disdain towards Arabs also allows Israel to harm Palestinian (and again Lebanese) civilian populations with impunity and no sense of guilt or wrongdoing.

Although Israel has a small but vital peace movement and dissident voices are heard among intellectuals and in the press, the combination of mystification ("there is no partner for peace"), disdain, vilification and dehumanization of the Palestinians, a self-perception of Israelis-as-victims, the supremacy of all-encompassing "security" concerns, and a compelling but closed meta-narrative means that little if any space exists for a public debate that could actually change policy. Because the Israel public has effectively removed itself as a player – except in granting passive support to its political leaders who pursue a program of territorial expansion and conflict management – a genuine, just and sustainable peace will not come to the region without massive international pressure. This is starting to happen as the Occupation assumes global proportions and churches, together with other civil society groups, weigh campaigns of divestment and economic sanctions against Israel – forms of the very nonviolent resistance that the world has been demanding. The Israeli Jewish public, unfortunately, has abrogated its responsibility. Zionism, which began as a movement of Jews to take charge of their lives, to determine their own fate, has ironically become a skein of pretexts serving only to prevent Israelis from taking their fate in their own hands. The "deal" with the political parties has turned Israeli government policies into mere pretexts for oppression, for "winning" over another people, for colluding with American Empire.

The problem with Israel is that, for all the reasons given in this paper, it has made itself impervious to normal political processes. Negotiations do not work because Israeli policy is based on "bad faith." If Israel's actual agenda is territorial expansion, retaining control of the entire country west of the Jordan and foreclosing any viable Palestinian state, then any negotiations that might threaten that agenda are put off, delayed or avoided. All Israeli officials and their surrogates - local religious figures, representatives of organized Jewish communities abroad, liberal Zionist peace organizations, intellectuals and journalists defining themselves as "Zionist," "pro-Israel" public figures in any given country and others – become gatekeepers. In effect - deliberately or not - their essential role is not to engage but to deflect engagement, to "build a fence" around the core Israeli agenda so as to appear to be forthcoming but to actually avert any negotiations or pressures that might threaten Israel's unilateral agenda.

It's a win-lose equation. If Ben Gurion's principle that the Arabs will sue for peace even after we get everything we want, then why compromise? True, Israel could have had peace, security and normalization years ago, but not a "unified" Jerusalem, Judea or Samaria. If the price is continued hostility of the Arab and Muslim masses and no integration into the region, well, that's certainly something we can live with. In the meantime, we can rely on our military to handle any challenges to either our Occupation or our hegemony that might arise.

This logic carried us through almost to the end, to Olmert's Convergence Plan that was intended to "end" the Occupation and establish a permanent regime of Israeli dominance. And then Israel hit the wall, a dead-end: The rise of Hamas to power in the Palestinian Authority and the traumatic "non-victory" over Hezbollah. Both those events exposed the fatal flaw of the non-conflict peace policy. The Palestinians are indeed the gatekeepers, and the Arab governments in whom Israel placed all its hopes are in danger of being swept away by a wave of fundamentalism fueled, in large part, by the Occupation and Israel’s open alignment with American Empire. Peace, even a minimally stable non-peace, cannot be achieved without dealing, once and for all, with the Palestinians. The war in Lebanon has left Israel staring into the abyss. The Oslo peace process died six years ago, the Road Map initiative was stillborn and, in the wake of the war, Olmert has announced that his convergence plan, the only political plan the government had, was being shelved for the time being. Ha'aretz commentator Aluf Benn spoke for many Israelis when he reflected:

Cancellation of the convergence plan raises two main questions: What is happening in the territories and what is the point of continuing Olmert's government? Olmert has no answers. The response to calls to dismiss him is the threat of Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm. But what, exactly, is the difference? Both now propose preservation of the status quo in the territories, rehabilitation of the North and grappling with Iran. At this point, what advantage does the head of state have over the head of the opposition? (Ha'aretz, August 25, 2006)

Without the ability to end or even manage its regional conflicts unilaterally, faced with the limitations of military power, increasingly isolated in a world for whom human rights does matter, yet saddled with a political system that prevents governments from taking political initiative and a public that can only hunker down, Israel finds itself not in a status quo but in a downward spiral of violence leading absolutely nowhere. Even worse, it finds itself strapped to a superpower that itself is discovering the futility of unilateralism in its own Middle East adventures even while encouraging Israel to join in. Still, knowing that governments will not do the right thing without being prodded by the people, the Israeli peace camp welcomes the active intervention of the progressive international civil society. In the end we can only hope that the Israeli mainstream will join us.

The door to peace is still wide open. The Palestinian, Lebanese, Egyptian and Syrian governments have said that war raises new possibilities for peace. Even Peretz said as much, but was forced to backtrack when Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister, declared the "time was not ripe" for talks with Syria. Instead the Olmert government appointed the chief of the air force to be its "campaign coordinator" in any possible war with Iran, and then named Avigdor Lieberman, the extremist right-winger who is on record as favoring a attacks on Iran as well as a nuclear strike on Egypt’s Aswan Dam, as Deputy Prime Minister and "Minister of Strategy."

Israel will simply not walk through that door, period. There is no indication that one of the lessons learned from the Lebanese disaster will be the futility of imposing a military solution on the region. On the contrary, the chorus of protest in Israel in the wake of the war is: Why didn't the government let the army win? Demands for the heads of Olmert, Peretz and Halutz come from their military failure, not from a failure of their military policy. But instead of demanding a government inquiry as to why Israel lost the war, the sensible Ha'aretz columnist Danny Rubinstein suggests a government inquiry on why Israel has not achieved peace with its neighbors over the past sixty years.

The question then is, will the international community, the only force capable of putting an end to the superfluous destabilization of the global system caused by Israel's Occupation, step in and finally impose a settlement agreeable to all the parties? So far, the answer appears to be "no," constrained in large part by America's view that Israel is still a valuable ally in its faltering "war on terror." Only when the international community – led probably by Europe rather than the US, which appears to be hopeless in this regard – decides that the price is too high and adopts a more assertive policy towards the Occupation will Israel's ability to manipulate end. Civil society's active intervention is crucial. We – Israelis, Palestinians and internationals – can formulate precisely what the large majority of Israelis and Palestinians crave: a win-win alternative to Israel's self-serving and failed "security" framing based on irreducible human rights. Such a campaign would contribute measurably to yet another critical project: A meta-campaign in which progressive forces throughout the world articulate a truly new world order founded on inclusiveness, justice, peace and reconciliation. If, in the end, Israel sparks such a reframing, if it generates a movement of global inclusiveness and dialogue, then it might, in spite of itself, yet be the "light unto the nations" it has always aspired to be.

(Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org).

Related posts:

• John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt: pro-Israel Lobby influence over U.S. foreign policy on the recent Israel-Lebanon war
• ‘Apartheid Israel’ week at Oxford and ‘Freedom of Speech’
• Time to talk peace

With all the religiophobia going around, specially when it comes to Palestinian issue, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, following article by Uri Avnery is a must read.

A War of Religions? God Forbid!
Uri Avnery, 19.2.06

ONE OF our former Chiefs-of-Staff, the late Rafael ("Raful") Eytan, who was not the brightest, once asked a foreign guest: "Are you Jewish or Christian?"

"I am an atheist!" the man replied.

"Okay, Okay," Raful demanded impatiently, "but a Jewish atheist or a Christian atheist?"

Well, I myself am a 100% atheist. And I am increasingly worried that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, which dominates our entire life, is assuming a more and more religious character.

THE HISTORICAL CONFLICT began as a clash between two national movements, which used religious motifs only as a decoration.

The Zionist movement was non-religious from the start, if not anti-religious. Almost all the Founding Fathers were self-declared atheists. In his book "Der Judenstaat", the original charter of Zionism, Theodor Herzl said that "we shall know how to keep (our clergymen) in their temples." Chaim Weitzman was an agnostic scientist. Vladimir Jabotinsky wanted his body to be cremated - a sin in Judaism. David Ben-Gurion refused to cover his head even at funerals.

All the great rabbis of the day, both Hassidim and their opponents, the Missnagdim, condemned Herzl and cursed him ferociously. They rejected the basic thesis of Zionism, that the Jews are a "nation" in the European sense, instead regarding the Jews as a holy people held together by observance of the divine commandments.

Moreover, in the eyes of the rabbis, the Zionist idea itself was a cardinal sin. The Almighty decreed the exile of the Jews as punishment for their sins. Therefore, only the Almighty Himself may revoke the punishment and send the Messiah, who will lead the Jews back to the holy land. Until then, it is strictly prohibited to "return en masse". By organizing mass immigration to the country, the Zionists rebel against God and, worst of all, hold up the coming of the Messiah. Some Hassidim, like the Satmar sect in America, and a small but principled group in Israel, the Neturei Karta (Guardians of the City) in Jerusalem, still adhere to this belief.

True, the Zionists expropriated the symbols of Judaism (the Star of David, the candlestick of the Temple, the prayer shawl that was turned into a flag, even the name "Zion") but that was only utilitarian manipulation. The small religious faction that joined Zionism (the "Religious Zionists") was a marginal group.

Before the Holocaust, we learned in the Zionist schools in Palestine to treat with pitiless scorn everything that was "exile Jewish" - the Jewish religion, the Jewish Stetl, the Jewish social structure (the "inverted pyramid"). Only the Holocaust changed the attitude towards the Jewish past in the diaspora, referred to in Hebrew as "Exile".)

Ben-Gurion made some concessions to the religious factions, including the anti-Zionist Orthodox. He released some hundreds of Yeshiva-students from military service and set up a separate "state-religious" school system. His aim was to acquire convenient coalition partners. But these steps were based on the assumption (common to all of us at the time) that the Jewish religion would evaporate anyhow under the burning Israeli sun and disappear altogether in one or two generations.

All this changed in the wake of the Six-day War. The Jewish religion staged an astounding comeback.

ON THE Palestinian side, something similar happened, but against a quite different background.

The Arab national movement, too, was born under the influence of the European national idea. Its spiritual fathers called for the liberation of the Arab nation from the shackles of Ottoman rule, and later from the yoke of European colonialism. Many of its founders were Arab Christians.

When a distinct Palestinian national movement came into being, following the Balfour Declaration and the setting up of the British Government of Palestine, it had no religious character. In order to fight it, the British appointed a religious personality to the leadership of the Palestinian community in Palestine: Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who quickly assumed the leadership of the Palestinian struggle against the Zionist immigration. He endeavored to give a religious face to the Palestinian-Arab rebellion. Accusing the Zionist of designs on the Temple Mount with its holy Islamic shrines, he tried to mobilize the Muslim peoples in support of the Palestinians.

The Mufti failed miserably, and his failure played a part in the catastrophe of his people. The Palestinians have all but obliterated him from their history. In the 1950s, they idolized Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, the standard-bearer of secular, pan-Arab nationalism. Later, when Yasser Arafat founded the modern Palestinian national movement, he did not distinguish between Muslims and Christians. Right up to his death, he insisted on calling for the liberation of the "mosques and churches" of Jerusalem.

At one stage of its development, the PLO called for the creation of a "Democratic secular state, where Muslims, Jews and Christians will live together". (Arafat did not like the term "secular", preferring "la-maliah", meaning "non-sectarian".)

George Habash, the leader of the "Arab Nationalists" and later of the "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine", is a Christian.

This situation changed with the outbreak of the first intifada, at the end of 1987. Only then did the Islamist movements, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, start to take over the national struggle.

THE ASTOUNDING victory of the Israeli army in the Six-day war, which looked like a miracle, effected a profound political and cultural change in Israel. When the shofar sounded at the Western Wall, the religious youth, which had until then been vegetating on the fringe, occupied the center of the stage.

Suddenly it was discovered that the religious education system, which had been set up by Ben-Gurion as a political bribe and contrary to his own convictions, had been quietly turning out a fanatical religious product. The religious youth movement, which had suffered all these years from feelings of humiliation and inferiority, was filled with zeal and started the settlement drive, leading the main national effort: the annexation of the occupied territories.

The Jewish religion itself underwent a mutation. This mutant shed all universal values and became a narrow, militant, xenophobic tribal creed, aiming at conquest and ethnic cleansing. The religious-Zionists of the new sort are convinced that they are fulfilling the will of God and preparing the ground for the coming of the Messiah. The "national-religious" cabinet ministers, that had always belonged to the moderate wing of the government, gave way to a new, extremist leadership with tendencies towards religious fascism.

Israel has not become a religious state. It still has a large secular majority. According to the authoritative Israeli Government Bureau of Statistics, only 8% of Israeli Jews define themselves as "Orthodox" (Haredim), 9% as "religious" (meaning Religious Zionists), 45% as "secular, non-religious" and 27% as "secular, traditional".

However, because of their role in the settlement enterprise, the "religious" have acquired a huge influence over the political process. They have practically prevented any move towards peace with the Palestinians. They have also provoked a religious reaction on the other side.

THE PALESTINIAN resistance to the occupation, which reached a peak with the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987, has given a big push to the religious forces. Until then, these had been growing quietly (not without the encouragement of the occupation authorities, which saw in them a counterweight to the secular PLO.)

The first intifada led to the Oslo agreement and brought Yasser Arafat back to Palestine. But the new Palestinian authority failed in its aim of putting an end to the occupation and establishing a secular Palestinian state. With settlements continually expanding all over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian public increasingly tended to support armed resistance. In this struggle, and with the limited means available, the religious factions excelled. A religious person is more ready to sacrifice his life in a suicide attack than his secular cousin.

The anger of the Palestinian public over the corruption that has infected sections of the secular Fatah leadership (but not the ascetic Yasser Arafat, whose reputation remained clean) has increased even more the popularity of the religious, whose honesty is unquestioned.

FOR YEARS I have been haunted by a nightmare: that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would change from a national to a religious confrontation.

A national conflict, terrible as it may be, is soluble. The last two centuries have seen many national wars, and almost all of them ended in a territorial compromise. Such conflicts are basically logical, and can be terminated in a rational way.

Not so religious conflicts. When all sides are bound by divine commandments, the attainment of a compromise becomes far more difficult.

Religious Jews believe that God promised them all of the holy land. Thus, giving away any of it to "foreigners" is an unforgivable sin. In the eyes of Muslim believers, the whole country is a Waqf (religious trust), and it is therefore absolutely forbidden to surrender any part of it to unbelievers. (When the Caliph Omar conquered Palestine some 1400 years ago, he declared it a Waqf. His motive was quite practical: to prevent his generals from dividing the land between themselves, as was their wont.)

By the way, the evangelical fundamentalists who dominate Washington at this time also see the Holy Land as a religious property, to which the Jews must return in order to make possible the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Is a compromise between these forces possible? Certainly yes, but it is much more difficult. A devout Muslim is allowed to declare a Hudna (armistice) for a hundred years and more, without condemning his soul to hell. Ariel Sharon, who began the evacuation of settlers, spoke about "long-range temporary arrangements". In politics, "temporary" measures have a tendency to become permanent.

But wisdom, sophistication and a lot of patience are needed to reach a resolution of the conflict in these circumstances.

On the day Arafat died, many Israelis were angry with me for saying (in a Haaretz interview) that we shall yet long for this secular leader, who was both willing and able to make peace with us. I said that his elimination removes the last obstacle to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Palestine and the entire Arab world.

One did not need to be a prophet to see that.

No comments!

Related posts:

• ‘Apartheid Israel’ week at Oxford and ‘Freedom of Speech’
• Taking charge of things, but where to?
• Palestine should be “wiped off the map.” Did anyone react?