N° 21 Dialogue issue (September 2008)
Introduction
Today a 60-year old Palestinian can only have lived in exile or in an occupied land. The heavy shelling of Gaza, where 70% of the people are refugees or descendants of refugees, most of them from the cities and villages of the Mediterranean coast, shows that the Nakba (the Arabic for "catastrophe"), which started with the massive and violent expulsion of 800 000 Palestinians in 1948, is not over. For the Zionist leaders, it should be erased from history. At the time of the ceremonies celebrating the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, Tzipi Livni, who knows very well that the Palestinians will never relinquish their rights, said that "as long as the Palestinians have not struck the word Nakba from their lexicon, no territory will be transferred." The Nakba is not a memory, it is a permanent threat that began to hang over the Palestinians sixty years ago, and is inextricably connected with the demand for the right of return.
Is it not the case that the present chaos has its origins in 1947, when the UN voted for the partition of Palestine and the creation of the State of Israel, on the basis of massive plunder? The present situation was there right from the beginning and it will go on as long as the gross injustice caused by the Nakba has not been put right.
"Not in our name!" Confronted with the barbarism that for 22 days (at the time of writing) has been unleashed on the Gaza Strip, with the appalling pictures of bodies torn to pieces by US bombs dropped by the Israeli air force, political leaders and activists, academics, intellectuals and politicians, all of Jewish extraction, have in an unheard-of situation, given full vent to their indignation. In Israel itself, on several occasions, thousands of Jews who do not want the killings to be done in their name have taken part in demonstrations and chanted "Stop the massacre! Cease fire, Lift the blockade now! At the same time, in the villages of Galilee, in their homeland, thousands of Palestinians, despite unprecedented repression, have shown their solidarity with their brothers of Gaza, thereby expressing the unity of the Palestinian people.
Let us quote what Sir Gerald Kaufman, a British Member of Parliament had to say:
«My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians.
On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians -- the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that "500 of them were militants."
That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.
However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more on the West Bank. They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well. The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel.
It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli Government that their conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis' real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools.»
Gerald Kaufman deserves praise for this statement, regardless of what one may think of his political viewpoints. We once more ask the question: which democratic solution is able to put an end to all those destructions?
Is it not once again proved that the two-state "solution", implemented by the partition of Palestine, can on no account provide a key to the problems posed to the peoples of the region?
In this issue we publish some of the hundred or so statements made by Jewish groups, activists, writers, intellectuals who, through the very existence of their protest, show that the totalitarian and bloody policies carried out by the leaders of the State of Israel run counter to the interests of all the peoples of the region, including the Jewish people.
"Courage to Refuse", an organization of young Israelis who refuse to serve in the occupied territories, has just issued an appeal calling soldiers to refuse to participate in the Gaza campaign. "The brutal, unprecedented violence in Gaza is shocking. The false hope that this kind of violence will bring security to Israelis is all the more dangerous. We cannot stand aside while hundreds of civilians are being butchered by the IDF."
Men and women working for various United Nations bodies like OCHA or UNRAWA have reacted with a similar scream of horror. In complete contradiction with the line developed by the UN, whose function has for 60 years consisted in mustering worldwide support for US policy, those officials, doctors, voluntary workers, being direct witnesses to the physical destruction of hundreds of children, men and women, for the only reason that they are Palestinians, have themselves become the target of the Israeli "State barbarism".
The latest military Israeli operation, called "Cast Lead" is very clearly the most barbaric of all, due to the number of casualties, 80% of whom are civilians, the large-scale devastation and the cold cynicism of those who justify it.
Two states? A two-state solution involves providing answers to several questions: what will become of the "Arab citizens" whose political parties have just been banned form running in next month's parliamentary elections to the Knesset? What about the thousands of refugees? What should be thought of proposals that dispose of the democratic settling of the question of refugees?
Facts speak for themselves. The Israeli State's policy, which by all possible means aims at forcing Palestinians to give up their rights, shows that this State is only the instrument of a policy that defends very specific interests, certainly not the interests of the huge majority of the Jewish people.
Is it not the case that the statements and stances mentioned above add strength to the democratic struggle for the unconditional right of return for the Palestinian people, turned out of their land and suffering martyrdom in continuous wars and never-ending repression?
By entering into dialogue in this review, do Arab and Jewish activists of Palestine not show that there exists a way out? Do such facts not prove that the positive solution is, let us repeat it, a Palestine freed from Zionist and imperialist oppression, with equal rights for Arab and Jewish people, as is demanded by those young Jewish Canadians, anxious to secure a future, in the open letter published in this issue?
And, if for all peoples, the first priority is to stop the Israeli bombings at once and lift the blockade, is it not time, precisely to put a lasting end to this human tragedy, to initiate a debate between democrats, activists and workers as to seek together, in mutual respect, the solution that could stop all discrimination, enshrine equality and thereby lay the foundations of real peace and democracy?
Content
- p.3
- Introduction
- p.6
- Press Release. Stop the assault! Ceasefire Now!
- p.7
- Gaza Massacres. By Salah Salah
- p.11
- An Open Letter From Anti-Zionist Jewish Youth in Canada
- p.13
- Thoughts on Gaza. By Miko Peled
- p.16
- Where peace is a problem. By Haim Bresheeth
- p.19
- The Gaza Ghetto uprising. By Mazin Qumsiyeh
- p.21
- The Texas Solution By Ben Adam
- p.24
- The pogrom at Acre, who should apologise? By Nizar Abu Ahmed – Nazareth
- p.26
