De Israelische Terreur 831

The following scenario (see article below) should make people seriously
think about why we insist on normalising Israel’s behaviour without even
thinking about why those rockets are being fired at all.  And why indeed are
our governments all too ready to back away from the Durban Review Conference
on anti-racism in Geneva this coming week, if Israel is NOT the racist state
everyone knows it is?  

Only last Friday, yet another Palestinian was shot down in cold-blood while
taking part in a non-violent protest that is held weekly in the village of
Bil’in (north of Ramallah) against the tearing apart of Bil’in’s rural
community and lands to make way for Israel’s Apartheid Wall. He was shot in
the chest by a new type of high velocity tear gas canister while shouting
“this is a peaceful demonstration, there are lots of internationals with
us”. Now he is dead like so many other Palestinians, not because he was
shooting rockets at Israel, but because he was exercising his human right to
protest  terrible state-perpetrated injustices against himself and his
people.  An international community that is always so quick to condemn the
rocket attacks on Israel remains disgracefully silent whenever Israel’s army
kills with impunity the very people it is imprisoning and oppressing.

Shame on our Australian Government for refusing to take part in the Durban
Review conference.  Shame on our Foreign Minister Stephen Smith for his
reasoning “Regrettably, we cannot be confident that the review conference
will not again be used as a platform to air offensive views, including
anti-Semitic views. Of additional concern are the suggestions of some
delegations in the Durban process to limit the universal right to free
speech."

Since when is criticising Israel’s racist agenda, anti-Semitic? Those who
are interfering with the right to free speech are the very countries
refusing to participate – Australia, the US, Canada, Israel and Italy.  
Please write to our Foreign Minister Stephen.Smith.MP@aph.gov.au  and
register your protest.

- SK




When Israel expelled Palestinians:
What if it was San Diego and Tijuana instead?

by Randall Kuhn

Washington Post
14 April 2009


UN school in Shati refugee camp, Gaza where Israeli air strike killed three
people on 6 January 2009.


In the wake of Israel's invasion of Gaza, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud
Barak made this analogy: "Think about what would happen if for seven years
rockets had been fired at San Diego, California from Tijuana, Mexico."

Within hours scores of American pundits and politicians had mimicked Barak's
comparisons almost verbatim. In fact, in this very paper on January 9 House
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor ended an
opinion piece by saying "America would never sit still if terrorists were
lobbing missiles across our border into Texas or Montana." But let's see if
our political and pundit class can parrot this analogy.

Think about what would happen if San Diego expelled most of its Hispanic,
African American, Asian American, and Native American population, about 48
percent of the total, and forcibly relocated them to Tijuana? Not just
immigrants, but even those who have lived in this country for many
generations. Not just the unemployed or the criminals or the America haters,
but the school teachers, the small business owners, the soldiers, even the
baseball players.

What if we established government and faith-based agencies to help move
white people into their former homes? And what if we razed hundreds of their
homes in rural areas and, with the aid of charitable donations from people
in the United States and abroad, planted forests on their former towns,
creating nature preserves for whites to enjoy? Sounds pretty awful, huh? I
may be called anti-Semitic for speaking this truth. Well, I'm Jewish and the
scenario above is what many prominent Israeli scholars say happened when
Israel expelled Palestinians from southern Israel and forced them into Gaza.
But this analogy is just getting started.

What if the United Nations kept San Diego's discarded minorities in crowded,
festering camps in Tijuana for 19 years? Then, the United States invaded
Mexico, occupied Tijuana and began to build large housing developments in
Tijuana where only whites could live.

And what if the United States built a network of highways connecting
American citizens of Tijuana to the United States? And checkpoints, not just
between Mexico and the United States but also around every neighborhood of
Tijuana? What if we required every Tijuana resident, refugee or native, to
show an ID card to the U.S. military on demand? What if thousands of Tijuana
residents lost their homes, their jobs, their businesses, their children,
their sense of self worth to this occupation? Would you be surprised to hear
of a protest movement in Tijuana that sometimes became violent and hateful?
Okay, now for the unbelievable part.

Think about what would happen if, after expelling all of the minorities from
San Diego to Tijuana and subjecting them to 40 years of brutal military
occupation, we just left Tijuana, removing all the white settlers and the
soldiers? Only instead of giving them their freedom, we built a 20-foot tall
electrified wall around Tijuana? Not just on the sides bordering San Diego,
but on all the Mexico crossings as well. What if we set up 50-foot high
watchtowers with machine gun batteries, and told them that if they stood
within 100 yards of this wall we would shoot them dead on sight? And four
out of every five days we kept every single one of those border crossings
closed, not even allowing food, clothing, or medicine to arrive. And we
patrolled their air space with our state-of-the-art fighter jets but didn't
allow them so much as a crop duster. And we patrolled their waters with
destroyers and submarines, but didn't even allow them to fish.

Would you be at all surprised to hear that these resistance groups in
Tijuana, even after having been "freed" from their occupation but starved
half to death, kept on firing rockets at the United States? Probably not.
But you may be surprised to learn that the majority of people in Tijuana
never picked up a rocket, or a gun, or a weapon of any kind.

The majority, instead, supported against all hope negotiations toward a
peaceful solution that would provide security, freedom and equal rights to
both people in two independent states living side by side as neighbors. This
is the sound analogy to Israel's military onslaught in Gaza today. Maybe
some day soon, common sense will prevail and no corpus of misleading
analogies abut Tijuana or the crazy guy across the hall who wants to murder
your daughter will be able to obscure the truth. And at that moment, in a
country whose people shouted We Shall Overcome, Ich bin ein Berliner, End
Apartheid, Free Tibet and Save Darfur, we will all join together and shout
"Free Gaza. Free Palestine." And because we are Americans, the world will
take notice and they will be free, and perhaps peace will prevail for all
the residents of the Holy Land.

_____________________________________________________________

Randall Kuhn is an assistant professor and Director of the Global Health
Affairs Program at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of
International Studies. He just returned from a trip to Israel and the West
Bank.

Web link
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/14/when-israel-expelled-palestinians/