Lamyae Aharouay, in jouw column in het dagblad Trouw stelde je het volgende:
Je zal je hele leven maar in angst en onzekerheid moeten leven. Als Palestijn afgesloten van de buitenwereld, onderdrukt in eigen gebied. Als Israëliër permanent op je hoede, bij ieder luchtalarm vluchten naar een schuilkelder. Zoals ik al schreef, ik vind het lastig.
http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4496/Buitenland/article/detail/3687045/2014/07/10/Conflict-Israel-en-Palestijnen-is-mij-meningmachine-te-lastig.dhtml?utm_source=dailynewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20140710
Daarmee suggereerde je dat de Joden in Israel even hard lijden onder de zionistische bezetting, onderdrukking en vervolging van de Palestijnse bevolking als de Palestijnen zelf, en dat jij je daardoor niet wilde
branden aan wie begon, wie het kwaad is en wie de schuld van alle problematiek daar verdient. Niet omdat ik het niet wil, maar omdat ik het niet weet.
Hieruit blijkt dat jij als columniste van Trouw tot nu hebt geweigerd jezelf in deze zaak te verdiepen, maar dat dit je niet ervan heeft weerhouden om toch een duidelijk standpunt in te nemen, namelijk dat de Joden in Israel evenveel lijden onder de Israelische terreur tegen de Palestijnse bevolking als de Palestijnen in de bezette en belegerde gebieden. Tegelijkertijd weiger je de historische context van deze kwestie te bestuderen. Jouw houding getuigt van een opmerkelijke immoraliteit. Hoe verklaar je die? Ik bied je alle ruimte aan om als columniste hierop -- op mijn weblog -- antwoord te geven. In afwachting van jouw antwoord, citeer ik twee wereldberoemde deskundigen op het gebied van het zogeheten Israelisch-Palestijns conflict, te weten de Australische onderzoeksjournalist John Pilger en vervolgens de Amerikaanse geleerde Noam Chomsky:
In politics as in journalism and the arts, it seems that dissent once tolerated in the 'mainstream' has regressed to a dissidence: a metaphoric underground. When I began a career in Britain’s Fleet Street in the 1960s, it was acceptable to critique western power as a rapacious force. Read James Cameron’s celebrated reports of the explosion of the Hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, the barbaric war in Korea and the American bombing of North Vietnam. Today’s grand illusion is of an information age when, in truth, we live in a media age in which incessant corporate propaganda is insidious, contagious, effective and liberal.
In his 1859 essay On Liberty, to which modern liberals pay homage, John Stuart Mill wrote: 'Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.' The 'barbarians' were large sections of humanity of whom 'implicit obedience' was required. 'It’s a nice and convenient myth that liberals are peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers,' wrote the historian Hywel Williams in 2001, 'but the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because of its open-ended nature: its conviction that it represents a superior form of life.' He had in mind a speech by Blair in which the then prime minister promised to 'reorder the world around us' according to his 'moral values.'
Richard Falk, the respected authority on international law and the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, once described a 'a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted political violence.' It is 'so widely accepted as to be virtually unchallengeable.'
Tenure and patronage reward the guardians. On BBC Radio 4, Razia Iqbal interviewed Toni Morrison, the African-American Nobel Laureate. Morrison wondered why people were 'so angry' with Barack Obama, who was 'cool' and wished to build a 'strong economy and health care.' Morrison was proud to have talked on the phone with her hero, who had read one of her books and invited her to his inauguration.
Neither she nor her interviewer mentioned Obama’s seven wars, including his terror campaign by drone, in which whole families, their rescuers and mourners have been murdered. What seemed to matter was that a 'finely spoken' man of colour had risen to the commanding heights of power. In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon wrote that the 'historic mission' of the colonized was to serve as a 'transmission line' to those who ruled and oppressed. In the modern era, the employment of ethnic difference in western power and propaganda systems is now seen as essential. Obama epitomises this, though the cabinet of George W. Bush – his warmongering clique – was the most multiracial in presidential history.
As the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to the jihadists of ISIS, Obama said, 'The American people made huge investments and sacrifices in order to give Iraqis the opportunity to chart a better destiny.' How 'cool' is that lie? How “finely spoken” was Obama’s speech at the West Point military academy on 28 May. Delivering his “state of the world” address at the graduation ceremony of those who “will take American leadership” across the world, Obama said, 'The United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it. International opinion matters, but America will never ask permission…'
In repudiating international law and the rights of independent nations, the American president claims a divinity based on the might of his 'indispensable nation.' It is a familiar message of imperial impunity, though always bracing to hear. Evoking the rise of fascism in the 1930s, Obama said, 'I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being.' Historian Norman Pollack wrote: 'For goose-steppers, substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarization of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manqué, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while.'
Gaza’s Torment, Israel’s Crimes, Our Responsibilities
By Noam ChomskyJuly 12, 2014 'ICH' - At 3am Gaza time, July 9, in the midst of Israel’s latest exercise in savagery, I received a phone call from a young Palestinian journalist in Gaza. In the background, I could hear his infant child wailing, amidst the sounds of explosions and jet planes, targeting any civilian who moves, and homes as well. He just saw a friend of his in a car clearly marked 'press' blown away. And he heard shrieks next door after an explosion but can’t go outside or he’ll be a likely target. This is a quiet neighborhood, no military targets – except Palestinians who are fair game for Israel’s high tech US-supplied military machine. He said that 70% of the ambulances have been destroyed, and that by then over 70 had been killed, and of the 300 or so wounded, about 2/3 women and children. Few Hamas activists have been hit – or rocket launching sites. Just the usual victims.
It is important to understand what life is like in Gaza when Israel’s behavior is 'restrained,' in between the regular manufactured crises like this one. A good sense is given in a report to UNRWA by Mads Gilbert, the courageous and expert Norwegian physician who has worked extensively in Gaza, also throughout the vicious and murderous Cast Lead operation. In every respect, the situation is disastrous. Just keeping to children, Gilbert reports: “Palestinian children in Gaza are suffering immensely. A large proportion are affected by the man-made malnourishment regime caused by the Israeli imposed blockage.
When Israel is on 'good behavior,' more than two Palestinian children are killed every week, a pattern that goes back over 14 years. The underlying cause is the criminal occupation and the programs to reduce Palestinian life to bare survival in Gaza, while Palestinians are restricted to unviable cantons in the West Bank and Israel takes over what it wants, all in gross violation of international law and explicit Security Council resolutions, not to speak of minimal decency. And it will continue as long as it is supported by Washington and tolerated by Europe – to our everlasting shame.
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