Apartheid: then and now (by Latuff)

Hilarious


It is hilarious to read “Brave Palestinian People” – what a farce, what a way of looking at the situation...

Is a Hamas terrorist as brave as a Palestinian orange merchant? Why don’t you discern between what you see as black and white?

Indymedia, like Latuff, is nothing more than a platform for one sided views; us and them. The naughty, naughty Israel and the brave, BRAVE Palestinians – whoever they may be.

Your platform is making enemies of your cause, not recruits. Consider this.

"Brave" is a generalisation yes, but why is the systematic oppression, murder, and cleansing of an entire population is hilarous?

The post above mentions STATE terror, which suggests the author does not view this as a black and white argument as you suggest. I am sure most Indymedia readers are aware that it is the state apparatus of Israel who are committing these atrocities, not the people of Israel, although many Israelis support the "security operations". Clearly they are subjected to far superior state propaganda than us.

Your problem is that you have been brought up to believe that states should have a monopoly on violence, and that anyone who attempts to fight state oppression with violence should suffer more condemnation than the very state they are fighting against, even if the state's violence eclipses theirs. When you get past this brainwashing you will have a clearer view on what tactics might be successful. If Palestinians had not used any violence against the Israeli state they would have been stamped into the dust years ago and would be a footnote in history. I don't think I or anyone else who reads Indymedia share many political views with Hamas, but they are pretty much the only force willing to take on the US backed violence of the Israeli state, and they provide services such as healthcare to local people where there are no provisions (as a result of the Israeli state's deliberate stranglehold on the Palestinian economy).

So I put it to you that you are the protagonist who is making enemies of our cause, and you are doing it by parroting lies which you have clearly heard elsewhere.

I agree with (Hilarious) the Palestinian people aren't being particularly brave, in fact they are surviving any which way they can as victims of persecution and oppression by an illegal occupying force. I'm sure the majority of them are quite scared, fearfull for their lives and the future of their children. One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter!

Israel should not exist as it does today it is the fault of the Western powers that they allowed this travesty to occur. If someone stole your land and persecuted your people would you not fight for it. We might as well have rolled over and let Germany win the second world war. I suppose you would denounce french wwii resistance fighters as terrorists as well.

I pity the average peace loving Israeli citizens, bombarded with over zealous nationalistic zionist propaganda. Forced to live in a climate of fear unneccessarliy, whipped up in furvour for the 60th anniversary of their beloved state. I wonder when they look at their leaders whether they see hazy swasticas hanging over their heads. How could anyone be proud of a state which was itself founded by terror and which has survived and expanded at the expense of so many innocent people.

Over simplifying things I know but Israel has no interest in peace not while it can still grab more land and weaken the Palestinian state ahead of any final deal or negotiations.

The whole situation makes me very sad, it used to make me angry in my idealistic youth when I thought I could change the world. Now it just makes me sad.

'If Palestinians had not used any violence against the Israeli state they would have been stamped into the dust years ago and would be a footnote in history.'

Not so. Had the Palestinians chosen to accept the 1947 UN backed partition plan, as Israel did, then we would have celebrated the 60th anniversaries of both Palestine and Israel last year. The problem was that the Palestinian leadership rejected the plan, instead choosing violence and civil war.

'Your problem is that you have been brought up to believe that states should have a monopoly on violence, and that anyone who attempts to fight state oppression with violence should suffer more condemnation than the very state they are fighting against, even if the state's violence eclipses theirs.'

One must ask have you actually read the Hamas Charter? Do you know what it is you claim to support? This isn't an insurgent group whose aims are an equal and just society where all humans are treated equally and fairly. Some examples...

Article Eleven: The Strategy of Hamas: Palestine is an Islamic Waqf
The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it. No Arab country nor the aggregate of all Arab countries, and no Arab King or President nor all of them in the aggregate, have that right, nor has that right any organization or the aggregate of all organizations, be they Palestinian or Arab, because Palestine is an Islamic Waqf throughout all generations and to the Day of Resurrection. Who can presume to speak for all Islamic Generations to the Day of Resurrection? This is the status [of the land] in Islamic Shari’a, and it is similar to all lands conquered by Islam by force, and made thereby Waqf lands upon their conquest, for all generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection. This [norm] has prevailed since the commanders of the Muslim armies completed the conquest of Syria and Iraq, and they asked the Caliph of Muslims, ‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab, for his view of the conquered land, whether it should be partitioned between the troops or left in the possession of its population, or otherwise. Following discussions and consultations between the Caliph of Islam, ‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab, and the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, be peace and prayer upon him, they decided that the land should remain in the hands of its owners to benefit from it and from its wealth; but the control of the land and the land itself ought to be endowed as a Waqf [in perpetuity] for all generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection. The ownership of the land by its owners is only one of usufruct, and this Waqf will endure as long as Heaven and earth last. Any demarche in violation of this law of Islam, with regard to Palestine, is baseless and reflects on its perpetrators.

Article Thirteen: Peaceful Solutions, [Peace] Initiatives and International Conferences
[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad: “Allah is the all-powerful, but most people are not aware.” From time to time a clamoring is voiced, to hold an International Conference in search for a solution to the problem. Some accept the idea, others reject it, for one reason or another, demanding the implementation of this or that condition, as a prerequisite for agreeing to convene the Conference or for participating in it. But the Islamic Resistance Movement, which is aware of the [prospective] parties to this conference, and of their past and present positions towards the problems of the Muslims, does not believe that those conferences are capable of responding to demands, or of restoring rights or doing justice to the oppressed. Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the nonbelievers as arbitrators in the lands of Islam. Since when did the Unbelievers do justice to the Believers? “And the Jews will not be pleased with thee, nor will the Christians, till thou follow their creed. Say: Lo! the guidance of Allah [himself] is the Guidance. And if you should follow their desires after the knowledge which has come unto thee, then you would have from Allah no protecting friend nor helper.” Sura 2 (the Cow), verse 120 There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. The initiatives, proposals and International Conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.


It is one thing to express support for an oppressed and downtrodden people, or to support insurgent violence which aims to end that persecution. It is completely another to suggest that means supporting a group who claim the entire territory of Israel to be given to them by God, and that consequently they must reject all peaceful solutions as they slaughter their way to victory.

"Had the Palestinians chosen to accept the 1947 UN backed partition plan, as Israel did, then we would have celebrated the 60th anniversaries of both Palestine and Israel last year."

Of course, then there would have been no reason for Palestinians to leave their many dunams to take up a tent in a refugee camp, thus Israel would have had a large Palestinian majority. Israel didn't exist in 1947.

Twenty-six-year-old Jamila Merhi was forced from her family's home in Akbara village near Safad, Palestine in 1948. Now, 86, she lives in the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon and still holds onto a copy of her family's deed for their land in Palestine. (Matthew Cassel)


This month Israel marks the 60th anniversary of its founding. But amidst the festivities including visits by international celebrities and politicians there is deep unease -- Israel has skeletons in its closet that it has tried hard to hide, and anxieties about an uncertain future which make many Israelis question whether the state will celebrate an 80th birthday.

Official Israel remains in complete denial that the birth it celebrates is inextricably linked with the near destruction of the vibrant Palestinian culture and society that had existed until then. It's not an unfamiliar dilemma for settler states. The United States, where I live, has found that even the passage of centuries cannot absolve a nation from confronting the crimes committed at its founding.

As the noted Israeli historian and staunch Zionist Benny Morris put it in 2004, "a Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them." He went on, "there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing."

But if one is not prepared to openly justify ethnic cleansing, there's only two real options: to deny history and take comfort in an airbrushed story that paints Israelis as brave, divinely inspired pioneers in a desert devoid of indigenous people and beset by external enemies, or to own up to the consequences and support the enormous redress needed to bring justice and peace.

Just before Israel's founding, Palestinians of all religions made up two thirds of the settled population of historic Palestine, while Jewish immigrants, recently arrived from Europe, made up most of the rest.

Among those uprooted was my mother, then nine years old. Now living in Amman, she remembers a happy childhood in her native Jerusalem neighborhood of Lifta. My grandfather owned several buildings and many of his tenants were Jews, including the family who rented the downstairs apartment in their house.

Early in 1948 -- before any Arab states' armies got involved -- she and her entire family, indeed all the inhabitants of several neighboring West Jerusalem areas, were forced out by Zionist militias. On 7 February that year, Israel's founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion told members of his party, "From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta-Romema, through Mahane Yehuda, through King George Street and Mea Shearim -- there are no strangers [i.e. Arabs]. One hundred percent Jews." So it was that the Palestinians became "strangers" in the land of their birth.

Since that time millions of refugees and their descendants who lost their homes, farms, groves, livestock, factories, stores, tools, automobiles, bank accounts, art work, insurance policies, furniture and every other possession have lived in exile, many in squalid refugee camps maintained by Israel and Arab states. Over 80 percent of the Palestinians now besieged and starved in the Gaza Strip are refugees from towns now in Israel. But what Palestinians could never be forced to part with -- and this we do celebrate -- is our attachment to our homeland and the determination to see justice done.

Palestinians all over the world are commemorating the start of our ongoing tragedy, but we are also looking forward. We are at an important turning point, where two things are happening at once. First, despite ritual declarations of international support, the prospect of a two-state solution has all but disappeared as Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are caged into walled reservations by growing Israeli settlements and settler-only roads -- a situation that resembles the bantustans of apartheid South Africa.

Second, despite Israel's efforts to keep Palestinians in check, the Palestinian population living under Israeli rule is about to exceed the five million Israeli Jews. Today there are 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and another 1.5 million Palestinians who are nominally citizens of Israel. Sometimes called "Israeli Arabs," Palestinians in Israel are increasingly restive about their second class status in a Jewish state that regards them as a hostile fifth column. While Palestinians in Israel call for equal rights in a state of all its citizens, some Israeli Jewish politicians threaten them with expulsion to the West Bank, Gaza Strip or beyond.

Official projections show that by 2025, Palestinians, due to their much higher birth rate, will exceed Israeli Jews in the country by two million and though few in the international community have woken up to this reality, a surgical separation between these populations is impossible.

Israeli leaders understand what they are up against; Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said last November: "If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished."

This struggle has already begun as more and more Palestinians, recognizing that statehood is unrealistic, debate and adopt the one-state solution, offering Israelis and Palestinians equal rights in the land they share. Last year, I was part of a group of Palestinians, Israelis and others who published the "One State Declaration." Inspired partly by South Africa's Freedom Charter, we set out principles for a common future in a single democratic state. Most Israelis, unsurprisingly, recoil at comparisons with apartheid South Africa. The good news for them is that the end of apartheid did not bring about the disaster many feared. Rather, it was a new dawn for all the people of the country.

Hi Dream,

"One must ask have you actually read the Hamas Charter? Do you know what it is you claim to support? This isn't an insurgent group whose aims are an equal and just society where all humans are treated equally and fairly. Some examples..."

If you read my comment again you will see no place where I have said anything suggesting that I support or agree with the aims of Hamas. I thought my quote "I don't think I or anyone else who reads Indymedia share many political views with Hamas" would give you an inkling.

However, it is certainly a good thing that they are defending Palestine, simply because no one else is, and it is also a good thing that they have the resources to secretly bring aid to the people of Palestine, aid which is viciously denied to them by the state of Israel.

Israel wants as many dead Palestinian children as possible. The biggest problem the Israeli state faces is one of population: there aren't enough Jews and there are too many Arabs as far as they are concerned. Which is why they are inviting as many Jews as possible to live in the occupied territories, and implementing policies which will inevitably result in poverty and infant mortality. Also, the odd bullet in the head of school children also helps their cause. A dirty little secret the likes of you don't want people to know.