- One of my great failings is that I forget that most people
are uninterested in truth. My second great failing is that I forget that
history is taught as sacred lies. Taken together, these two items make
for my third great failing: failing to see that sacred lies become holy
truth in the minds of men who have a grasp of history not much better than
the average high school sophmore. Thus, we see in Israel how the Palestinians
are reduced to inconsequential people.
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- For Palestine Think Tank
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- Communicating with Israelis may leave one bewildered.
Even now when the Israeli Air Force is practicing murder in broad daylight
of hundreds of civilians, elderly persons, women and children, the Israeli
people manage to convince themselves that they are the real victims in
this violent saga.
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- Those who are familiar intimately with Israeli people
realise that they are completely uninformed about the roots of the conflict
that dominates their lives. Rather often Israelis manage to come up with
some bizarre arguments that may make a lot of sense within the Israeli
discourse, yet make no sense whatsoever outside of the Jewish street. Such
an argument goes as follows: 'those Palestinians, why do they insist upon
living on our land (Israel), why can't they just settle in Egypt, Syria,
Lebanon or any other Arab country?' Another Hebraic pearl of wisdom sounds
like this: 'what is wrong with these Palestinians? We gave them water,
electricity, education and all they do is try to throw us to the sea'.
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- Astonishingly enough, the Israelis even within the so-called
'left' and even the educated 'left' fail to understand who the Palestinians
are, where they come from and what they stand for. They fail to grasp that
for the Palestinians, Palestine is home. Miraculously, the Israelis manage
to fail to grasp that Israel had been erected at the expense of the Palestinian
people, on Palestinian land, on Palestinian villages, towns, fields and
orchards. The Israelis do not realise that Palestinians in Gaza and in
refugee camps in the region are actually dispossessed people from Ber Shive,
Yafo, Tel Kabir, Shekh Munis, Lod, Haifa, Jerusalem and many more towns
and villages. If you wonder how come the Israelis don't know their history,
the answer is pretty simple, they have never been told. The circumstances
that led to the Israeli Palestinian conflict are well hidden within their
culture. Traces of pre-1948 Palestinian civilisation on the land had been
- wiped out. Not only the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing
of the indigenous Palestinians, is not part of the Israeli curriculum,
it is not even mentioned or discussed in any Israeli official or academic
forum.
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- In the very centre of almost every Israeli town one can
a find a 1948 memorial statue displaying a very bizarre, almost abstract,
pipe work. The plumbing feature is called Davidka and it is actually a
1948 Israeli mortar cannon. Interestingly enough, the Davidka was an extremely
ineffective weapon. Its shells wouldn't reach more than 300 meters and
would cause very limited damage. Though the Davidika would cause just minimal
harm, it produced a lot of noise. According to the Israeli official historical
narrative, the Arabs i.e., Palestinians, simply ran away for their lives
once they heard the Davidka from afar. According to the Israeli narrative,
the Jews i.e., 'new Israelis' did a bit of fireworks and the 'Arab cowards'
just ran off like idiots. In the Israeli official narrative there is no
mention of the many orchestrated massacres conducted by the young IDF and
the paramilitary units that preceded it. There is no mention also of the
racist
- laws that stop Palestinians[1][1] from returning to their
homes and lands.
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- The meaning of the above is pretty simple. Israelis are
totally unfamiliar with the Palestinian cause. Hence, they can only interpret
the Palestinian struggle as a murderous irrational lunacy. Within the Israeli
Judeo- centric solipsistic universe, the Israeli is an innocent victim
and the Palestinian is no less than a savage murderer.
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- This grave situation that leaves the Israeli in the dark
regarding his past demolishes any possibility of future reconciliation.
Since the Israeli lacks the minimal comprehension of the conflict, he cannot
contemplate any possible resolution except extermination or cleansing of
the 'enemy'. All the Israeli is entitled to know are various phantasmic
narratives of Jewish suffering. Palestinian pain is completely foreign
to his ears. 'Palestinian right of return' sounds to him like an amusing
idea. Even the most advanced 'Israeli humanists' are not ready to share
the land with its indigenous inhabitants. This doesn't leave the Palestinians
with many options but to liberate themselves against all odds. Clearly,
there is no partner for peace on the Israel side.
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- This week we all learned more about the ballistic capability
of Hamas. Evidently, Hamas was rather restrained with Israel for more than
a long while. It refrained from escalating the conflict to the whole of
southern Israel. It occurred to me that the barrages of Qassams that have
been landing sporadically on Sderot and Ashkelon were actually nothing
but a message from the imprisoned Palestinians. First it was a message
to the stolen land, homes fields and orchards: 'Our beloved soil, we didn't
forget, we are still here fighting for you, sooner rather than later, we
will come back, we will start again where we had stopped'. But it was also
a clear message to the Israelis. 'You out there, in Sderot, Beer Sheva,
Ashkelon, Ashdod, Tel Aviv and Haifa, whether you realise it or not, you
are actually living on our stolen land. You better start to pack because
your time is running out, you have exhausted our patience. We, the Palestinian
people, have
- nothing to lose anymore'.
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- Let's face it, realistically the situation in Israel
is rather grave. Two years ago it was Hezbollah rockets that pounded northern
Israel. This week the Hamas proved beyond doubt that it is capable of serving
the South of Israel with some cocktail of ballistic vengeance. Both in
the case of the Hezbollah and the case of the Hamas, Israel was left with
no military answer. It can no doubt kill civilians but it fails to stop
the rocket barrage. The IDF lacks the means of protecting Israel unless
covering Israel with a solid concrete roof is a viable solution. At the
end of the day, they might be planning just that (link).
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- But this is far from the end of the story. In fact it
is just the beginning. Every Middle East expert knows that Hamas can seize
control of the West Bank within hours. In fact, PA and Fatah control in
the West Bank is maintained by the IDF. Once Hamas takes the West Bank,
the biggest Israeli population centre will be left to the mercy of Hamas.
For those who fail to see, this would be the end of Jewish Israel. It may
happen later today, it may happen in three months or in five years, it
isn't matter of 'if' but rather matter of 'when'. By that time, the whole
of Israel will be within firing range of Hamas and Hezbollah, Israeli society
will collapse, its economy will be ruined. The price of a detached villa
in Northern Tel Aviv would equal a shed in Kiryat Shmone or Sderot. By
the time a single rocket hits Tel Aviv, the Zionist dream will be over.
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- The IDF generals know it, the Israeli leaders know it.
This is why they stepped up the war against the Palestinian into extermination.
The Israelis do not plan upon invading Gaza. They have lost nothing there.
All they want is to finish the Nakba. They drop bombs on Palestinians in
order to wipe them out. They want the Palestinians out of the region. It
is obviously not going to work, Palestinians will stay. Not only they will
they stay, their day of return to their land is coming closer as Israel
has been exploiting its deadliest tactics.
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- This is exactly where Israeli escapism comes into play.
Israel has passed the 'point of no return'. Its doomed fate is deeply engraved
in each bomb it drops on Palestinian civilians. There is nothing Israel
can do to save itself. There is no exit strategy. It can't negotiate its
way out because neither the Israelis nor their leadership understand the
elementary parameters involved in the conflict. Israel lacks the military
power to conclude the battle. It may manage to kill Palestinian grassroots
leaders, it has been doing it for years, yet Palestinian resistance and
persistence is growing fierce rather than weakening. As an IDF intelligence
general predicted already at the first Intifada. 'In order to win, all
Palestinians have to do is to survive'. They survive and they are indeed
winning.
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- Israeli leaders understand it all. Israel has already
tried everything, unilateral withdrawal, starvation and now extermination.
It thought to evade the demographic danger by shrinking into an intimate
cosy Jewish ghetto. Nothing worked. It is Palestinian persistence in the
shape of Hamas politics that defines the future of the region.
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- All that is left to Israelis is to cling to their blindness
and escapism to evade their devastating grave fate that has become immanent
already. All along their way down, the Israelis will sing their familiar
various victim anthems. Being imbued in a self-centred supremacist reality,
they will be utterly involved in their own pain yet completely blind to
the pain they inflict on others. Uniquely enough, the Israelis are operating
as a unified collective when dropping bombs on others, yet, once being
slightly hurt, they all manage to become monads of vulnerable innocence.
It is this discrepancy between the self-image and the way they are seen
by the rest of us which turns the Israeli into a monstrous exterminator.
It is this discrepancy that stops Israelis from grasping their own history,
it is that discrepancy that stops them from comprehending the repeated
numerous attempts to destroy their State. It is that discrepancy that stops
Israelis from understanding the meaning of the Shoah so can they prevent
the next one. It is this discrepancy that stops Israelis from being part
of humanity.
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- Once again, Jews will have to wander into an unknown
fate. To a certain extent, I myself have started my journey a while ago.
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- [1] Jews only law of return-
- http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/1950_1959/Law of
Return 5710-1950;
- read more-
- http://www.australiansforpalestine.com/press_room/briefing/papers/
- BriefingPaperNo35_17Aug07_TheLawofReturncopy.pdf
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