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Israel/Zionism See other Israel/Zionism Articles Title: Display of Israeli pathologies in West Bank The fact of the matter is that, whether you like it or not, the abduction is being applauded by Palestinians in the West Bank, where for three generations people have lived a life that is nothing but a parable of lack of reasoning and disaster Israeli soldiers have been told by their prime minister, in language reminiscent of the bard’s, to stiffen their sinews, summon up their blood — and run amok all over the West Bank. And, yes, this is the right time to do it, the right time to wreak as much havoc and inflict as much pain on people already tormented beyond endurance by an almost five-decade long foreign occupation. The excuse to do it is at hand. The alleged abduction in the Occupied Territories three weeks ago of three Israeli students from a paramilitary Yasheva, a traditional religious school devoted to the study of the Talmud, has commanded the obsessive attention of Israelis and, though not quite as obsessively, that of the western media. Let us look at it this way: The question that should be asked here is not how, where and by whom these children were abducted, but why would they not be abducted. And, above all, what on earth were they doing in the West Bank in the first place? You say they lived there? The West Bank is Occupied Territory and according to international law, Occupied Territory, controlled by foreign occupation forces, is considered a battle zone. You do not bring your women and children to a battle zone and then complain when they get killed or kidnapped. In fact, that same law also — to be exact, in Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions — prohibits an occupying power from building colonies in occupied land and transferring segments of its civilian population there. Yes, Israeli soldiers have indeed been running amok in the West Bank in violent pursuit — and violent it has been — of the captors. Already four Palestinians have been killed, well over 400 arrested and more than 1,400 homes and locales “searched” (read ransacked). The reaction by human rights groups was immediate. A chorus of these groups have condemned the crackdown as “collective punishment” and the United Nations Undersecretary for Political Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, has told the UN Security Council that “the rising death toll as a result of Israeli security operations in the West Bank is alarming indeed”. Alarming indeed. But consider the brazenness evinced by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, barely 24 hours after news of the abduction broke, called the 78-year-old Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, and addressed him sternly, much in the manner that a school principal would address a recalcitrant student. “I expect you to do your utmost ...” he said. Abbas did, by authorising Palestinian security forces to collaborate with Israeli soldiers in the search — truly a case where the occupied are being told, via some twisted logic, that it is up to them to guarantee the peace and security of the occupiers. However, Israel continues to portray Palestinian resistance, where it exists at all these days, as a deadly threat to its very existence, projecting an image of symmetry between that mythical resistance and the Israeli army. Even at the best of times, in confrontations over the last 47 years, the Israeli army, with its advanced, American weaponry, has encountered a Palestinian resistance with inferior weaponry and with elementary training in combat tactics. By the end of Israel’s last assault on Gaza, for example, the Palestinian death toll came to 1,400 — mostly civilians, including 400 women and children and Hamas cadres at the time, you may recall, did not acquit themselves well in confronting the invaders. Israeli casualties? Fifteen soldiers killed, including four from traffic accidents. This is truly a no-contest situation. The fact of the matter is that, whether you like it or not, the abduction is being applauded by Palestinians in the West Bank, where for three generations people have lived a life that is nothing but a parable of lack of reasoning and disaster. “The masses in the streets, in their private conversations, wish and hope for even more kidnappings”, a 40-year-old lab technician told a correspondent for the New York Times last Monday. And this, let us face it, embodies the sentiment of people who see no way out of their ordeal — a whole generation that was born and then went on to acquire a maturing consciousness, under the watchful, vengeful eyes of a foreign occupier. And we are talking about an occupier whose tribal-messianic ideology rejects recognition of the humanity of others. In short, the Palestinians have morphed into people who are effectively being told that they cannot choose the way to live. Well, then, when you deny a man or woman the right to choose how he or she will like to live his or her life, then it will only lead to how he or she chooses to die. Continue, in other words, to deny Palestinians their right to be free and they will come after you with an assassin’s dagger or the belt of a suicide bomber. They have nothing to lose. In human history, it is surely freedom that has been the vessel of human grace and the prime carrier of civilisation. In Palestine, Palestinians have consistently been denied their freedom by Israelis — a neurotic group of people forever glancing at their tortured past and extrapolating from it in the present. When is this going to end? Meanwhile, damn these people and damn the day they came to our part of the world from Europe, with their inherited pathologies. And, yes, damn also successive American administrations that had, from the very outset, indulged these pathologies. Fawaz Turki is a journalist, lecturer and author based in Washington. He is the author of The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: Lorie Meacham (#0)
Insane, evil bastards.
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