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America; The Not So Free

Sami Jamil Jadallah

As Americans we should not be surprised to wake up one day and soon and wake up to discover that our country is taken over by a Bolsheviks Politburo with tens of millions of secrete informers, no different from the former Soviet Union or East Germany with informers at home, in the office, in the sport club and in the markets and malls. The fight against terrorism is turning into a fight against America and Americans.

With no more freedoms to worry about, former President George Bush should not worry about the “terrorists” hating our freedoms as he declared on September 20, 2001 in a speech to the nations.

“ They hate what they see right here in this chamber; democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed (not a typo); they hate our freedoms: freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, and our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other”. We have no more freedoms to worry about.

Many of these freedoms are no longer available in the US. We are living the first stages of political and military dictatorship, a government run by “intelligence agencies” no different from Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, Saddam of Iraq, Assad of Syria, Erich Honecker of East Germany and Stalin of the Soviet Union.

It was not surprising that Barack Obama like his predecessor George Bush adopted the same approach to the National Security. In the words of Azra Klein and Evans Soltas

“ rather than dismantling Mr. Bush approach to national security, Mr. Obama has to some extent validated it and put it on a more sustainable footing”.

PRISM is the code word for the extensive surveillance that have been on going for over six years now tapping into email, documents, and videos of nine US companies the likes of Google, Microsoft, Verizon, Apple, Facebook among others as part of the unpatriotic “ Patriot Act” that was put in place back in 2001.

The disclosure by the Washington Post forced the director of national intelligence to come out and defend the top secrete government surveillance program, forcing private companies to try and explain the extent of intrusion to the private accounts of hundreds of millions of customers and clients.

The program was put in place with the full support of all three branches of government, executive, legislative and judicial, and as explained by the director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr, PRISM as

“An internal government computer system used to facilitate the government’s statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision.”

What is not being discussed in the national media is the extent and active role of the Israeli Mossad and Israeli companies in the extensive surveillance program.

According to an article in the American technology magazine “WIRED” dated April 2012, two Israeli companies Verint and Narus which according to “Wired” have close ties with the Israeli security community.

With the two Israeli companies involvement in the extensive surveillance program, Israel through its extensive security and intelligence cooperation with the United States no doubt is also gathering information on hundreds of millions of US citizens

“Verint, which took over its parent company Comverse Technology earlier this year, is responsible for tapping the communication lines of the American telephone giant Verizon, according to a past Verizon employee sited by James Bamford in Wired. Neither Verint nor Verizon commented on the matter.
Natus, which was acquired in 2010 by the American company Boeing, supplied the software and hardware used at AT&T wiretapping rooms, according to whistleblower Mark Klein, who revealed the information in 2004. Klein, a past technician at AT&T who filed a suit against the company for spying on its customers, revealed a “secret room” in the company’s San Fransisco office, where the NSA collected data on American citizens’ telephone calls and Internet surfing.
Klein’s claims were reinforced by former NSA employee Thomas Drake who testified that the agency uses a program produced by Narus to save the personal electrical communications of AT&T customers.
Both Verint and Narus have ties to the Israeli intelligence agency and the Israel Defense Forces intelligence-gathering unit 8200. Hanan Gefen, a former commander of the 8200 unit, told Forbes magazine in 2007 that Comverse’s technology, which was formerly the parent company of Verint and merged with it this year, was directly influenced by the technology of 8200. Ori Cohen, one of the founders of Narus, told Fortune magazine in 2001 that his partners had done technology work for the Israeli intelligence.

The question of whether intelligence communities outside the United States were involved has been raised. According to The Guardian, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain’s intelligence agency, secretly collected intelligence information from the world’s largest Internet companies via the American program PRISM. According to a top secret document obtained by The Guardian, GCHQ had access to PRISM since 2010 and that it used the information to prepare 197 intelligence reports last year. In a statement to the Guardian, GCHQ, said it “takes its obligations under the law very seriously.”
According to The Guardian, details of GCHQ’s use of PRISM are set out in a 41-page PowerPoint presentation prepared for senior NSA analysts, and describe a “snooping” operation that gave the NSA and FBI access to the systems of nine Internet giants, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo and Skype.
Given the close ties between U.S. and Israeli intelligence, the question arises as to whether Israeli intelligence, including the Mossad, was party to the secret. “

The question that all of us Americans have to ask who is spying on whom and whether the US intelligence and national security community have decided to subcontract our national security and our privacy to Israel, a country well known to have deliberate killed our sailors spied on our country passing massive critical and damaging secret documents to Israel and the former Soviet Union (Jonathan Pollard) and whether such cooperation amount to acts of treason on the part of key officials of our national security.

America as we known it the land of the free and the home of the brave no more. We are now living in a country that is far distant from the visions of its founding fathers. Both Bush and Obama once more prove that the “terrorists” are winning and America is loosing.

While the story of PRISM will not die any time soon, for sure the Israeli involvement with such surveillance will not see much coverage in the national media.

 

 

Sami Jamil Jadallah

Sami Jamil Jadallah

Sami Jamil Jadallah is an international legal and business consultant and is the founder and director of Palestine Agency and Palestine Documentation Center www.palestineagency.com and founder and owner of several business in technology and services. Sami also runs an online website (Jefferson Corner). His articles are also featured on PalestineNote and Veterans Today.

Articles on RamallahOnline by Sami Jamil Jadallah

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Kerry’s Plan: Palestinians to Be Cast as Fall Guys – Again

Jonathan Cook – Nazareth

Under heavy pressure from the US, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has paid grudging lip service over the past four years to the goal of Palestinian statehood. But his real agenda was always transparent: not statehood, but what he termed “economic peace”.

Ordinary Palestinians, in Netanyahu’s view, can be pacified with crumbs from the master’s table: fewer checkpoints, extra jobs and trading opportunities, and a gradual, if limited, improvement in living standards. All of this buys time for Israel to expand the settlements, cementing its hold over the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

After 20 years of pursuing Palestinian statehood implied in the Oslo Accords, the US indicated last week it was switching horses. It appears to be adopting Netanyahu’s model of “economic peace”.

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, flanked by the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, and the Palestinian Authority chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, at the World Economic Forum in Jordan, revealed an economic programme for getting peace talks on track.

Some 300 Israeli and Palestinian business people were on board, he said, and would invest heavily in the Palestinian economy in a venture that was “bigger, bolder and more ambitious than anything since the Oslo accords”.

No more details were forthcoming, except that it will be overseen by Tony Blair, Britain’s former prime minister who has been the Quartet representative, the international community’s “man in Jerusalem”, since 2007.

He is a strange choice indeed, given that the Palestinian leadership has publicly dismissed him as “Israel’s defence attorney” and privately argued — as revealed in the Palestine Papers leaked in 2011 — that he advocates “an apartheid-like approach to dealing with the occupied West Bank”.

Kerry’s claims for his programme were grand yet vague. Some $4 billion in private investment over three years would boost the Palestinian economy by 50 per cent; agricultural production and tourism would triple; unemployment fall by two-thirds; wages rise by 40 per cent; and 100,000 homes would be built.

But the proposal left few impressed, and for good reason.

Kerry is simply repackaging the task Blair was entrusted with six years ago. His job has been to develop the Palestinian economy and build up Palestinian institutions in preparation for eventual statehood, so far to little effect.

As David Horovitz, editor of the right wing Times of Israel newspaper, scoffed: “If there was $4 billion to be had in private investment in the Palestinian economy, you can rest assured that Tony Blair would have found it.”

Or seen another way, the Palestinian economy’s problem is not a lack of investment; it is a lack of viable opportunities for investment. Palestinians have no control over their borders, airspace, radio frequencies, water and other natural resources, not even over the currency or internal movement of goods and people. Everything depends on Israel’s good will. And few investors will be prepared to bet on that. Israel has repeatedly shown itself more than ready to crush the PA’s finances by, for example, withholding Palestinian tax revenues it collects and is mandated to pass on.

Blair’s role has been heavily criticised because his narrow focus on economic development has not only failed to foster a climate conducive to talks but has served as cover for Israel and Washington’s inaction on Palestinian statehood. Instead of rethinking Blair’s failed mandate, Kerry appears set on perpetuating and expanding it.

Abdallah Abdallah, a senior Fatah official, summed up the Palestinian response: “We are not animals that only want food. We are a people struggling for freedom”.

Israel, meanwhile, is only too ready to push Kerry down this hopeless path.

From Israel’s perspective, the US plan usefully distracts attention from the Arab Peace Initiative, the Arab states’ renewed offer last month of full diplomatic relations with Israel in return for its withdrawal from most of the occupied territories.

Netanyahu, worried the offer might corner him into serious talks, has responded with stony silence. At the same time, Yair Lapid, the supposedly centrist finance minister who was originally promoted by the West as a peacemaker, has squashed the idea of a deal with the Palestinians as unrealistic. He told the New York Times last month that he supported expanding the settlements.

Israel, it seems, hopes that the Palestinian Authority, now permanently mired in financial crisis, can be arm-twisted with promises of billions of dollars in sweeteners. According to Palestinian sources, Abbas is facing intense pressure from the US, with the Kerry plan intended to leverage him into dropping his condition that Israel freeze settlement growth before negotiations restart.

Israel is keen to win that concession. Despite reports that Netanyahu has quietly promised the Americans he will avoid embarrassing them for the next few weeks with announcements of settlement building, a rash of projects is in the pipeline.

At the weekend, media reports disclosed a plan for 300 new homes in East Jerusalem, while nearly 800 more are to be released for sale. Several settlement outposts established without authorisation from the Israeli government are expected to be made legal retrospectively, including hundreds of homes in Eli, near Ramallah.

Reuters reported yesterday that Kerry expects a decision on restarting peace talks within two weeks – or, his officials say, he will walk away from the peace process. He told a meeting of the American Jewish Committee the same day: “If we do not succeed now, we may not get another chance.”

For Netanyahu, such threats are hollow. If the US absents itself from the conflict, Israel will simply be left with a freer hand to intensify its subjugation of the Palestinians and the theft of their land.

Even though much more is at stake for the Palestinians, the PA has so far been quietly dismissive of the Kerry plan. It has stated it will not make “political concessions in exchange for economic benefits” – a diplomatic way of saying it will not be bribed to sell out on statehood.

But the real danger for the Palestinians, as they remember only too well from the 2000 Camp David talks, is that they are being set up as the fall guy. Should they refuse to sign up to the latest version of economic peace, Israel and the US will be only too ready to blame them for their intransigence.

This is win-win for Netanyahu, and another moment of disastrous slippage in the diplomatic process for the Palestinians.

Jonathan Cook

Jonathan Cook

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

  • The author is a regular contributor to RamallahOnline. More Articles by Jonathan Cook.

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The Arabs: From the Barracks to the Mosque

Sami Jamil Jadallah

The “mosque” and religious establishment in the Arab world was hardly on the side of people advocating and speaking up for their rights to freedom, for decent jobs, for education, for social services, for freedom from arbitrary and midnight arrests and torture, and for the most part were part of and speakers of the ruling establishment. And when it did it was a forum for the likes of Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis to organize in order to take over and replace existing ruling elites, replacing the “mosque” for the barracks.

The clear and present danger facing the Arab people and states is the inevitable move from the rules of the barracks to the rules of the mosque. The modern Arab world is paying the heavy price of the rules of barracks in Libya, in Egypt, in Sudan, in Iraq, in Syria, in Somalia, in Yemen and Algeria. As if 60 years of utter and total failure of the military/police state is not enough the Arabs now have to contend with perhaps another 60 years of rules by the mosque. Not sure if the Arab future lies in substituting the mosques for the barracks.

For over 600 years the “Arabs” never rose to the occasion and have lived a life of failings, subjected to colonial rules and foreign occupation with deep divisions along tribal and sectarian lines. The Arab Uprising of the late Sharif Hussain had nothing to do with Arab “independence” but personal ambition to establish collections of family owned states. Of course the price was the loss of Palestine.

The Arabs and for the last 6 centuries have been living in the Dark Age and ignorance, notwithstanding the tallest buildings, the most expensive shopping centers or signature hand bags, or fast cars. Civil and sectarian conflicts, illiteracy, malnutrition, ignorance, poverty, hunger, oppression, lack of freedoms, secret jails, high unemployment, wide ranging corruption from top to bottom, unfair distribution of wealth and absence of equal opportunity are the signature/ trade marks of modern Arab states.

Bureaucracy that created hell on earth for the hundreds of millions of people who have the unfortunate and necessary need to get a birth certificate, or a “family book” (book of family births and deaths necessary in everything in life), or driver license which require citizens to spend on the average one month a year just to meet the police and bureaucratic requirement of being a ‘subject” of an Arab state. I always believed that there is an invisible minister in every Arab country whose mission is to create hell for the people, a difficult and humiliating bureaucracy that makes bribery, corruption and subjugations a necessity and a way of life.

Of course the one institution that proved over and over its failure and incompetence for the last 600 years is the “military” with no known battles or wars won against foreign occupation and colonial rules. This failed institution having failed at what it is trained to spread its failing from the battle fields to cities, towns and farms. The military establishment failed miserable and the results we see today all across the Arab world.

Since early 50’s with the first military take over in Syria, followed by Egypt, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and to some extent Tunisia, Algeria, the Arab world have been afflicted with military rules that set the stage for civil wars, foreign interventions, lawlessness, massive influx of refugees escaping killing massive debts, destructive sectarian violence, absence of peace and security for the people, not to mention looting the country and wasting its wealth and resources.

Failed incompetent military officers like Gamal Abdul Nasser, Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, Hafiz Assad, Moumar Qaddafi, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Omar Al-Bashir, took over nations with semblance of governing institutions. They destroyed what ever little was there and failed to build modern nation states with independent judiciary, free press, accountable transparent government, proper efficient bureaucracy in the service of the people and free transparent elections. Rather they spread fear, established police state and allowed whatever infrastructure was there in post colonial rule to almost disappear. Post independent Tunisia and Algeria saw the establishment of a secular police state with governing institution in service of the ruling party and in the case of Algeria, a post independence state in perpetual service of the ruling military.

In the case of Iraq’s Saddam he took over a nation with well-educated population with tens of billions in bank accounts. He declared war against the newly established Islamic Republic of Iraq for an on behalf of Ronald Reagan resulting in the death of over a million on both sides and running a war bill of over $350 billions. As if this was not enough he decided to go to war against Kuwait, another war, which costs Iraq dearly with casualties in the millions and some $800 billions in total costs to Arab economies, leading up to the American invasion. Saddam war with Iran was the first step toward the destruction of Iraq. And the destruction of what could be counted as modern Arab state.

All of these military leaders brought with them fellow officers to manage the nation, manage commerce, transportation, education, finance, health care, municipalities and regional governors, They all failed miserably. How can such failed officers who failed at what they were trained for could manage such complex needs requiring professional subject matter expertise and understanding of social and economic complex issues. The results we see it today in Egypt, Syria, in Libya, in Sudan, in Somalia, in Iraq, and in Yemen. The only thing these failed military officers succeeded in was in establishing a police state ruled by fear, jails and summary executions and destructions of the little infrastructure that was out there.

Non of the military rulers succeeded in setting up and establishing accountable and transparent state institutions, independent of the one party state and independent of the rule and supervision of “mokhabarat” or secrete intelligence services dreaded and feared by all citizens including officials of the state, certainly independent from the barracks.

Sixty years of barracks rules brought the Arab world to the brinks of civil war as we are witnessing now in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Somalia. Civil and sectarian wars as we are now seeing in Syria and Iraq with Lebanon on the brinks of a renewed civil war, the inevitable result of military dictatorships.

As if these failed experiences are not enough, the Arab world is now seeing the emergence of the ‘mosque” as a key player in the affairs of the nation, replacing military officers who came on top of tanks with turbaned clergymen coming down from the pulpit. If the military could not manage the affairs of the state, can the mosque and Muslim clergy with their slogan “Islam as the solution” can fix what the military destroyed. I doubt it.

Not so sure if these clergymen with their followers, mostly illiterate, unemployed, with no hope in the present life can address and fix such endemic issues as illiteracy, poverty, hunger, failed educational and health systems, failed almost non existing transportation system, poor housing conditions for millions as we see in Egyptian, in Iraq, in Yemen and in Libya. For the most part these Muslim clergymen are not offering solution to existing miserable conditions; they are offering Heaven as an easy way out, hence the jihad.

Religion and faith should be an inspiration, setting forth a value system of fairness, justice, equality of citizenship but these value systems in and of themselves do not solve what ails the Arab world. Intellectual political competent leadership with support from social and scientific, financial leadership and expertise is the hope for the Arabs, not the mosque, certainly not the barracks. The Arabs as it stands now lack the leadership necessary to end the Dark Age.

Sami Jamil Jadallah

Sami Jamil Jadallah

Sami Jamil Jadallah is an international legal and business consultant and is the founder and director of Palestine Agency and Palestine Documentation Centerwww.palestineagency.com and founder and owner of several business in technology and services. Sami also runs an online website (Jefferson Corner). His articles are also featured on PalestineNote andVeterans Today.

Articles on RamallahOnline by Sami Jamil Jadallah

 

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Is this the best that Christianity can do?

Stuart Littlewood

The Holy Land needs advocates for the truth. “It is the truth, and only the truth, that will lead to peace and justice”

 

 

While the Jewish State was putting its finishing touches to Operation Cast Lead (the horrific blitzkrieg launched over Christmas-New Year 2008/9 against Gaza’s civilians, including the Christian community there), the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, joined Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in a visit to the former Nazi camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau to demonstrate their joint solidarity against the extremes of hostility and genocide. 

 

“This is a pilgrimage… to a place of utter profanity – a place where the name of God was profaned because the image of God in human beings was abused and disfigured,” said the Archbishop. “How shall we be able to read the signs of the times, the indications that evil is gathering force once again and societies are slipping towards the same collective corruption and moral sickness that made the Shoah possible?”

 

Read the signs? He needed to look no further than the hell-hole that the Holy Land had been turned into by Israel’s occupation and unfettered aggression, with Britain’s blessing… and, dare one say, without too much fuss from England’s established church either.

 

If ever there was a place where “the name of God was profaned” the so-called Holy Land is it.

 

And in 2010, just a year after that slaughter, the Archbishop announced he was planning a visit to Gaza. I asked his Lambeth Palace office if he would sit down and talk with the elected prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, man of God to man of God (for Mr Haniyeh is an imam).  Would he do Gaza (and all of us) proud by spending a generous amount of his time with senior members of the Islamic faith?

 

His office didn’t reply.

 

According to the Archbishop’s website he did none of those things. And on his return he said nothing about Gaza in the House of Lords, where he had the ear of Parliament and the support of 25 other Church of England bishops.

 

Yet he began his Ecumenical letter that Easter by declaring: “Christians need to witness boldly and clearly”….

 

I was told afterwards that the Israelis initially refused the Archbishop access to Gaza and only at the last minute granted him a piddling 90 minutes, just enough for a hurried visit to the Ahli hospital and no more.

 

But this didn’t stop him hobnobbing with the Chief Rabbinate, paying his respects to Yad Vashem and the Holocaust, and talking with the President of Israel. Didn’t Lambeth Palace realise that his meekly accepting a situation where Israel’s thugs prevented him seeing what horrors they had inflicted, only served to legitimise the Israelis’ illegal occupation and give the Anglican Church’s stamp of approval to the vicious siege, the continuing air strikes, the persecution of Muslim and Christian communities and the regime’s utter contempt for international law and human rights?

 

 

When is ethnic cleansing not ethnic cleansing? When it’s “Newtonian energy transfer”.

 

In June 2011 Kairos Palestine, the voice of Palestinian Christians, felt it necessary to give the Archbishop of Canterbury a strong ticking-off for remarks he made during a BBC interview.

 

Rifat Kassis, co-ordinator of Kairos Palestine, said he was “deeply troubled” by the Archbishop’s “inaccurate and erroneous remarks” about the situation of Christians in the Middle East. He called the Archbishop’s failure to mention the Israeli occupation and the regime’s oppressive policies “shocking”.

 

In a letter to Williams http://www.kairospalestine.ps/sites/default/Documents/Kairos%20Palestine%20response%20to%20Dr%20Rowan%20%20Williams.pdf he said: “You know very well that in the Bethlehem area alone there are 19 illegal Israeli settlements… and the wall that have devoured Christian lands and put Bethlehem in a chokehold. You know well that only 13% of Bethlehem area is available for Palestinian use and the wall isolates 25% of the Bethlehem area’s agricultural land. Not to mention the situation of Christians in Jerusalem, which you know very well, since you should have received reports from the Anglican Bishop in the City whose residency permit was denied by the occupying power.”

 

Mr Kassis ended by saying: “We would like to remind Your Grace that Christian Palestinians need advocates for the truth. It is the truth, and only the truth, that will lead to peace and justice in our home.”

 

So what did Archbishop Rowan Williams say to the BBC http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2071/christians-in-the-middle-east-archbishop-on-world-at-one  that so infuriated his Palestinian brethren? Apparently it was his remarks about the ethnic cleansing of Christians, referring to extreme pressure in Iraq while suggesting that the exodus of Christians from Palestine was due to much more “un-dramatic” pressure. Williams seemed happy to use the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ in connection with Iraq but notIsrael’s programme to dispossess and terrorise Palestinians.

 

He was also content with the UK government’s attitude. “I think the issue of religious freedom in general has very high priority in the Foreign Office at the moment. So I hope that continues.” The truth is that the British Foreign Office is infested with pro-Israel placemen and has not lifted a finger to ensure religious or any other freedoms in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. 

 

Williams went on the say: “I think there are still perhaps too few people in this country who are aware of the haemorrhaging of Christian populations from the Holy Land.   The fact [is] that Bethlehem, a majority Christian city just a couple of decades ago, is now very definitely a place where Christians are a marginalised minority. We want that to be a little bit higher on people’s radar… “ 

 

Interviewer:  “Would you see what’s happening in Bethlehem as another example of what you’ve described as ethnic cleansing?”

 

Archbishop:  “It’s not ethnic cleansing exactly because it’s been far less deliberate than that I think. What we’ve seen though is a kind of Newtonian passing-on of energy or force from one body to another so that some Muslim populations in the West Bank, under pressure, move away from certain areas like Hebron, move into other areas like Bethlehem. And there’s nowhere much else for Christian populations to go except away from Palestine.”

 

The Archbishop’s comments were “faulty and offensive”, according to Kassis, especially his claim that Muslims coming into the Bethlehem area, where space is limited, were forcing Christians out.

 

And I daresay exiled Palestinian Christians will be relieved to hear that their misfortune is all down to Newtonian energy effects.

 

Now that Williams has gone, what are we to make of the new Archbishop, Justin Welby, who came from nowhere and has Jewish immigrant roots? He was ‘accelerated’ up the ladder and served as Bishop of Durham for barely five minutes before landing the top job. It makes you wonder what influences are at work behind the scenes. Welby is touted as an expert in conflict resolution although he is not known for his concern about the Holy Land.  Indeed, the Jewish Chronicle reported that Welby helped mount a Holocaust Memorial Day exhibition in Liverpool Cathedral and abstained in the vote at the Anglican Synod which endorsed the EAPPI.

 

Frankly, anyone who cannot bring himself to give wholehearted backing to a worthy humanitarian project like EAPPI (the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel which provides protective presence to vulnerable communities, monitors and reports human rights abuses and supports Palestinians and Israelis working together for peace), shouldn’t be leading a great Christian church.

 

 

It’s a religious war

 

The residency permit issue mentioned by Rifat Kassis referred to the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, Suheil Dawani, who is a classic victim of the evil machinations of the occupation. The Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem covers Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Dawani was installed in April 2007, but in March 2011 Israel cancelled his residency permit making it impossible for him to carry out his duties properly. As a non-Israeli he needed a temporary residence permit. The Israelis played silly-buggers, initially granting one then turning him down.

 

Here’s the explanation http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=17766 . “The bishop is a native of the Holy Land and has spent most of his life and ministry there, but cannot obtain either citizenship or legal residence in Israel, since he was born inNablus, in the West Bank, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1967, but has not been annexed to Israel. East Jerusalem, on the other hand, where the Anglican Cathedral and Diocesan offices are situated, was also occupied at the same time, but Israelannexed it and considers it part of its national territory (although no other country in the world recognizes this annexation). Therefore, Bishop Dawani is considered by Israel to be a foreigner who can only visit – let alone live in – East Jerusalem with a special permit, which the Israeli authorities can either grant or deny at their sole discretion.”

 

Dawani was wide open to this sort of dirty trick. After six months of aggravation and international pressure the illegal occupiers granted residency permits to the bishop and his family. But here’s the catch… those permits will have to be renewed when they expire, whenever that may be or whenever the Israelis choose.

 

Do Christian clergy need an Army thunderflash up their collective cassock before they understand there’s a religious war going on in the Holy Land and the churches of Western Christendom, regrettably, are not engaging in it, even though the source from which they draw their authority, inspiration and teachings is right there? They much prefer to appease the invader regime and leave their brother churches in Jerusalem and the Middle East to fight alone.

 

Disgraceful.

 

 

The Zionist wing of the Church of England?

 

Ever heard of the CMJ (the Church’s Ministry among Jewish People)?

 

Apparently it has a proud 200-year history and feels a need to provide in-depth teaching on the Jewish roots of the Christian faith. In its statement of faith the CMJ says Christians have “a special responsibility to love, defend and share the Gospel with God’s historic, chosen People, the Jews”.

http://www.cmj.org.uk/home/israelandthepalestinians  and

http://www.cmj-israel.org/Portals/0/docs/userdocs/CMJ%20Statement%20on%20Israel%20and%20the%20Palestinians.pdf

 

And this is the CMJ’s attitude to the Israel-Palestine struggle…

 

  • CMJ believes that both Jewish and Gentile believers (including our Palestinian brothers and sisters) are united in the one “olive tree”. In fact, Jesus has made Jew and Gentile believers one “and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility…”

 

The reality is that the Israelis are still building the hated barrier and love nothing better than destroying whole groves of olive trees.

 

  • Gentiles are “fellow-citizens with God’s people”… God loves all people equally. This means that he loves the Israelis and the Palestinians equally. 

 

So we can safely ignore all claims, including those made by the CMJ, that Jews are God’s “chosen ones”?

 

  • CMJ… has always seen the return of the Jewish people to their ancient land, and on a national scale to their Messiah, as a precursor to the return of Jesus in glory.

 

Their return is achieved by expelling the Arabs (whom God loves equally), slaughtering those who resist and trashing just about all of God’s commandments. Jesus is really going to be impressed when he arrives.

 

  • CMJ rejoices that, after 2000 years… the Jewish people now, at last, have returned to the land from which the majority were dispersed in AD70…

 

Rejoice in the Jewish occupation and you rejoice in the murderous crime spree that goes with it. 

 

  • CMJ recognizes that the State of Israel was set up as a result of a majority vote of the United Nations in 1947… However the Ministry does not hold any official position as to the appropriate location of the borders of the state. 

 

If CMJ recognises the UN’s 1947 Partition Plan it should also accept the borders on which it was based. Instead the CMJ appears to advocate a ‘blank cheque’ for the Zionist entity’s territorial greed

 

  • CMJ  Ministry recognizes that the Israelis, after 2000 years of anti-Semitism, face a resurgence of anti-Semitism, a military threat from various nations, Palestinian terrorism and a threat to the stability of their safe homeland through demographic factors. 

 

Is it any wonder? Israel, with its nuclear arsenal and American-supplied state of the art weaponry, easily outguns its neighbours in the Middle East and even threatens Europe. Its lack of restraint and contempt for international law, demonstrated repeatedly, makes it the prime menace to the region. Meanwhile Palestinians have every right to defend their homes as best they can. 

 

It’s obvious that the CMJ adopts the Zionist position and encourages the physical restoration of the Jewish people to the biblical Land of Israel regardless of the suffering and injustice this causes. Nevertheless the CMJ was adopted as an official ministry of the Church of England in 1995, Archbishop George Carey presiding, and has been operating in the shadows all this time. Is this the Church of England’s official Zionist wing?

 

Carey is remembered for opposing the Church of England’s divestment from companies, such as Caterpillar, which profit from Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, saying he was “ashamed of being an Anglican”.  http://www.jpost.com/International/Lord-Carey-ashamed-to-be-an-Anglican

 

 

Signs of hope from Scotland

 

Altogether it’s been a dismal performance by most (though not all) churches. But this week, hopefully, the Church of Scotland will give a new lead at their Assembly in Edinburgh to stop the rot.

 

Although under great pressure to re-write the Church’s report ‘The Inheritance of Abraham?’, which challenges the Jews’ divine right to the Palestinians’ homeland and is condemned by a furious Jewish lobby as a “truly hurtful” and “inquisition-era” document, they actually beefed it up! For example, the revised version re-states emphatically that they do not support the idea that ancient scripture offers anyone a privileged right to territory, and it not only urges the UK Government and the European Union to use pressure to stop further expansion of Israeli settlements but also to remove the existing ones.

 

Bravo, Scotland!

 

 

Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood is an industrial marketing specialist turned writer-photographer. In 2005 he was invited to write and shoot pictures for a book about the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. ‘Radio Free Palestine’ was published in 2007. For details please seehttp://www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk/.

  • The Author is a regular contributor to RamallahOnline.com. Find more Articles by Stuart Littlewood on RamallahOnline.

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Church of Scotland report challenging Jews’ ‘divine right’ to Palestinian homeland unchanged

Stuart Littlewood

Impertinent complaints politely sidestepped

 

 

The Church of Scotland’s revised report ‘The Inheritance of Abraham?’ has

now been released ahead of their Assembly http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/14050/The_Inheritance_of_Abraham.pdf .

 

The Church felt obliged to change some of it after Jewish leaders sought to interfere, one complaining that it was “an outrage to everything that interfaith dialogue stands for…  and closes the door on meaningful dialogue”. Another said “it reads like an Inquisition-era polemic against Jews and Judaism.”

 

The Israeli ambassador moaned that it belittled the deeply held Jewish attachment to the land of Israel in a way which was “truly hurtful”.

 

So do the changes amount to a caving-in to Zionist meddlers?

 

I soon gave up comparing the two versions word for word to spot the difference. The press release gives no clues either. In it, Convener Sally Foster-Fulton simply says: “We believe that this new version has paid attention to the concern some of the language of the previous version caused amongst the Jewish community whilst holding true to our concerns about the injustices being perpetrated because of policies of the Government of Israel against the Palestinian people that we wanted to highlight. The views of this report are consistent with the views held by the Church of Scotland over many years.”

 

Cool under fire, this lady.

 

The report’s key conclusion remains that “the Church of Scotland does not agree with a premise that scripture offers any peoples a divine right to territory”. At least they stand firm on that.

 

They also recap on what they already believe, and here’s where disagreements might flare up. For example…

 

  • “Israel is a recognised State and has the right to exist in peace and security.”

Yet Israel’s right to exist seems somehow inconsistent with the Church’s statement that scripture does not bestow a divine right to someone else’s land. Even if the Church believes that the UN’s 1947 Partition Plan was morally and legally right, what does it say to the Jewish terror groups that were driving Palestinians from their homes before the ink was dry and before the state of Israel was declared? What about the hundreds of towns and villages not even allocated to the Jewish state in the UN Plan but erased by Israel in order to implant itself. What about the systematic ethnic cleansing and the criminal occupation of additional Arab territories in the 1967 war? Perhaps the Church should remain silent on the ‘right to exist’ question, at least until Israel declares its internationally recognised boundaries and halts its illegal expansion.

 

  • “There should be a Palestinian State, recognised by the United Nations, that should have the right to exist in peace and security.”

Israel doesn’t recognise the Palestinians’ right to a state.

 

  • “We condemn racism and religious hatred.”

The Jewish state is a racist entity.

 

  • “We are especially concerned at the recent actions of the Government of

Israel in its support for settlements, for the construction of the security barrier or ‘the Wall’ within Occupied Territory, for the blockade of Gaza and for the anti-Boycott law.”

“Recent” actions? Israel has been building illegal settlements since 1967. Gaza has been blockaded since 2006. The West Bank has lived under permanent blockade for decades.

 

  • “We assert our sincere belief that to be critical of the policies of the Israeli Government is a legitimate part of our witness and we strongly reject accusations of anti-Semitic bias. We regularly engage with and critique policies of all Governments, where we deem them to be contrary to our understanding of God’s wish for humanity.”

Well said.

 

Central to the Church’s discussion is this excellent passage…

“To Christians in the 21st century, promises about the land of Israel shouldn’t be intended to be taken literally, or as applying to a defined geographical territory; The ‘promised land’ in the Bible is not a place, so much as a metaphor of how things ought to be among the people of God. This ‘promised land’ can be found or built anywhere.”

 

The report’s key conclusions appear the same as before. Christians should not be supporting any claims by any people to an exclusive or even privileged divine right to possess particular territory… It is a misuse of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) and the New Testament to use it as a topographic guide to settle contemporary conflicts over land.

 

And regarding Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory the Church remains committed to the following principles (previously set out and agreed by the General Assembly):

 

That the current situation is characterised by an inequality in power, therefore reconciliation can only be possible if the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the blockade of Gaza, are ended.

 

The Church of Scotland condemns violence, terrorism and intimidation no

matter the perpetrator

 

The Church of Scotland affirms the right of Israelis and Palestinians to live within secure and fixed boundaries in states of their own.

 

The Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are illegal under international law.

 

The Church of Scotland should do nothing to promote the viability of the illegal settlements on Palestinian land.

 

That human rights of all peoples should be respected, and this should include the right of return and / or compensation for Palestinian refugees.

 

That negotiations between the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority about peace with justice must resume at the earliest opportunity and the Church of Scotland should continue to put political pressure on all parties to commence such negotiations, and asking all parties to recognise the inequality in power which characterises this situation.

 

That there are safe rights of access to the sacred sites for the main religions in the area.

 

This stance seems pretty robust to me, and the Church’s support for refugees’ right of return is very welcome. However it also raises questions. Why, having already emphasised that the crisis in the Holy Land is characterised by “an inequality of power”, call for the two sides to be thrown together again in fruitless negotiations? Negotiate what? Freedom? Is that negotiable? The return of stolen lands and property? Is that negotiable? These matters are already decided by international and humanitarian law and numerous UN resolutions waiting to be enforced. How can the Church approve so-called ‘negotiations’ while one party is still under illegal occupation with a gun to his head? What justice is likely to come out of that? The Church does urge the UK Government and the European Union “to do all that is within their power to ensure that international law is upheld”, but that surely must come first, rather than relying on discredited talks.

 

The report going in front of the Church’s Assembly appears unchanged in substance and has cleverly sidestepped objections. The only caving-in, so far, has been the senior clergy’s agreement to listen to the Zionists’ impertinent demands in the first place.

 

I can only wish the Assembly an enjoyable week ahead and, on this issue, firm judgement.

 

 

Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood is an industrial marketing specialist turned writer-photographer. In 2005 he was invited to write and shoot pictures for a book about the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. ‘Radio Free Palestine’ was published in 2007. For details please seehttp://www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk/.

  • The Author is a regular contributor to RamallahOnline.com. Find more Articles by Stuart Littlewood on RamallahOnline.

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The State of Whom?

Uri Avnery

CAN A law be both ridiculous and dangerous?

It certainly can. Witness the ongoing initiative of our government to enact a law that would define the State of Israel as “The Nation-State of the Jewish People”.

Ridiculous 1 – because what and who is the “Jewish people”? The Jews of the world are a mixed lot. Their only official definition in Israel is religious. In Israel, you are a Jew if your mother was a Jewess. This is a purely religious definition. In Jewish religion, your father does not count for this purpose (it is said, only half in jest, that you cannot ever be sure who your father is.) If a non-Jew wants to join the Jewish people in Israel, he or she has to convert to Judaism in a religious ceremony. Under Israeli law, one ceases to be a Jew if one adopts another religion. All these are purely religious definitions. Nothing national about it.

Ridiculous 2 – The Jews around the world belong to other nations. They are not being asked by the promoters of this law whether they want to belong to a people represented by the State of Israel. They are automatically adopted by a foreign state. In a way, this is another form of attempted annexation.

It is dangerous for several reasons. First of all, because it excludes the citizens of Israel who are not Jews – a million and a half Muslim and Christian Arabs and about 400 thousand immigrants from the former Soviet Union who were allowed in because they are somehow related to Jews. Recently, when the army Chief of Staff laid little flags (instead of flowers) on the graves of fallen soldiers, he skipped the grave of one such non-Jewish soldier who gave his life for Israel.

Even more dangerous are the possibilities this law opens for the future. It is only a further short step from there to a law that would confer automatic citizenship on all Jews in the world, thus tripling the number of Jewish citizens of Greater Israel and creating a huge Jewish majority in an apartheid state between the sea and the river. The Jews in question will not be asked.

From there, another short step would be to deprive all non-Jews in Israel of their citizenship.

The (Jewish) sky is the limit.

BUT ON this occasion I would like to dwell on another aspect of the proposed law: the term “Nation-State”.

The nation-state is an invention of recent centuries. We tend to believe that it is the natural form of political structure and that it has always been so. That is quite wrong. Even in Western culture, it was preceded by several other models, such as feudal states, dynastic states and so on.

New social forms are created when new economic, technological and ideological developments demand them. A form that was possible when the average European never travelled more than a few kilometers from his place of birth became impossible when roads and railways dramatically changed the movement of people and goods. New technologies created immense industrial capabilities.

For societies to compete, they had to create structures that were big enough to sustain a large domestic market and to maintain a military force strong enough to defend it (and, if possible, to grab territories from their neighbors). A new ideology, called nationalism, cemented the new states. Smaller peoples were subdued and incorporated in the new big national societies. Presto: the Nation-State.

This process needed a century or two to become general. Zionism was one of the last European national movements. As in other aspects – such as colonialism and imperialism – it was a late-comer. When Israel was founded, the European nation-states were already on the verge of becoming obsolete.

WORLD WAR II hastened the demise of the nation-state for all practical purposes. Huge economic units like the USA and the Soviet Union made countries like Spain and Italy, and even like Germany and France, much too small to compete. The European Common Market came into being. Large economic federations supplanted most of the old nation-states.

New technologies hastened the process. Change became more and more rapid. While the new regional structures were being formed, they too were already becoming obsolete. Globalization is an irreversible process. No nation or combination of nations can solve the apocalyptic problems of mankind.

Climate change is a world problem that urgently needs world-wide cooperation. So is the danger created by nuclear weapons that will soon be acquired by violent non-state groups. A photo taken in Timbuktu is immediately seen in Kamchatka. A hacker in Australia can silence entire industries in America. Bloody dictators can be brought before world justice in The Hague. An American youngster can revolutionize the lives of people in Zimbabwe. Deadly pandemics can travel within hours from Ethiopia to Sweden.

For all practical purposes, the world is now one. But human consciousness is far, far slower than technology. While the nation-state has become anachronistic, nationalism is still alive and killing.

HOW TO bridge the gap? The European Union is an instructive example.

At the end of World War II, thinking people realized that World War III could mean the end of Europe, if not the end of the world. Europe had to be united, but nationalism was rampant. In the end, the compromise model proposed by Charles de Gaulle was adopted: the nation-states would remain, but some real power would be transferred to a kind of confederation.

This made sense. The common market was born and steadily enlarged, a common currency was adopted. And now an economic earthquake threatens to bring the whole edifice down.

Why? Not because of the surplus of concentration, but because of the lack of it.

I am not an economist. Indeed, no renowned professor ever taught me the science of economics (or anything else). I just try to apply common sense to this problem as to all others.

Common sense told me right from the beginning that a common currency could not exist without common economic governance. It cannot possibly function when every little “nation-state” within the currency-zone has its own state budget and economic policy.

The founding fathers of the United States were faced with this problem and decided upon a federation and not a confederation – in other words, a strong central government. Thanks to that wise decision, when Nebraska has a problem, Illinois can spring in. The economy of all 50 states is practically run by Washington DC. The common currency does not just mean the same greenbacks, but the same powerful central bank.

Now Europe is faced with the same choice. It will either break apart – an unthinkable disaster – or abandon the Gaullist recipe. The diverse nation-states, from Malta to Sweden, must give up a huge chunk of their independence and sovereignty and transfer it to the hated bureaucrats in Brussels. One budget for all.

If this happens – a big “if” – what will remain of the nation state? There will be national soccer teams, with all the nationalist and racist hullabaloo. France may still invade Mali, with the consent of its main European partners. Greeks can still be proud of their ancient past. Belgium will still be plagued by its bi-national troubles. But the nation-state will be more or less an empty shell.

I predict, as I did before, that by the end of this century (when some of us will not be around anymore) there will be some kind of world governance in place. It will probably be called by some other name, but the major problems facing humankind will be managed by strong and effectual international bodies. There will be new problems (there always are): how to maintain democracy in such a global structure, how to sustain human values, how to channel aggressive emotion, now released in wars, into harmless activities.

In this brave new world, what about the nation-state? I believe that it will still be there as a cultural and nostalgic phenomenon, with certain local functions, like today’s municipalities. Probably there will be even more nation-states. When the states are stripped of most of their functions, they may well split into their component parts. Bretons and Corsicans, who were forced by nationalism to join the larger unit called France, may want to live in states of their own within a unified world.

LEAVING THE realm of wild speculation and returning to our own little world: what about this “Nation-State of the Jewish People”?

As long as the world consists of nation-states, we shall have our own. And by the same logic, the Palestinian people will have one, too.

Our state cannot be a nation-state of a non-existent nation. Israel must and will be the nation-state of the Israeli nation, belonging to all Israeli citizens living in Israel, Arabs and other non-Jews included. And to nobody else.

Israeli Jews who feel a strong attachment to the Jews around the world, and Jews around the world who feel a strong attachment to Israel, can certainly maintain and even strengthen their attachment. Similarly, Arab citizens can maintain their attachment to the Palestinian nation and the Arab world at large. And the non-Jewish Russians to their Russian heritage. By all means. But that does not concern the state as such.

When peace comes to this tortured part of the world, the states of Israel and Palestine may join a regional organization extending from Iran to Morocco, on the lines of the EU. They will join the ranks of the march of humanity towards a functioning modern world-wide structure to save the planet, prevent wars between states or communities and further the well-being of human beings (yes, and animals, too) everywhere.

Utopia? Certainly. But that’s how today’s reality would have looked to Napoleon.

Uri Avnery is a longtime Israeli peace activist. Since 1948 he has advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. In 1974, Uri Avnery was the first Israeli to establish contact with the PLO leadership. In 1982 he was the first Israeli ever to meet Yasser Arafat, after crossing the lines in besieged Beirut. He served three terms in the Israeli Knesset and is the founder ofGush Shalom (Peace Bloc). Visit his Web site.

 

More Articles on RamallahOnline by Uri Avnery or visit Gush-Shalom.org

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Women of the Wall

Uri Avnery

THERE WAS this Israeli man who from time to time put a slip of paper in the cracks between the stones of the Western Wall, asking God for favors – as Jews have been doing for centuries. They believe that the gates of heaven are located directly above the Wall, making it easy for their missives to arrive quickly.

The man always wondered what all the other petitioners were requesting from the Almighty. One night his curiosity got the better of him. In the wee hours of the morning he stole to the Wall, extracted all the pieces of paper and checked them. All of them were stamped “Request Denied”.

This joke is typical for the attitude of a great many Israelis towards the edifice that every few months or so sets off a political and religious pandemonium.

NOW IT is happening again. A group of feminist Jewish women (mostly of American origin, of course) insists on praying at the Wall clad in praying shawls (talith) and wearing phylacteries (tefillin). They are physically attacked by the orthodox, the police have to restrain them, the Knesset and the courts intervene.

Why? According to Jewish religious law, women are not allowed to wear praying shawls, and certainly not phylacteries, which orthodox men put on their brow and forearm. They are not allowed to mingle with men at the holiest place of Judaism.

The part of the Wall set aside for prayer is about 60 meters long. 12 meters are reserved for women, separated by a low divide.

It seems that most religions are obsessed with sex. They assume that if a religious male sees a woman, whatever her age and looks, he is aroused and cannot think about anything else. So, logically, women must be hidden away.

The “Women of the Wall”, many of whom are not religious at all, want to break the taboo by provocation. So there you are.

TWO YEARS before the birth of Israel, I went to look at the Western Wall for the first time . It was a moving experience.

To get to the place, you had to pass through a maze of narrow Arab alleys. In the end you found yourself in a narrow enclave, about three meters wide. To your left was the Wall – an awe-inspiring monumental structure, consisting of huge rocks. To see the top you had to lean back and look towards heaven.

On your other side was a much lower wall, behind which the ancient, poverty stricken Mugrabi (Maghribi, Moroccan) Quarter was lodged.

Very few people know – or care to know – that this enclosure did not come into being by accident. In 1516 Jerusalem was conquered by the rising world power, the Ottoman Empire, which was at the time one of the most modern and progressive states. Soon after, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent built the – well, magnificent – wall of Jerusalem, as it stands today, a hugely expensive work which testifies to the immense devotion of the Ottoman Turks to this remote town in their realm. Suleiman’s chief architect was Sinan, who also designed the Damascus Gate, which many people (including myself) consider the most beautiful structure in the entire country.

The benevolent Sultan instructed Sinan to set aside a special place of worship for the Jews in the town, so the architect created this enclosure at the Western Wall (not to be confused with the city wall). To make the wall more towering, he lowered the floor of the alley and put up the parallel low wall cutting it off from the surroundings. (Anyone interested in this history would be well advised to read the book “Jerusalem” by Karen Armstrong, a British ex-nun and historian.)

Legend has it that when the city wall, with all its 34 towers and seven gates, was finished in 1541, the Sultan was so overcome by its beauty the he had the architect killed. He did not want him to build anything else to compete with it.

UNTIL THEN, the Western Wall was not the main praying place for Jews.

Pilgrims from all over the world came to Jerusalem and prayed at the top of the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Temple Mount. But this holy place had become unsafe, because while the preceding Mamluk Empire was crumbling, roaming Bedouins had been robbing the pilgrims. Also, for the local Jews, who lived side by side with the Muslims in the town, the Western Wall was much nearer to their homes. So the holy place on the Mount of Olives was abandoned. Today, a luxury hotel stands there.

Since then, the Western Wall remains the holiest place in the world for the Jews, a place where multitudes assemble on holy days, army units swear allegiance to the State of Israel, rich Jews from all over the world bring their sons for Bar Mitzva and the Women of the Wall are kicking up the latest ruckus.

But basically there is nothing holy about the Wall. It was built by King Herod, a great builder and bloody monster, who was not even a real Jew. He belonged to the people of Edom, who had only recently been forcibly converted to Judaism. I doubt whether the present Chief Rabbinate would have recognized him as a Jew and have allowed him to enter the country, marry a Jewish woman or be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Contrary to common belief, it was not a part of the Temple Herod built. To create the large platform on which the Temple stood, (and on which now stand the magnificent Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque) he had to bring in a lot of earth and raise the floor. To hold this mass together, he built a wall around it. The Western Wall is nothing but a remnant of this supporting wall.

WHEN THE Israeli army conquered East Jerusalem in the June 1967 War, one of the state’s first acts was an outrage. At the time, the mayor of West Jerusalem was Teddy Kollek, a convinced atheist. But he was quick to realize the political and touristic significance of the place and ordered the immediate expulsion of the entire population of the adjoining Mugrabi Quarter, some 650 Muslim human beings. He then razed the whole quarter to the ground.

I happened to be in the Old City of Jerusalem on that day, and I will never forget the sights – especially the tear-covered face of a 13-year old girl carrying a large cupboard on her back.

On the site of the destroyed quarter, a huge empty space was created. This is now the Western Wall piazza, resembling a huge parking lot, which attracts tourists and prayer-shawl-wearing women. It faces the Western Wall, which has completely lost its awe-inspiring character and now looks like just another large wall.

The late Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an orthodox Jew, called it the Diskotel (kotel means wall). He was full of praise for the Wahhabis, a fundamentalist Sunni sect which, upon conquering Mecca, immediately destroyed the tomb of the prophet Muhammad, claiming that revering stones as holy places was nothing but idolatry. They would surely have condemned the Western Wall rabbis as rabid pagans.

In the Jewish myth, the burial site of Moses is unknown, so it could not become a site for adulation.

It must be mentioned to Kollek’s credit that he prevented another outrage. After the destruction of the Mugrabi Quarter, David Ben-Gurion, by that time a simple member of the Knesset, demanded that the entire Old City Wall be also razed to the ground. In the newly united Jewish capital, he asserted, there was no place for a Turkish wall. Kollek, a former chief assistant to Ben-Gurion, calmed the old man down.

MANY ISRAELIS believe that the Western Wall should be declared a secular national monument, irrespective of its religious connotations. But the State of Israel declared it a holy place and put it under the sole jurisdiction of the Chief Rabbinate. Bad for the Wall Women.

Lately, Nathan Sharansky has proposed a compromise: clear an additional space near the wall and allow everybody – man or woman, with or without prayer shawl, and presumably straight or gay or Lesbian – to pray there. The Egg of Columbus.

(Sharansky, the former much admired rebel against the KGB in the Soviet Union and later a failed politician in Israel, has been secured a sinecure as chief of the Jewish Agency, an anachronistic institution mainly occupied with raising money for the settlers.)

The rabbis may accept the compromise or they may not. The women may be allowed to pray without risking arrest or not. But the real question is why the state gave complete control over this place, that is so important to so many people, to the orthodox rabbis. After all, they represent a minority in Israel, as well as among the world’s Jews.

The answer may be political, but it touches upon a far more important aspect: the lack of separation between state and religion.

This situation is being justified – even by atheist Israelis – by the argument that Israel relies on the support of world Jewry. And what unites world Jewry? Religion. (By the way, Leibowitz once told me that the Jewish religion had been dead for 200 years, and that what united world Jewry was the memory of the Holocaust.)

Under state doctrine, Israel is the Nation-state of the Jewish people. Under Zionist doctrine, the Jewish people and the Jewish religion are one and the same. Ergo, there is and can be no separation.

Anyone wanting to turn Israel into a normal country must reject both these doctrines. Israelis are a nation, and the State of Israel belongs to this nation. Every citizen, male or female, should be able to pray to whoever he or she wants, in any public place, including the Western Wall.

The Temple Mount (known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, the venerable shrine), including the Western Wall and, at a short distance, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, are of immense importance to billions of people and should be a factor for peace.

We can only hope that sometime in the future they will fulfill this mission.

 

Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery is a longtime Israeli peace activist. Since 1948 he has advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. In 1974, Uri Avnery was the first Israeli to establish contact with the PLO leadership. In 1982 he was the first Israeli ever to meet Yasser Arafat, after crossing the lines in besieged Beirut. He served three terms in the Israeli Knesset and is the founder ofGush Shalom (Peace Bloc). Visit his Web site.

 

More Articles on RamallahOnline by Uri Avnery or visit Gush-Shalom.org

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Alan Hart and What It Takes to Struggle On – An Analysis

Dr. Lawrence Davidson

 

I – Who Is Alan Hart?

 

Alan Hart is an author and a journalist. He is the former Middle East Chief Correspondent for Britain’s Independent Television News and a former BBC Panorama presenter whose beat was the Middle East. He has written a number of books, including Arafat: Terrorist or Peacemaker? (1984) and the three-volume  Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews (2009-2010). He is also a longtime activist for various causes, particularly his three-decade struggle on behalf of justice for the Palestinian people.

 

II – Alan Hart Resigns

 

On April 25 Alan Hart, the activist for Palestine, literally turned in his resignation letter. In it he states, “I am withdrawing from the battlefield of the war for the truth of history as it relates to making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine.” Why did he do this? In Hart’s opinion, the struggle for justice in Palestine is “mission impossible.” The information/propaganda war between Zionists and those, such as himself, supporting the Palestinians (which, in any case, had always been “the most asymmetric of all information wars”) is lost. He notes that the Western media still follow a Zionist line and asserts that most of the Western populations remain either pro-Israel or indifferent to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

 

Hart blames this alleged Zionist victory in the propaganda war on a lack of financial support for those trying to write and speak out for Palestinian justice, and contrasts their plight to the situation of the Zionist writers and advocates, who enjoy almost unlimited funds. Hart feels it is mainly wealthy Palestinians and other Arabs who have failed to support pro-Palestinian activists. These wealthy Arabs  have failed to step forward because they either are afraid of Zionist retribution that would damage their businesses or careers, or are afraid of their own Arab governments, which do not want trouble with Israel because of assertive actions by pro-Palestinian wealthy citizens.

 

III – Mr. Hart’s Plight

 

With all due respect to Mr. Hart, who certainly does deserve our respect, I can’t help asking myself whether his assessment of this “war for the truth of history” is objectively true or an expression of personal disappointments. According to his own explanation, Alan Hart’s decision to leave the struggle is connected to the fact that Arab publishers and media failed to financially support and promote his recent book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. This was a great disappointment to him because the Arab media had serialized his prior work on Yasser Arafat and this had brought him “a significant income.” He had obviously made the assumption that the situation would repeat itself. So strong was that expectation that, as Mr. Hart tells us in his resignation statement, he made certain decisions, such as mortgaging his property in order to support the production of the Zionism study, which have now brought him into financial distress. Hart appears to see the failure of Arab money to come to his assistance as indicative of Arab failure to support the Palestinian cause.

 

 

IV – How accurate Is Alan Hart’s Assessment?

 

As disappointing as the Arab failure to promote Hart’s important work on Zionism may be, it is not accurate to conclude, as Hart does, that most wealthy Arabs “do not care about the occupied and oppressed Palestinians.” Before the first Iraq war, both public and private Arab money generously supported the PLO. Yasser Arafat’s unfortunate attempt to mediate that conflict and prevent a war against Iraq stopped most (but never all) of that support. Whether the wealthy Arabs could now do much more is another question. However, and this is an important point, this is not the same question as to whether Western supporters of the Palestinian cause should or should not give up.

 

Hart is correct that in the past thirty years supporters of Palestinian justice have not been able to create the necessary critical mass of public opinion to change the policies of national governments. However, that does not mean there has been no progress. It does not mean this is a lost cause.

 

I too have been a strong supporter of the Palestinians for decades, and I have seen a tremendous difference over time. Thirty years ago you could not critically raise the subject of Israel in public, and thus the Zionists had a monopoly on the entire history of this issue. That is emphatically not the case today. Despite Alan Hart’s unfortunate experience, the fact is that, at a popular level, the Zionists have lost control of the Palestine narrative. There are other real positive signs in this struggle that Hart fails to mention, including the progress of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement; the continuing maturation of counter-lobbies, particularly in the United States; and the growing worldwide recognition of Israeli criminality, which has slowly increased that country’s sense of isolation. In other words, there is more to this than the Arab failure to support Mr. Hart’s latest work.

 

V – How Do We Measure Success?

 

One has to also understand that success and failure come on many levels. On the macro level, progress is slow, but as pointed out above, it is far from nonexistent. Sometimes you just need to know where to look to see the ongoing activity. For instance, in the case of the United States, there are a growing number of organizations that are constantly busy getting out the message of Israeli crimes and the Palestinian demand for justice. There are the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (a coalition of almost 400 member groups and organizations), Jewish Voices for Peace, and the Council for the National Interest, to name just a few. The struggle against Israeli apartheid might well be, as it was in the case of South Africa, multigenerational. But among the many organizations waging this struggle there is no sign of slacking.

 

On the micro level, success comes when one is consistently true to one’s principles in a manner that is personally acceptable. No one is asking Western supporters of the Palestinian cause to go bankrupt or put themselves in physical danger, although in the latter case notably heroic individuals such as Rachel Corey and Tom Hurndall have chosen to do so, with tragic results. However, there are less dangerous routes. To do what you can in a steady, consistent way for a just cause in which you believe is already to have achieved success at the personal level. We struggle not only for the cause, but also because of who we are.

 

Alan Hart is an admirable man who has done admirable things, and we all owe him our thanks for his contributions to the Palestinian cause. But his decision to retire from the field should in no way be taken as a sign that that cause is lost. It is emphatically not lost. It has made significant progress over the past three decades and it is well positioned to make more progress in the future.

 

Dr. Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

The author is a regular contributor to RamallahOnline.com.More articles can be found onRamallahOnline.com, Logos Journal, and Dr. Davidson also maintains an online blog, you can find it athttp://www.tothepointanalyses.com

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US watchdog turns blind eye to Israel’s religious rights violations

It’s hilarious.

 

I’m still rolling on the floor laughing my socks off at a report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

 

What’s the joke?  Well, it’s no joke really. The USCIRF has just released its 2013 Annual Report http://www.uscirf.gov/images/2013%20USCIRF%20Annual%20Report%20(2).pdf on the world’s worst violators of religious freedom. And… you simply won’t believe this… it doesn’t even mention the worst offender of all, Israel.

 

Truly. It’s like Israel doesn’t exist…  

 

I am regularly bombarded with reports of Israel’s religious persecution of Christians and their Muslim brothers and sisters in the Holy Land. This week included an account http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=592219 of how Israel continues to cause “countless difficulties” for Palestinian Christians and Muslims trying to reach their holy sites. “It is not only that Israel has isolated our occupied capital from the rest of our country — forcing our people to apply for special military permits to access their families and holy places for religious occasions — but even Palestinians from Jerusalem were beaten when trying to reach the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,” said Hanna Amireh, a member of the PLO Executive Committee and Head of the Presidential Committee on Church Affairs.

 

The Israeli forces turned a religious occasion into a battle camp scenario, she said. “What was witnessed in Jerusalem was an attempt to cancel a tradition of 700 years. The Israeli government is doing everything possible in order to achieve its goal of changing Jerusalem’s landscape, by building more settlements, demolishing more Palestinian homes, revoking more IDs and by attempting to prevent the normal celebration of Christian and Muslim religious events.”

 

This week also saw Jewish settlers storming the Aqsa mosque. The Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation accused Israel of pursuing a systematic policy of aggression against holy places in occupied Jerusalem.

 

I have spent time with priests and members of their congregation in Occupied Palestine and it’s true that Israel is conducting a religious war. If you don’t believe me, go see for yourselves – but not by Israeli bus-tour, obviously.

 

Imagine the fuss if we road-blocked Jews from their synagogues in Golders Green, Hendon and Finchley.

 

The USCIRF report was sent to the President on 30 April with a covering letter hammering home the Commissioners’ recommendation that the Secretary of State re-designate eight countries as “countries of particular concern,” or CPCs, “for egregious violations of religious freedom”. These are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan.

 

The Commissioners also recommend that seven additional countries be designated as CPCs: Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam.

 

Israel is not even on the list of countries looked at, while the Commission’s press release

emphasises how US foreign policy recognizes the critical role religious freedom plays in nations and prioritizes accordingly. “Religious freedom is both a pivotal human right under international law and a key factor that helps determine whether a nation experiences stability or chaos.”

 

The letter is signed in all seriousness by USCIRF’s chairperson Katrina Lantos Swett. The report she presided over has allowed Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/05/07/report-finds-iran-worst-violator-religious-freedom/ to point the finger at Iran, not Israel, and to give poor old Ahmadinejad another verbal blasting. “Religious freedom,” says Fox, “is in short supply in the Middle East, according to the bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which has issued a report finding Iran chief among the nations where spiritual beliefs can bring prison sentences or worse.”

 

An article http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=124980 by Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett herself, called ‘US Promotion of International Religious Freedom’, explains that USCIRF was created in 1998 by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) to be “an independent watchdog of US government activity that identifies violations of religious freedom and develops policy solutions to advance religious freedom for everyone everywhere. USCIRF is separate and distinct from the State Department…

 

“Through our work, we have observed how governments engage in or allow at least three kinds of violations: state hostility toward religion, state sponsorship of extremist religious ideology, and state failure to prevent and punish religious freedom violations.

 

“Through state hostility, individuals or groups are persecuted on account of their beliefs. State sponsorship involves governments promoting including exporting violent and extremist religious ideas that include calls to violate the religious freedom and sometimes even the right to life of others. State failure refers to governments abandoning their duty to protect those whom others are targeting due to their beliefs, creating a climate of impunity in which religious dissenters are threatened, intimidated, or even murdered.

 

“In response to such violations, IRFA requires the President, who has delegated this authority to the Secretary of State, to designate as ‘countries of particular concern’, or CPCs, those governments that have engaged in or tolerated ‘particularly severe’ religious freedom violations.”

 

The IRFA defines “particularly severe” violations as ones that are “systematic, ongoing, and egregious”, including acts such as torture, prolonged detention without charges, disappearances, or “other flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty, or the security of persons”.  All these are an everyday fact of life to non-Jews living under the Zionist-Israeli jackboot in the Holy Land.

 

And after a country is designated a CPC, the President is required by law to take specific actions to encourage reform.

 

So now we begin to see why Israel is omitted. Mustn’t upset the Zionists’ racist programme steal and ethnically cleanse the Holy Land, must we? The irony seems totally lost on Lantos Swett and her colleagues.

 

Another reason is the appointment of Elliott Abrams, a Zionist hardliner, to the Commission. American readers will know all about Abrams, but for the benefit of fellow Brits and others these extracts fromhttp://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-feith.html  may help…

 

“In 1992 Abrams helped form the Committee for U.S. Interests in the Middle East, which was actually a committee to ensure that U.S. policy was aligned with the Likud Party in Israel. Other members included Perle, Feith, Gaffney, and John Lehman, among dozens of other neoconservatives and pro-Israel hawks. The committee spoke out against what it perceived as a dangerous distancing between the Bush Senior administration and Israel seen in the administration’s pressure for Israel to pull out of some occupied territories and halt its campaign to expand settlements in these zones.

 

“Abrams has long voiced his strong support for Likud positions on the Oslo peace process and ‘land for peace’ negotiations.

 

“As Abrams, who has argued against Jews dating or attending elementary schools with non-Jews, put it in his book Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America: ‘Outside the land of Israel, there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nation in which they live. It is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart—except in Israel—from the rest of the population’ (Free Press, 1997). Judaism, according to Abrams, demands ‘apartness’ — not in the sense of confining oneself to a physical ghetto, but all necessary measures should be taken to prevent ‘prolonged and intimate exposure to non-Jewish culture’. Abrams takes care to insist that his positions imply no ‘disloyalty’ to the United States, but at the same times insists that Jews must be loyal to Israel because they ‘are in a permanent covenant with God and with the land of Israel and its people. Their commitment will not weaken if the Israeli government pursues unpopular policies.’

 

That’s a frightening message for America and indeed Britain, where the Jewish influence continues apace.

 

The article continues: “Abrams was indicted by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor for giving false testimony before Congress in 1987 about his role in illicitly raising money for the Nicaraguan Contras. He pleaded guilty to two lesser offences of withholding information to Congress in order to avoid a trial and a possible jail term.”

 

Nice chap to have aboard, then. Abrams’ fellow Commissioners are…

Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett (Chair)

Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon and Rev. William J. Shaw (vice-Chairs)

Hon. Sam Gejdenson

Dr. Robert P. George

Dr. Azizah Y. al-Hibri

Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser

Ambassador Suzan D. Johnson Cook

 

Why haven’t they examined the problem in their own country before condemning others?

I’m talking, of course, about the scourge of Christian Zionism which is rife in the US and is allowed to permeate and bully Congress, influence US foreign policy and thus encourage and fund the Zionist thugs of the Jewish State in their project to oust Christians and Muslims from Palestine and annex their lands.

 

Doesn’t this fall under “exporting violent and extremist religious ideas”, which Lantos Swett talks about?

 

American journalist and fearless champion of the truth, Grace Halsell, explained Christian Zionism’s message: “Simply stated it is this: Every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God, and should be condoned, supported, and even praised by the rest of us. Never mind what Israel does, say the Christian Zionists. God wants this to happen…”

 

The problem, she said, was their belief system. “They believe that what Israel wants is what God wants. Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable to give the green light to whatever it is Israel wants and then conceal this from the American people. Anything, including lies, theft, even murder, is justified as long as Israel wants it.”

 

The credit for much of the world’s misery must go to Cyrus Scofield, who was commissioned by the Oxford University Press to re-write the King James Bible by inserting Zionist-friendly notes with the aim of changing the Christian view of Zionism and creating a pro-Zionist sub-culture within Christianity. Between them they distorted the Biblical message and produced a propaganda classic, the Scofield Reference Bible, which has oozed its nonsense for 100 years.

 

I commend to Lantos Swett and her fellow Commissioners ‘The Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism’, a statement by the Latin Patriarch and Local Heads of Churches in Jerusalemhttp://imeu.net/news/article003122.shtml.  They are in the front line. They know the score. Here are the key passages…

 

We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.

We further reject the contemporary alliance of Christian Zionist leaders and organizations with elements in the governments of Israel and the United States that are presently imposing their unilateral pre-emptive borders and domination over Palestine. This inevitably leads to unending cycles of violence that undermine the security of all peoples of the Middle East and the rest of the world.

We reject the teachings of Christian Zionism that facilitate and support these policies as they advance racial exclusivity and perpetual war rather than the gospel of universal love, redemption and reconciliation taught by Jesus Christ. Rather than condemn the world to the doom of Armageddon we call upon everyone to liberate themselves from the ideologies of militarism and occupation. Instead, let them pursue the healing of the nations!

 

America, heal thyself first.

 

Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood is an industrial marketing specialist turned writer-photographer. In 2005 he was invited to write and shoot pictures for a book about the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. ‘Radio Free Palestine’ was published in 2007. For details please seehttp://www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk/.

  • The Author is a regular contributor to RamallahOnline.com. Find more Articles by Stuart Littlewood on RamallahOnline.

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The Donkey of the Messiah

Uri Avnery

“THE TWO-STATE solution is dead!” This mantra has been repeated so often lately, by so many authoritative commentators, that it must be true.

Well, it ain‘t.

It reminds one of Mark Twain’s oft quoted words: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”

BY NOW this has become an intellectual fad. To advocate the two-state solution means that you are ancient, old-fashioned, stale, stodgy, a fossil from a bygone era. Hoisting the flag of the “one-state solution” means that you are young, forward-looking, “cool”.

Actually, this only shows how ideas move in circles. When we declared in early 1949, just after the end of the first Israeli-Arab war, that the only answer to the new situation was the establishment of a Palestinian state side by side with Israel, the “one-state solution” was already old.

The idea of a “bi-national state” was in vogue in the 1930s. Its main advocates were well-meaning intellectuals, many of them luminaries of the new Hebrew University, like Judah Leon Magnes and Martin Buber. They were reinforced by the Hashomer Hatza’ir kibbutz movement, which later became the Mapam party.

It never gained any traction. The Arabs believed that it was a Jewish trick. Bi-nationalism was built on the principle of parity between the two populations in Palestine – 50% Jews, 50% Arabs. Since the Jews at that time were much less than half the population, Arab suspicions were reasonable.

On the Jewish side, the idea looked ridiculous. The very essence of Zionism was to have a state where Jews would be masters of their fate, preferably in all of Palestine.

At the time, no one called it the “one-state solution” because there was already one state – the State of Palestine, ruled by the British. The “solution” was called “the bi-national state” and died, unmourned, in the war of 1948.

WHAT HAS caused the miraculous resurrection of this idea?

Not the birth of a new love between the two peoples. Such a phenomenon would have been wonderful, even miraculous. If Israelis and Palestinians had discovered their common values, the common roots of their history and languages, their common love for this country – why, wouldn’t that have been absolutely splendid?

But, alas, the renewed “one-state solution” was not born of another immaculate conception. Its father is the occupation, its mother despair.

The occupation has already created a de facto One State – an evil state of oppression and brutality, in which half the population (or slightly less than half) deprives the other half of almost all rights – human rights, economic rights and political rights. The Jewish settlements proliferate, and every day brings new stories of woe.

Good people on both sides have lost hope. But hopelessness does not stir to action. It fosters resignation.

LET’S GO back to the starting point. “The two-state solution is dead”. How come? Who says? In accordance with what scientific criteria has death been certified?

Generally, the spread of the settlements is cited as the sign of death. In the 1980s the respected Israeli historian Meron Benvenisti pronounced that the situation had now become “irreversible”. At the time, there were hardly 100 thousand settlers in the occupied territories (apart from East Jerusalem, which by common consent is a separate issue). Now they claim to be 300 thousand, but who is counting? How many settlers mean irreversibility? 100, 300, 500, 800 thousand?

History is a hothouse of reversibility. Empires grow and collapse. Cultures flourish and wither. So do social and economic patterns. Only death is irreversible.

I can think of a dozen different ways to solve the settlement problem, from forcible removal to exchange of territories to Palestinian citizenship. Who believed that the settlements in North Sinai would be removed so easily? That the evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements would become a national farce?

In the end, there will probably be a mixture of several ways, according to circumstances.

All the Herculean problems of the conflict can be resolved – if there is a will. It’s the will that is the real problem.

THE ONE-STATERS like to base themselves on the South African experience. For them, Israel is an apartheid state, like the former South Africa, and therefore the solution must be South African-like.

The situation in the occupied territories, and to some extent in Israel proper, does indeed strongly resemble the apartheid regime. The apartheid example may be justly cited in political debate. But in reality, there is very little deeper resemblance – if any – between the two countries.

David Ben-Gurion once gave the South African leaders a piece of advice: partition. Concentrate the white population in the south, in the Cape region, and cede the other parts of the country to the blacks. Both sides in South Africa rejected this idea furiously, because both sides believed in a single, united country.

They largely spoke the same languages, adhered to the same religion, were integrated in the same economy. The fight was about the master-slave relationship, with a small minority lording it over a massive majority.

Nothing of this is true in our country. Here we have two different nations, two populations of nearly equal size, two languages, two (or rather, three) religions, two cultures, two totally different economies.

A false proposition leads to false conclusions. One of them is that Israel, like Apartheid South Africa, can be brought to its knees by an international boycott. About South Africa, this is a patronizing imperialist illusion. The boycott, moral and important as it was, did not do the job. It was the Africans themselves, aided by some local white idealists, who did it by their courageous strikes and uprisings.

I am an optimist, and I do hope that eventually Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Arabs will become sister nations, living side by side in harmony. But to come to that point, there must be a period of living peacefully in two adjoining states, hopefully with open borders.

THE PEOPLE who speak now of the “one-state solution” are idealists. But they do a lot of harm. And not only because they remove themselves and others from the struggle for the only solution that is realistic.

If we are going to live together in one state, it makes no sense to fight against the settlements. If Haifa and Ramallah will be in the same state, what is the difference between a settlement near Haifa and one near Ramallah? But the fight against the settlements is absolutely essential, it is the main battlefield in the struggle for peace.

Indeed, the one-state solution is the common aim of the extreme Zionist right and the extreme anti-Zionist left. And since the right is incomparably stronger, it is the left that is aiding the right, and not the other way round.

In theory, that is as it should be. Because the one-staters believe that the rightists are only preparing the ground for their future paradise. The right is uniting the country and putting an end to the possibility of creating an independent State of Palestine. They will subject the Palestinians to all the horrors of apartheid and much more, since the South African racists did not aim at displacing and replacing the blacks. But in due course – perhaps in a mere few decades, or half a century – the world will compel Greater Israel to grant the Palestinians full rights, and Israel will become Palestine.

According to this ultra-leftist theory, the right, which is now creating the racist one state, is in reality the Donkey of the Messiah, the legendary animal on which the Messiah will ride to triumph.

It’s a beautiful theory, but what is the assurance that this will actually happen? And before the final stage arrives, what will happen to the Palestinian people? Who will compel the rulers of Greater Israel to accept the diktat of world public opinion?

If Israel now refuses to bow to world opinion and enable the Palestinians to have their own state in 28% of historical Palestine, why would they bow to world opinion in the future and dismantle Israel altogether?

Speaking about a process that will surely last 50 years and more, who knows what will happen? What changes will take place in the world in the meantime? What wars and other catastrophes will take the world’s mind off the “Palestinian issue”?

Would one really gamble the fate of one’s nation on a far-fetched theory like this?

ASSUMING FOR a moment that the one-state solution would really come about, how would it function?

Will Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs serve in the same army, pay the same taxes, obey the same laws, work together in the same political parties? Will there be social intercourse between them? Or will the state sink into an interminable civil war?

Other peoples have found it impossible to live together in one state. Take the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia. Serbia. Czechoslovakia. Cyprus. Sudan. The Scots want to secede from the United Kingdom. So do the Basques and the Catalans from Spain. The French in Canada and the Flemish in Belgium are uneasy. As far as I know, nowhere in the entire world have two different peoples agreed to form a joint state for decades.

NO, THE two-state solution is not dead. It cannot die, because it is the only solution there is.

Despair may be convenient and tempting. But despair is no solution at all.

 

Uri Avnery

 

Uri Avnery is a longtime Israeli peace activist. Since 1948 he has advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. In 1974, Uri Avnery was the first Israeli to establish contact with the PLO leadership. In 1982 he was the first Israeli ever to meet Yasser Arafat, after crossing the lines in besieged Beirut. He served three terms in the Israeli Knesset and is the founder ofGush Shalom (Peace Bloc). Visit his Web site.

 

More Articles on RamallahOnline by Uri Avnery or visit Gush-Shalom.org