[WCUSP] "Can You Really Not See?" by Amira Hass (Ha'aretz)

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

Please send this to those you know who don't yet see...
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Can you really  not see?

By Amira Hass- HA'ARETZ, AUGUST 30, 2006

Let us leave  aside those Israelis whose ideology supports the
dispossession of the  Palestinian people because "God chose us." Leave
aside the judges who  whitewash every military policy of killing and
destruction. Leave aside the  military commanders who knowingly jail
an entire nation in pens surrounded by  walls, fortified observation
towers, machine guns, barbed wire and blinding  projectors. Leave
aside the ministers. All of these are not counted among  the
collaborators. These are the architects, the planners, the  designers,
the executioners.

But there are others. Historians and  mathematicians, senior editors,
media stars, psychologists and family  doctors, lawyers who do not
support Gush Emunim and Kadima, teachers and  educators, lovers of
hiking trails and sing-alongs, high-tech wizards. Where  are you? And
what about you, researchers of Nazism, the Holocaust and  Soviet
gulags? Could you all be in favor of systematic discriminating  laws?
Laws stating that the Arabs of the Galilee will not even  be
compensated for the damages of the war by the same sums their  Jewish
neighbors are entitled to (Aryeh Dayan, Haaretz , August  21).

Could it be that you are all in favor of a racist Citizenship  Law
that forbids an Israeli Arab from living with his family in his  own
home? That you side with further expropriation of lands and  the
demolishing of additional orchards, for another settler  neighborhood
and another exclusively Jewish road? That you all back the  shelling
and missile fire killing the old and the young in the Gaza  Strip?

Could it be that you all agree that a third of the  West Bank (the
Jordan Valley) should be off limits to Palestinians? That you  all
side with an Israeli policy that prevents tens of thousands  of
Palestinians who have obtained foreign citizenship from returning  to
their families in the occupied territories?

Could your mind really  be so washed with the security excuse, used to
forbid Gaza students from  studying occupational therapy at Bethlehem
and medicine at Abu Dis, and  preventing sick people from Rafah from
receiving medical treatment in  Ramallah? Will also you find it easy
to hide behind the explanation "we had  no idea": we had no idea that
the discrimination practiced in the  distribution of water - which is
solely controlled by Israel - leaves  thousands of Palestinian
households without water during the hot summer  months; we had no idea
that when the IDF blocks the entrance to villages, it  also blocks
their access to springs or water tanks.

But it cannot be  that you don't see the iron gates along route 344 in
the West Bank, blocking  access to it from the Palestinian villages it
passes by. It cannot be that  you support preventing the access of
thousands of farmers to their land and  plantations, that you support
the quarantine on Gaza which prevents the entry  of medicine for
hospitals, the disruption of electricity and water supply to  1.4
million human beings, closing their only outlet to the world  for
months.

Could it be that you do not know what is happening 15  minutes from
your faculties and offices? Is it plausible that you support  the
system in which Hebrew soldiers, at checkpoints in the heart of  the
West Bank, are letting tens of thousands of people wait everyday  for
hours upon hours under the blazing sun, while selecting: residents  of
Nablus and Tul Karm are not allowed through, 35-year-olds and under  -
yallah, back to Jenin, residents of the Salem village are not  even
allowed to be here, a sick woman who skipped the line must learn  a
lesson and will be purposefully detained for hours. Machsom Watch's
site  is available for all; in it are countless such testimonies and
worse, a day  by day routine. But it cannot be that those who are
appalled over every  swastika painted on a Jewish grave in France and
over every anti-Semitic  headline in a Spanish local newspaper will
not know how to reach this  information, and will not be appalled and
outraged.

As Jews we all  enjoy the privilege Israel gives us, what makes us all
collaborators. The  question is what does every one of us do in an
active and direct daily manner  to minimize cooperation with a
dispossessing, suppressing regime that never  has its fill. Signing a
petition and tutting will not do. Israel is a  democracy for its Jews.
We are not in danger of our lives, we will not be  jailed in
concentration camps, our livelihood will not be damaged  and
recreation in the countryside or abroad will not be denied to  us.
Therefore, the burden of collaboration and direct responsibility  is
immeasurably heavy.  
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