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

[Odile Hugonot Haber]

My hat down to hers she is such a good thinker.

On 8/30/06, KATHARLOW at aol.com <KATHARLOW at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Please send this to those you know who don't yet see...
> ------------------------------------------------------
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> 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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