[WCUSP] Fwd: Address by Hanan Ashrawi in Durban, South Africa on August 28, 2001

[yvonne simmons]

--- Rezeq Faraj <rezeqfaraj at videotron.ca> wrote:

> To: "Women in Black" <rezeqfaraj at videotron.ca>
> From: "Rezeq Faraj" <rezeqfaraj at videotron.ca>
> Subject: Address by Hanan Ashrawi in Durban, South
> Africa   on August 28, 2001
> Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 06:48:58 -0400
> 
> World should intervene to end the Israeli Apartheid
> (Address by Hanan Ashrawi in Durban, South Africa,
> on August 28, 2001)
> 
> 
> by Hanan Ashrawi
> 
> Sisters and Brothers,
> 
> From Jerusalem, from the heart of Palestine, a land
> besieged, and repeatedly
> violated by a most brutal Israeli military
> occupation, I have come to join
> you today. From the midst of the people of
> Palestine, a tortured nation,
> guilty only of an unwavering commitment to freedom,
> dignity, and
> independence, I have come to join you today. From
> the depths of unredeemed
> history, I have come to join you today. I represent
> a narrative of
> exclusion, denial, racism, and national
> victimization, but I also come with
> a message of hope, redemption, and historical
> vindication embodied in the
> spirit and the will of a people that has refused to
> succumb to all forces of
> oppression, violence, cruelty, and injustice.
> 
> In convening this conference, you are the authentic
> embodiment of courage in
> withstanding the forces of domination, subjugation,
> and enslavement.
> 
> We stand together today to launch a truly global
> mission of empowerment and
> solidarity, to give voice to the "silenced," to give
> a reality to the
> "invisible," to give recognition to the "denied,"
> and to give credence to
> the victimized.
> 
> In times of adversity, and during the darkest nights
> of the soul, we look to
> you for affirmation and action as an antidote to the
> failure of established
> power systems, including governments - a failure
> characterized by
> self-interest, power politics, absence of will, and
> impotence. I take this
> opportunity to recognize before you those valiant
> men and women who had left
> the comfort of their homes in Europe and the US and
> joined us in Palestine
> to provide popular protection, a "human shield" in
> the face of Israeli
> abuses, violence, and violations against the
> Palestinian people.
> 
> I come to you today with a heavy heart leaving
> behind a nation in captivity
> held hostage to an ongoing "Nakba" [catastrophe], as
> the most intricate and
> pervasive expression of persistent colonialism,
> apartheid, racism, and
> victimization.
> 
> More than half a century ago [53 years], the
> Palestinians as a people were
> slated for national obliteration, cast outside the
> course of history, their
> identity denied, and their very human cultural and
> historical reality
> suppressed. We became victims of the myth of "a land
> without a people for
> people without a land" whereby the West sought to
> assuage its guilt over its
> horrendous anti-Semitism by the total victimization
> of a whole nation.
> Zionism sought to implement its agenda of
> exclusivity by usurping not only
> the lands and rights of the Palestinians, but also
> by confiscating their
> utterance and distorting their historical narrative.
> 
> In 1948, we became subject to a grave historical
> injustice manifested in a
> dual victimization: on the one hand, the injustice
> of dispossession,
> dispersion, and exile forcibly enacted on the
> population that has come to be
> known as the "refugee question" that currently
> encompasses more than 5
> million Palestinians. On the other hand, those that
> remained were subject to
> the systematic oppression and brutality of an
> inhuman occupation that robbed
> them of all their rights and liberties including
> their national identity on
> their own land.
> 
> The creation of the state of Israel was no heroic
> and legendary
> accomplishment as depicted by the version of history
> propagated by the
> conquerors. It is time to lift the veil, to examine
> the facts themselves,
> and to come to grips with the horrific price paid by
> an innocent nation for
> the mere fact of its existence as well as for the
> greed and moral blindness
> of others. The days of denial must come to an end.
> The Palestinian people
> deserve their day in the sun as an equal among
> nations, and as a tribute to
> the human will that cannot be broken.
> 
> As a Palestinian, as a woman, and on behalf of my
> people, I stand before you
> today to lay claim to my/to our humanity. From the
> non-existent Palestinians
> ("there is not such thing as Palestinians; they
> never existed" (Golda Meir,
> 1969) we have undergone a metamorphosis willfully
> inflicted upon us by
> Israeli-imposed diction and policies that have
> variously depicted us as
> "two-legged vermin," "cockroaches," "beasts walking
> on two legs," a people
> that have to be exterminated unless they are
> "resigned to live as slaves,"
> "grasshoppers to be crushed," "crocodiles," and
> "vipers." [A comprehensive
> list with representative samples is available]
> 
> Such a systematic and racist dehumanization was also
> accompanied by policies
> of violent expulsion. "There is no other way than to
> transfer the Arabs from
> here to neighboring countries, not one village, not
> one tribe should be
> left" (Joseph Weitz, 1940).
> 
> "There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for
> the Jews in Eretz Yisrael.
> If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples,
> it is also possible to
> move the Palestinian Arabs" (Vladimir Jabotinsky,
> 1939).
> 
> "Zionist colonization must either be terminated or
> carried out against the
> wishes of the native population.. It is important to
> speak Hebrew, but it is
> even more important to be able to shoot - or else I
> am through at playing
> with colonizing" (Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1939).
> 
> "We must do everything to insure they never return.
> The old will die and the
> young will forget." However, for those that remained
> in spite of all of
> Israel's military coercion and attempts at forced
> expulsion, other (and
> equally sinister) plans were in the making: "We
> shall reduce the Arab
> population to a community of woodcutters and
> waiters." (David Ben Gurion).
> 
> To the rest of the world, we were reduced to the
> Aristotelian dualism of
> pity and fear - the pitiful refugees, of the fearful
> "terrorists." But never
> were we perceived or addressed in the fullness of
> our humanity.
> 
> The Palestinians today continue to be subject to
> multiple forms and
> expressions of racism, exclusion, oppression,
> colonialism, apartheid, and
> national denial. Our right to self-determination,
> hence sovereignty and
> statehood, has been withheld by force and made
> subject to the approval of
> our oppressor. The refugee populations, mostly
> "stateless people," are
> bereft of the rudimentary civil, human, political,
> and national rights, left
> at the mercy of host countries that view them either
> as a demographic
> threat, or as unwelcome guests. While Israel has
> legislated a "law of
> return" to bring in Jews from all over the world
> into historical Palestine,
> it persists in rejecting the Palestinian refugees'
> "Right of Return" and in
> refusing to abide by UN res. 194, a legal commitment
> which the international
> community was supposed to guarantee and implement.
> 
> The Palestinians who remained in what has become
> Israel are experiencing in
> their historical homeland the worst system of
> apartheid, exclusion, and
> racial discrimination--their towns and cities either
> taken over entirely, or
> turned into ghettos and enclaves as the "non-Jewish"
> population of Israel.
> Many continue to be "displaced persons" in their own
> land, witnesses to the
> destruction of their villages. Over 500 villages
> were razed in the original
> ethnic cleansing campaign that accompanied the
> creation of the state of
> Israel. Those of us who came under Israeli
> occupation in 1967 have
> languished in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Gaza
> Strip under a unique
> combination of military occupation, settler
> colonization, and systematic
> oppression.
> 
> Rarely has the human mind devised such varied,
> diverse, and comprehensive
> means of wholesale brutalization and persecution.
> Since 1967, Palestinian
> land has been expropriated at an increasing pace,
> while whole Jewish
> populations have been brought in, in a calculated
> scheme of settler
> colonization. Throughout the land, an artificial and
> colonial grid of
> infrastructure was superimposed on our authentic
> reality to create a
> spurious settler superstructure as a means of
> Israeli demographic,
> geographic, and extraterritorial incursions into
> Palestine.
> 
> So-called "bypass roads" for the exclusive use of
> the illegal Jewish settler
> population, tear through the heart of Palestinian
> land, to bypass
> Palestinian realities and create a unique form of
> racism. In the meantime,
> settler vigilantes habitually unleash the full force
> of their extremism and
> violence, carrying out campaigns of terror against
> defenseless Palestinian
> families and villages. Israel's state terrorism is
> implemented by both
> military and settler perpetrators with political
> duplicity and legal
> impunity.
> 
> Another unique manifestation of Israeli racism is
> the blatant and sinister
> policy of "demographic engineering." To maintain the
> "Jewish character," or
> the "purity" of the state of Israel, the
> Palestinians have been depicted and
> dealt with as a "demographic threat." Proposed
> "remedies" included calls for
> forced birth control and "population management," to
> "transfer" and
> expulsion of whole communities, to the racist and
> punitive unilateral
> "separation" scheme currently being advocated.
> 
> In Jerusalem, land expropriation, ID confiscations,
> home demolitions,
> withholding of building permits, and the importation
> of settler colonies
> within and around the city have become constant
> elements of Israel's
> demographic engineering through ethnic cleansing.
> 
> Jerusalem is also under siege in an attempt to
> isolate it from its
> Palestinian context and environment, and to
> extricate it from the heart of
> Palestine, as the center of political, cultural,
> economic, social, and
> educational activity and as the future capital of
> our state. Such Israeli
> unilateral measures seek to consolidate Israel's
> illegal annexation of
> occupied Jerusalem, and to impose a Jewish
> exclusivity on a Palestinian city
> that has always been pluralistic and tolerant.
> Onslaughts on Christian and
> Islamic holy sites and activities while banning
> Palestinian worshipers from
> reaching their holy places of worship betray a
> willful policy of intolerance
> and a violation of the right and freedom to worship.
> 
> A state of siege has been imposed not only on the
> West Bank and Gaza, but
> also within these territories, to transform each
> village, town, and city
> into an isolated prison thereby destroying every
> aspect of human life,
> including economic, educational, health, and social
> cohesiveness in an
> attempt to sever every fiber of the fabric of normal
> life. Israeli
> occupation troops using tanks, helicopter gunships,
> F-16s, military barges,
> and checkpoints not only render a whole Palestinian
> population captive in 64
> isolated bantustans, they also use the full force of
> their military power
> against a vulnerable and defenseless people. Daily,
> they shell Palestinian
> homes, assassinate Palestinian activists and
> leaders, destroy crops and
> fields, indulge in cold-blooded murder of children
> and other innocents while
> implementing a policy of deliberate humiliation and
> suffocation at every
> checkpoint.
> 
> The Israeli occupation has also hijacked the concept
> of "security" rendering
> it applicable only to Israelis while depriving the
> Palestinians of every
> aspect of personal, political, legal, territorial,
> historical, cultural,
> economic, and even human security. As a blanket
> cover for its systematic
> abuses, Israel has also abused the essence of the
> concept, exploiting it for
> the sake of eradicating any mention of the
> occupation, and claiming the
> illogical "right" to have a "secure"-or even a safe
> and pleasant-military
> occupation that is in itself the very antithesis of
> peace, security, and
> human rights.
> 
> As the world watches, Israel has succeeded in
> evolving and imposing another
> grand deception in the form of an official spin that
> not only dehumanizes
> and demonizes the Palestinians, but also as an
> attempt at "blaming the
> victim" and resuscitating labels that represent us
> as subhuman species, and
> genetically violent "terrorists," hence undeserving
> of any human treatment.
> At best, a false symmetry is manufactured between
> occupier and occupied,
> oppressor and oppressed, (as in the call on both
> sides to "stop the
> violence") serving to eradicate the full horror of
> the occupation while
> depriving the victims of their right to resist.
> Given the disequilibrium of
> power, the American insistence on a "bilateral
> solution" only serves to give
> Israel license to exploit the asymmetry of power and
> to pursue its policies
> of subjugating a whole nation and imposing a
> unilateral and unjust solution.
> 
> The Israeli solution is firmly imbedded in the
> tainted mentality of
> occupation as license to dictate by force of arms
> illegal and punitive
> realities that would further exacerbate the conflict
> and the suffering of
> the Palestinian people. Refusal to intervene by the
> US and the international
> community as a whole has given Israel a free hand to
> continue to act with
> impunity and immunity as a country above the law and
> beyond accountability,
> while the Palestinians continue to be deprived of
> protection of the law and
> the minimal imperatives of moral and human decency.
> We continue to plead for
> a global rule of law that would check the aggression
> of the powerful, and
> eliminate the ongoing dehumanization of the
> Palestinian people. Such absence
> of will and abrogation of responsibility on the part
> of the international
> community has not only perpetuated the "Nakba" and
> prolonged the suffering
> and victimization of the Palestinian people, but has
> also served to
> undermine the quest and chances for peace throughout
> the region.
> 
> When we joined the peace process launched in Madrid
> in 1991, we did so as an
> act of will, as a commitment to a peaceful
> resolution of the conflict with
> the aim of ending the occupation of 22% of
> historical Palestine and the
> establishment of our independent state on the
> territory occupied by Israel
> in 1967. As victims, we rose above the pain of the
> moment and reached out to
> our occupiers to wrench the course of history away
> from inevitable conflict,
> towards reconciliation based on justice and parity.
> Buttressed by the
> confidence of the people's will to endure and resist
> oppression, as
> manifested in the intifada of 1987, we offered
> Israel and the world a unique
> opportunity to legitimize a daring pursuit of peace,
> and to gain a
> constituency for an equitable resolution.
> 
> Unfortunately, the peace process became a punitive
> process manipulated by
> Israel to pursue its policies of expansion, ethnic
> cleansing, colonialism,
> and subjugation of the weaker side by force. It
> further served as a guise to
> rationalize the separation of the people from the
> land and to fragment both
> the people and the land, transforming the occupied
> Palestinian territories
> into a series of isolated reservations or Bantustans
> while maintaining full
> Israeli hegemony and direct control. While seeking
> to bestow retroactive
> legitimacy on illegal Israeli settlements, and on
> Israel's annexation of
> Jerusalem by force, it also sought to negate the
> Palestinian refugees' right
> of return thereby denying the very essence of peace
> and destroying its
> foundations.
> 
> The so-called "generous offer" of Barak has been
> exposed for the sham that
> it is - an occupier's version of "what's good for
> the natives," based only
> on "what's good for Israel," thus ensuring further
> conflict and instability
> rather than cementing a fair and durable solution.
> Having been historically
> the victims of war and conflict, we found ourselves
> the victims of a flawed
> and unjust peace process.
> 
> Sharon's incursion into the Haram Al-Sharif on
> September 28, 2000, was only
> the calculated spark that ignited a powder keg
> already in place as a result
> of the inequities of the process itself. The use of
> live ammunition and
> "lethal force" against the unarmed Palestinian
> protestors unleashed horrific
> forces of hostility, racism, and orchestrated
> violence against the captive
> Palestinian people. The continued intensification of
> these measures sends an
> ominous and stark message of brutality and is
> symptomatic of the regression
> to fundamentalist Zionism witnessed in the
> bloodbaths of the 1940's. By
> claiming that "this is the continuation of Israel's
> War of Independence,"
> Sharon is sending a message to the Palestinian
> people and to the whole world
> that the national eradication and the ethnic
> cleansing of the 1948 "Nakba"
> are still in process.
> 
> The current Israeli government represents the most
> lethal combination of
> extremist right-wing political ideology, religious
> fundamentalism and
> zealotry, and unbridled forces of militarism with a
> deceptive veneer of "the
> civilized face" of the Labor party. Sharon is the
> same army general who had
> committed crimes against humanity in such atrocities
> as the Qibya massacre
> of 1953, the "cleansing of Gaza" in 1973, the
> invasion of Lebanon and the
> massacres of Sabra and Shatilla of 1982. Intent on
> pursuing this bloody path
> and on repeating the mistakes of history, Sharon has
> not learned that no
> amount of brutality, cruelty, or violence can break
> the will of a people
> determined to gain its freedom, dignity, and
> independence. He shows no signs
> of drawing the right historical conclusions that
> colonialism is by nature a
> temporary form of enslavement, and that a people
> colonized cannot be brought
> to their knees by the colonizer's stifling measures
> of subjugation and
> containment.
> 
> Sisters and brothers, I appeal to you today, to
> restore the absent
> Palestinians to the agenda of humanity, to validate
> our reality and rights,
> to recognize and alleviate the pain and suffering of
> this tortured nation,
> and to give recognition to the Palestinian narrative
> long denied. You are
> the only source of empowerment for a people who feel
> abandoned and
> disempowered, but who have never lost faith in human
> solidarity and a shared
> vision of emancipation.
> 
> I appeal to you, as I have often done to governments
> and global fora, not to
> adopt the stance of "cowardly neutrality," for in
> the struggle against
> oppression, injustice, racism, intolerance,
> colonialism, and exclusion,
> there can be NO neutrality. We are all called upon
> to take sides on behalf
> of the victim, the disenfranchised, and the
> oppressed, and to stem the tide
> of evil and prevent the forces of darkness from
> prevailing. Here, there is
> no US veto to deprive us of protection and our
> rights, nor is there
> censorship or blackmail to intimidate governments
> ruled by self- interest.
> 
> Let this meeting radiate the pure light of the human
> spirit that can never
> be dimmed or contained. Our path to the future must
> be based on the
> redemption of history and the past, free of the
> shackles of inherited
> inequities. Our legacy to the future must be based
> on the rectification of
> the painful legacies of the past.
> 
> Sisters and brothers, Never before has an occupation
> army imposed such a
> total and suffocating siege on a captive civilian
> population, then proceeded
> to shell their homes, bomb their infrastructure,
> assassinate their activists
> and leaders, destroy their crops and trees, murder
> their civilians at will,
> steal their lands, and then demand that they
> acquiesce like lambs to the
> slaughter. Never before have the victims been denied
> the right to
> articulate, and gain recognition for, the horrendous
> atrocities being
> committed against them as a matter of policy, but
> were rather blamed and
> punished for the fact of their victimization.
> 
> The oft-repeated dictum that "Israel will not
> negotiate under fire" applies
> only to Palestinian "fire" or attempts at
> self-defense. While Israel must be
> left unhampered in its fire-shell-assassinate at
> will policy, the
> Palestinians must maintain "zero violence" leading
> to a "cooling off period"
> that would prepare the way for "confidence-building
> measures" and ultimately
> award the Palestinians the coveted "prize" of
> resuming negotiations with
> their occupiers.
> 
> On behalf of the Palestinian people I appeal to you
> to have the courage to
> intervene, to ensure that the oppressor is held
> accountable and the victim
> is protected, to enact those principles and values
> that not only protect
> lives but that also imbue life with the human
> qualities that make it worth
> living. Despite our overwhelming pain, we have not
> surrendered to the forces
> of occupation, colonization, racism, and
> dehumanization-nor have we adopted
> their moral distortions. I ask you also not to
> succumb, but to maintain and
> enhance the struggle for dignity, equality, freedom,
> and justice as an act
> of collective affirmation on behalf of humanity as a
> whole.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://rezeq.com
> http://pages.infinit.net/far/
> rezeqfaraj at videotron.ca
> 
> 



 
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