[WCUSP] 2 articles: YNET Opinion and IMEMC

[Tura Campanella Cook]

> YNET 
> OPINION 
>
> Time to talk peace   
>
> Israel's leaders must change mindset, engage in dialogue with  
> Palestinians  
>
> Shulamit Aloni   
> Published: 09.24.06, 00:28
>
> In a few months, we will mark 40 years of "enlightened" occupation by  
> our famed army in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. Israel pretends  
> to be an enlightened state and signatory of the Fourth Geneva  
> Convention, which rules that "The Occupying Power shall not deport or  
> transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it  
> occupies" (Israel ratified the Convention in 1951.)   
>
> Over the years we deported, robbed land and stole water, destroyed  
> crops, uprooted trees, turned every village and town into a detention  
> camp, and set up hundreds of communities on land that doesn't belong  
> to us. 
>
> We allowed the settlers to make a living by providing them with huge  
> amounts of money (more than 5 times per capita compared to residents  
> of southern development towns.) 
>
> We paved roads for Jews only, a case of blatant apartheid, while  
> defending it using witty Jewish self-righteousness in the absence of  
> fair and public reporting of the budgets involved, deeds committed,  
> expropriation of land, and disregard for vandalism. 
>
> Morality, justice, law and order stopped at the Green Line.  
> Lawlessness prevailed right under the noses and protective and  
> soothing hand of the IDF and police, as lawbreaking settlers made  
> their own laws undisturbed, and at times with the kind help of  
> authorities. 
>
> Every illegal settlement enjoys water, hydro, and a paved road. The  
> permanent residents, the natives, which the Israeli regime had to take  
> care of, became seemingly non-existent. As if they are there but not  
> there at the same time. The government only notices them if they  
> bother it by filing complaints.  
>
> It's no wonder that the leader of a political movement in Israel and a  
> Knesset member can declare that we should expel the Palestinians (and  
> also Israel's Arab citizens) in order to take over what is still left  
> to them.  
>
> But as we usually present it – we're the victim while they're the  
> murderers with blood on their hands. We never report the number of  
> Palestinians we murdered from the sky and killed by fire – women,  
> children, the elderly, whole families, thousands of them.  
>
> No wonder they hate us  
>
> Aerial bombings kill wanted suspects, while eliminating many civilians  
> – yet the hands of the pilot are "clean" of any blood. After all, the  
> victims were killed at the press of a button while their killers  
> returned home safely. None of them committed suicide to kill wanted  
> suspects, who by the way are not a "ticking bomb" and no evidence  
> exists against them.  
>
> At times it appears that the IDF, particularly during the last,  
> needless Lebanon war, turns the Gaza Strip into live-fire training  
> grounds for all army branches. Is it a wonder they hate us, and is it  
> a wonder they elected Hamas in free elections, the same Hamas whose  
> establishment we encouraged in order to undermine the PLO?  
>
> Many peace-making windows were opened over the years. We hindered all  
> of them, because we coveted the whole of the Territories. We had the  
> Oslo agreements. Twenty countries, which in the past had no ties with  
> us, recognized Israel. We had welfare, international ties were  
> blossoming, peace was at our gates – but we didn't want to make  
> concessions.  
>
> Rabin was murdered for the sake of the settlers, and the job of  
> burying peace-making attempts was completed by Ehud Barak with his  
> "There's nobody to talk to!" spin. In order to establish himself in  
> power, Barak also allowed Arik Sharon to visit Temple Mount with armed  
> escorts, even though he was asked by Arafat the night before not to  
> allow this due to the frustration and fury among Palestinians.  
>
> Now, another possibility for dialogue has opened. Yet our government  
> is again turning its back on it. They don't know how to and don’t want  
> to talk. Just now we brutally destroyed half of Lebanon at an immense  
> cost and turned a million civilians into refugees in their own  
> country.  
>
> Another superb achievement by the IDF and government of Israel. We're  
> willing to resort to any provocation and blow any incident out of  
> proportion, just to hold on to the regular pretext that "There's  
> nobody to talk to", and that we don't talk to terrorists.  
>
> Kahane won  
>
> Yet the acts we undertake by starving, curfews, deportations, the  
> theft of water and land, false arrests, and targeted killings – all  
> those are, of course, not terror, because the acts are undertaken by a  
> national army through the power of a decision made by legitimate  
> government.  
>
> Wonderful, it turns out we forget the fascist states (including  
> Stalin's USSR) that were very legitimate according to their own logic,  
> while committing a plethora of terror acts.  
>
> The time has come for the government of Israel to start talking peace,  
> and end the excuses for disqualifying and boycotting Palestinian  
> representatives. The use of arms does not have to be the first  
> reaction. Starvation, imprisonment, and expropriation by an occupying  
> force attest to an unwillingness to reach an agreement and an  
> addiction to greed.  
>
> This is reminiscent of Benny Elon comments: "We'll embitter their  
> lives so that they transfer themselves elsewhere."  
>
> One cannot escape the impression that the racist and brutal  
> declarations by Effie Eitam gave public expression to government  
> policy over the years. We must note that the courts – the defenders of  
> law and order, including the High Court of Justice – were partners to  
> the developments that led to the legitimization of parties and Knesset  
> members reminiscent of the racist, crude words uttered by MK Eitam.  
>
> In fact, it appears that Meir Kahane won, and we continue in his path  
> – we don't talk, but rather, only kill, raze homes and roads and  
> bridges, cut off electricity, fill prisons with women and children and  
> elected officials, because all of them are the "terrorists" while we,  
> the Jewish state, need to be defended from them. We're always the  
> ultimate victim.  
>
> As Golda Meir said: "I don't forgive the Arabs for forcing us to kill  
> them." There you go, she's the killer, yet she's the victim.  
>
> For our sake, the citizens of Israel, and for the sake of brining  
> peace and quiet – government leaders, start talking and keep doing it  
> until you reach an agreement.  
>
> Unruly sons will be brought back into the country, we'll be respecting  
> UN decisions and international conventions, we'll earnestly memorize  
> the universal human rights declaration and our own declaration of  
> independence, we'll rehabilitate our soul, and we'll attempt to  
> establish a democratic country governed by the law and justice. Shana  
> Tova. 
>
> http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3307081,00.html
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> -------------
>
> Jewish rabbi calls for extermination of all Palestinian males 
>
> IMEMC - 18 September 2006 
>
> A Jewish rabbi living in the West Bank has called on the Israeli  
> government to use their troops to kill all Palestinian males more than  
> 13 years old in a bid to end Palestinian presence on this earth. 
>
> Extremist rabbi Yousef Falay, who dwells at the Yitzhar settlement on  
> illegally seized Palestinian land in the northern part of the West  
> Bank, wrote an article in a Zionist magazine under the title "Ways of  
> War", in which he called for the killing of all Palestinian males  
> refusing to flee their country, describing his idea as the practical  
> way to ensure the non- existence of the Palestinian race. 
>
> "We have to make sure that no Palestinian individual remains under our  
> occupation. If they (Palestinians) escape then it is good; but if  
> anyone of them remains, then he should be exterminated", the fanatic  
> rabbi added in his article. 
>
> Falay is not the first to have called for such extreme measures.  
>  Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Kach movement, called for "the  
> transfer of Israel's Arab population to Arab (or other) lands." (As it  
> states on the group's website). Followers of Kahane have been  
> connected to a number of murders of Palestinians, particularly in the  
> Hebron area in the southern West Bank.  In the most well-known of such  
> attacks, 29 Palestinians praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron were  
> gunned down by Baruch Goldstein, a follower of Kahane, in 1994, with  
> Israeli soldiers looking on and allowing the gunman to reload his  
> automatic machine gun and continue killing innocent civilians.  In  
> response to that massacre, the Israeli authorities punished the  
> Palestinian victims by taking over the Ibrahimi mosque and turning  
> half of it into a synagogue, where Israeli settlers go to pray each  
> week.  And each year, on the anniversary of the massacre, Israeli  
> settlers in Hebron dress up like Baruch Goldstein and parade through  
> the streets of Hebron, firing guns in the air. 
>
> The Kach movement recognizes the 'transfer' of 750,000 Palestinians  
> that took place in 1948 in order for the state of Israel to be created  
> on their land, but argues on their website that this 'transfer' was  
> incomplete, and that all Palestinians must be sent away, or killed, in  
> order for Israel to remain a 'Jewish state'.  Their platform reads,  
> "In a genuinely 'JEWISH State', how can an Arab be an equal when that  
> State has an Independence Day celebrating his defeat. Its flag isn't  
> that of its people. He isn't trusted to serve in the army. His cousin  
> born in Haifa [sic] and fled during the 1948 War of Independence  
> cannot return... yet any Jew who never lived there before is welcomed  
> with open arms. In short, Israel is his enemy's country, not his. So  
> how can an Arab truly be a loyal citizen in a Jewish State? Simply,  
> they cannot, and they must go!" 
>
> The idea of extermination of Palestinians, or their 'transfer' into  
> other countries, is not only a view held by extremists on the fringes  
> of society. Prominent Israeli politicians have also made calls for a  
> 'transfer', or ethnic cleansing, based on race.  Just last week, on  
> September 11, 2006, an Israeli member of Parliament called explicitly  
> for the transfer of Palestinians (whom he referred to as 'Arabs') from  
> the West Bank (which he referred to as 'Judea and Samaria', the  
> biblical name for the region where the majority of Palestinians now  
> live). 
>
> "We have to expel most Arabs from Judea and Samaria," Eitam said at a  
> memorial service for Lt. Amihai Merhavia, a soldier who was killed in  
> South Lebanon in July.  "We can't deal with all these Arabs, and we  
> can't give up the territory, because we've already seen what they do  
> there. Some of them might have to stay under certain conditions, but  
> most of them will have to go."  Despite a law that would strip Israeli  
> parliament members of their immunity to prosecution if they are found  
> make explicitly racist statements, no investigation of Eitam has  
> occurred on this matter, and there was no condemnation of his  
> statement by the Israeli government. 
>
> http://www.imemc.org/content/view/21527/1/
>  
> --
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