Celebrating 60 Years Of Israel's Terror

By Ghali Hassan

15 May, 2008
Countercurrents.org

http://www.countercurrents.org/hassan150408.htm

May 14, 2008: As the U.S. and other Western governments began celebrating Israel's 60th anniversary of colonisation in Palestine, little attention is given to the unimaginable suffering of the Palestinian people. Instead Israel's daily terror against the Palestinians has been normalised as a relief of guilt feelings.

Few years before the establishment of Israel, Western governments, including Australia, Britain, Sweden, The Netherlands, Canada and the U.S. were opposed to the returning of displaced Jews and refugees to their countries of origin except to Palestine. In order to increase the number of Jews there, persecuted Jews were given one choice; migrate to Palestine or be killed by the Nazis. Yitzchak Greenbaum (head of the Rescue Committee for European Jewry) told a meeting in Tel Aviv in February 1943 that; "[T]he redemption of the land [Palestine]" must take precedence over "the rescue of the masses of Jews in Europe". He added: "The more said about the slaughter of our people, the greater the minimization of our efforts to strengthen and promote the Hebraization [ethnic cleansing] of the land". Western governments took this opportunity not only to "get rid" of their own Jews but also knowingly participated in the "Nazi Holocaust" and later in the Palestinian al-Nakba or "the Catastrophe", the deliberate and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land.

In 19947, Western powers voted (at the UN) to endorse the partition of historic Palestine. The Palestinians, who compromised two thirds of the settled population, were allotted 44 per cent of Palestine while the recently arrived Jewish immigrants from Europe, who comprised one third of the population, were allotted 56 per cent of Palestine. (See the Links for detail). The motives behind Western deliberate hypocrisy were – as usual – "humanitarian"; to "help" persecuted Jewish refugees and displaced persons. But as former Pakistan's representative to the UN, the late Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan, told the UN General Assembly on 28 November 1947: "One has observed that those who talk of humanitarian principles, and can afford to do most, have done the least at their own expense to alleviate this problem [the persecution of Jews]. But they are ready – indeed, they are anxious – to be most generous at the expense of the Arabs" of Palestine. It is important to remember that while most Western countries opposed to the return of Jewish refugees and displaced persons to their countries of origin, they declined to allow persecuted Jews to settle in the West. "Australia, an over-populated small country with congested areas, says no, no, no; Canada, equally congested and over-populated, says no; the United States, a great humanitarian country, a small area, with small resources, says no. That is their contribution to the humanitarian principles. But they state: let them go into Palestine, where there are vast areas, a large economy and no trouble; they can easily be taken in there", stated Zafrullah Khan. (See Link for the Plenary Meeting).

After the establishment of the state of Israel on 14 May 1948, Zionist Jews (led by David Ben-Gurion), supported by mostly Western powers, adopted Nazi policy and practice (Plan D or Dalet) to establish a "Jewish State" on all of historic Palestine with the judgement that Nazi policy is the only policy to guide the Zionists to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population and wipe out their nation. In a systematic campaign of terror, reminiscent to the November 1938 pogroms that terrorised Germany's Jewish community, Jewish terrorist organisations, such as the Haganah, Stern Gang, the Irgun and the Night Death Squads - armed and financed by the British -, embarked on a deliberate and uncontrolled orgy of burning, beating and killing Palestinians. Overnight, the Palestinians became victims of the "Nazi Holocaust".

Some 800,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homes and driven into exile. As Zionists planted the myths of "land without a people for a people without a land" and "Jews are God's chosen people", Palestinians were dehumanised and considered as Untermenschen (sub- humans). Thousands of Palestinian civilians were massacred by Jewish terrorists in cold blood. Palestinians were murdered for no reason except for being Palestinians. More than 530 villages and a dozen of urban neighbourhoods throughout Palestine were destroyed. Plan Dalet was "a detailed description of the methods to be used to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; and laying siege to and bombarding population centres", writes Ilan Pappe, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Cambridge University Press, 2006). To this day, Palestinians continue their legitimate struggle against Israel's deliberate and systematic policies of genocide.

Sixty years on, the state of Israel has given the world the Palestinian Nakba, the killing of Palestinian children for sport, the targeted assassinations of innocent Palestinians, the Apartheid Wall, and house demolition. Israel has given the world the most racist state in modern history, characterised by laws for Jews and discriminatory laws for none-Jews. Israel has given the world Zionist Jews who appropriating the Nazi Holocaust for shameful ends and too often tried to tar any legitimate criticism of Israel with the cliché of "anti-Semitism". Israel has also given the world war criminals such as David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barack, Shimon Peres, and Isaac Shamir, to mention just a few achievements.

Meanwhile, Western journalist, academics and pundits, function as complicit propagandists spreading anti-Arabs/anti Muslims sentiments. They argue that Israel is a "success" story and Israelis ought to be "proud of their achievements". Of course, these achievements are fabricated fictions. Israel is a transferred entity erected on the ruins of Palestinian homes and villages in flagrant violation of international law and civilised norms. Without the massive and unconditional American-European financial, military and political support, Israel would not come into being.

In addition, Western media saturation ensured that Israel' Nazi-like policies and a fabricated image of Israel as a "democratic" and "peace-loving" nation would be firmly implanted in the minds of the American-Western publics. From the Hollywood Entertainment Industry to CNN and the New York Times to Murdoch media to the British BBC and the Internet, a global propaganda is working tirelessly defending and legitimising Israelo-fascism in the Middle East. But measured by its history of violent actions and state-sponsored terrorism rather than its fabricated image, Israel is a terrorist state with abhorrent racist policies.

Through constant vilification of Muslims and Arabs, Western propaganda is exonerating Israel and covering-up for Israel's oppression and war crimes against the Palestinian people. In this sense, Western anti-Semitism has come full cycle: from the victimisation of Jews to the dehumanisation and victimisation of the Palestinians. The recent display of arrogance by Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who claimed that Palestinian legitimate resistance to Israel's terror amounts to "anti-Semitism", is just an abhorrent case in point.

Sixty years on, Palestinians continue to live under unimaginable suffering while the rest of the world is manipulated by opportunist politicians and Zionists-controlled media to look the other way. In his recent visit to Gaza, former president of the U.S., Jimmy Carter observes: "The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air, or land. An entire population is being brutally punished". Carter rightly calls Israel an Apartheid state, and concludes: "[T]he world must not stand idle while innocent people are treated cruelly. It is time for strong voices in Europe, the US, Israel, and elsewhere to speak out and condemn this human rights tragedy among the Palestinian people". (Daily Star, Egypt, 06 May 2008). As a result of exposing some of Israel's war crimes, Carter was vilified and accused of "anti-Semitism" by pro-Israel Zion-fascists such as Alan Dershowitz and Daniel Pipes.

Furthermore, Richard Falk, Professor of International Law at Princeton University, rightly compares Israeli crimes in Palestine to those of the Nazis and reminds the Western World of "the famous post-Nazi pledge of 'never again'". The leading Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, argued that Israeli leaders are using Gaza collective punishment as a human experiment to test the affect of starvation on innocent civilians, a reminder of Nazis' policy in Auschwitz.

Condoned by major Western governments, particularly the U.S. and Britain, Israel's terror against the Palestinians has not only increased, but also normalised in "Western Conscience". Violence has become Israel's preferred policy. Any just peaceful settlement with the Palestinians is rejected out of hand, even when many Israelis are in favour of peace. More often, Israel initiates violence to justify greater violence and destruction, and in order to occupy more Arab land. Today, Israel is rightly seen by the majority of people around the world as the greatest threat to world peace; a terrorist state.
As Western governments began to congratulate Israel, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights issued a report on Sunday revealing that Israeli soldiers killed 69 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in April. Among the killed residents were 20 children and 16 women. The Centre reported that soldiers carried 30 invasions into the Gaza Strip in April and kidnapped 127 Palestinians, including 17 who are still in detention. Soldiers also bulldozed 372 Dunams (one Dunam is 1,000 square meters) of agricultural land and demolished 15 homes. In the West Bank and Jerusalem, Palestinians are enduring Israel's brutal military occupation, characterised by a system of total military control. In March 2008, under massive Israeli military aggression on Gaza, the Israeli army killed 130 Palestinians, a third of them were children and 12 women, and caused massive destruction to civilian homes. In an attempt to desensitize world opinion, murdering Palestinians has become a daily occurrence and normalised. More often, when Israelis murdered Palestinian children, Israeli and Western propagandists blamed the victims, always depicted as "militants", for "accidentally setting off explosive in their backpacks".  

Furthermore, at least 11,000 Palestinians, including women and 350 children, are incarcerated in Israeli prisons, many of them without charge. They are subjected to Israel's daily criminal abuses of human rights, including sadistic torture sanctioned by Israel's Supreme Court. They remain isolated and deliberately ignored by Israel's friends and allies in the West. No matter where they are, in Gaza or the West Bank, Palestinians are living under Israeli torturous prison conditions.

The ongoing building of the illegal Apartheid Wall, which is annexing 20 per cent of the Occupied West Bank, illegal Jewish colonies (settlements) and the construction of Jewish-only roads on private Palestinian land in the West Bank have isolated Palestinians from each other and pushed Palestinians into destitute ghettos. Moreover, the proliferation of more than 500 Israeli check-points and the presence of large number of illegal and heavily armed extremist Jewish settlers subjected the Palestinians to permanent state of terror and brutal system of control.

Today, more than ever, the right of Palestinians to a viable Palestinian state has been made impossible. The so-called two-state solution – the chewing gum of Western politicians and pundits –, is dead "because Israel has destroyed the physical and political possibilities of building a coherent state for the Palestinian people" to return to, wrote Joel Kovel.

Despite all oft hat, Israel has failed to wipe out the Palestinians and their aspirations. The only option left (for Palestinians and Jews) is a single democratic state with equal rights for all citizens, irrespective of religion and ethnicity.

While Western governments celebrating Israel's 60th anniversary of colonisation of Palestine, Palestinians are commemorating 60 years of ongoing Israel's terror and dispossession. Unless a just peaceful solution is found to end the suffering of the Palestinian people, Western governments will continue to live with the burden of guilt they had perpetuated.

Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.