Who are the real terrorists in the Middle East?

Laura

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http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1197235.ece

What exactly is being defended? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state?
Published: 26 July 2006

As its citizens are being killed, Israel is, yet again, inflicting death and destruction on Lebanon. It tries to portray this horror as necessary for its self-defence. Indeed, the casual observer might regard the rocket attacks on Israeli cities such as Haifa and my own home town, Nahariya, as justifying this claim.

While states should defend their citizens, states which fail this duty should be questioned and, if necessary, reconfigured. Israel is a state which, instead of defending its citizens, puts all of them, Jews as well as non-Jews, in danger.

What exactly is being defended by the violence in Gaza and Lebanon? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state? I suggest the latter. Israel's statehood is based on an unjust ideology which causes indignity and suffering for those who are classified as non-Jewish by either a religious or ethnic test. To hide this primordial immorality, Israel fosters an image of victimhood. Provoking violence, consciously or unconsciously, against which one must defend oneself is a key feature of the victim-mentality. By perpetuating such a tragic cycle, Israel is a terrorist state like no other.

Many who wish to hide the immorality of the Israeli state do so by restricting attention to the horrors of the post-1967 occupation and talking about a two-state solution, since endorsing a Palestinian state implicitly endorses the ideology behind a Jewish one.

The very creation of Israel required an act of terror. In 1948, most of the non-Jewish indigenous people were ethnically cleansed from the part of Palestine which became Israel. This action was carefully planned. Without it, no state with a Jewish majority and character would have been possible. Since 1948, the "Israeli Arabs", those Palestinians who avoided expulsion, have suffered continuous discrimination. Indeed, many have been internally displaced, ostensibly for "security reasons", but really to acquire their lands for Jews.

Surely Holocaust memory and Jewish longing for Eretz Israel would not be sufficient to justify ethnic cleansing and ethnocracy? To avoid the destabilisation that would result from ethical inquiry, the Israeli state must hide the core problem, by nourishing a victim mentality among Israeli Jews.

To sustain that mentality and to preserve an impression of victimhood among outsiders, Israel must breed conditions for violence. Whenever prospects of violence against it subside, Israel must do its utmost to regenerate them: the myth that it is a peace-seeking victim which has "no partner for peace" is a key panel in the screen with which Israel hides its primordial and continuing immorality.

Israel's successful campaign to silence criticism of its initial and continuing dispossession of the indigenous Palestinians leaves the latter no option but to resort to violent resistance. In the wake of electing Hamas - the only party which, in the eyes of Palestinians, has not yet given up their cause - the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank were subjected to an Israeli campaign of starvation, humiliation and violence.

The insincere "withdrawal" from Gaza, and the subsequent blockade, ensured a chronicle of violence which, so far, includes Palestinian firing of Kasem rockets, the capture of an Israeli soldier and the Israeli near re-occupation of Gaza. What we witness is more hatred, more violence from Palestinians, more humiliation and collective punishments from Israelis - all useful reinforcement for the Israeli victim mentality and for the sacred cow status of Israeli statehood.

The truth is that there never could have been a partition of Palestine by ethically acceptable means. Israel was created through terror and it needs terror to cover-up its core immorality. Whenever there is a glimmer of stability, the state orders a targeted assassination, such as that in Sidon which preceded the current Lebanon crisis, knowing well that this brings not security but more violence. Israel's unilateralism and the cycle of violence nourish one another.

Amidst the violence and despite the conventional discourse which hides the root of this violence, actuality calls upon us to think. The more we silence its voice, the more violently actuality is sure to speak.

In Hebrew, the word elem (a stunned silence resulting from oppression or shock) is etymologically linked to the word almut (violence). Silence about the immoral core of Israeli statehood makes us all complicit in breeding the terrorism that threatens a catastrophe which could tear the world apart.

okbendor@ yahoo.com

The writer teaches the philosophy of law and political philosophy at University of Southampton
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0%2C%2C1832183%2C00.html

The call that tells you: run, you're about to lose your home and possessions

Conal Urquhart in Gaza City
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian

The voice sounded friendly enough. "Hi, my name is Danny. I'm an officer in Israeli military intelligence. In one hour we will blow up your house."

Mohammed Deeb took the telephone call seriously and told his family and neighbours to get out of the building. An hour later, an Israeli helicopter fired three missiles at the four-storey building in Gaza City, destroying the ground floor and damaging the upper storeys.

Mr Deeb was on the receiving end of a new Israeli tactic of using telephone, radio and leaflets to warn Gazans of impending attacks. The army claims it is an attempt to minimise civilian casualties, but Palestinians say it is a new way of terrorising the population.

Raji Serrani, the director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which has collected several examples of the tactic, described it as "psychological warfare", adding: "Since when did Israel feel the need to warn people that they were about to bomb their homes? They are simply playing with people's minds and inflicting a new panic in Gaza."

The family of Ibrahim Mahmoud in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza were ordered to leave their home by an Israeli intelligence officer. The officer called back one hour later to say she had made a mistake. She ended her call to Mr Mahmoud by telling him to "be safe", he told the Associated Press.

The warnings, which sometimes are followed by an Israeli attack and sometimes not, are happening as Israel continues its latest invasion of the Gaza Strip. Four people were killed and dozens injured yesterday as Israeli tanks patrolled residential areas to the east of Gaza City. Twenty-five people were killed on Wednesday.

Fears that Israel will destroy homes are widespread: 900 residents of the al Nader towers, a complex of 12 apartment blocks in the north of Gaza, fled on Tuesday after 10 Israeli shells landed close to them, killing three residents. According to the PCHR, Israel had also informed Palestinian police that they planned to demolish the towers.

Izzat al Jamal, 38, a Palestinian policeman, moved his wife and eight children out of their apartment to emergency accommodation in a local school. "When they started firing, it was clear it was aimed directly at us and it wasn't a random mistake. I had to leave for the children's sake. I haven't been paid in four months and now I don't even have a home."

Hundreds of families have also moved out of the east of Gaza City in the al Shaaf and al Tuffah suburbs after Israeli tanks took up position on Wednesday. Two tanks were visible on hills above the suburbs and many more could be heard shooting and moving in the narrow streets.

Scores of Palestinian fighters armed with rifles attempted to approach the tanks, which - supported by drones and helicopters - fired shells and machine guns throughout yesterday. At Shifa Hospital, the ambulances lined up to deliver the injured and crowds of men waited to take away the dead.

Dr Jumah Sakkah said the hospital had taken in 16 injured people and two had died. The death toll later rose to four. He said that all of the injured were non-combatants.
 
It will be interesting to see how many buildings are blown up after telephone warnings before they still phone but the building is not attacked - only the population 'removed.'
 
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