Alternative Insight

Vanquishing the Palestinians

Recent media articles have conditioned the public to accept Israel's construction of a separation barrier that postures as a security wall but divides Palestinian communities into enclaves. The media softening of criticism to Israel's separation barrier has been followed by the U.S. government's vocal acceptance of the "strangling" wall. The juxtaposition of events indicates a concentrated effort to disguise a disturbing situation -- Israel's intention to vanquish the Palestinian people.

 

A Media Conditioning
In a convoluted article titled, In Israel's Fence, an Opening to Accord, Washington Post, Dec. 22, 2003, Henry Kissinger argues that the Israel separation wall, that divides Palestinian communities into enclaves and permits Israel to annex much of the West Bank, is a route to peaceful negotiations. This absurd "route to peaceful negotiations" is troublesome. Absurdities often become drastic policies and the Tribune Media Services circulation of the Kissinger article serves to condition the public to the drastic policy - acceptance of a separation barrier that will bring about the dissolution of the Palestinian people. The danger of the barrier to the life of the Palestinian people is obvious.

Israeli authorities have not published an official map of the proposed route of the "Separation Barrier." Information leaks, land confiscation and present routes have provided clues to the final routing of the barrier. Take a look at a drawing that shows what the "Separation Barrier" accomplishes.

Carefully survey the map of the Separation Barrier and the conclusion leaps from its routing: The settlements were planned to invite retaliation and strategically placed to eventually construct a barrier that separates the Palestinians into enclaves. The barrier was not primarily planned to provide security.

Let's face it. Henry Kissinger might lack credibility to many political observers but he has credentials and influence. Kissinger words can persuade the public. His astonishing statements, that don't consider the punishing fate of the Palestinian population, require rebuttals. These rebuttals serve to counter the growing number of similar arguments that attempt to convince audiences that enclosing people in camps is good for them.

NOTE: Kissinger's staements are in bold.

When considering purchasing a property in one of Jerusalem's more exclusive neighborhoods, always remember: a good portion of the holy city's real estate is owned by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate (ED:Which is Palestinian). Besides the Patriarchate's compound in the Old City, which includes 23 churches and monasteries, the San Simon complex in Old Katamon and the Monastery of the Cross near the Knesset, the church owns the land around the Jerusalem railway station, and large swathes of property in Talbieh and Rehavia, both neighborhoods in great demand. (ED: And that is ownership by only one Palestinian institution.)
Capital Property Consultants , P.O. Box 4315 Jerusalem Israel

Actually, there are no historically verified biblical Hebrew institutions, buildings or monuments that exist today in Jerusalem. Note:

There are five centuries (500 B.C. to 1 A.D.) about which our historical knowledge, the Temple Mount, and the Temple itself is relatively abundant. But the lion's share of the information comes to us from written sources alone, for no archeological excavations prior to the Six-Day War (1967 war) yielded any more than a paucity of finds from this rich period. In fact, anyone attempting to reconstruct the history of Jerusalem through archaeological means would find himself in very difficult straits when it comes to this span of half a millennium. The only material available is common to all artifacts, all of them small objects, architectural finds-meaning the remains of buildings-are almost entirely absent. Of course, we hoped that our own dig would change this sorry situation, but our hopes went unfulfilled. Neither our excavations below the Temple Mount nor any of the other digs carried out in the Old City after the Six-Day War uncovered any architectural remains.- Meir Ben-Dove, In the Shadow of the Temple, P.64

Consider Kissinger's pronouncements.

For several months, the U.S. administration expressed discomfort with Israel's security barrier and didn't prevent its construction. After wide circulation of media propaganda that favors the construction of the Separation Wall, the U.S. modified its tone. The U.S. is now defending Israel's construction of the wall and Israel's struggle against a possible World Court decision that will consider the barrier as being illegal.

U.S. Government Pronouncements

Powell defends Sharon's barrier - Nicholas Kralev, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, Jan.9, 2004.

The Bush administration yesterday dismissed a Palestinian threat to pursue a shared state with Israel if Prime Minister Ariel Sharon goes ahead with a security barrier that would cut off parts of the West Bank. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell defended Mr. Sharon, saying the barrier is only a contingency plan in the event that the Palestinians fail to become a "reliable partner."


U.S. shares Israel's concerns about Hague fence talks - Aluf Benn and Arnon Regular, Ha'aretz, Jan. 11, 2004

The U.S. is privy to Israel's concerns about the upcoming discussions on the security fence at the International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC). American officials believe these anticipated discussions will set a negative precedent, and politicize international law.
But in diplomacy there are no free lunches - and we can assume that in exchange for removing the legal nuisance, Washington will demand that Israel give up the idea of the eastern fence.

The U.S. is following a policy towards Israel's Separation Barrier similar to those of previous policies that excused Israel's violations of International law. Complain - Threaten - Do Nothing - Have public anger against the violation run its course - Have the media create a new public opinion favorable to the violation - Subtly change the policy to favor Israel. Similar tactics were used to permit Israel to capture the West Bank and Gaza, extend its occupation in both areas and construct settlements that grew and grew and grew. Now the U.S. is shifting the arguments against all settlements, which are all illegal, by focusing on the few "illegal" isolated settlements that are scarcely inhabited.

What does this mean? The trend of U.S. policy favors Israel's annexation of the West Bank and eventual vanquishing of the Palestinian people.

Vanquishing the Palestinians
Survey the map: The Zionists that entered Palestine in the 1880's have created a population that displaces millions of Palestinians from their native land. The separation barrier isolates the remaining Palestinian population and concentrates them in camps.

Survey the statistics: World Bank Report Highlights 60 Percent Poverty Level In Palestinian Territories

JERUSALEM, March 5, 2003: Twenty-seven months after the outbreak of the intifada, 60 percent of the population of the West Bank and Gaza live under a poverty line of US$2 per day. The numbers of the poor have tripled from 637,000 in September 2000 to nearly 2 million today.All Palestinian economic indicators continued their dramatic decline through the second year of the intifada. Gross national income per capita has fallen to nearly half of what it was two years ago. More than 50 percent of the work force is unemployed. Physical damage resulting from the conflict amounted to US$728 million by the end of August 2002. Between June 2000 and June 2002, Palestinian exports declined by almost a half, and imports by a third. Investment shrunk from an estimated US$1.5 billion in 1999 to a mere US$140 million last year. Overall national income losses in just over two years have reached US$5.4 billion--the equivalent of one full year of national income prior to the intifada.With unemployment rising and incomes collapsing, over half a million Palestinians in this formerly middle-income economy are now fully dependent on food aid. Per capita food consumption has declined by 30 percent in the past two years, and the incidence of severe malnutrition recently reported in Gaza by Johns Hopkins University is equivalent to levels found in some of the poorer sub-Saharan countries. The proximate cause of Palestinian economic crisis is closure--the imposition by the Government of Israel (GOI) of restrictions on the movement of Palestinian people and goods across borders and within the West Bank and Gaza.

Survey the history: The destruction of the Palestinian people didn't start with the settlements. It started with the creation of the state of Israel.

Israeli Benny Morris, in his book: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem," Cambridge University Press; Reprint edition (February 24, 1989) is one of many historians that described planned ethnic cleansing of Palestinian populations. Note: History is a broad and lengthy subject. Benny Morris' efforts have been criticized and he has updated his research in a forthcoming book: "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited," Cambridge University Press. Nevertheless, Benny Morris has affirmed his documented assertions in an interview reported by Ha'aretz Jan. 9, 2004. Examples:

Benny Morris, in the month ahead the new version of your book on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem is due to be published. Who will be less pleased with the book - the Israelis or the Palestinians?

The revised book is a double-edged sword. It is based on many documents that were not available to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel Defense Forces Archives. What the new material shows is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves.

According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948?

"Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.

What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right?

"Yes. One of the revelations in the book is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population. Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth.

So when the commanders of Operation Dani are standing there and observing the long and terrible column of the 50,000 people expelled from Lod walking eastward, you stand there with them? You justify them?

"I definitely understand them. I understand their motives. I don't think they felt any pangs of conscience, and in their place I wouldn't have felt pangs of conscience. Without that act, they would not have won the war and the state would not have come into being."

Continue from the 1948 expulsions (700,000 Palestinians) to the 1967 expulsions (150,000 Palestinians) and to the events of today.

The order that Ariel Sharon gave to the soldiers who went to wreak revenge in Qibiah: "Maximize losses in life and property", has not been forgotten. Today Sharon, Mofaz and Yaalon, the three Generals who manage the policy of this government, behave like that self-righteous cat - suffocating
all the time. Curfew and another curfew, arrests and more arrests, destruction of roads, brutality to the residents at stops. Benny Alon, (a minister in the present government), already said: "make their life so bitter that they will transfer themselves willingly". This is done on a daily basis, in addition to the destruction.

Many of our children are being indoctrinated, in religious schools,that the Arabs are Amalek, and the bible teaches us Amalek must be destroyed. There was already a rabbi (Israel Hess) who wrote in the newspaper of Bar Ilan University that we all must commit genocide,and that is because his research showed that the Palestinians are Amalek.
Murder of a population under cover of righteousness: Shulamit Aloni, former Member of Knesset who served in Labour government Cabinets ; Ha'aretz, March 7th, 2003.

Nations often float recommendations by lawmakers to condition the public before instituting a policy.

Last week, Uzi Cohen, a member of Ariel Sharon's right-wing party, the Likud, proposed the creation of a Palestinian state in northern Jordan in preparation for the expulsion of all non-Jews from Palestine. Cohen said that there is widespread support in Israel for "the idea of transfer." "Many people support the idea (of transferring Arabs out of Palestine), but few are willing to speak about it publicly."
Cohen, (member of the Israeli parliament) who is also the deputy-mayor of the Israeli city of Ra'anana, said Palestinians should be given 20 years to "leave voluntarily." "In case they didn't leave, then plans would have to be drawn to expel them by force." Jordanian deputies demand to expel Israeli ambassador; Albawaba.com, Jan 12, 2004.

The vanquishing of the Palestinian community is almost complete. The support by the United States and a minority of the world to the vanquishing of a people, the refusal of the mass media to accurately portray the Middle East crisis and the inability of an anguished world to take appropriate action to prevent the catastrophe re-shapes the modus operandi of the 21st century world. The world has accepted the notions that social justice is a hypocritical selective process, international law has no validity and the oppressed have no protection. Business as usual: the demonic is approved and relations are governed by power and force.

alternative insight
february 1, 2004


							

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