------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 14, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- ON ANNIVERSARY OF JUNE WAR: ISRAEL HAS NO RIGHT TO ACCUSE THE PALESTINIANS OF VIOLENCE By Richard Becker To understand what is happening today in Israel and the occupied Palestinian areas, it is essential to know the history of the area. June 5 marks the 34th anniversary of Israel's six-day war against three bordering Arab states and the Palestinian people. In the war, Israel's war machine, supplied by the U.S. and France, destroyed much of the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian military power in a matter of hours. Following the example of the U.S. in Vietnam--which Israeli army chief of staff Gen. Moshe Dayan had visited the previous year--the Israelis made ample use of napalm, cluster bombs and other anti-personnel weaponry on the Arab civilian population. To make absolutely clear to the Arab countries that it intended to back Israel, the Pentagon sent the U.S. Sixth Fleet to patrol the Mediterranean coast off Syria as the Israeli assault raged. When a cease fire took effect on June 11, the dead numbered 35,000 on the Arab side, 600 on the Israeli. By the war's end, Israel had tripled the territory under its control, conquering the remainder of historic Palestine--the West Bank and Gaza, along with Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and Syria's Golan Heights. Hundreds of thousands more Palestinians were driven into exile. For many it was the second time. They had been driven from their homes inside the 1948 borders of Israel less than two decades earlier. Today, Israel still occupies all those areas except for the Sinai, in violation of international law and countless United Nations resolutions. Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem and the surrounding area immediately following the 1967 war, when it also started an aggressive settlement campaign in the newly occupied territories. The idea was to create "facts on the ground"--the de facto incorporation of the West Bank, Gaza and Golan into an expanded Israeli state. The Palestinians who fiercely resisted the brutal occupation regime were subjected to assassination, expulsion, torture and imprisonment on a mass scale. WHO ARE THE VICTIMS AND WHO ARE THE AGGRESSORS? Yet for the past 34 years, the U.S. corporate media have turned reality upside down, presenting the aggressors as the victims in the Middle East, and vice-versa. The Palestinians, whose heroic resistance against seemingly impossible odds has never been crushed, are presented as terrorists, while the Israeli terrorist state, relentlessly described in the mass media here as "the only democracy in the Middle East," is depicted as the innocent target. Never mind that 484 Palestinians have been killed since the new Intifada, or uprising, began last September compared to 108 Israelis, or that 14,000 Palestinians have been wounded as compared to 700 on the Israeli side. Never mind that nearly all the fighting and dying have taken place in the tiny and disconnected pieces of territory--less than 5 percent of Palestine--that are now under Palestinian Authority (PA) control, and that almost nightly U.S.- supplied helicopters and, on occasion, F-16 fighter-bombers fire missiles into residential areas. While we are told the names and witness the funerals and weeping survivors of Israelis who are killed, the vast majority of Palestinian victims remain nameless in the big business media. What is most consistently "forgotten" in U.S coverage of the Middle East conflict is this simple fact: the basic cause of the conflict is the occupation itself. The Palestinians, like all people living under foreign military occupation, have the right to resist by any means at their disposal. SUICIDE BOMBERS AND F-16 BOMBERS On June 1 a 22-year-old Palestinian, Said Hotari, detonated a bomb wrapped around his body outside a Tel Aviv beach disco. He and 19 Israelis--most of them draft-age youth-- were killed and more than 100 people wounded. The attack evoked a violently anti-Palestinian response from the U.S. media and denunciations of "terrorism" from U.S. officials, including President George W. Bush. Two weeks earlier, Israeli F-16 fighter-bombers had hit five Palestinian cities. The casualties were similar to those in the Tel Aviv bombing. But U.S. politicians and the press had a very different response. The word "terrorism" is never used to describe the actions of the Israeli military--nor the U.S. military--no matter how murderous or indiscriminate. Top administration officials confined themselves to urging "restraint" on the Israeli leaders. A few days after the unprecedented use of F-16s against Palestinian civilian areas, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared a "cease fire" at U.S. urging. The basis for the "cease fire" was the report of the Mitchell Commission headed by former U.S. Senate majority leader George Mitchell. The report is really a plan to terminate the Palestinian Intifada. The commission calls for the PA to "make a 100-percent effort to prevent terrorism" and to "arrest all terrorists." The Israeli occupation army should develop "non-lethal" responses to unarmed demo nstrations. In other words, the occupation is OK, repression is OK as long as it isn't deadly, and the Palestinians should stop fighting. The U.S. call to "stop the violence," the Mitchell Commission makes crystal clear, is really a demand that the Palestinians stop resisting. PALESTINIANS REPLY TO "CEASE FIRE" DEMAND Another key provision of the report calls for Israel to freeze settlement building in the West Bank and Gaza. The Sharon government, while saying that it was accepting the Mitchell Commission report and implementing a "cease fire" based upon it, flatly refused to stop expanding the settlements, which now house more than 200,000 people. The PA refused to accept this position and vowed to continue the Intifada. But on June 3, following the disco bombing, heavy international pressure caused PA President Yasir Arafat to call for a "cease fire." Some Palestinian groups have endorsed the cease fire. But on June 4, 14 organizations--including Fatah, Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--issued a statement saying: "Our people have a right to defend themselves against aggression, occupation, and settlements and pursue the popular Intifada as a legitimate means against the continuing occupation of our land and to achieve our national rights." At the same time, the Israel Army has tightened its stranglehold on all Palestinian cities and villages, cutting off all trade and movement. Hunger and shortages are becoming severe in many areas. The Israeli military is preparing for very heavy military strikes on Palestinian areas if and when Sharon decides to end the "cease fire." Surface-to-surface missiles were reportedly being moved near Gaza in large quantities, and Sharon stated that the targets of future attacks had already been selected. The Israeli government hopes that its "cease fire" tactic will allow it to assign blame for the coming attacks on the victims--the Palestinians--as they have done for decades. MANDELA DENOUNCES U.S. ROLE In attempting to carry out this strategy, the Israelis have the helping hand of their protector, funder and supplier, the U.S. The U.S. role was denounced this week by the historic liberation fighter and former South African President Nelson Mandela. "It is completely wrong that the United States must be the mediator in this conflict. Everybody knows the United States is a friend of Israel." Speaking at a press conference in Johannesburg after meeting the French prime minister, Mandela continued: "What is being done to the Palestinians is a matter of grave concern. We are friends of the Palestinians. We support their struggle." The comments of a Palestinian living in Beit Jala quoted in the June 4 New York Times expressed a popular sentiment. Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, has received near-daily fire from Israeli tanks dug in across a rocky valley. Many homes have been destroyed, many residents killed, wounded or forced to flee. Ramzi Ghawaneh described his response to the Tel Aviv disco bombing. "What we saw made us feel great pity for them. But we also thought, let them feel the fear that we are living with every day, and then maybe this will stop." Thirty-four years after the 1967 war it is clear that there will be no peace in the Middle East until there is justice for the Palestinian people. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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