Mazin Qumsiyeh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: "Mazin Qumsiyeh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 05 Apr 2005 14:26:11 -0400
Subject: [HumanRights] Existential struggle
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1) New Orleans Palestine Solidarity
(http://www.nolapalestinesolidarity.org/) hosted a regional workshop on
Palestine aimed at training activists in skills ranging from media work to
lobbying to organizing. The program was sponsored by the US Campaign to End
the Occupation (http://www.endtheoccupation.org/ ). The Wheels of Justice
bus tour was there (Http://justicewheels.org). Local activists were
extremely hospitable and generous. The combined local organizing with
national networking is exactly the kind of work needed. I hope similar
future events would be held and that more people in those regions would
participate.
2) Israel is to dumb 10,000 tons of its garbage in the occupied areas
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=560433&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
(make sure link is intact before clicking or simply copy and paste to your
browser as an intact link)
3) An existential struggle, by Mazin Qumsiyeh
It is amazing how little was said in US mainstream media about the decision
by Israel's supreme court recognizing some non-Orthodox conversion to
Judaism. Israeli and European papers debated this issue clearly revealing
that Israel is the only country in the world that recognizes members of a
particular religion as nationals of the state entitled to automatic
citizenship regardless of where they live and what their current citizenship
happens to be (or even if they want such "right").
Despite a concerted propaganda campaign with billions spent, most Jews chose
to live outside Israel and most are non-Zionist or even anti-Zionist.
Zionists thus made sure on many occasions that persecuted Jews have only one
place to migrate (e.g. by pressuring the US Congress and the German
government not to increase Soviet Jewish migration to the West but to insist
on migration to Israel).
This issue, poorly understood by many because of a media blackout on open
discussion is at the core of the failure of US foreign policy. Prior to
Truman (who was pressured by an emerging Zionist lobby), no US president
supported Zionism. Such support is actually contrary to US constitutional
mandates separation of Church and state and not promoting religion. Yet,
even Truman and those who came after him to support Israel because of the
cold war, understood that such a state was created based on a deep injustice
to the native Palestinians(Christians and Muslims).
The West Bank and Gaza together comprise 22% of historic Palestine but even
here, some 450,000 Jewish colonial settlers control over half the land while
3.5 million Palestinians are squeezed into smaller and smaller areas not
different from Indian reservations (now being surrounded by walls and
fences). The other 78% of Palestine is now home to 4.5 million Jews and 1.2
million remaining Palestinians. But those Palestinians are by no means equal
Israeli citizens (even if they have a right to vote). Even excluding the
continuous racist paranoia about their “demographic threat”, nearly one
quarter of them are considered by law "present absentees" meaning that they
did not join their relative in Lebanon or Gaza as refugees but their land is
confiscated and turned over for Jewish National Fund use under the "absentee
property" basic law. Over 100 of these remaining Palestinian towns and
villages are "unrecognized" by the state and thus receive no governmental
services (water, roads, schools, electricity etc.).
As for Palestinian refugees, over 500 of their villages and towns were
destroyed (see PalestineRemembered.com) and now they constitute two-thirds
of the 9 million Palestinians in the world. This process, while accelerated
under the fog of five wars, never stopped. In the past four years alone,
over 16,000 Palestinians lost their homes by Israeli army demolitions (per
the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, ICAHD.org), a process now
going unchecked and unreported since the Palestinians declared a cease-fire
and the myth of “peace process” resumed. How is it fair that any Jew,
including converts to Judaism (now adding non-orthodox conversions), can
come live on Palestinian land while Palestinian Christians and Muslims are
denied their basic right to return? Studies show that such return of native
people is possible and desirable without displacing Israelis and
even improving standard of living for all.
This basic injustice of political Zionism is the reason for continued
instability in the Middle East. It is why a Zionist like Henry Kissinger
would state that under his leadership, the policy was to get Iranians and
Iraqis “to kill each other” (the Iran-Iraq war took one million lives and
the US give aid to both parties!). It is why Zionists like Richard Perle
and Paul Wolfowitz were instrumental in violating the UN charter by invading
Iraq. In 1996-1997, these same folks explained the benefit to Israel. In
one of their studies, they said it would be difficult to sell this program
of "preemption" and hegemony "save for a Pearl Harbor like event" (Project
for the New American Century). These words uttered before 9/11/01 are
chilling when one combines them with the fact that so far we spent $250
billion to support Israel’s destruction of Palestine and $160 billion for
the occupation and destruction of Iraq (not counting the 11 years of
destruction before the last invasion that took one million Iraqi lives due
to US led sanctions and infrastructure destruction). The costs have been
staggering in terms of lives lost and destroyed: thousands of Israelis and
Americans and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Iraqis.
All for what? Is it so that the "only democracy in the Middle East" can
decide in its Knesset and Courts whether Reform Jews are equivalent to
Orthodox Jews in their conversion and thus “rights” to settle on Palestinian
land? Is it so that we can continue to prop up undemocratic regimes like
Egypt and Jordan so long as they have signed peace treaties with Israel or
if they keep the oil flowing at cheap prices while propping rich US military
and other corporations (e.g. Saudi Arabia)? Is it not time for everyone to
demand a rational US foreign policy that recognizes native rights and puts
people rigst ahead of corporate greed? And for those of us (Palestinian or
otherwise) who are not part of the elite, is it not time we recognize that
this is an existential struggle shared by all humans?
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://academicsforjustice.org
http://boycottIsraeliGoods.org
http://justicewheels.org
http://al-awda.org
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