Monday, June 08, 2015

The only importance of history in regard to Israel's occupation of Palestine is that if Israel had not been forcibly imposed on Palestine, there woud have been no history and no violence and no terrible colonial injustice for the Palestinians.

First of all, no ‘war’ is properly understood without understanding the background or circumstances which lead to it. And no war is resolved without then putting those facts aside and dealing with now.
The core reason for the Six Day War was the Zionist invasion and occupation and colonisation of Palestine, i.e. the existence of Israel.
If Israel had not been imposed on Palestine in 1947 there would never have been a Six Day War. Ergo, the source of that war and all wars and violence since 1947 was the colonial enterprise which founded an Israeli state in Palestine. All violence is the result of a colonial war waged by Europeans against the indigenous Palestinians.
One could argue that probably from the sixties when it became pretty clear, worldwide, that occupation and colonisation were wrongs, that violence following this point was and is sourced in the Zionist/Israeli Jewish religious bigotry, i.e. that Jews are superior to everyone else and particularly superior to the Palestinians in particular and Arabs in general whom they regard as sub-human.
Without this bigotry one could presume that the colonial enterprise of Israel would either have created one state with equal rights for all as the US, Canada, Australia etc., did and by the early Sixties so yet again, no Six Day War.
All wars and violence, and responsibility for them rests on the shoulders of those who forced the Israeli State on Palestine and those who wanted it to be a theocratic, i.e. religious State where members of Judaism had superior rights to non-Jews and full control ongoing.
The fact that there was no State of Palestine in 1967 is utterly irrelevant. The concept of a nation-state is historically recent. There was no State of Germany until the early 1900’s but no historian and in fact only a deluded fool would seek to argue there was no Germany or country called Germany for thousands of years prior to Statehood.
Ditto for Palestine, thousands of years old and very much a country and nation even if it had not gained Statehood owing to successive waves of occupiers – Turks, British and then Europeans in the form of Zionists. 
As to Jews being denied access to their holiest places, so what? Many religions are denied access to holy places but that does not give the religion any rights to the land. If it did the Catholics could take back Istanbul which they founded as Constantinople.
And while Gaza may have been under Egyptian control, the simple reality is that Gaza was a refugee camp, filled with Palestinians driven out of their land and from their homes by Zionist forces. Their homes and land, places like Sderot etc., were taken by Zionist armies and handed over to colonial settlers. 
Zionist forces destroyed around 600 Palestinian villages, reduced them to rubble and built over them. Unfortunately for Israeli propaganda the old British colonial maps remain and so the position of all those villages, is known. As is the extent of genocide by Zionist armies.
And since Israel is the occupier and has been for decades the fact that the Egyptians controlled the Gaza refugee camp for a time means nothing. Under UN Resolutions, the Geneva Convention and international law it is the occupier who is responsible for the wellbeing of the occupied people and that occupier is Israel.
The Golan Heights are Syrian. End of story. Israel keeps stealing land under the pretense that it is for security measures. Theft is theft. There would be no need for security if Zionist Israelis had not colonized Palestine in the first place and then refused justice to the indigenous Palestinians. Israel’s security issues are self-created. Then again, why not, opportunities for more theft abound.
The article then waffles on about the Arabs doing this or doing that but the core principle remains – no Zionist State of Israel imposed on Palestine and no Arabs involved. The Arabs were allies of the Palestinians. Why would they not be? In the two world wars Americans and others went to fight alongside their allies. It’s a no-brainer that Palestine had allies.
American Indian tribes allied to fight their colonial invaders. Why on earth is it surprising that the Palestinians sought the same kind of support. Israel pushes this delusion that somehow the Palestinians are being unreasonable when they are doing what every other occupied people in history have done. They are defending themselves against a brutal coloniser.
The article is pure apologist propaganda. Even more relevant is the fact that sure, take the article as a given and as an explanation but it resolves nothing because the core issue remains that what matters most is not the history of how it happened or might have happened, but the simple fact that Israel is a colonial venture and had no more right to colonise Palestine than the English had to colonise the Americas. We can accept it exists but we cannot accept it had any right to colonise someone else's country.
In a civilized world Israel needs to say sorry, admit to the wrongs inherent in its foundation and provide justice and freedom to the indigenous people whose land it has stolen. Even more relevant is that Israel has maintained a murderous military occupation for nearly seven decades and set up an apartheid State and that will not be allowed to continue.
Whether you believe that religions have rights, they don’t but even if you believe they should; whether one accepts that sure, as a coloniser Israel exists and has a right to exist; whether you also believe Jews are superior to everyone else and Palestinians are sub-human, or whatever concoction of belief fuels support for Israel, there is absolutely no getting away from the fact that in a modern, democratic, enlightened world, Occupation, Colonisation and Apartheid are wrong and so Israel is wrong, wrong, wrong and occupation, colonisation and apartheid will end.
If Israel will not end it then Israel will be forced to end it as South Africa was with a crippled economy which makes survival impossible without justice being done. 
A one-state solution is now the only outcome. Israel cannot kill or drive out the nearly six million Palestinians it holds under occupation. It is impossible. It could not even kill the two million Palestinians imprisoned in the Gaza concentration camp, although 2,000, a quarter of them children, shredded for resisting occupation was horrendous enough, so how could it kill the nearly four million held in bantustans in occupied Palestine which is criss-crossed with Jew-only roads to Jew-only settlements? It could not without killing many of those illegal Jewish settlers unless the Israeli Government sought to move them out first which would give the game away.
World outrage at the two murderous attacks on the Gaza prison was enormous and if Israel tries to kill or drive out the Palestinians the rage would be so great even the US would have to become involved in imposing a one-state solution immediately.
Trying to justify the Six Day War, or rather, cast Israel as an innocent or victim nearly half a century on, is akin to the Germans trying to justify the bombing of Britain because as an ally it was trying to end occupation by the Nazis in Europe.
The Blitz was the result of German aggression - the Six Day War was the result of Zionist/Israeli aggression. 
So, given the stark realities the article is in the scheme of life superfluous and meaningless as all propaganda becomes in the face of justice and reason.


Forty-eight years ago this week, the Six-Day War broke out. While some wars fade into obscurity, this one remains as relevant today as in 1967. Many of its core issues remain unresolved and in the news.
HUFFINGTONPOST.COM

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