The best way to help Palestine

[StarfarerBill]

By Seth Freeman, GuardianUK

The stage was set, the cast assembled. On one side, heavily armed Israeli soldiers, police and private security guards. On the other, scores of Israeli and Palestinian activists, flying banners and waving placards, with press photographers and documentary makers on hand to record events as they unfolded. The sun beat down from a cloudless sky, the air felt still and calm: the lull before the storm.

And then... that was how it remained for the rest of the day, all lull and no storm, which was a welcome respite from the violent clashes taking place elsewhere in the Occupied Territories. This wasn't Bi'lin, nor Ni'lin, nor Sheikh Jarrah – places which routinely descend into aggressive hostilities between rock-throwing demonstrators and teargas-firing security forces. Instead, this was a perfectly planned, perfectly executed example of a joint Israeli-Palestinian protest where flailing fists and antagonistic posturing came a distant second to clear-headed, constructive bond-forging between activists from both sides.

Combatants for Peace (CFP) had organised the day's protest against the planned construction of the Givat Yael settlement, a project entirely at odds with the current freeze imposed on settler building in the West Bank. Givat Yael is slated to be established on land belonging to the Palestinian village of Wallaje on the outskirts of Jerusalem, a move CFP calls "an additional step signifying the narrowing of the possibility for a political negotiation <between the Israelis and Palestinians>".

As a result, CFP mobilised their supporters, along with activists from Rabbis for Human Rights, ICAHD and other prominent NGOs, to demonstrate peacefully in the farmland around Wallaje in order to voice their opposition to the Givat Yael development.

"We're here to support our friends from Wallaje," explained Idan Barir, a 29-year-old Israeli who formerly served in an artillery unit of the IDF. CFP are comprised of ex-IDF soldiers and ex-members of Palestinian militant groups, who have renounced violence and now seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict – something which Barir finds entirely compatible with his world view.

"<CFP> is the first and only organisation I have found where I can be accepted as a proud patriot," he said, "while at the same time being accepted as a refusenik showing his objection to the occupation. Here I can cooperate with Palestinians who have the same goals as me: two states for two peoples."

He was sanguine about the efficacy of the protest, despite it appearing that neither local settlers nor soldiers took much notice of the event. "People don't think we have the ability to change anything, but that is only because the Israeli mainstream have currently their senses," he said.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/10/israel-palestine-combatants-for-peace

[yurbud]

1. maybe if enough Palestinians and Israelis connect, there can be a ONE state solution

that would take care of all those sticky issues about borders. Just make the Israelis pay for any land they seized for settlements or that Arabs abandoned in the Naqba.

[sellitman]

2. There is already one State.

Hopefully there can be two living side by side in Peace someday.

[yurbud]

3. if Israel admitted there was essentially one state now, they would be in deep shit over how they

treat a lot of their ''citizens.''

[sellitman]

7. If American Indians started lobbing bombs towards American cities today

They would just as justified as the Arabs are in Israel.

Are you for that too?

Maybe we should dissolve our Government too and just hand it over the Native Americans.

Bottom line is it's not ever going to happen.

[yurbud]

19. I don't think you want to bring up the American Indian analogy--it fits too well

We immigrated to North America, took their land, and if they reacted violently, used it as an excuse to take more land. If they didn't react violently, it was taken as an excuse that they didn't really care if we took their land.

Would settlements slow down if there were NO Palestinian attacks?

I doubt it.

Also, the fact that we committed genocide and ethnic cleansing here does not excuse it when others do it elsewhere. If anything, that analogy explains why Americans don't have the same reaction to what's going on in the Occupied Territories as the rest of the world does.

[mplo]

21. I don't entirely agree here, yurbud.

Very often, the Native Americans were quite peaceful, considering what was done to them. Some of them reacted violently to the incursion of the Europeans to North American, but they weren't in the majority. Also, unlike the Palestinians, the Native Americans don't have a history of doing things such as hijacking El Al airliners and taking planeloads of passengers hostage, nor do they have a history of storming schools and getting school kids killed, or sending people to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, as what happened in Munich back in the early 1970's, nor have they sent out suicide bombers into pizzerias, discos, onto buses, and into wedding halls, etc., to blow themselves and innocent civilians along with them to promote their causes.

[shaayecanaan]

22. Im not sure whether Geronimo or Sitting Bull ever attempted to hijack

an airplane. But in the event that they did not, I imagine it may have had something to do with the relative lack of air services at the time.

However, Irish separatists did hijack airplanes, fire mortars at the British house of parliament, and detonate bombs in city centres. And they had a lot less to complain about than the Palestinians, relatively speaking.

Moreover, I doubt many Native Americans would be thrilled with your characterisation of them as having meekly surrendered to the white man. In truth, most Indian tribes fought magnificently in the face of impossible odds to try and salvage their way of life. In Florida, less than 500 Seminole braves held out for more than one hundred years against a US military campaign that cost the Army $40 million - a staggering sum in those days. It was not until the 1930s that white men properly saw the Everglades, and that was only after they made it clear to the Seminole that they no longer wanted to steal their remaining territory.

[mplo]

23. There's something to be said

for this:

"However, Irish separatists did hijack airplanes, fire mortars at the British house of parliament, and detonate bombs in city centres. And they had a lot less to complain about than the Palestinians, relatively speaking."

shaayecanaan.

However, unlike the Palestinians, the IRA didn't go around taking their problems out on the world at large. They also didn't go out into other countries and kill people there, such as the gunning down of people in airports and other areas in various parts of the world.

[shaayecanaan]

24. Well, to be fair to the Palestinians

I think that the airport incident that you are referring to was undertaken by an Egyptian person not connected to any Palestinian group, although I acknowledge that the PLO did engage in violence abroad.

It could also be said that unlike the Israelis, the British didn`t launch air strikes on Irish Catholic neighbourhoods in response to the IRA`s activities.

[sabbat hunter]

4. do the Arabs

pay for any land/property stolen/seized when the jews fled their countries after 1949?

[yurbud]

6. sure. But if you read your history, the flow was mostly the other direction

and indisputably has been ever since. Israel isn't the part that's shrinking geographically.

[sabbat hunter]

8. actually if you read your history

almost as many jews fled arab/muslim countries in 1949 as arabs fled Israel

[Violet_Crumble]

9. Which history is that version of events in?

Because every bit of history I've read on it doesn't say that at all. While the vast majority of Palestinians were either expelled or fled during the late 1940's, the movement of Jews from Arab states to Israel was something that happened over the course of a few decades and the reasons why it happened depended from state to state. To try to link it to the Palestinian refugees is incorrect and mainly done for political purposes....

[sabbat hunter]

10. here you go

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_lands

[Violet_Crumble]

13. That doesn't support what you said...

The first few sentences would have been a dead giveaway....

[Douglas Carpenter]

12. perhaps you have seen this article

Hitching a ride on the magic carpet

By Yehouda Shenhav

link:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=329736

Any analogy between Palestinian refugees and Jewish immigrants from Arab lands is folly in historical and political terms

An intensive campaign to secure official political and legal recognition of Jews from Arab lands as refugees has been going on for the past three years. This campaign has tried to create an analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi Jews, whose origins are in Middle Eastern countries - depicting both groups as victims of the 1948 War of Independence. The campaign's proponents hope their efforts will prevent conferral of what is called a "right of return" on Palestinians, and reduce the size of the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in exchange for Palestinian property appropriated by the state guardian of "lost" assets.

The idea of drawing this analogy constitutes a mistaken reading of history, imprudent politics, and moral injustice.

snip: The organization's claims infuriated many Mizrahi Israelis who defined themselves as Zionists. As early as 1975, at the time of WOJAC's formation, Knesset speaker Yisrael Yeshayahu declared: "We are not refugees. came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations."

Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist in Iraq, adamantly opposed the analogy: "I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists."

In a Knesset hearing, Ran Cohen stated emphatically: "I have this to say: I am not a refugee." He added: "I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee."

The opposition was so vociferous that Ora Schweitzer, chair of WOJAC's political department, asked the organization's secretariat to end its campaign. She reported that members of Strasburg's Jewish community were so offended that they threatened to boycott organization meetings should the topic of "Sephardi Jews as refugees" ever come up again. Such remonstration precisely predicted the failure of the current organization, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries to inspire enthusiasm for its efforts. "

snip: "Any reasonable person, Zionist or non-Zionist, must acknowledge that the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews is unfounded. Palestinian refugees did not want to leave Palestine. Many Palestinian communities were destroyed in 1948, and some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled, or fled, from the borders of historic Palestine. Those who left did not do so of their own volition.

In contrast, Jews from Arab lands came to this country under the initiative of the State of Israel and Jewish organizations. Some came of their own free will; others arrived against their will. Some lived comfortably and securely in Arab lands; others suffered from fear and oppression.

The history of the "Mizrahi aliyah" (immigration to Israel) is complex, and cannot be subsumed within a facile explanation. Many of the newcomers lost considerable property, and there can be no question that they should be allowed to submit individual property claims against Arab states (up to the present day, the State of Israel and WOJAC have blocked the submission of claims on this basis).

The unfounded, immoral analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi immigrants needlessly embroils members of these two groups in a dispute, degrades the dignity of many Mizrahi Jews, and harms prospects for genuine Jewish-Arab reconciliation. "

link to full article:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=329736

[Violet_Crumble]

14. Thanks for posting that one, Douglas. It's a good article n/t

[azurnoir]

15. Thank you it is a "new" perspective on this n/t

[yurbud]

18. ah! I was talking about in Palestine itself.

[aranthus]

11. sure. Cause if the Czechs and the Slovaks can live together in one state,

why can't the Jews and the Palestinians?

[sabbat hunter]

16. the czech and the solvaks

were forced to live in one state. As soon as they had the opportunity, they split in to two states. Same for Yugoslavia.

If you have a one state solution, you will soon see a muslim majority country, which goes against why Israel was founded.

[aranthus]

17. That was my point.

I was being just a bit sarcastic. Too subtle?

[shira]

5. Rabid Anti-Semitism Flowing from the Freedman thread

http://cifwatch.com/2010/01/10/rabid-antisemitism-flowing-from-the-freedman-thread/

The Guardian must be so proud of nourishing the haters.

[mplo]

20. The best way to help Palestine is to help both Palestinians and Israelis.

The best way to help Palestine is to help both the Palestinians and Israelis make peace, and for the United States, the United Nations, the European Community, the Former Soviet Union, and the Arab States to convene together and help both sides establish the necessary 2-state solution. There has to be an independent, sovereign Palestinian nation-state established alongside Israel, and not in place of it, like a number of people want.