Mechanisms Of Dispossession
By Ghali Hassan
07 April, 2005
Countercurrents.orgIn his speech on Tuesday 15 March 2005, to mark the opening of a new Israeli memorial to the Holocaust in Jerusalem, Mr. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General said; "Our global mission of peace, freedom, and human dignity, was literally forced in fire in fact the most awful fires that mankind has ever seen". One wonders if Mr. Kofi Annan was speaking on behalf of president George W. Bush or he is simply unaware of what is happening around him. True, the Holocaust was a Supreme Crime, but the world, and the 'West' in particular, is failing again to put an end to similar crimes against the Palestinian people.
The Holocaust was Europe 'Supreme Crime' against humanity. Although the systematic genocide targeted various ethnic, religious and secular groups, European Jews were the main targets. It was therefore referred to by the German Nazis as the "final solution to the Jewish Question". The total death toll is estimated at between 12 and 26 million people. Today the commonly used figure of six million is the number of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. More than 20 million Russians died to liberate Europe from the scourge of Fascism. Moreover, as the Holocaust of the Jews ended in Europe, the Palestinian people were added to its list of victims in 1948. The Holocaust has been and stills Israel and the West moral compass card.
Like the 'anti-Semitism' card, the Holocaust is used to blackmail any criticism of Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people. The cliché goes like this: what ever the Israelis do to the Palestinians, is justified on the basis that; it is not the Holocaust yet. "The Holocaust overshadows everything the Israeli people think and do. Our attitude is conditioned by the Holocaust. It conditions Israel to justify any means because compared with the Holocaust any bad things we do are negligible by comparison. It is a standard of comparison, which gives a kind of moral permit to do anything. In a way we are still victims of the Holocaust today but in a different way. It twists our outlook on things", writes Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom in Tel Aviv.
Arabs or Muslims were not responsible for any crimes against Jews. In fact, thousands of Jews found safety among Muslims. The creation of Israel in 1948 in Palestine at the expense of the Palestinian people designed to remove European guilt and installed a European imperialist outpost in the world's most vital energy rich region. In fact many Jews advocated a homeland in South America or Uganda in Africa than in small and resources-scarce Palestine, but Zionists and their Christian supporters decided on biblical Palestine.
The Palestinian people have had to pay for crimes committed by others. The factual information given thus far is designed to explode the myth propagated by Zionists that the enmity between Muslims (Arabs) and Jews is of ancient origin. This is obviously not true. According to credible historical records, Jews and Muslims have lived together for centuries, from Baghdad and Istanbul to Palestine and Casablanca both communities coexisted peacefully. The "Arabs' opposition to Zionism wasn't based on anti-Semitism but rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossession of their people". It is Israel and the occupation of Palestinian land that is the root cause.
Over 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from the country and forced to become refugees in the Arab states. In what Palestinians call "the Catastrophe," Jewish terrorist groups such as Haganah, Irgun and Stern were commanded to terrorise the Palestinian populations. More than 450 towns and villages were destroyed to prevent the return Palestinians, and in many cases the entire Palestinian population were massacred. Today, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) estimates that there were more than 7 million Palestinian refugees and displaced persons at the beginning of 2003. Most Palestinian refugees are scattered in refugee camps in neighbouring countries and in the West Bank and Gaza, living in appalling conditions and unable to return to their homeland.
Israel's mechanisms of dispossession the Palestinian people are supported by the Western powers, particularly, the British and US governments. Since 1948, the Israeli government and Jewish terrorist groups embarked on countless genocides to "redeem" Palestine from the native Palestinian people. Today, Israeli terrorism against the Palestinian people is well-organised policy. The policy is recognised by the US and European governments, and supported by massive Western investments and financial aids.
Israel does whatever the world doesn't like. Israel's invasions and wars are called 'self-defence'. In addition to Palestine, in the 1967 war, Israel occupied and illegally annexed the Syrian province of Al-Quenitra, known the Golan Heights. The Israeli army destroyed 250 Syrian villages and expelled more than 150,000 Syrian and Palestinian inhabitants. Israel still illegally occupies territory in Lebanese. It is easier today to talk and make threats against Syrian security troops in Lebanon, than point the finger at Israel occupation and aggression. Palestinians who remains under Israeli occupation are continuously detained, abused, tortured and murdered by the Israeli army.
As the Israeli human rights attorney Shamai Leibowitz writes; "From 1986 to 1991 I served in the Israeli army in the occupied territories. During this period I was shocked and disgusted at what my comrades and I were repeatedly ordered to do to Palestinian civilians. To crush the uprising for independence and statehood, we were ordered to brutalize them. In one of our army bases in the West Bank, there was a mysterious room. Every day we watched Palestinians being led into it. After a couple of days our
commanders would lead the Palestinians out, black and blue from bruises and their faces swollen. They resembled sacks of potatoes more than human beings". This was exactly what the Nazis did to Jews in Auschwitz torture chambers. The only one thing lacking in Israel's' treatment of the Palestinian people are the Gas Chambers of the Nazis. It should be noted that the prelude to the Jewish Holocaust was German racist attacks against minorities, and Germany's 1930s law to confiscate land and property owned by German Jews for the purpose of creating an 'Aryan only' German nation. As a result many German Jews lost their homes and property, and forced to leave. The same policy of dispossession is now implemented by the Israeli government and based on the old policy of "redemption of the land"- the forcible ethnic cleansing of Palestinians - to create an only Jewish state. Israel policy of dispossession is also extended to the one million Palestinians ('Israeli Arabs') living in Israel and under Israeli jurisdiction. Israeli Arabs are unable to built homes or buy land
anywhere in Israel.The practice of Palestinians dispossession is continuing with the full support of the Israeli government and its institutions in Israel and funded by Jewish organisations abroad, such as the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and the World Zionist Organization (WZO). Well-armed Jewish colonisers (settlers) are conducting daily pogroms against defenceless Palestinian families, farmers and school children in order to force them to leave their land. Under the eyes of watching Israeli soldiers, the settlers are committing daily atrocities; from murdering Palestinians to cutting down thousands of Palestinian olive trees, and poisoning Palestinian livestock. A Palestinian mother of four children called these violent settlers "the Nazis of our times", when the family was attacked by the armed groups of Israeli
Talmudic settlers.Israeli colonies (settlements) continue to expand even beyond the Jewish settlers need for housing. As Gush Shalom reports; "Although there are 3,700 vacant houses in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, some 6,130 other houses are under construction. In the largest West Bank
settlement of Maale Adumim, 47% of the housing units remain unsold, and the figure soars to 97% in Givat Ze'ev, north of Jerusalem". The recently resurrected Absentee Property Law of 1950 is implemented in full swing to not only to confiscate thousands of Palestinian property in East Jerusalem, but also to completely strangle and ghettoise Arab East Jerusalem and isolate it from the West Bank .The Law is the relic of Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing the Palestinian people in 1948. It should be borne in mind that all these "outposts" and settlements are illegal under international law have been approved by the Sharon government (Ha'aretz, 11, March 2005). As I write, the Sharon government is building 3,500 homes on confiscated Palestinian land to form a corridor between Jerusalem and the largest West Bank settlement, Maale Adumim. The US administration opposes the expansion of any settlement activity in public, but records show that the US administration has been funding and encouraging the building of these illegal settlements for years.According to Israeli journalist Amira Hass, the dispossession of the Palestinians is a matter of government policy. She writes; "From July 2005, the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, carriers of Israeli IDs, will no longer be permitted to enter Ramallah. That is when construction [of the
Apartheid Wall] will be completed and the Erez-type passage at Kalandia, deep inside Palestinian territory. Only those who obtain an entry permit (and experience teaches us how difficult that is) will be permitted to pass.I asked the Prime Minister's Office and the IDF whether this doesn't this contradict two developments: first, permission for residents of East Jerusalem to vote in the elections for the head of the Palestinian Authority, and second, the possibility of calm and a return to final status negotiations. I received no answer. That silence tells us, just as the bulldozers and the soldiers who already prevent Jerusalem Palestinians from travelling to Ramallah tell us, that Israel is following her plan: East Jerusalem will be separated from Ramallah, and of course from Bethlehem".The Apartheid Wall, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), continues moving outside the 1967 boundaries and confiscates Palestinian land in the West Bank and around Jerusalem. The main purpose of the Wall, which is also called the "War Wall", is to isolate Palestinians
from each other and from their communities. Its route is directed to confiscate Palestinian fertile land and water resources and further shrinking what is left of Palestine. Palestinians are the most water-deprived people on the planet, while Jews in the Occupied Palestine enjoy swimming pools life style. Meanwhile Israel Ha'aretz newspaper reports that Israel is start dumping 10,000 pounds of garbage a month inside the West Bank against international law. The garbage dump will jeopardize water sources in the West Bank and increases fly numbers and air pollution.Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and Israel's policy of erecting new settlements and "outposts" on Palestinian land are illegal and criminal. The policy is currently used in parallel to the so-called "Gaza disengagement", a PR exercise by the Sharon government to manipulate public opinion in
favour of Israel. The aims are to incarcerate more than 3.7 million Palestinians in few disjoined cantons (native reserves) on 10-15% of the original Palestine, completely surrounded and controlled by the Israeli army and the Apartheid Wall, ensuring the impossibility of viable state. This is what Israel is seeking; remove the Jewish colonies in Gaza and grab as much land from Palestinians in the West Bank as possible. Gaza will remain a prison within a prison. The Palestinians there are trapped like mice, and at the mercy of the Israeli army and US F-16.More than 60 years of occupation, abuse, torture and genocide the Palestinian people still have to achieve the West classification of "victims" despite Israel's daily atrocities. The Palestinians are incarcerated and killed on daily basis by Israeli army. The crimes against the Palestinian people perpetuated by the Israeli government provoked not much outrage on the part of Jews in Israel or outside of Israel, where the majority of Jews live, or on the part of people in the West. Complicit in all these mechanisms of dispossession of the Palestinian people is the US. For years, American taxpayer money has funded Israel's Occupation of Palestine - the torture chambers, the military apparatus, the bulldozers used in house demolitions, the building of settlements and now the construction of the Apartheid Wall.
"Most tragically, American support for Sharon's settlement project destroys forever the possibility of a viable Palestinian state, dooming the peoples of Israel-Palestine to perpetual conflict. How this squares with American interests in a stable Middle East is anybody's guess", writes Jeff Halper, Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. As long as Israeli crimes continue against the Palestinian people, the world community is failing to remove the scourge of the Holocaust. One cannot protect one community, and at the same time look the other way to victimise another community.
The time has come for the world community of peoples to put a stop on Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people. It's in the US and the American people interests to try and promote a fair solution and stop Israel's colonial war and policy of dispossession of the Palestinian people.
Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia.
