What Will It Take to Stop Israel: Truth and Justice

8/12/2019 What Will It Take to Stop Israel: Truth and Justice

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WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO STOP ISRAEL?: TRUTH AND JUSTICE

Why would the Palestinians be valid negotiators since they donot have a country? Why would they have a country, since theirshas been taken? They have never been given any choice than tosurrender unconditionally. They have been offered only death.In the war that opposes them to Israel, Israels actions areconsidered legitimate reprisals (even if they appeardisproportionate), while those of the Palestinians are treatedexclusively as terrorist crimes. And an Arab death has neitherthe same value nor the same weight as an Israeli death.

Gilles Deleuze (1978) 1

Towards the end of his life the endlessly-missed Edward Said spent a term as a visiting

professor at Cambridge University. While in Britain he took part in a number of discussions

and debates, and at the end of one such event he turned to a friend and said: What is the

matter with these people, why does no one mention tr uth or justice any more? Said was of

course too sophisticated a thinker to be asking for a reinstallation of a full-blown positivistic

conception of truth or a conception of justice predicated on specious appeals to human rights

or universal values , appeals of the kind resorted to by George W. Bush and Tony Blair to justify

the invasion of Iraq. By truth Said was referring, primarily but not exclusively, to the

seemingly insurmountable reality represented by the ruthless dispossession of the Palestinian

people that Israel has been undertaking since its inception in 1948. By justice he was

referring to the pressing need to rectify the situation brought about by this dispossession; a

justice whose requirements seem incomprehensible to many Israelis and Americans.


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The truth of this seemingly insurmountable reality, and the overwhelming need for a

structure of justice capable of rectifying it, has been compellingly demonstrated in the most

recent Israeli onslaught on Gaza. The facts of this pitiless slaughter are by now known well-

known: the pulverizing of many areas in Gaza ensuing in a vast disproportion in the fatalities

and casualties of the two sides; the deliberate targeting of children; the attacking of schools,

hospitals, and ambulances; as well as the infliction of much suffering on the 260,000 Gazans

displaced as result of an indiscriminate bombardment that destroyed 40,000 dwellings. 2 The

recent Israeli attack on Gaza is however only one of numerous episodes in the historic injustice

that has been meted-out to the Palestinian people.

The essential truth of this historic injustice resides in Israels long -term objective of

emptying the Palestinian territories of their Arab inhabitants. To this end it has used a range of

measures that involve widespread violations of international law. In addition to collective

punishments (house demolitions as well as bombardments of heavily-populated areas where

civilian casualties are inevitable), there are Israels ille gal occupation and settlement of

territories seized after the 1967 War; arbitrary arrests and illegal detentions; the widespread

use of torture; expulsion and deportations; extra-judicial assassinations (targeted at the

leaders of civil society, and not just the alleged heads of the resistance militias); summary

executions of civilians; systemic employment of disproportionate force against protesters

(tanks firing on stone-throwing youngsters as a matter of routine, etc.); the already-mentioned

attacks on ambulances and medical personnel; the deliberate shooting of journalists covering

protests in the occupied territories; the use of Palestinians as human shields in military

operations; the withholding of medical aid to wounded civilians; the clearance of orchards


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Israel in return for his subservience and cooperation apart from a few gestures of a largely

titular nature: as a reward for his compliancy President Abbas has been fobbed -off with the

trappings of a state without any entitlement or access to the real functions of a state. 5

The current Israeli withdrawal of its ground forces from Gaza and the so-called truce

talks in Cairo should give us, much less the Palestinians, no grounds for hope. Israels strategy

in discussions with the Palestinians has always been the restoration of a status quo under its

more or less complete control, which in this case will involve a protraction of the illegal siege of

Gaza (there are still very dangerous terrorists hiding in those tunnels will be an obvious

briefing-point for its official propagandists such as the egregious Australian transplant Mark

Regev), and a continuation of the cruel hamstringing of Gazas economy and civil society ( if we

allow them to have more freedom and power they will only use it against us will be another

briefing-point). If this is the truth/reality of the situation confronting the Palestinian people

today, what then are the conditions of a just rectification of their desperate situation?

At the very least, we-- but circumspection is counseled regarding the we to whom this

seeming imperative is addressed-- have to work for a cessation of the blithe indifference of the

West, tinged with any amount of racism and Islamophobia, when it comes to the pain and

suffering of the Palestinian people. The Western powers are locked in an embrace with Israel,

Europe less so than the US, and their electorates have in the main been acquiescent, and thus

far almost somnolently so, with regard to the pervasively asymmetrical situation between the

Palestinians and Israel. 6 This systemically induced inertia on the part of the West will have to

be overcome as a solidaristic accompaniment, always subsidiary, to the struggles of the

Palestinian people. The authority of those who suffer can never be gainsaid.


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The second condition, which will have to be implemented on the disputed territory

itself, will be to find a way to make Israel accept the right of the Palestinians to self-

determination, and to acknowledge their entitlement to territory which existed when Israel had

its 1967 borders. At this juncture this clearly will necessitate a one-state solution, Israel having

obviated any possibility of a viable two-state solution by its illegal seizure and occupation of

ever-increasing tracts of Palestinian land. Concomitant with this will be the ending of the

Israeli occupation, with its arbitrary curfews and checkpoints, humiliating body searches and

haphazard violence towards Palestinians, roads in the West Bank earmarked for Jews only in

short, the eradication of the present Israeli-imposed apartheid system. And with this

eradication, the creation, monumentally arduous and for many unthinkable, of a single

binational state that would safeguard the civil rights and equality of all, Arabs and Jews.

Is it possible? Since the end of World War II, two absolutely unanticipated world-

historical events have occurred. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and shortly after the Soviet empire.

The overcoming of South African apartheid in so short a time was another event that could not

have been anticipated. If there is hope (and as the Jew Walter Benjamin said, hope is only

given to the hopeless ), another possibility and its accompanying struggles beckon .


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NOTES

1 Gilles Deleuze, The Troublemakers, trans. Timothy S. Murphy, Discourse 20(1998), 23.

Originally published in Le Monde , April 7, 1978. The theoretical basis underpinning the notions

of truth and justice invoked here is developed in my Dealin g in Straight Power Co ncepts:

the Quest for Justice afte r September 11, in Jon L. Berquist , eds., Strike Terror No More:

Theology, Ethics, and the New War (London: Chalice Press, 2002), 86-97, 340-43.

2 According to The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA):

With up to thirty percent of Gazas population displaced, an

estimated 65,000 people have no home to return to. There are

at least 187,000 displaced Palestinians in 90 UNRWA shelters .

The number of Palestinians killed stands at 1,843. 85 per cent of

Palestinian fatalities are believed to be civilians (excluding those

whose bodies could not be identified or their status is

undetermined). The Ministry of Health reports that 9,567 were

injured. During the conflict, 67 Israelis were killed, including 64

soldiers, two civilians and one foreign national.

See http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/emergency-reports/gaza-situation-report-29 , accessed

on 2014-08-07.

3 The gutless Barack Obama echoed this Israeli self -defense refrain, in front of a group of

Muslim Americans and diplomats from predominantly Muslim countries, at a White House

dinner celebrating the recent Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Obamas insensitivity on this
http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/emergency-reports/gaza-situation-report-29http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/emergency-reports/gaza-situation-report-29http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/emergency-reports/gaza-situation-report-29http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/emergency-reports/gaza-situation-report-29


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occasion was almost certainly prompted by the inexplicable presence of the Israeli ambassador

at this iftar (dinner at the breaking of the Ramadan fast). On this see

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/15/obama-israel-ceasefire_n_5586229.html ,

accessed on 2014-08-07.

4 See Paul Mason, Why Gaza will prove to be a game-changing event , at

http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/gaza-prove-gamechanging-event/2118 , accessed

on 2014-08-08. The specialist in international law John Dugard, who was also the U.N. special

rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, has discredited Israel s claim that it is

acting in legitimate self-defense in his Debunking Israels Self -Defense Argument at

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/7/gaza-israel-internationalpoliticsunicc.html ,

accessed on 2014-08-07. The same position is taken by the human rights lawyer Noura Erakat

in her No, Israel Does Not Have the Right to Self-Defense In International Law Against Occupied

Palestinian Territory at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8799/no-israel-does-not-have-

the-right-to-self-defense- , accessed on 2014-08-07.

5 All Israeli governments, with the possible exception of the government led by Yitzhak Rabin

(who was assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish extremist), have done everything to preempt the

prospect of a full-blown two-state solution, typically laying the blame for this failure at the feet

of the Palestinians (it should be noted that even Rabin continued the settlement expansion

program). Netanyahu let the cat out of the bag when he said in Hebrew at a press conference

(on the fourth day of the recent Gaza attack) that he could never, ever, countenance a fully

sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank. While he is known to have previously indicated

he is opposed to a single binational Israeli state which would include Palestinians, favoring
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/15/obama-israel-ceasefire_n_5586229.htmlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/15/obama-israel-ceasefire_n_5586229.htmlhttp://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/gaza-prove-gamechanging-event/2118http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/gaza-prove-gamechanging-event/2118http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/7/gaza-israel-internationalpoliticsunicc.htmlhttp://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/7/gaza-israel-internationalpoliticsunicc.htmlhttp://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8799/no-israel-does-not-have-the-right-to-self-defense-http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8799/no-israel-does-not-have-the-right-to-self-defense-http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8799/no-israel-does-not-have-the-right-to-self-defense-http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8799/no-israel-does-not-have-the-right-to-self-defense-http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8799/no-israel-does-not-have-the-right-to-self-defense-http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8799/no-israel-does-not-have-the-right-to-self-defense-http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/7/gaza-israel-internationalpoliticsunicc.htmlhttp://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/gaza-prove-gamechanging-event/2118http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/15/obama-israel-ceasefire_n_5586229.html


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instead a unilateral separation from the Palestinians, he now made explicit that this could not

extend t o full Palestinian sovereignty

On this see http://mondediplo.com/blogs/gaza-netanyahu-s-real-goal , accessed on 2014-08-07.

In a word: there will be no Palestinian state, Hamas or no Hamas.

6 There are signs that this is changing, especially among those who are younger. See Cristina

Silva, Hamas Wins Hearts, Minds Of Millennials In Conflict With Israel , at

http://www.ibtimes.com/hamas-wins-hearts-minds-millennials-conflict-israel-1652292 ,

accessed on 2014-08-08.
http://mondediplo.com/blogs/gaza-netanyahu-s-real-goalhttp://mondediplo.com/blogs/gaza-netanyahu-s-real-goalhttp://mondediplo.com/blogs/gaza-netanyahu-s-real-goalhttp://www.ibtimes.com/hamas-wins-hearts-minds-millennials-conflict-israel-1652292http://www.ibtimes.com/hamas-wins-hearts-minds-millennials-conflict-israel-1652292http://www.ibtimes.com/hamas-wins-hearts-minds-millennials-conflict-israel-1652292http://mondediplo.com/blogs/gaza-netanyahu-s-real-goal

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What Will It Take to Stop Israel: Truth and Justice