Comment of The Day
Sometimes the comments at Comment Is Free should be a post in themselves. This commenter on ousted Labour MP Lorna Fitzsimmons’ hiring by a pro-Zionist lobby group has managed to sum up the entire Israel/Palestine struggle in a few paras:
Israel is attempting to do to the Palistinians what Europeans did to native Americans, and what the British did to Australian Aboriginals. It has established a system of religious apartheid as it deliberately and consciously seeks to make life as difficult as possible for Palistinians.
But it is not 1700, and such behaviour is no longer acceptable in the world. Israel’s actions and the injustice it inflicts are brutal and sickening.
And Israel will not succeed. The Palistinian people have shown the ability to endure whatever hardship and humiliation Israel inflicts on them. Short of the ethnic cleansing that some members of the Israeli government advocate, they will not go away. And all the time the barbarity and brutality that Israelis inflict on palistinians corrupts Israel itself, making it a more brutal and more violent society, and sinking it further into darkness. You cannot do these terrible, terrible things and not be changed yourself.
The excellent book ‘Country of My Skull’, by Antjie Krog is the story of an Africaans reporter covering the Truth & Reconcilliation Commission following the end of apartheid in South Africa, and of her coming to terms with the horror that had been done on behalf of her people. While reading the often harrowing book I kept thinking that Israelis will someday have to go through a similar process if they are to face what they’ve done and rejoin the civilised nations of the world.
Lorna Fitzsimons justifies Israeli atrocities by pointing to the fear caused by the home-made missiles that have killed nine people and asks what Britian if British citizens would accept a single rocket on a British town.
Let me go further and ask if British citizens would accept the confiscation of much of their land? Would they accept regular bombardment from high-tech weaponery? Would they accept daily humiliation and disruption of their lives at roadblocks? Would they accept the division of their land into isolated blocks? Would they accept the absolute and total control over every aspect of their lives by another power? Would they accept roads and areas reserved for the use of the occupiers only?
Well? Would they?
Of course they wouldn’t. They would resist. They would fight for the freedom of their country and of their people, as every occupied, subjugated people have the right – and the duty – to do.
Shame on what Israel has become and on those who support its brutal and horrific acts. Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!
Quite.
I once had to give a seminar for a socialist student group on Israel/Palestine and I struggled to find useful metaphors to explain what had happened, until I hit on the idea of using the Danish as an example.
If the Danes decided to reclaim all of the British land that was once governed by the Danelaw and were backed up militarily by all the other Scandinavian countries to invade and set up a Danish homeland in, say, Nottinghamshire – do you really think the inhabitants wouldn’t complain?
To bring it a little closer to home for American Zionists – if New York was reclaimed by the Mohawk tribe, and all the inhabitants were penned up in camps in Queens, or Staten Island or exiled to Montreal; if they were subjected to checkpoints, internal passports and regular military bombardments, snipers and collective punishment – do you really think they wouldn’t fight back with all the weapons available to them?
Shit, there’d be daily guerilla raids up the Hudson. It all depends on your perspective. Turn the kaleidoscope 90 degrees and the ‘terrorist’ is a freedom fighter.
Read more: Comment of The Day, Israel, Palestine
