These are the latest stats from the results of Israel's assault on Gaza which began on December 27th, 2008. Israel vows to deal a permanent and lasting blow to Hamas but fails to see that the surviving civilians who have now lost everything of value to them - their families, relatives, friends, livelihood, and economy, have all the more reason to lose their lives in the fight against Israel. If ever there was a graduation ceremony for Hamas, it is after an Israeli bombing.
Somehow, Israel has managed to convince the world of the logic behind not speaking to terrorists (for fear of legitimizing them) vs. legitimizing collective punishment upon a whole population of people while killing hundreds of innocent civilians in the process. Are words more valuable than human life? I think not. And to the Zionists who claim exclusive right to the land. Do you not believe that Adam was made in God's image? Was the land made for his descendants or were they made for the land? Is a piece of land more important to God or the value of human life?
As if megaton death from the skies wasn't bad enough, Palestine is plagued by a second type of bomb - that of the Settler movement. In relative times of "peace and quiet," Zionist settlers (not to be confused with peaceful Jewish Israelis) harass and often attack civilian Palestinians behind the scenes, who are just going about their ways within their own homeland in the West Bank. In case the world has forgotten, this is an occupation afterall. And in an occupation you have two parties: the occupiers and the occupied. As for the occupiers, let's call them "the masters" and for the occupied, "the slaves." Now, the typical master-slave bond involves many commands, often against the will of the slaves, that produce benefit and/or pleasure to the master at the cost to the slave(s). If the master is upset about something, he takes it out on the slave. The slave, being powerless, usually takes the punishment knowing there is little to be gained from retaliation - that is, if he is even thinking of retaliating. You see, for the slave, retaliation is only the fledgling psyche of one who has not yet accepted his fate of subjugation at the hands of his master; that is to say, one who still holds desperately unto his fleeting identity and self-respect. Nevertheless, after enough abuse, the slaves usually come to lose their own self-identity and totally immerse themselves in the pleasure of their master - no longer caring of principle but rather the fear of punishment has taken over. Skipping over history's many vivid examples of this paradigm, we see this as the case with the Israeli "masters" and the Palestinian "slaves" - the irony of course, being that the Jews themselves were once slaves under Egyptian masters. The Palestinians, however, have not yet forgotten who they are. Their self-identity is very much alive and dare I say, ever-so defined and emboldened with each successive crack of the Zionist "whip." Usually punishment keeps the slaves in check, but this time its not working.
The master is clearly not catching on this time.
And so, because of their zealous right to self-determination, the Palestinians, the slaves, not only think of retaliating, but have made it their very purpose in life. Afterall, what have they got to lose? Their fellow people are all in the same boat, some more severely beaten than others, but even as the master lays down his whip for a brief moment of calm, this "calm" itself is only a quietude enjoyed by the master himself. If he goes around telling his friends that things are quiet down in the slave den it doesn't mean that its actually the case. His friends might praise his generosity and example because they too understand that the slaves have accepted the state (no pun-intended.) However, this "calm" is actually the time of rage for the slaves since anger is best expressed while the whip is down, not while being lashed upon.
The same is true for the Palestinians.
Ceasefires and truces only act as show for Israel's friends that he knows how to put down the whip. This does not change the underlying dynamics of power imbalance that cause the rage within the Palestinians to stir up in the first place - that is, in being enslaved - which is exactly what this occupation has done to them. So while the whip is down, Israel's friends are shocked when a Palestinian will use this time to end his own slavery by attacking his oppressive master. *Gasps!* Does this at all sound familiar to us? Israelites in Egypt? Race-riots in Alabama? Apartheid in South Africa? - Does it ring a bell? And yet, this slavery continues without a rational understanding of the dynamics behind it despite the fact that history has repeated itself in this matter many times before. So is it wrong for the slave to kill the master's wife? Perhaps. But it is equally wrong to enslave, humiliate, kill, beat, and rape the slaves and their families for entire generations and take everything of value from them as well. With power comes responsibility, and the onus of change lies with the powerful before the weak, if responsibility has any meaning. Sadly, this realization is often only experienced while being at the other end of the whip so-to-speak. Pain is a great teacher and unfortunately the cost of human life had to show us that pain and power do not change a mindset of a people. Afterall, pain's greatest lesson is to run away from the source of pain, not go towards it - which is the opposite of what needs to be done in the Middle East. There needs to be a coming together, just as healing results from sealing the gash in a wound, so too do the Israelis and Palestinians have a need to come together and seal the gash, not run away from it because of pain.
I want to leave you with an article by an American Rabbi, Rabbi Michael Lerner and his thoughts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And I must say, he truly is a voice of reason, well-balanced and fair, within what has become a sea of insanity. It is people like him that we need, people on both sides of the argument to come forward with decent, balanced proposals and above all, good-will for both parties.
Israel's attempt to wipe out Hamas is understandable, but stupid.
Sure, no country in the world is going to ignore the provocation of rockets being launched from neighboring territory day after day. If Mexico had a group of anti-imperialists bombing Texas, imagine how long it would take for America to mobilize a counterattack. Israel has every right to respond.
But the kind of response matters.
Killing 500 Palestinians and wounding 2,500 others (at the time of writing) is disproportionate. And just as Hamas's indiscriminate bombing of population centers is a crime against humanity, so too is Israel's killing of civilians (at least 130 so far, not to mention the thousands in the years of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza).
Before Israel’s massive bombing, the Hamas bombings that began when the previous ceasefire ran out had not (thank God) killed anyone. The reason is obvious: Hamas has no airplanes, no tanks, nothing more than the weapons of the powerless—limited range mortars with limited accuracy.
Hamas can harass, but it cannot pose any threat to the existence of Israel.
On the other hand, any understanding of the situation must also include acknowledgment of the stress faced by Israelis living under the constant threat of terrorism, to which the katyusha bombings, however ineffective militarily, contribute massively. Living under constant threat of attack, plus hearing the leader of Iran talk about wiping Israel off the map, is a background condition that shapes Israelis' ability to be so insensitive to the human damage they have caused through their occupation.
Conversely, the ongoing trauma of expulsion and the occupation has contributed to the ongoing ethical insensitivity of many Palestinians to the suffering that they cause Israelis by engaging in attacks against civilians.
In short, compassion on both sides is a desperate necessity.
Hamas had respected the previously negotiated ceasefire except when Israel used it as cover to make assassination raids. Hamas argued that these raids were hardly a manifestation of a ceasefire, and so as symbolic protest would allow the release of rocket fire (usually hitting no targets).
But when the issue of continuing the ceasefire came up, Hamas wanted a guarantee that these assassination raids would stop. And it asked for more. With hundreds of thousands of Palestinians facing acute malnutrition bordering on starvation, Hamas insisted that the borders be opened to counter Israeli attempts to starve the Gazans into submission. And in return for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, it asks for the release of a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
Hamas has made it clear that it would accept the terms of the Saudi Arabian peace initiative, though it would never formally recognize Israel. It would live peacefully in a two-state arrangement, but it would never acknowledge Israel’s “right to exist.” This position is unnecessarily provocative and represents deep self-destructiveness on the part of some Palestinians, who believe that this failure to acknowledge Israel’s rights is the only symbolic weapon they have left.
Similarly, there are members of Israel's parliament, the Knesset, who say that they will never accept anything less than the total expulsion ("transfer") of all Palestinians to neighboring Arab states.
So what does Israel really seek? Probably it hopes to make Hamas so powerless that it loses the election against Fatah, and then the Palestinian Authority. It hopes the PA, itself deeply weakened by Israel's ongoing occupation, might negotiate a peace treaty that creates a "Palestinian state" that is actually a series of cantons or little separated city-states that are themselves cut off from each other by Israeli roads and military—in short a Palestinian state that will be neither economically nor politically viable. Then Israel can claim to have "given" the Palestinians "what they want," and meanwhile Israel will retain its settlements throughout the West Bank and continue de facto control.
Yet this will not generate long-term peace, but only a temporary rest in the fighting. Only a fully just settlement that allows Palestinians a real state that incorporates all of the West Bank and Gaza (with minor border modifications) and that provides real compensation for Palestinian refugees, and a state created in a spirit of generosity and genuine caring on the part of Israel, will end the violence and provide Israel with lasting safety.
Let me be clear. I hate Hamas and everything it stands for. I want to see it defeated. But that defeat can only happen politically through isolation, not militarily through slaughter.
The way to defeat Hamas is through meeting the legitimate needs of the Palestinian people and doing so in a spirit of genuine caring, in which the Jews of the world and the Israeli people show that they recognize Palestinians as our brothers and sisters, made in God's image and as equally precious to God as the Jewish people.
It is Jews taking seriously our reliance on God and God's message that the world should be based on love, generosity, caring, kindness, and compassion. And it is a reversal of the reliance on power that has not brought Israel safety or security, and a trust in the fundamental decency of the majority of Palestinians. This is what it would mean for Jews to take seriously our own Judaism and manifest it in a Jewish state.
Israel still seeks to wipe out Hamas. But even if it killed every one of Hamas' 20,000 fighters in Gaza, it would not extinguish the impulse toward Islamic fundamentalism that Hamas represents. Surely Israelis by now know that killing only creates new generations of angry people who will be the next wave of terrorists.
How do we get out of this destructive spiral? The first step is for the world to demand an immediate ceasefire. That ceasefire should be imposed by the United Nations and backed unequivocally by America. Its terms must include the following:
— Hamas stops all firing of missiles, bombs or any other violent action originating from the West Bank or Gaza, and cooperates in actively jailing anyone from any faction that breaks this ceasefire.
— Israel stops all bombing, targeted assassinations or any other violent actions aimed at activists, militants or suspected terrorists in the West Bank or Gaza, and uses the full force of its army to prevent any further attacks on Palestinians.
— Israel opens the border with Gaza and allows free access to and from Israel, subject only to full search and seizure of any weapons. Israel allows free travel of food, gas, electricity, water and consumer goods and materials including from land, air and sea, subject only to full search and seizure of any weapons or materials typically used for weapons.
— Israel releases all Palestinians in detention and returns them to the West Bank or Gaza according to the choice of the detainees or prisoners. Hamas releases Gilad Shalit and anyone else being held by Palestinian forces.
— Both sides invite an international force to implement these agreements.
— Both sides agree to end teaching and/or advocacy of violence against the other side in and outside mosques, educational institutions and the media.
— This ceasefire would last for 20 years. NATO, the UN and the US all agree to enforce this agreement and impose severe sanctions in the event of any violations.
These steps would make a huge difference, isolate the most radical members of each side from the mainstream and make it possible to then begin negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on a broader and deeper set of issues.
The basic condition for creating peace is to help each side feel "safe." A first and critical step is to speak in a language that is empathic toward the suffering of each people in a climate of discourse in which both sides' stories are heard and understood.
Yet Israel, as the militarily superior power, ought to take the first steps: Implementing a massive Marshall Plan in Gaza and in the West Bank to end poverty and unemployment, rebuilding infrastructure and encouraging investment, dismantling the settlements or making settlers become citizens of a Palestinian state, accepting 30,000 Palestinian refugees annually back into Israel for the next 30 years, apologizing for its role in the 1948 expulsions and offering to coordinate a worldwide compensation effort for all that Palestinians lost during the occupation and, finally, by recognizing a Palestinian state within borders already defined by the Geneva Accord of 2003.
This is the only way Israel will ever achieve security. It is the only way to permanently defeat Hamas and all extremists who wish to see endless war against Israel.
The most significant contribution the new Obama administration could make to Middle East peace would be to embrace a strategy that homeland security is best achieved not by military or economic domination but by generosity and caring for others. If this new way of thinking could become a serious part of US policy, it would have an immense impact on undermining the fearful consciousness of Israelis who still see the world more through the frame of the Holocaust and previous persecutions than through the frame of their actual present power in the world.
It breaks my heart to see the terrible suffering in Gaza and in Israel. As a religious Jew I find it all the worse, because under the guise of serving God, both Jews and Arabs are actually acting out their accumulated pain in ways that will generate future suffering.
And because it confirms to me how easy it is to pervert the loving message of Judaism into a message of hatred and domination. This is why I remain in mourning for the Jewish people, for Israel and for the world.
***Rabbi Michael Lerner is chief editor of Tikkun Magazine, a prominent Jewish critique of politics, culture and society in North America. Rabbi Lerner has published 11 books, most recently New York Times bestseller "The Left Hand of God," which was lauded by the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and numerous others.
SOURCE: http://maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=34647
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