of Ilan Pappe - The Electronic Intifada
The my visit home in Galilee, coincided with the genocidal attack Israeli attack on Gaza. The state, through its media and with the help of academics, issued a unanimous chorus - even stronger than that heard during the criminal attack in Lebanon in the summer of 2006.
Israel is once again submerged by a righteous fury that results in the destruction operations in the Gaza Strip. This overwhelming self-justification of inhumanity and impunity is not only annoying, but it is a matter on which it is worth stopping if you want to understand the international immunity for the massacre that has been raging in Gaza.
is based primarily on simple lies broadcast journalism in a language that recalls the moments darkest of the thirties in Europe. A news bulletin every half hour on radio and television described the victims as terrorists in Gaza and their mass murder by Israel as an act of self-defense. Israel presents himself to his people as the ...
right victim defends himself against a great evil. The academic world is enlisted to explain the demonic and monstrous
both the Palestinian struggle, whether led by Hamas. These are the same scholars who in the past demonized the last Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and delegitimize his movement, Fatah, during the Second Palestinian Intifada.
But the lies and distorted representations are not the worst part of all of this. It is the direct attack on the last vestiges of humanity and dignity of the Palestinian people what is more anger. The Palestinians in Israel have shown their solidarity with the inhabitants of Gaza and are now branded as a fifth column within the Jewish state, their right to remain in their homeland is questioned given the lack of support for Israeli aggression. Among those who agree - wrongly, in my opinion - to appear in the local media are interviewed and not interviewed, as if they were in the prison of the Shin Bet. Their arrival on the scene is preceded and followed by humiliating racist and underscores are accused of being a fifth column, irrational people and fanatical. But this is not even the most indecent habit. There are some Palestinian children in the occupied territories treated by cancer in Israeli hospitals. God knows what price they have paid their families because
were hospitalized there. Israel Radio he went to the hospital every day to ask for poor parents to tell listeners what the Israeli right has Israel in its attacks and how evil is Hamas in its defense. There is no limit to the hypocrisy that produces a righteous fury. The discourse of politicians and generals constantly oscillates between the complacency of humanity shows that the army in its operations "surgery" on one side, and the need to destroy Gaza once and for all, so human of course, on the other. The
righteous fury is a constant resulting in the phenomenon, now and in time the Zionist Israel, Palestine. Every act, whether it was ethnic cleansing, occupation, massacre or destruction has always been portrayed as morally justified and as a pure act of self defense so reluctant perpetrated by Israel in its war against the worst kind of human beings. In his excellent book The Return of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel, Gabi Piterberg explores the ideological origins and progress of this historic righteous fury. Today in Israel, from left to right, from Likud to Kadima, from academia to the media, you can listen to this right Fury of a State which is busier than any other in the world to destroy and dispossess indigenous population.
is crucial to analyze the ideological origins of this attitude and take the necessary political conclusions from its dissemination. This righteous fury repair companies and politicians in Israel from reproach or criticism abroad. But even worse, is always translated into policies of destruction against the Palestinians. Without any mechanism for critical internal and external pressures, any Palestinian becomes a potential target of this fury. Given the firepower of the Jewish state can only inevitably end up in more mass murders, massacres and ethnic cleansing.
The a priori conviction of being right is a powerful act of self-denial and justification. It explains why the Israeli Jewish society is not swayed by talk sensible, logical point of view or from the diplomatic dialogue. And if you do not want to endorse violence as a means to counter it, there is only one way before us, this challenge head-blind belief as a moral evil ideology that seeks to conceal the atrocities. Another name for this ideology is that of Zionism, and international condemnation against Zionism, not only in cases of specific Israeli policies, is the only way to reject it. We must try to explain not only the world, but also to the Israelis themselves, that Zionism is an ideology that endorses the ethnic cleansing, occupation, and now the mass murder. What now feels the need is not only a condemnation of the massacre in progress, but also the de-legitimization of an ideology that produces the political and morally and politically justified. Let us hope that significant items in the world say that this ideology to the Jewish state and the entire State's conduct is intolerable and unacceptable, and as long as they persist, Israel will be boycotted and will be subject to penalties. But
are not naive. I know that even the killing of hundreds of innocent Palestinians would not be sufficient to produce such a change Western public opinion, and it is even more unlikely that the crimes committed in Gaza push European governments to change their policy towards Palestine.
Yet, we can not let 2009 be just another year, less loaded with meaning in 2008, the year commemorating the Nakba, and that did not keep high hopes that we all have the potential to radically transform the attitude of the Western world towards Palestine and the Palestinians.
seems that even the most heinous crimes, like genocide in Gaza, are treated as events out of context, free from any past event and any ideology or system. In this new year, we try to ensure that the public will reconsider the history of Palestine and the Zionist ideology misdeeds as the best means for explaining the operations of genocide like the one being held in Gaza as a way to prevent the worst events to come. In
academic institutions, this has already been done. Our main challenge is to find an effective way to explain the connection between the Zionist ideology and past policies of destruction, until the current crisis. It might be easier to do while under the most dire circumstances, the world's attention has turned once again to Palestine. It would be even more difficult times in which the situation may seem "quieter" and less dramatic. In these moments of "relaxation", the threshold for the limited attention the Western media marginalize the Palestinian tragedy, once again, neglecting because of the horrific genocide in Africa or by the economic crisis and ecological doomsday scenarios in the rest the world. Although it is unlikely that the information is interested in Western history to stock, it is only through a historical analysis that the bulk of the crimes committed against the Palestinian people over the last sixty years can be exposed. Therefore, it is for a world of alternative media activists and academics to insist on this connection town. These figures should not escape, twisting his nose, from information the general public, and hopefully even from pushing politicians more careful look at the events with a wider historical perspective.
In a similar way, we might be able to find a more understandable way, compared with the academic and intellectual, to explain clearly that Israel's policy in the last sixty years is derived from a hegemonic racist ideology called Zionism, protected by many layers of righteous fury. Despite the predictable charges of anti-Semitism and so on, it's time to associate the Zionist ideology in the public mind with the now well-known historical landmarks in the country:
ethnic cleansing of 1948, the oppression of Palestinians in Israel during the days of military rule, the brutal occupation of the West Bank and now the massacre in Gaza. As much as the ideology of apartheid, said the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology-in its most simplistic-shared and allowed all Israeli governments past and present de-humanize the Palestinians wherever they are and aspire to destroy them. The means have changed from one period to another and from one place to another, as well as the stories that hid these atrocities. But there is a clear model that can not be discussed solely in academic ivory towers but must be part of political discourse on the contemporary reality of Palestine today.
Some of us, namely those who are committed to peace and justice in Palestine, unknowingly circumvent this debate by focusing, and this is understandable, the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)-the West Bank and Gaza Strip . Fighting against crime policies is an urgent mission. But this should not get the message that the powers in the West have adopted with joy at the suggestion of Israel that Palestine is only
the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and that the Palestinians are the only people in those territories chevivono . We should broaden the representation of Palestine in geographical and demographic making a historical narrative of the events of 1948, and require the same human and civil rights for all people who live or once lived in what is now Israel and the OPT.
connecting the Zionist ideology and policies of the past with these atrocities, we can provide a rationale and transparent to the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions. With non-violent means to challenge a state ideology that allows no doubts about his honesty and that you can, aided by a silent world, to expropriate and destroy the native population of Palestine, a cause is just and moral. It would also be an effective way to stimulate public opinion, not only against the current policy of genocide in Gaza, but hopefully also to prevent future atrocities. But far more important than anything else, deflate the bubble of the righteous fury that stifles the Palestinians whenever it makes its appearance. It would help to put an end to impunity immunity west of Israel. Without that immunity, it is hoped that more people in Israel are beginning to see the real nature of the crimes committed in their name and their fury against those who ask them and the Palestinians trapped in this pointless cycle of bloodshed and violence. Ilan Pappe
(Israel's righteous fury and Its Victims in Gaza)
The Electronic Intifada, January, 2009 2nd
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