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Why is Everybody Silent? By Michael D. Roberts |
In fact Sharon had a free hand during this time as world focus and preoccupation with events in Afghanistan allowed him to combat the Palestinians and to gradually escalate the level and quantity of force that he used to rid himself of the pesky Palestinians. But with the war winding down in Afghanistan Sharon and company were concerned that world public opinion would turn against them and so Israel embarked on a propaganda campaign to place the United States firmly in its corner.
After using warplanes against the Palestinians for the first time in many years Sharon then branded the now frequent suicide bombers "terrorists," and enjoined Yasser Arafat with them saying that he was responsible and that he alone had the ability to stop them. The United States bought into this fiction and so never again will I blame just a few cops in the NYPD who brutalize and kill Black people in New York I'll blame whoever is the present mayor or the President of the United States since they are the ones in authority and could, like Arafat, have stopped them.
But Israel need not have feared, for the United States went a step further subscribing to the notion that "any enemy of Israel is our enemy also." Within weeks President Bush singled out Iran, Iraq and North Korea (thrown in for good measure) as the "axis of evil." And just this week U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld added Syria to that list - a statement that came just days after the Israeli Defense Minister warned Iran and Syria to desist from any tempting military adventures in the region. Now the United States and Israel is speaking the same language in respect to the Palestinians and so the U.S. sending of a Special Envoy to the Middle East to work out a cease fire and a peaceful solution to the problem stinks to high heaven of unmitigated hypocrisy it's like asking Satan to give up sin.
Israel has repeated the mantra that it is acting in self-defense and claimed that it has a right to exist. I agree. But the million dollar question is this: so why do Ariel Sharon and the Israeli hardliners oppose a Palestinian state? The answer is simple Palestinian land, or what's left of it. At the core of the conflict is sneaky settlements built over the years by the Israeli's over the objection of the Palestinians and the United Nations. Then there is Jerusalem that is being jointly claimed by both Arabs and Jews. But the systematic, gradual and forceful annexation of Palestinian land is what sustained this long standing conflict. Trouble is every world body has conveniently ignored this fundamental fact.
Any true settlement of the Palestinian question must take into consideration the question of the boundaries that would contain a Palestinian state, and address the settler question that Ariel Sharon does not want to deal with. And so the Israelis and the United States have become strident in their condemnation of the string of suicide bombings and have unfairly and simplistically blamed Yasser Arafat for any attack even while he was surrounded by Israeli tanks, his phone cut off, and with no electricity of running water in the compound. But the roots of the suicide bombers must be put in its correct context and historical perspective, and understood in the sense of the conflict.
Of course Hamas and the other extremist groups that train and arm suicide bombers all have a warped view of Israel and are vehemently opposed to its right to exist. That is a fact and a position that every sane individual must condemn outright. But their allure especially to Palestinian youths comes also from the fact that Israel routinely provides the attraction and incentive for a wave of new bombers. Starving Palestinians economically, entrenching astronomical levels of poverty, scattering Palestinians into refugee camps for political reasons, and humiliating and degrading their leadership hardly engender good faith. When Israel bulldozes the homes of innocent, impoverished Palestinians they also crush the hopes and aspirations of the youth who now see martyrdom as a way to solve the problem and get revenge on Israel at the same time.
Is the spate of suicide bombings acts of terror? Certainly. But how does a people oppressed and occupied, without an army, whose leadership have been rendered ineffective by the acts of the Israeli army, and whose leader has been called among other things, "irrelevant, an enemy, and a terrorist" depending on the mood of Mr. Sharon fight back against what they see as a gross injustice? How does a people whose land was stolen by an international conspiracy and pushed onto a little parcel of space reconcile the fact that more and more of that space is being systematically appropriated by a stronger neighbor armed to the teeth and supported carte blanche by the only superpower in the world?
The United States must bear responsibility for Israel's actions; and in the same way that Mr. Sharon is blaming Mr. Arafat, Mr. Bush must be blamed for Mr. Sharon's bloody hands. It's as simple as that. What Mr. Bush needs to do is to call of his attack Rotweiller and force both sides back to the negotiating table. Israel has the military means to occupy the Palestinian nation, destroy the property and authority of Mr. Arafat, and generally seize more land in the process. But as long as occupation and military aggression is the order of the day then Israel will never get the peace it craves. Power might come from the barrel of a gun but lasting peace requires a commitment of the human spirit.
Within the mix of diplomatic activities and lame duck, tongue-in-cheek, wrist-slapping of the Israelis and the harsh rhetoric against the Palestinians, a balance must be sought. The war on terror must not be used as a blanket tactic for unbridled and naked aggression. Likewise, the continuing spiral of suicide bombings will only serve to harden Israeli resistance to dealing with the Palestinians. And finally Mr. Sharon must be told that there is a major difference between a real leader and the insecure, anal, rabble-rousing and pejorative statements of a man obsessed with proving that he's got more penile length than Yasser Arafat and therefore could piss further.
Sharon's statement that he regretted not killing Arafat in Lebanon is clearly not only injudicious, but asinine, and not the kind of thing that comes out of the mouth of responsible leadership. Personal obsession and hatreds have no place in finding a peaceful solution to a problem that daily takes innocent lives. The deafening silence by world leaders when Sharon rants and raves is indeed pathetic. Major news networks refuse to analyze the Israeli leader's looney tunes off-the-cuff statements. There is very timid condemnation for Israeli aggression and full blame for Palestinian suicide bombs. Why? Because Israel has done a great job of fooling the world that any criticism of its policies translates into anti-Semitism. Now that not only is a pot of crock but plain hypocritical since the Palestinians do not have the monopoly on violence.
Finally, the latest statement, or ultimatum by Ariel Sharon that orders Arafat out of Ramallah into exile and, in his words, " he takes no one with him because they are all murderers and it's a one-way ticket. He can never return," proves that Sharon may have lost it. This is the politics of insanity, hatred, and obsession since Arafat, for better or worse, is the legitimate leader of the Palestinian people and Sharon's ultimatum, or "offer," smacks of disrespect and arrogance. Trouble is nobody wants to say this publicly and Sharon marches on snug in his belief that he can do all that he's doing and saying since Big Brother George in the White House will say little or do nothing. What a world we live in today.