A nation which enslaves another forges its own chains.

Palestinians, dark-skinned

March 31, 2004

The Demented Logic of the Occupation

Israel: Suicide Nation?

By M. JUNAID ALAM


A nation which enslaves another forges its own chains.

-Karl Marx

Politics, being the art of deception, must certainly recognize Israel
as its Da Vinci. Its smug self-portrait as a 'civilized democracy',
rendered with brushes dipped deeply in the oil paint of antipathy for
Arabs, has won much admiration among impressionable Americans.
Galvanizing and amplifying latent Western hatred of Muslim Arabs in
order to rally the West under the banner of 'Judeo-Christian
civilization', and intimidating doubters by abusing the memory of the
Holocaust to claim special 'unique victim' status, Israel
intones, 'Stand with us because we are white and bomb towel-heads in F-
16s just as you do, and don't dare stand against us because you once
persecuted our forefathers and should atone for your sins--by abetting
ours.'

The result of this most cynical ploy is that the Palestinians, dark-
skinned victims of Israel's perpetual campaign of ethnic cleansing,
torture, theft, and humiliation, are always grotesquely caricatured as
mindless savages with a fetish for suicide attacks. There is, however,
one major credibility problem with this racist rhetoric: Israel itself
is in the process of committing suicide.

The trouble hardly stems from any defect in Israel's elaborate
propaganda campaign. To the contrary, its message has been widely
accepted with fawning awe and reverence by all dominant presses,
pundits, and politicians, whose necks and knees strain from displaying
the proper respect accorded to the lies of the powerful. The Israeli
narrative, preserved, polished, and peddled by the generously-funded
pro-Israel lobby and various sycophants, has easily withstood the
fleabites of facts and evidence presented by critical Jewish- Israeli
scholars, historians, journalists and commentators, which go unnoticed
in mainstream discourse.

No, Israel's crisis has not emerged because its packaged lies have been
unwrapped for the public by sentimental sectors of corporate capital
moved by the plight of the oppressed, but rather because the oppressed
themselves, viciously maligned and virtually alone in their struggle
for survival, have refused to bow to the logic behind those packaged
lies; that is to say, they refuse to be exterminated, disappeared,
destroyed, or spirited away, as Zionism has been demanding of them for
one hundred years. As one Palestinian recently wrote in response to Ben-
Gurion's famous quip on expelling Arabs, ("The old will die and the
young will forget,"): "The old are dying, and the young are dying too,
but no one is forgetting."

What is therefore falling to pieces is not Israel's 'smug self-
portrait', but rather the cheap, crumbling edifice of arrogance on
which it and all the other aspirations of Israeli colonialism are
mounted. Propping up this arrogance in the past was the basic
assumption among Israeli elites that after enough murder, rape,
torture, bulldozing, looting, and expropriating, the Palestinians will
break. This prognosis has failed miserably. Compounding the original
crime of mass expulsion with more violence has not allowed Israel to
escape its consequences. Zionism's "original sin", as one Israeli
historian calls his nation's original 1948 expulsion of over 700,000
Palestinians and massacre of hundreds more, is the basis of both
Israel's existence and the continued non-existence of the more than
four million caged, dispossessed Palestinian victims who demand justice.

This demand for justice expresses itself in continued endurance and
resistance, separate forms of defiance with interdependent consequences-
-consequences that Israeli society cannot cope with and sees as its
greatest threat.

Endurance means, first and foremost, staying in place. Its greed for
land and settlements partially hindered by Palestinian presence, Israel
has responded by robbing the natives of any legal, political or human
rights, and has constructed what Israeli anti-occupation activist Jeff
Halper calls a "matrix of control" to stifle their lives, including
settlements, military checkpoints, roadblocks, curfews, embargoes, and
detention centers. But merely living in this hellish scenario
constitutes a victory against the root logic of Israeli colonialism,
which is to 'purify' the land by removing its indigenous population.

Resistance, on the other hand, refers to active measures against the
occupation. In the first Intifada and in the beginning of the second
Intifada this almost always took the form of unarmed protest or stone-
throwing, but Israel responded by mowing down hundreds of Palestinians
with machine guns and breaking their bones, bringing in bulldozers to
demolish homes and tanks to enforce even harsher living conditions.
Their restraint further rewarded with an atrocious death ratio of 25:1,
Palestinians tired of digging rows of graves for their children and
patriots just to be patted on the head by a few polite Western
liberals, and turned to armed struggle, the most extreme form of which
now manifests itself in suicide bombing.

The remarkable reality of sustained Palestinian endurance and
resistance in the face of overwhelming power has precipitated two
crises for Israel so entwined that they are best referred to as a dual
crisis: that of its political legitimacy and self-proclaimed moral
purpose.

Because Palestinian-Arab population growth in historical Palestine
(Israel, Gaza, West Bank) greatly exceeds that of the Jewish
population, Jewish majority status in the area - assiduously obtained
through a century of mass murder and mass expulsion - will be imperiled
and surpassed within a mere two decades. That these growing Arab
millions stand stripped of elementary rights and suffer the
deprivations of a racist military machine undermines Israel's claim to
the mantle of democracy. Panicked Israeli protest to the effect that
Palestinian growth is some sneaky maneuver to "destroy" Israel only
reinforces its status as an apartheid state, since a democracy which
fears the democratic enfranchisement of half its population is no
democracy at all.

Furthermore, Israel's viciously disproportionate use of force against
all forms of Palestinian resistance to the occupation has created a
maximum escalation of violence in which any citizen of Israel is now a
potential target of weaponized desperation--suicide bombing. Rocking
Israeli cafes, discos, and streets at will, this tactic has narrowed
the 25:1 death ratio to almost 3:1, and exploded Israel's basic
founding ideal--that it is a safe haven for Jews. Indeed, Jews are now
safer in almost any place in the world other than Israel.

In responding to this dual crisis, some in Israeli circles of power
have expressed quite reasonable ideas. Last September, Israeli
politician Avraham Burg, former speaker of the Knesset, declared his
country was resting "on foundations of oppression and injustice" and
advocated full withdrawal from the territories to create a Palestinian
state. The same month 27 air force pilots, considered the military's
elite, refused to implement assassinations, describing them in a letter
as "illegal and immoral attacks." In November, four ex-chiefs of
Israel's vaunted internal security service, Shin Bet, jointly declared
themselves against Sharon, the apartheid wall, and their
country's "disgraceful" and "patently immoral" behavior against
Palestinians, prompted by concerns that "Israel will no longer be a
democracy and a home for the Jewish people." In December, 13 reservists
(including three officers) of Israel's top commando unit joined
hundreds of other Refuseniks in refusing to serve in the occupied
territories, saying that they "have long ago crossed the line between
fighters fighting a just cause and oppressing another people."

But flirtation with reasonableness by these small few stands in stark
contrast with Israel's long-time marriage to racism, colonialism, and
growing "fascist tendencies," to borrow Israeli historian Baruch
Kimmerling's words. Representing these tendencies are rightists at the
helm of Israeli society - the settler movement, military, and right-
wing parties, spearheaded by prime minister Ariel Sharon, a war
criminal responsible for several bloody massacres that have left
hundreds of civilians dead.

Sharon's 'solution' to the country's dual crisis is in the tradition of
Revisionist Zionism, founded in the 1920's by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, an
admirer of Italian fascism who wrote honestly but with the aspirations
of a conquistador-cowboy that Palestinians "look upon Palestine with
the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon
his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie." One disciple of this
doctrine was Israeli war hero Moshe Dayan, who admitted, "There is not
one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab
population," and advocated the following method to expand this
theft: "[Israel] must see the sword as the main, if not the only,
instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral
tension. Toward this end it may, no - it must - invent dangers."

The assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin epitomizes and
exemplifies this strategy for addressing Israel's dual crisis. While
the murder of a blind, crippled, wheelchair-bound quadriplegic outside
a place of worship appears cowardly, and the inevitable blowback
against Israel gives the impression Sharon has lost his mind, the
strike is part and parcel of a consciously calculated game plan that is
perfectly rational within the framework of Zionist logic. For the
assassination of Hamas' main symbolic leader is designed to provoke it
into an extreme 'mega-terror' act or a series of terror attacks, severe
enough to marshal chauvinist-Israeli support for a final solution to
the Palestinian problem--complete ethnic cleansing and removal of all
Arabs from historical Palestine.

This is not some imaginary scenario, but a definite escalation of
existing Israeli tactics. An attack of September 11th or similar
proportions would allow Israelis to heighten their coveted 'special
victim' status, bolster their image as fighting for the 'Judeo-
Christian' cause of the 'war on terror', and purge the re-demonized
Arabs without international interference. In one fell swoop, Israel
would be able to complete what it started in the 1948 war and its dual
crisis would be solved.

No serious person denies that Hamas will retaliate; the organization
has vowed to attack any Israeli from Sharon on down and political
analysts even within Israel recognize that it is only a matter of time
before it strikes. Nor is Israeli provocation which aims at or leads to
getting Israelis killed unprecedented. In fact, it is commonplace. On
July 22, 2003, the Israeli daily Yedioth Achronot reported that the
heads of Tanzim, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, approved a unilateral cease-
fire, and that former Palestinian Security minister Dahlan had met
Sheikh Yassin, who agreed to the cease-fire principles. 90 minutes
later, the same paper reports, Israel assassinated militant Salah
Sheadeh, "in the course of which dozens of civilians were killed and
wounded as well." Israeli writer and professor Ran Hacohen noted that
in November 2001, "the assassination of the Hamas activist Mahmoud Abu
Hanoud was carried out just when the Hamas was respecting for two
months its agreement with Arafat not to attack inside Israel," and
that "in January 2002, the assassination of Raed Karmi ended a few
weeks of relative quiet in the territories." All of this obviously had
disastrous consequences for Israeli civilians.

Then there are those infamous media-created 'periods of calm' during
which no Israelis die but dozens of Palestinians are murdered and
thrown into the trash heap of forgotten history, such as August 1st, to
September 1st, 2002 when 39 Palestinians were killed; 18 days later a
suicide bomber exploded in Israel--a 'shattering' of the 'lull'.
(Haaretz, September 2, 2002). Even more telling is a study conducted by
the Israeli weekly, Ha'Ir, of ten Israeli assassinations against
targeted Palestinian activists that followed periods of relative calm
(a revelation in itself), from July 31, 2001 to September 9, 2003. The
results? In retaliations immediately following the deaths of the ten
targeted militants, a total of 180 Israeli civilians were killed.
(Ha'Ir, September 25, 2003)

This makes the results of recent Israeli polls all the more remarkable,
for they show not only that 80% of Israelis believe the Yassin
assassination will increase Palestinian terrorist attacks, but that 62%
of Israelis support it. (AFP, March 23, 2003). Even a generous
interpreter would have to admit that a significant portion of those who
predicted dire consequences from the attack nonetheless approved of it.
That Israel's political strategy involves the jeopardizing and killing
of its own citizens, apparently with loud approval from some of its own
population, speaks volumes about its moral bankruptcy.

Along with this bankruptcy comes a high degree of irony, since Israeli
propagandists never tire of demonizing Palestinians based on suicide
bombings. Their smugness precluding any possibility of sincerity,
Israeli pundits ask, 'Why do Palestinians blow themselves up just to
kill us?', and always answer themselves (who else is there?) in a
somber tone as if they are suddenly concerned with Palestinian well-
being, 'They place no value on their own lives.' If given a chance, the
Palestinian native would respond, 'If you would be so kind as to donate
us those tanks and helicopters you safely slaughter us with from afar,
we would be happy to spare you the agony you undoubtedly feel about our
deaths.'

But it turns out that Israel is now neither safe nor far from the reach
of its victims, and that its main strategy for addressing its problem
involves exposing all its citizens to injury and death just to whip up
enough self-righteousness and hate to repeat the cycle all over again
until the conditions are ripe for mass expulsion. In this sense Israel
is akin to a guilt-ridden wife beater; acutely aware of its own
immorality, it provokes its victim into some futile kind of resistance
to inspire itself with enough hatred to justify continuing the beating,
awaiting all-out world war to finish the job without eliciting much
protest.

Many IDF officers probably do not even see the demented logic of their
own strategy and have convinced themselves that it is beyond reproach.
Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon and his crew proudly announced that they
plan to 'liquidate' the entire Hamas leadership, removing those who
train suicide bombers, and thus rid Israel of Palestinian terrorism
once and for all. What these fine gentlemen fail to understand is that
they will accomplish absolutely nothing of the sort. In the Israeli
daily Haaretz, September 14, 2003, it was pointed out that in the past
two years, the IDF had claimed to have killed or captured the
Hebron "head" of the military wing of Hamas no less than five times--
and each time it was a different person. Moreover, the notion that
bombers need to be 'trained' is absurd: how much practice does it
require to put on a bomb belt, walk into Israelis, and explode? All
the 'training' required is amply provided by the daily supply of
Israeli atrocities that make one final death appear preferable to a
humiliating life in which one's dignity and hope are killed a thousand
times over.

Ya'alon himself must know this; a few months ago he declared that
Israeli tactics were only creating hatred. It is worth quoting one of
the former Shin Bet heads, Major General Ami Ayalon, on the
subject: "Terror is not thwarted with bombs or helicopters. Why does
this increase terror? Because it is overt, because it carries an
element of vindictiveness." Israeli elites who hope to snuff out the
Palestinian demand for land, freedom and justice by crushing the
Palestinians themselves should take heed: their history of vengeance is
no match for the vengeance of history.

For it is precisely the vengeance of history that haunts Israel today;
conceived and inserted into the heart of the Islamic world at a time
when Europe looked highly upon colonialism, the memory of the Holocaust
fell heavily upon its conscience, and Muslims were politically weak and
motionless, Israel's confidence appeared justified. But now, Europe has
largely abandoned its colonialist attitudes, Israel's abuse of its vast
military power has earned it the label of the world's greatest threat
to peace within Europe and inverted its image from underdog to occupier
across most of the globe, and the first signs of Islamic awakening and
resistance, though often primitive and backward-looking at the moment,
are emerging.

Israel's reliance on the waning forces which precipitated its creation
in its war against the very people who were dispossessed during that
creation has locked it into a self-destructive dynamic. Its set of
solutions consist only of increasing: (a) colonial brutality by killing
more natives, (b) sympathy for and anger over Jewish suffering by
getting more Israelis killed, and (c) prospects for an intensified 'war
on terror' in which anything goes and actions (a) and (b) would be
justified in the long run.

Plan (c) is certainly the clincher in Sharon's vision of purging the
Palestinians, as he always justifies his atrocities as complementary to
the American-led 'war on terror' and constantly advocates bringing this
war to Iran, Syria, and elsewhere. Thus from the Zionist viewpoint,
America replaces Europe and its crusade against terrorism substitutes
for colonialism, allowing Israel to thrive again. But Israelis who
cling to this new savior fail to see that this is only an escalation of
and not an escape from the self-destructive dynamic. Sharon's decision
to follow Dayan's directive to "invent dangers" by inciting and
exacerbating the Islamic threat along with America means that the whole
nation's very existence will be imperiled, not simply that of a few
dozen Israelis every few weeks, as is presently the case.

For assuming our 'war on terror' is still raging two decades from now
as desired by Sharon and company, what will Israel do when it is
surrounded by over 300 million neighboring Arabs and 1.5 billion
Muslims worldwide? Does a sane nation of a mere few million place its
hopes for survival on the permanent subjugation of a quarter of
humanity that surrounds it? Israel on its current path is like a man
who swims off the coast into the ocean and happens on an island, only
to complain of being surrounded by water. Its citizens should start
asking themselves and their leaders, 'What will we do when the typhoon
comes?'



M. Junaid Alam, 20, Boston, co-editor and web-designer of new leftist
journal for American youth, Left Hook. Feedback:

The result of this most cynical ploy is that the Palestinians, dark-
skinned victims of Israel's perpetual campaign of ethnic cleansing,

A nation which enslaves another forges its own chains.

-Karl Marx

the Palestinians, dark-
skinned victims