The Israelis bulldozed another 14 Palestinian homes this week in a refugee
camp in Gaza. The United States said the act was “provocative.”
Actually, it was a war crime. Actually, what the Israelis have been doing to
the Palestinians has been correctly characterized by the International Red
Cross as war crimes and by a United Nations official as “an affront to
civilization.”
But, hey, you misled, sleeping Americans, you don't know what a breakthrough
it is for the U.S. State Department to utter even the mildest criticism of
some Israeli atrocity.
“Provocative.”
Wow. Golly gee whiz. Old George W. Bush promised he would provide leadership,
and that's real leadership, calling a war crime “provocative.” Finally,
after eight months of refusing to utter even that bland a criticism, he
managed to say the destruction of homes so precious to such terribly poor
people is “provocative.”
It is such an improvement over Warren Christopher. When he was secretary of
state, the Israelis were indulging in one of their periodic and gratuitous
artillery attacks against villages in South Lebanon.
A group of about 100 Lebanese women and children fled to a United Nations
compound for safety. It didn't matter. The Israelis fired on it deliberately,
as a subsequent U.N. investigation demonstrated. They were all killed, along
with the U.N. peacekeepers. Bits and pieces of their flesh hung like grotesque
decorations, dripping blood from shattered debris and blasted trees.
Do you know what Christopher said?
“The United States urges both sides to show restraint.”
I wonder how he expected the shattered flesh of the dead Lebanese women and
children to show restraint. Perhaps he thought that they should not bleed so
profusely from their wounds. I think that was the very first time I felt
ashamed to be an American, listening to that rat-faced, cold-blooded
international lawyer brushing off an atrocity like a crumb on his expensive
coat sleeve.
One day, Americans are going to wake up from more than 50 years of Zionist
propaganda and suddenly feel like strangers in a strange land, to borrow the
title of an old science-fiction work. They're finally going to see the simple
truth:
Israelis drove Palestinians out of their own country and confiscated their
land and wealth. Israelis refused to allow (and still refuse) Palestinian
refugees to return, despite United Nations resolutions instructing them to do
so.
In 1967, the Israelis attacked and took the West Bank, Gaza and East
Jerusalem. Since then, they have ruled it and still rule, despite U.N.
resolutions against their actions.
Now, after dragging out so-called peace negotiations for 10 years — how can
the simple question, “When are you going to withdraw from the territories
you illegally occupy?” take 10 years? — the drama is heading toward a
climax.
The Israelis have tried economic strangulation. They have tried to force the
Palestinians to accept a chopped-up pseudo-country. They have tried killing
their children, demolishing their homes and assassinating their leaders.
They tried uprooting their agricultural orchards and sealing the Palestinians
off from normal travel.
By the way, where are you environmentalists while the Israelis commit this
environmental atrocity? Don't you know how long it takes for an olive tree to
reach maturity and start bearing fruit? I thought you were concerned about the
environment. Oh, excuse me — not when it's a Palestinian environment. My
mistake. I sometimes forget who is a hypocrite and who isn't, because there
are so many these days.
What's next, of course, is for the Israelis to take off the bloody glove and
commit one super massacre in an attempt to drive the Palestinians out or to
break their spirit. This is what the Palestinians expect. They are bracing for
it. They know that the Israelis have elected the one politician, Ariel Sharon,
willing to do it.
They figure they can absorb that blow. If the survivors can rise from the
rubble and say to the Israelis, “You can bury us here, but you can never
drive us out of our own country,” then the Israelis will have exhausted
their options. They will dump Sharon and replace him with somebody who will
finally, at long last, do some serious talking.
It's already terrible what the Palestinians are going through, and this new
assault, when it comes, will be far worse. They need the support now of decent
people with the courage to stand up for human rights. As you can see, the Bush
administration prefers to remain on its knees. Most members of Congress are
afraid even to do that. They prefer the supine position, total prostration.
If you can't find the courage to speak out against evil financed with your tax
money, then at least watch as Palestinian children show you how real men and
women live and die with honor.
Reach Charley Reese at 407-420-5315 or [email protected].