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Every time I raise my voice against the atrocities comitted by us in the Occupid territories - some one comes up with the following typical argument - received by me after reporting the murdering of a 14 year old child Kindi Qutteineh in Ramallah - may his young soul rest in Peace. Enclosed by my answer to this and similar arguments. Yehudith
From: Keren Lewin
Re: A Ramallah Update - 14 years old boy shot to death In Israel my friend went out for a cup of coffee to discuss peace with a friend and promptly got killed what do we call this? Her parents met in Auchwitz and their previous families were killed. My friend was their only child. What do we call this? There are two sides to everything and two agendas. Terrorism needs to be stopped. Keren Lewin
From: Yehudith Harel
All Terrorism must be Stopped - the Holocaust manipulation too Yehudith Harel Indeed terrorism must be stopped - all kinds of terrorism and first of all Israeli State terrorism - but please - leave Auchwitz out of this game. My heart goes out for every victim of this tragedy Israeli and Palestinian alike. They are all victims of the Occupation which us killing us all. We have lost thousands of young lives to the Molech of Sharon’s megalomanic Lebanon War. Now we are losing thousands of new victims - Palestinians and Israelis - in his no less megalomanic, immoral unjust and cruel “Peace of the Settlements War”. Death is death is death and agony is always agony for everyone. Yet once again - I am an Israeli citizen - responsible for my Government’s actions. I regard us and our people to be the side which is responsible for the continuous 35 years of Occupation and Oppression of the Palestinians, denying their legitimate rights to live in Freedom and dignity in their Independent State. Furthermore, I believe that our side is the one responsible for the collapse of the CD2 talks and the catastrophical deterioration of the Intifada into a full scale war between a major military power and some lightly armed militias in the midst of an unarmed civil population*. The continuous denial of the just cause of the Palestinians and the brutal Oppression of the Intifada created a process that breeds all these horrors, including the suicide attacks that inflict pain and loss on innocent people. We created a reality in which we imposed so much suffering, humiliation, death and damage on the Palestinians untill there came to be enough desperate people who feel that they have nothing to loose and nothing to live for, and therefore they are ready to kill and get killed. These acts are indeed horrifying but it is up to the Palestinians to deal with the moral aspects of their legitimate resisatance to the Occupation. As an Israeli Citizen and the Occupier, I am in no position to condemn them or chastize them. Full Stop. My duty is to resist the Oppression and the Occupation and deal with the moral and practical aspects of OUR conduct. Therefore I concentrate my political activities in exerting pressure on Our public opinion and on Our Government to put an End to the root cause of this tragedy, which are the Occupation and the denial and the disposession of political, material and and moral rights (Ie - their Just Cause). First and utmost - we have to put an END to the Occupation. Then and only then we might have a chance - right now it is just a chance, no guarantees - to start building a better future for all of us - without losing our beloved ones in this endless and self destructive cycle of bloodshed and revenge. Last but not least - please leave the Holocaust and Auschwitz out of the game. Arafat is not Hitler and the Palestinians are not Nazis. Moreover - the Palestinians and the Arabs have nothing to do with our tragedy in the Holocaust - yet they were the ones who paid the full price for our plight on the hand of the Nazis and Europe at large. We have been brainwashed to assume that because of our tragedy we are immune of any criticism and that we are the eternal righteous victims entitled to every immoral and brutal act for the sake of our self defense. What is worse - in our collective subconscious we got used to justify whatever evil and suffering we inflict on our OTHER - our Palestinian victims - by the fact that we were once the victims and that we still are. We dared to assume that we can act and speak in the name of the 6 million victims. This reasoning is sick. Furthermore, we are not the victims any more - but the victimizers. Blaming our victims in the name of our martyrs is sacrilege and it desecrates the memory of our beloved ones who perished in the Holocaust. All my family from both sides was exterminated in Auschwitz - and true respect for all our martyrs demands not to talk blasphemy in their names. We should never ever justify any evil that we commit in their martyrdom. The one and only one legitimate consequence of the Holocaust is NEVER Again - to Any body - and it is up to all of us to see to it that We do not become Nazis. Yehudith Harel My perspective on the course of events in the past two years that lead us where we are now:WE are a MIGHTY MILITARY POWER - conducting a cruel war of attrition against the legitimate will of the Palestinian People for Fredom, Dignity and Independence - in a Viable State - and not in a caricature Bantustan. Please do not start to reiterate the mantra about Barak’s “generous offers”. What he suggested was a joke - a humiliating surrender proposal: the immediate annexation of about 12% of their land for the so called “Settlement Block”, including big settlements like Offrah and Beit El in the backyard of Ramallah - this proposal was admitted by Ben Ami in his Haaretz interview. We should not forget the absurd offer concerning Jerusalem with Israeli sovereignity over the Temple Mount and the heart of the Arab city and no decent and acceptable solution to the refugee problem. (And I am not talking about the return of millions of refugees which was never ever demanded not even discussed in the initial CD2 talks in July 2000...) All this and more - especially the fact that ever since Oslo in 1993, we almost doubled the number of the Settlers and the construction of by pass roads, lead the Palestinian PEOPLE - not the Leadership - to the conclusion that they have no partners on OUR side for a peacefully negotiated and acceptable agreement and that they must start fighting. All their frustration burst out when Barak allowed Sharon to visit the temple Mount in spite of Arafat asking him not to allow him to do so. Our reaction from the very beginning of this Intifada was very brutal. Our Army was using snipers against their young men and children, who at the beginning were just throwing stones and not shooting. The death toll was immense, every day there were 5-6 young people shot to death and many more injured, thus refuelling and increasing the protest and vice versa. Our Army didn’t adopt a policy of restraint - on the contrary - and things deteriorated quicly. I believe that things went out of control for the Palestinian Political leadership. Than we started the policy of the cruel closure around their towns and villages, disrupting the normal daily life, preventing sick people from getting to hospitals, preventing pregnant women to deliver in safety, thus causing many deaths of innocent people. We “levelled” = destroyed thousands of acres of agricultural land, destroying their livelyhood, their infrastructure and causing immense suffering to the whole civilian population. Barak started the so called “targetted killings” - a euphemism for extra-judicial executions - let alone the ‘colateral damage’ - or the many innocent people, women and children who were killed by “mistake” in some of these actions. Our Government conducted a systematic policy of escalation, especially since Sharon came to power. In the past few months Arafat was put in “house arrest” and we bombarded Palestinian cities with apachies and F16, tanks and artillery from the sea of Gaza. Our army systematicaly destroyed all the symbols of the Palestinain Authority - clearly “signaling” that the target is to destroy and dismantle the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian political leadership. Sharon never missed an opportunity to deliberately rekindle the fire - even after periods of relative truce, thus triggering Palestinian revenge that gave him the pretext for further escalation. (Remember the assassination of Raed Karmi and what followed...) So what exactly did you expect them to do? To send us flowers??? We created a reality in which we imposed so much suffering, humiliation, death and damage on the Palestinians untill they had enough desperate people who feel that they have nothing to loose and nothing to live for and therefore they are ready to kill and get killed. This phenomenon is awful - yet it cannot be stopped by more brute force - and it is in our hand to stop it. |