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Facing up to ethnic cleansing What would be the structure of a real peace between Israel and Palestine? First, the refugee issue needs to be placed at the centre of the process from where it has mysteriously disappeared. Next, all those involved in resolving the conflict must have the public courage to confront the Israeli denial of the expulsion and ethnic cleansing at the heart of the Palestinian refugee question. This remains the single largest stumbling block towards a lasting peace between both peoples. [read more] ----------
The Other Israel: A very close friend, non-Jewish, recently told me that, although she does not sympathize with much that Israel has done to the Palestinians in the last few months, she generally supports Israel in the conflict because so many of her friends are Jewish, and many of them are deeply worried about Israel's existence in the face of Palestinian depredations. I refrained from asking her at the time, but the question still haunts me, just which Jews she is supporting. Are they her friends who apparently do represent the mainstream of American Jewry these days, who ignore Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and think of Palestinians only as terrorists, Israelis only as victims, and the Palestinian intifada as another pogrom, with no root causes other than Jew-hatred? Or are they perhaps those Jews who send hate mail to any who criticize the Israeli occupation and who threatened death to the family of Adam Shapiro, a young Jewish man from Brooklyn who daily risks his life to protect Palestinians under Israeli siege in the West Bank? Or, at the other end of the spectrum, are they those Jews--Israelis and Americans--who know clearly what the occupation is, what it means to Palestinians and what it does to Israel, and have been courageously speaking out against the murderous policies of the Israeli government? [read more] ----------
20 Years Aft Over the years dirt from Sabra and Shatila has clung just as tenaciously to Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. As some -- but probably not many -- Americans may remember, twenty years ago this month the twin camps in southern Beirut were the scene of an infamous massacre carried out by Lebanese militiamen operating under Israel's direct control. The massacre was an exceptionally tragic denouement to Israel's 1982 invasion of its neighbor to the north, which Israel carried out with American approval partly in the hope of establishing a Lebanese government friendly to its interests. [read more] ---------- Of all the grave and ugly developments on the fringes of settler society, none is more frightening than acts of Jewish terror, whose perpetrators attack Palestinian targets, primarily schools in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, without hindrance. One or more cells, comprised of Israelis living either in the territories or west of the Green Line, has for the past two years succeeded in making a laughingstock of the Shin Bet security service and the police, and assaulting Arabs. These attacks would be disturbing even if the targets were chosen at random. But the targets are chosen carefully - and, abominably, they are children. Even worse, these attacks target children while they are in school. So blindly evil is the fire of vengeance that burns in these Jews that they seek the lives of children where they can be found in the greatest quantity - while they are studying. [read more] |