[THS] Israel in Palestine - Does It Matter What You Call It?

[Peter Webster]

  http://www.counterpunch.org/christison11272006.html

November 27, 2006

Does It Matter What You Call It?
Genocide or Erasure of Palestinians
By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON

During an appearance in late October on Ireland's Pat Kenny radio 
show, a popular national program broadcast daily on Ireland's RTE 
Radio, we were asked as the opening question if Israel could be 
compared to Nazi Germany. Not across the board, we said, but there 
are certainly some aspects of Israel's policy toward the Palestinians 
that bear a clear resemblance to the Nazis' oppression. Do you mean 
the wall, Kenny prompted, and we agreed, describing the ghettoization 
and other effects of this monstrosity. Before we could elaborate on 
other Nazi-like features of Israel's policies, Kenny moved on to 
another question. Within minutes, while we were still on the air, a 
producer handed Kenny a note, which we later learned was a request 
from the newly arrived Israeli ambassador to Ireland to appear on the 
show, by himself. Several days later, on the air by himself, the 
ambassador pronounced us and our comparisons of Israeli and Nazi 
policies "outrageous."

What else? We were not surprised or disturbed by his outrage. We had 
just spent two weeks in the West Bank witnessing the oppression, and 
it was a sure bet that, even had he not been fulfilling his role as 
propagandist for Israel, the ambassador would not have known the 
first thing about the Palestinian situation in the West Bank because 
he had most likely not set foot there in any recent year. In 
retrospect, we regret not having used even stronger language. Having 
at that point just completed our fifth trip to Palestine since early 
2003, we should have had the courage and the insight to call what we 
have observed Israel doing to the Palestinians by its rightful name: genocide.

We have long played with words about this, labeling Israel's policy 
"ethnocide," meaning the attempt to destroy the Palestinians as a 
people with a specific ethnic identity. Others who dance around the 
subject use terms like "politicide" or, a new invention, "sociocide," 
but neither of these terms implies the large-scale destruction of 
people and identity that is truly the Israeli objective. "Genocide" 
-- defined by the UN Convention as the intention "to destroy, in 
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group" 
-- most aptly describes Israel's efforts, akin to the Nazis', to 
erase an entire people. (See William Cook's "The Rape of Palestine," 
CounterPunch, January 7/8, 2006 for a discussion of what constitutes genocide.)

In fact, it matters little what you call it, so long as it is 
recognized that what Israel intends and is working toward is the 
erasure of the Palestinian people from the Palestine landscape. 
Israel most likely does not care about how systematic its efforts at 
erasure are, or how rapidly they proceed, and in these ways it 
differs from the Nazis. There are no gas chambers; there is no 
overriding urgency. Gas chambers are not needed. A round of rockets 
on a residential housing complex in the middle of the night here, a 
few million cluster bomblets or phosphorous weapons there can, given 
time, easily meet the UN definition above.

Children shot to death sitting in school classrooms here, families 
murdered while tilling their land there; agricultural land stripped 
and burned here, farmers cut off from their land there; little girls 
riddled with bullets here, infants beheaded by shell fire there; a 
little massacre here, a little starvation there; expulsion here, 
denial of entry and families torn apart there; dispossession is the 
name of the game. With no functioning economy, dwindling food 
supplies, medical supply shortages, no way to move from one area to 
another, no access to a capital city, no easy access to education or 
medical care, no civil service salaries, the people will die, the 
nation will die without a single gas chamber. Or so the Israelis hope.


Surrender vs. Resistance

A major part of the Israeli scheme -- apart from the outright land 
expropriation, national fragmentation, and killing that are designed 
to strangle and destroy the Palestinian people -- is to so discourage 
the Palestinians psychologically that they will simply leave 
voluntarily -- if they have the money -- or give up in abject 
surrender and agree to live quietly in small enclaves under the 
Israeli thumb. You wonder sometimes if the Israelis are not 
succeeding in this bit of psychological warfare, as they are 
succeeding in tightening their physical stranglehold on territory in 
the West Bank and Gaza. Overall, we do not believe they have yet 
brought the Palestinians to this point of psychological surrender, 
although the breaking point for Palestinians appears nearer than ever before.

The anger and depression, even despair, in Palestine are palpable 
these days, far worse than we have previously encountered. We met two 
Palestinians so discouraged that they are preparing to leave, in one 
case uprooting family from a Muslim village where roots go back 
centuries. The other case is a Christian young person, also from an 
old family, who sees no prospects for herself or anyone and who feels 
betrayed by her Catholic Church for having abandoned Palestine's 
Christians. She would rather just be elsewhere. A Palestinian 
pollster who has tracked attitudes toward emigration recently 
reported that the proportion of people thinking about leaving has 
jumped from about 20 percent, where it has long hovered, to 32 
percent in a recent poll, largely because of despair arising from 
intra-Palestinian factional fighting and from Hamas' inability to 
govern thanks to crippling Israeli, U.S., and European sanctions.

Nothing like one-third of Palestinians will ultimately leave or even 
attempt to leave, but the trend in attitudes clearly points to the 
kind of despair that is afflicting much of Palestine. One thoughtful 
Palestinian writer with whom we spent an evening feels so defeated 
and so oppressed by Israeli restrictions that he thinks Hamas should 
abandon its principled stand and agree to recognize Israel's right to 
exist, in the hope that this concession might induce the Israelis to 
lift some of the innumerable restrictions on Palestinian life, end 
the military siege on Palestinian territories and the land theft, and 
in general ease the day-to-day misery that Palestinians endure under 
occupation. Asked if he thought such a major Hamas concession would 
actually bring meaningful Israeli concessions, he said no, but 
perhaps it would ease the misery a little. It was clear he holds out 
no great hope. His village's land is gradually disappearing 
underneath the separation wall and expanding Israeli settlements.

We met westerners who have lived in the West Bank, working on behalf 
of the Palestinians for various NGOs for a decade and more, who are 
planning to leave out of frustration at seeing the situation worsen 
year after year and their own work increasingly go for naught. Many 
other western human rights workers and educators, particularly at 
venerable institutions like the Friends' School in Ramallah and Bir 
Zeit University, are being denied visas by the Israelis as part of 
their deliberate campaign to keep out foreign passport holders, 
including thousands of ethnic Palestinians who have lived in the West 
Bank with their families and worked for years. The Israeli campaign 
to deny residency and re-entry permits is a deliberate attempt at 
ethnic cleansing, a hope that if a husband or wife is barred, he or 
she will remove the rest of the family and Israel will have fewer 
Palestinians to deal with. In addition, the entry denial campaign 
targets in particular anyone, Palestinian or international, who might 
bring a measure of business prosperity to the Palestinian 
territories, or education, or medical assistance, or humanitarian assistance.

The campaign against foreigners who might help the Palestinians or 
bear witness for them became particularly vicious in mid-November 
when a 19-year-old Swedish volunteer with the International 
Solidarity Movement escorting Palestinian children to school was 
brutally attacked by Israeli settlers in Hebron as Israeli soldiers 
watched. The young woman, Tove Johansson, was walking through an 
Israeli army checkpoint with several other volunteers when they were 
set upon by a group of approximately 100 settlers chanting, "We 
killed Jesus, we'll kill you too!" A settler hit Johansson in the 
face with a broken bottle, breaking her cheekbone, and as she lay 
bleeding on the ground, the settlers cheered and clapped and took 
pictures of themselves posing next to her. The Israeli soldiers 
briefly questioned three settlers but made no arrests and conducted 
no investigation. In fact, they threatened the international 
volunteers with arrest if they did not leave the area immediately. 
The assault was so raw and brutal that Amnesty International issued 
an alert warning internationals to beware of settler attacks. The 
U.S. media have not seen fit to report the incident, which was 
clearly part of a longstanding effort to discourage witnesses to 
Israeli atrocities and deprive Palestinians of any protection against 
the atrocities.

Palestinian resistance does figure in this dismal story. In the same 
small village where one of our acquaintances is uprooting his family, 
others are building, building small homes and multi-story apartment 
buildings, simply as a sign of resistance. International human rights 
volunteers are still trying to reach the West Bank and Gaza to assist 
Palestinians. When we told one Palestinian friend about our 
conversation with the writer who wants Hamas to concede Israel's 
right to exist, his immediate reaction was "absolutely not." He is 
himself a secular Muslim, a Fatah supporter, does not like Hamas and 
did not vote for Hamas in last January's legislative elections, but 
he fully supports Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel's right to 
exist until Israel recognizes the right of the Palestinian people to 
exist as a nation. "Why should I recognize you until you get out of 
my garden?" he wondered.

Our friend Ahmad's views reflect the general feeling among 
Palestinians: a poll conducted in September by a Palestinian polling 
organization found that 67 percent of Palestinians do not think Hamas 
should recognize Israel in order to satisfy Israeli and international 
demands, while almost the same proportion, 63 percent, would support 
recognizing Israel if this came as part of a peace agreement in which 
a Palestinian state was established -- in other words, if Israel also 
recognized the Palestinians as a nation. Surrender is not yet on the horizon.

On the possibility of pulling up stakes and leaving Palestine, Ahmad 
was equally adamant. "Why should I leave and then have to fight to 
get back later? Empires never last." He mentioned the Turks and the 
British and the Soviets, "and the Americans and the Israelis won't 
last either. It may take a long time, but we can wait." He was 
angrier than we have ever previously seen him, and more 
uncompromising -- and with good reason: the separation wall is now 
within a few yards of his home and demolition is threatened. Ahmad 
and some neighbors have been fighting the wall's advance in court and 
succeeded in stopping it for over a year, but construction is moving 
ahead again. He already has to drive miles out of his way to skirt 
the wall on his way to work and will be able to exit only on foot 
when the wall is completed -- assuming his house is not demolished altogether.

But he is not giving up. He thinks suicide bombers are "a piece of 
shit," but he believes the Palestinians have to resist in some way, 
if only by throwing stones, and he sees some kind of explosion in the 
offing. If Palestinians do nothing at all, he said, "the Israelis 
will just relax" and will feel no pressure to cease the oppression. 
Palestinians everywhere are keeping up the pressure. Haaretz 
correspondent Gideon Levy described a cloth banner displayed in Beit 
Hanoun immediately after Israel's devastation of that small Gaza city 
during the first week in November. "Kill, destroy, crush -- you won't 
succeed in breaking us," declared the banner.

Palestinians in Beit Hanoun, as well as throughout Gaza and the West 
Bank, have been putting up resistance to their own incompetent, 
quisling leadership, as well as to Israel. It has not escaped the 
notice of the Palestinian man in the street that, while Israel 
slaughters men, women, and children in Beit Hanoun and continues its 
march across the West Bank, Palestinian Authority President Mamhud 
Abbas has been cooperating with the U.S. and Israel to undermine the 
democratically elected Hamas government. The U.S. is arming and 
training a militia that will protect Abbas' and Fatah's narrow 
factional interests against Hamas' fighters, in what can only be 
termed an open coup attempt against the legally constituted 
Palestinian government.

Few Palestinians, even Fatah supporters, condone this U.S. 
interference or Abbas' traitorous acquiescence. "Fatah are thieves," 
a local leader who is a Fatah member himself told us. "Hamas won 
because we wanted to get rid of the thieves." He thinks that if there 
were an election today, "ordinary people" -- by which he means people 
not associated with either Fatah or Hamas -- would win. In each 
house, he said, "we find one son with Hamas, another son with Fatah, 
so how is a father going to support one or the other?" It is perhaps 
this knowledge that they cannot fight each other without destroying 
the nuclear and the broader Palestinian family, and that they must 
not succumb to Israeli and U.S. schemes to fragment Palestinian 
society, that have motivated the intensive Palestinian efforts to 
achieve some kind of unity government.


Around the West Bank

In Bil'in, the small town west of Ramallah that has seen a 
non-violent protest against the wall by Palestinians, Israelis, and 
internationals every Friday for almost two years, the village leader, 
Ahmad Issa Yassin, talked about the lesson his youngest son learned 
after being arrested last year at age 14 in an Israeli raid. "He is 
more courageous now, more ready to resist," Yassin said. "So am I." 
We first met this boy a few months before his arrest, a particularly 
friendly young man with a sweet smile. He greeted us again this year 
with another warm smile and bantered with us as we took his picture. 
He gave no hint of having spent two months in one of Israel's worst 
prisons or of the horror of having been arrested in a Nazi-style 
middle-of-the-night raid. Perhaps he threw stones at the Israeli 
soldiers who converge on his village at least once a week and respond 
to non-violent protests with live ammunition, rubber bullets, 
teargas, concussion grenades, and batons. This boy was no terrorist. 
On the other hand, the Israelis may have turned him into a young man 
willing to fight terror with terror a few years from now.

Yassin walked us to his olive grove, half destroyed, on the other 
side of the wall. The Israelis allow the villagers access to lands 
that now lie on Israel's side of the wall, but there is only one 
gate, manned by Israeli soldiers who may or may not bestir themselves 
to open it. The villagers' names are all on a list of Palestinians 
authorized to pass through the gate. At this particular village, one 
of many whose lands have been cut off from the village, protesters 
have established an outpost or, as they call it, a "settlement" on 
the Israeli side to stake a claim to the land for the village even 
though it now lies on Israel's side in the path of an expanding 
Israeli settlement. The Palestinian "settlement" consists of a small 
building, a tent where a couple of activists maintain a constant 
vigil, and a soccer field for a bit of normality.

Yassin took us uphill on a dirt path running alongside the wall, 
which in this rural area consists of an electronic fence, a dirt 
patrol road on each side where footprints can be picked up, a paved 
patrol road on the Israeli side, and coils of razor wire on each side 
-- encompassing altogether an area about 50 meters wide, where olive 
groves once stood. We waited at the gate in the electronic fence 
while Yassin called several times to the Israeli soldiers, whom we 
could see lounging under a tent canopy on a nearby hillside. When 
they finally came to the gate, they checked Yassin's name against 
their list of permitees, recorded our names and passport numbers, and 
officiously warned us against taking pictures in this "military 
zone." As we made our way across country to the Bil'in outpost, 
Yassin pointed out olive trees burned and uprooted by Israelis and, 
at the outpost right next to the stump of a tree that had been cut 
down, a new tree sprouting from the old one.

We talked for a while with a Palestinian activist from the village 
and a young British activist who had both been sleeping late into the 
morning, after enjoying a Ramadan meal, the Iftar, late the night 
before. When we returned to the gate, the Israeli soldiers were even 
slower arriving to open it, obviously totally bored with their duty. 
The following Friday at the weekly protest, they enjoyed a little 
more excitement as protesters managed to erect ladders to scale the 
fence. The soldiers responded with batons and teargas.

The resistance goes on, but so does the Israeli encroachment. We took 
away with us two striking impressions: the little olive tree being 
carefully nurtured as a sign of renewal and resistance, and in the 
near distance the constant sound of bulldozers and earth-clearing 
equipment working on the Israeli settlement of Modiin Illit, being 
built on the lands of Bil'in and other neighboring villages.

Elsewhere, signs of the Israeli advance override the continuing signs 
of Palestinian resistance. In the small village of Wadi Fuqin 
southwest of Bethlehem, a beautiful village sitting in a narrow, 
fertile valley between ridge lines that is being squeezed on one side 
by the wall, still to be constructed, and on the other by the already 
large and rapidly expanding Israeli settlement of Betar Illit, we saw 
more destruction. The settlement is dumping vast tonnages of 
construction debris down onto the village, so that its fields are 
gradually being swallowed. This was more evident this year than when 
we visited last year. The settlement's sewage often overflows onto 
village land through sewage pipes evident high up on the hillside. 
Israeli settlers swagger through the village increasingly, as if it 
were theirs, swimming in the many irrigation pools that are fed by 
natural springs dating back to Roman times.

In the village of Walaja, not far away to the north, nearer 
Jerusalem, Ahmad took us to visit friends of his. The village is 
scheduled to be surrounded completely by the wall because it sits 
near the Green Line in the midst of a cluster of Israeli settlements. 
We sat in a garden of fruit trees with a family whose house is on a 
hill overlooking a spectacular valley and hills beyond. Jerusalem 
sits on another hill in the distance. We commented that, except for 
the Israeli settlements across the valley, the place is like 
paradise, but our host responded with a cynical laugh that actually 
it is hell. Even beautiful scenery loses its appeal when one is 
trapped and surrounded.

In another encircled village that we visited last year, Nu'man, the 
approximately 200 residents are also trapped between the wall, now 
completed, on one side and the advancing settlement of Har Homa, 
which covets the village land, on the other. Although last year, with 
the wall incomplete, we could drive in, this year we were denied 
entry at the one gate in. With Ahmad, we tried to talk to four 
obviously intimidated young Palestinian men waiting across the patrol 
road from the gate to gain entry to their homes, but the Israeli 
soldiers told them not to talk to us; one of them said a few words to 
Ahmad but never took his eyes off the Israeli guardpost. We drove off 
and left them to their plight. We could have tried to get to the 
village with an arduous cross-country walk, but we did not.


"Grand" Terminals

With the near completion of the separation wall, the Israelis have 
systematized the West Bank prison. Since August 2005, the number of 
checkpoints throughout the West Bank has risen 40 percent, from 376 
to 528, according to OCHA, the UN Office for the Coordination of 
Humanitarian Affairs, which carefully tracks the numbers and types of 
Israeli checkpoints, as well as other aspects of the Israeli 
stranglehold on the Palestinians. As part of the systematization, a 
series of elaborate terminals now manage the humiliation of 
Palestinians at major checkpoints, particularly around Jerusalem. The 
terminals are huge cages resembling cattle runs, which direct foot 
traffic in snaking lines that double back and forth. At the end of 
the line are a series of turnstiles, x-ray machines, conveyor belts, 
and other accoutrements of heavy security. Any Palestinian entering 
Jerusalem from the West Bank to work, to visit family, to pray at 
al-Aqsa Mosque or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to go to school, 
or for medical treatment must have a hard-to-obtain permit from 
Israel. The turnstiles and other security barriers are controlled 
remotely by Israeli soldiers housed behind heavy bullet-proof glass.

The cages are currently painted a bright, cheerful blue, but it's a 
fair bet that when they are older and worn, the paint job will not be 
renewed. Adding to the false cheer, the Israelis have erected 
incongruous welcoming signs at the terminals. Most egregious is the 
giant sign at the Bethlehem terminal. "Peace be with you," it 
proclaims in three languages to travelers leaving Jerusalem for 
Bethlehem. This is on a giant pastel-colored sign erected by the 
Israeli Ministry of Tourism, as if travel through this terminal were 
the ordinary tourist lark. At the Qalandiya terminal between Ramallah 
and Jerusalem, a large cartoon-like red rose welcomes Palestinians 
with a sign in Arabic. Early this year when the terminal was opened, 
the rose was on a sign that proclaimed, in three languages, "The hope 
of us all." Apparently embarrassed at being caught so red-handed in 
their hypocrisy, the Israelis removed the sign, preserving only the 
rose, after a Jewish activist stenciled over it the words that once 
graced the entrance to Auschwitz, "Arbeit Macht Frei" -- work makes 
you free. There is still a sign saying in three languages, "May you 
go in peace and return in peace." The Israelis still don't really get it.

Nor do the Americans. The terminals, advertised as a way to "ease 
life" for Palestinians by prettying up the checkpoints of old and 
making passage more efficient, were paid for out of U.S. aid monies 
designated originally for the Palestinian Authority (before the Hamas 
election) but diverted to Israel's terminal-building enterprise -- 
helping Israel make Palestinian humiliation more efficient. Steven 
Erlanger in the New York Times, among others, fell for the scam, 
noting when the Bethlehem terminal opened in December last year that 
the terminals were aimed at "easing the burden on Palestinians and 
softening international criticism." He labeled the Bethlehem terminal 
a "grand" gateway for Christians visiting Jesus' birthplace -- not 
acknowledging that Christians had been visiting for two millennia 
without benefit of turnstiles and concrete walls.

The burden on Palestinians has not been significantly eased as far as 
we could tell. We spent some time watching at several of the 
terminals -- feeling like voyeurs of Palestinian misery. At 
Qalandiya, about 100 people stood waiting to pass through three 
locked turnstiles. A young Israeli woman soldier sat in a glassed-in 
control booth barking commands at them. Our friend Ahmad speaks 
Hebrew as well as Arabic and could not even make out which language 
she was speaking in. There was no reason for her anger or for her 
decision to lock the turnstiles. When she saw us observing, carrying 
a camera, she shook her finger in an apparent warning against taking 
pictures. They don't like witnesses. Immediately after this, she 
unlocked the turnstiles.

We walked through after everyone else who had been waiting, and Ahmad 
took us to the waiting area on the other side where Palestinians from 
the West Bank apply for permits to enter Jerusalem. About 50 people 
were waiting. A middle-aged man walked up to us and began telling his 
story. He was scheduled for neurosurgery at Maqassad Hospital in East 
Jerusalem in two days, according to a certificate from the hospital, 
written in English and clearly intended for Israeli permit 
authorities. He had already been waiting for six days -- three 
futilely sitting in this waiting area and a previous three when the 
Israelis had closed the terminal altogether for Yom Kippur. He was 
beginning to fear he would never get his permit and, as he expressed 
his frustration and desperation, he began to cry. He asked that we 
take his picture holding the certificate and tell the world. We did, 
but we will never know if he obtained his permit in time, or at all.

At another terminal, leading from al-Azzariyah, the biblical Bethany, 
into Jerusalem, a soldier screamed at us -- quite literally, his face 
red, blood vessels standing out on his neck -- when he saw us taking 
pictures of his soldier colleagues questioning Palestinians before 
they entered the terminal area, a pre-screening for the screening at 
the terminal. We told the soldier we thought pictures would be all 
right; this terminal was run after all by the Ministry of Tourism and 
so must be a tourist attraction. But our flippancy didn't go over 
well. He pushed us toward an exit gate, screaming that this was the 
"Ministry of Gates" and that we had to get out. We managed to remain 
inside until Ahmad, who was talking to another Israeli soldier, 
finished and exited with us. Maybe we saved one or two Palestinians 
from scrutiny by distracting a couple of soldiers -- or maybe 
unfortunately we just delayed them further.

At a third checkpoint, this a makeshift one set up temporarily at an 
opening in the wall where the concrete barrier is still incomplete, 
we watched as a growing crowd of Palestinians wanting to enter 
Jerusalem to pray at al-Aqsa Mosque tried to negotiate with two young 
Israeli soldiers. It was a Friday in Ramadan and, although these 
Palestinians had permits to enter Jerusalem, their names were not on 
the authorized list at this particular checkpoint. They had to go, 
according to Israel's administrative fiat, to the main terminal from 
their area into the city. As the crowd gathered, more Israeli 
soldiers arrived. The crowd included women as well as men, and 
several children. Being watched by a couple of Americans who probably 
appeared more patronizing than helpful clearly did not improve the 
mood of most of the crowd.

One little boy of about five, dressed neatly in a tie and pressed 
white shirt, stood looking at the commotion for a few minutes, 
standing slightly apart from his father, and suddenly burst into 
tears. A few minutes later, the soldiers exploded a concussion 
grenade, and most of the crowd dispersed. It's the Israeli way: make 
them cry, run them off in fear. We left, embarrassed by our own inadequacy.


Terminology

Is it genocide when a little boy is made to cry because belligerent 
armed men intimidate him, intimidate his father, and ultimately run 
them off; when they are forbidden from performing their religious 
ceremonies because a belligerent government decides they are of the 
wrong religion; when their town is encircled and cut off because a 
racist state decides their ethnic identity is of the wrong variety?

You can argue over terminology, but the truth is evident everywhere 
on the ground where Israel has extended its writ: Palestinians are 
unworthy, inferior to Jews, and in the name of the Jewish people, 
Israel has given itself the right to erase the Palestinian presence 
in Palestine -- in other words, to commit genocide by destroying "in 
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group."

As we debate about and analyze the Palestinian psyche, trying to 
determine if they have had enough and will surrender or will survive 
by resisting, it is important to remember that the Jewish people, 
despite unspeakable tragedy, emerged from the holocaust ultimately 
triumphant. Israel and its supporters should keep this in mind: 
empires never last, as Ahmad said, and gross injustice such as the 
Nazis and Israel have inflicted on innocent people cannot prevail for long.



Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked 
on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions 
of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.

Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a 
National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of 
Regional and Political Analysis. They spent October 2006 in Palestine 
and on a speaking tour of Ireland sponsored by the Ireland Palestine 
Solidarity Campaign.

They can be reached at kathy.bill at christison-santafe.com.