January 23, 2013
USS Liberty
Yet in all my years of travel in occupied Palestine I have yet to meet an educated Palestinian who ever held such views. Palestine ceased to exist in 1948. It lost its name, its territory, and many of its people. Three-quarters of the land was taken by the Jewish movement, which was financed by the Rothschilds and aided by militant criminal gangs such as the Stern Gang. They massacred Palestinian farmers, spreading terror and producing refugees that remain in camps to this day. The Palestinian diaspora still dreams of a return. It has never accepted that they, alone of all the Arab nations, should be refused the right to decide their own future in their own land.
The Israeli right, which has added one million Russian Jews since the fall of communism, views things differently. In fact, Jewish settlers on Palestinian lands have been known to express the same kind of opinion about “subhuman” Palestinians that the Saudis use about Jews. When the United Nations called in 1947 for the partition of Mandate Palestine, the Zionists had taken close to 50 percent of the Holy Land. Today the occupied West Bank and Gaza stand to get 22 percent of the land under any two-state peace. Still, Netanyahu and his gang keep building illegal settlements, making a contiguous two-state solution pretty much impossible.
Nearly five million Palestinians are refugees. They have seen Israel flout international law with impunity, they have seen Israel plant apartheid colonies, and they have seen the number of Israeli settlers double on the West Bank since 1993’s Oslo Accord. Israel also withholds the 100 million dollars in tax revenues it collects monthly for the Palestinian Authority, which needs the money to pay salaries. (It is as if the Israeli right wants Hamas, rather than the very responsible PA, to represent the Palestinians.) It is illegal under international law”a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court”for an occupying power to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. Yet Israel has been doing this with impunity since 1967, having gained most of its land with the same practices previous to that date.
So the next time you read about the Arabs raised on hatred of the Jews and you cringe when they”re called the offspring of apes and pigs, think not of the Palestinians, but of those nice guys wearing sheets with whom George W. Bush held hands after 9/11. Think of the Saudis and Qataris whose trillions finance TV channels and schools that preach libel against the Jews, and also spare a thought for the innocent Palestinians whose lands have been stolen and who continue to live under the Israeli yoke.
