Before the Death Adders in the Knesset

Draft

Copyright (c) 2018, Christopher John Brickill. All rights are reserved, and the moral rights of Christopher John Brickhill as the Author have been asserted by him.

Israel is an Apartheid State. Governments, institutions, companies and citizens must join to resist Israel and and stop stop its murderous activities.

 The Current Situation

Most Arab regimes have accepted Israel and are no longer calling for its end. They agreed at the Arab League summit in 2002 to accept peace with Israel in return for its withdrawal from all Arab territories occupied since 1967, its acceptance of an independent Palestinian Arab state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a solution to the Palestinian Arab refugee problem. Some states, Iran for example, do not recognize Israel as a legitimate entity. Some states, Ecuador for example, consider Israel to be a terrorist state.[1]

What the Arab states want from Israel is the same as what the Palestinian Arabs want. Except for two issues, the requirements have not changed for more than 100 years, since they were discussed by Colonel Sir Henry McMahon, Britain’s High Commissioner in Egypt, and Sharif Hussain ibn Ali al-Hashimi, Grand Sharif and King of Mecca, and Protector of Islam’s Holy Places in the Hejaz.[2]  The refugee issue arose in 1948, and again in 1967, and the Palestinian Arabs want Israel to permit Palestinian Arab refugees to return to their homes in Palestine. The territory issue was modified, from all of Palestine to 22% of it, conditionally upon Israel taking certain actions, which, however, it has not. Some argue that as Israel has repeatedly not kept to its side of the bargain, the Palestinian territorial claim has reverted to 100% of Palestine.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is a global issue, and opinion weighs heavily in favour of the Palestinian Arabs. Muslim countries generally support them and are critical of Israel. Most non-Muslim countries recognize Israel’s legitimacy, but are critical of it as it has not kept to its side of the many bargains and agreements it has made, and because of its treatment of the Palestinian Arabs in the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. We will use oPt to refer to these territories.

Human rights groups, and most countries, accuse Israel of extensive abuses of human rights abuses, ethnic cleansing, genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Indeed, most say that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian Arabs is appalling, both inside and outside of Israel, and that it is an apartheid state. It is an aggressive war mongering state that has fought multiple wars with each of its neighbors, all of whom support the Palestinian Arabs, and all of which provide a home to large Palestinian Arab refugee communities. Jordan accommodates the largest number of Palestinian Arab refugees, and in all cases, they are crowded into inadequate camps.

Israel would have us believe that the Jews were a poorly maligned and threatened ethnic group that were forced out of their mostly European homes and fled to an unoccupied Palestine for safety. They say they have a right to Palestine, and have renamed it Israel. They say that all they have done is returned to their ancestral homeland. They say that today they live in fear of terrorism, so tight security measures are necessary. They say that the Palestinian Arabs are terrorists, and often say they are anti-Semitic, as are the other Arab states. They say that they are compulsive liars and not trustworthy.

The Palestinian Arabs, however, have a different view. They say they have been imposed upon by Zionist Jewish colonial settlers, who have no right to be in Palestine, nor have they ever had any right to Palestine. They have opposed the Zionist settlers, and their struggle is a struggle of liberation, for the restoration of their inalienable rights, the principles of which are enshrined in international law and various treaties, charters, and United Nations, hereafter UN, resolutions, and in justice. Their homeland, Palestine, was taken from them by force by the Zionist Jews, and they are not terrorists. The Jewish Zionists are the terrorists

Furthermore, the Palestinian Arabs maintain, as does the UN, and almost all its member states, that Israel’s use of force against those that live in the oPt is uncalled for, and when exercised, it is excessive and disproportionate, and constitutes war crimes. Furthermore, the both the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council have passed countless resolutions criticizing Israel and demanding it abide by international law, and take certain actions.

The problem with Israel’s story is that apart from being a European minority community that has been persecuted and threatened from time to time, the rest is not true. The problem for us is why, given that Israel’s story is nonsense, there is an issue today? Why does the conflict remain? Why is there not a state of Palestine recognized by all, and why does the US support Israel? If it were not for the US, there would be no Israel as we know it today.

The following quotation from Golda Meir, Israel’s Prime Minister from 1969 to 1974 informs:

When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.

These words were used to try to find a defense for Israel, and impossible task. To unpack it, Meir is saying that Israel’s behavior constitutes rational self-defense and Palestinian Arab aggression is irrational terrorism, and devoid reason.

Palestinian Arabs have been resisting the Zionists from 1920, from the first days of the British Mandate (we will take about the Mandate in a few paragraphs time), when the British were colonial rulers of Palestine.[3] The conclusion that we will draw is that it is not the Palestinian Arabs that are the problem, it is Israel. The Jewish Zionist state, Israel, has no grounds for being in Palestine, and its behavior is unacceptable in all respects.

Some History

We will expand on what we say here in subsequent chapters and Volume II. As we said in the footnote, we will need to postpose a discussion of many of the details.

A movement developed in the late 19^th century in Europe, the Zionist movement, comprised of Jews, and which from its first days, while understanding that Palestine was occupied by a substantial indigenous Palestinian Arab population, planned to remove it so that a state could be established that was entirely Jewish. They wanted a place where Jews could be masters of their own destiny, given their perceived history of Jewish oppression. Jews would immigrate to Palestine and create a Zionist Jewish state. Zionism was grounded in the abhorrent colonial world view that the rights of indigenous inhabitants were of no account. Colonialism was, and is illegal, and its practice breaches international law.

During World War I, WWI, the European colonial powers, Britain, France and Imperial Russia made promises they could not keep. These included in a number of agreements, including the McMahon-Hussain and Sykes-Picot agreements, and their many confirmations, and the Balfour Declaration, Balfour, which the Zionists took to be a promise.[4]

The jingoism which plunged Europe into a bloodbath in 1914 revealed belligerent cultures, the rectitude of imperial domination and racial superiority. It was exploited to bolster national self-esteem. When peace arrived with the armistice of 11^th November 1918, it was compromised by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, which set the stage for another world war. The power brokers had little intention of radically change the world. In 1917, US President Woodrow Wilson, “to keep the white race strong against the yellow” and to preserve “white civilization and its domination of the planet”.

The butchery of WWI gave birth to Zionist Israel, Europe’s original sin.

After WWI Palestine became subject to a British Mandate. Colonialism had been strongly denounced by the President Wilson, and so the League of Nations, the League, created mandates. A mandate was given to a mandatory power whose job it was to administer a mandated territory and bring it to independence. Rather than creating colonies from the territories captured in WWI, they would become mandated territories. Many mandates were awarded by the League, however in just one case, Palestine, the mandatory power, Britain, was given an additional task. It was to assist in the creation of a Jewish community in Palestine.

The Mandate for Palestine was awarded in 1920, and Jewish immigration to Palestine became egregious. With the support of Britain, the Zionist project could never have been realized without the military backing of the British, an international power. Force was needed to realize the Zionist goals. Land and resources were forcefully usurped by the Zionist Jews and its economic and cultural infrastructure systematically destroyed. Eventually an attempt was made to wipe out the entire Palestinian Arab population. In contrast to what had happened in the 19^th century, the Palestinian Arabs survived.

The Palestinian Arabs soon understood the intentions of the Jewish Zionists, and objected to ongoing Jewish immigration, strenuously. They saw that it posed a real threat to the very existence of the Arab society in Palestine. The Palestinian Arabs’ opposition to Zionism wasn’t based on anti-Semitism, as Israel maintains, but rather, on the reasonable fear of dispossession. no evidence whatsoever for the Israeli claim of anti-Semitism has ever been presented, rather, there is strong evidence to the contrary.

The Mandate ended in 1948, after 28 years, a period when violence was ever present. The Zionists pushed forward with their plans and the Palestinian Arabs fought back. The disruptions led to many commissions and investigations, and finally on the eve of another world war, WWII, Britain, after its plan to partition Palestine between the Jewish Zionists and the Palestinian Arabs was rejected by both parties, decided to create a democratic state in Palestine. As the Palestinian Arabs were very much in the majority, this meant that a Palestinian Arab state would be established, and the Zionist plans would come to an end. The outbreak of war intervened, and during and immediately after its cessation, Jewish Zionist terrorism reached new heights in what became a civil war. The British outlawed two Jewish Zionist terrorist organizations, the Irgun and the Lehi. They had massacred Palestinian Arabs and bombed and destroyed public buildings and villages. They ethnically cleansed large areas of Palestine, forcefully evicting Palestinian Arabs.

Britain could not control the violence and handed the matter, the Question of Palestine, to the UN. On the day that the British left in 1948, Israel proclaimed itself a state, and the next day the neighboring Arab states joined the disorganized and meagre Palestinian Arab forces, and the civil war became a war between nations, the first was of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The UN tried to resolve the conflict, a mediator was appointed, cease fires were negotiated, agreed and broken, and Israel took military control of 80% of Palestine, and applied to the UN for admission. The UN agreed to admit Israel if it implemented certain UN resolutions, Israel agreed, was admitted, but reneged on all its agreements.

Since that time, there have been very many attempts to find a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. They have been called accords, peace plans, roads to peace, road maps, initiatives, and so on, but there has never been a resolution. Both sides say the other does not want one. The truth is that Israel has never wanted one, and has destroyed all attempts to find a peaceful solution. The Palestinian Arabs want, simply, their state.

Why Has the Conflict Never Been Resolved?

In the concluding remarks of his book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, published in 2007,[5] US President Jimmy Carter asked why no resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict had been acheived. He observed that the open issues, the issues to be resolved had been agreed, so what needed to be done was clear.

Carter observed that the 1979 agreement between Egypt and Israel demonstrated that Israel was able to come to an agreement with an Arab state, and the subsequent agreement between Israel and Jordan in 1994 reinforced this view. Nevertheless, all the attempts to resolve the issues have gone nowhere.

Carter considered a solution with two states, the two solution. It was assumed that this was the only way to go forward. Later we will look at both the single state solution and the two state solution. For the moment, Carter assumed that an Israeli state and a Palestinian state would emerge from a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. What was needed was agreement by all:

• Israel would withdraw to its pre-1967 borders, and a Palestinian Arab state would be created from the oPt. Israel and Palestine would recognize the sovereignty of each other and agree to peaceful coexistence. The Palestinian Arabs would thus be restored to a nation in which its citizens exercised self-determination;
• The Israeli settlements in the oPt would be dismantled and removed;
• Jerusalem would be apportioned between the state of Israel and the state of Palestine. It could be internationalized, perhaps;
• The Palestinian refugees could return to their homes, in Israel or in Palestine. If their homes were in Israel, and they chose not to return, then Israel would pay compensation.

There were minor modifications on the table, but these were the essential go forward conditions. One such modification was a land swap. Some Israeli settlements might not be dismantled, but become part of Israel in an exchange of territory. Another was that both states would become demilitarized, and a UN peace keeping force put in place. Israel strongly objected to demilitarization, but demanded that the Palestinian state was demilitarized. The point, however, is that these two provisions, and there were a few more, were resolvable, and would not stand in the way of a peace agreement.

The Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, the representative of the Palestinian Arabs, the Palestine (National) Authority, the PA, which governs the oPt, and Hamas, a political party which emerged in the 1980s, and dominates Palestinian Arab politics, have stated that these were the issues to be resolved to have peace.[6] The Quartet (the US, Russia, the UN and the EU) proposed a solution which incorporated Carter’s proposed items for agreement, and the Palestinian Arabs have concurred with it. A subsequent version, the Geneva Initiative contains these items too, and the Palestinian Arabs have concurred with it as well.

Israel is the only party that has never agreed to a solution, although it accuses the Palestinian Arabs of rejecting peace because it rejects Israel’s counter proposals. Although a majority of Israeli citizens, agreed with the Quartet’s proposal, but the government of Israel counter proposed ludicrous, unacceptable caveats and prerequisites. This is what Israel means when it says that the Palestinian Arabs reject peace proposals. They reject, with good reason, Israel’s proposed modifications to what everyone else has agreed.

Prior to the Quartet’s proposal, Israel had agreed to Security Council Resolution 242 adopted 22^nd November 1967 and Security Council resolution 338 adopted on 22^nd October 1973, the Camp David Accords, Accords, in 1978 and the Oslo Peace Agreement, Oslo, in 1993, all of which were ratified by the Israeli Knesset.[7] Carter’s four requirements were part of these resolutions, agreements and accords. Furthermore, all members of the Quartet have stated that the borders of Israel are the pre-1967 borders, that Israel’s occupation of the oPt, and the settlements are illegal and violations of international law, the Hague Convention of 1907, Hague, and the Geneva Conventions of 1949, Geneva. Israel in fact refuses to define its claimed borders. The International Court of Justice, the ICJ, has ruled that the occupation and settlements are illegal. The legal issues and the international agreements are set out and discussed in the section International Law Agreements on Page 220.

The reason is that Israel has no interest in a peace agreement is that it wants to absorb the oPt, the territories that it occupied in the 1967 war, and as much other territory in the Middle East as it can take. Israel, for example, has annexed Syrian and Lebanese territory, and tried to annex other parts of Lebanon. This policy has not always been Israeli policy. Although there have always been some who have wanted a Jewish state in all of Palestine, the state itself has vacillated. By the time that Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister in 2001, the policy of continued colonization became set in stone. Israel today considers that it has the right to confiscate and colonize more Palestinian Arab land. There is a problem, of course, with this objective. It is illegal.

There is another problem that all Israelis must face. It is how to explain Israel’s sustained subjugation and the persecution of the Palestinian Arabs, its ongoing abuse of human rights, its continues ethnic cleansing, which at time verges on genocide, its crimes against humanity and lengthy list of war crimes. The Palestinian Arabs have reacted to the oppression, and often resorted to violence, and Israel has responded with retribution and oppression. The retribution has been extreme, at measures that far outweigh reason and justification. This has resulted in further Palestinian Arab opposition, and more violence. It is a vicious circle for which only Israel is to blame.

The US is Israel’s only supporter, and a question we must ask is why the rest of the world, despite the countless condemnations of Israel, has permitted this circle of repression, oppression, and violence to continue. There is every indication that the majority of Palestinian Arabs and Israelis want a resolution along the lines of the many proposals that have been put forward. The rest of the world appears powerless, and moreover, the ongoing cost of dealing with the problem has been high, aside from the large loss of life.

For 25 years, the actions of Israel have been in direct conflict with the international community, and its international agreements. In order to wall off Gaza, Israel has committed war crimes and denied basic human rights. It removed the settlers and the IDF, but left the Gazan Palestinian Arabs in a jail, and eschewed any responsibility for them. From September 2000 to March 2006, 3,982 Palestinian Arabs and 1,084 Israelis were killed in the second intifada. There were 708 Palestinian Arab and 123 Israeli children killed. It is obvious that if Israel withdrew from the oPt, violence would cease.

Israel continues to carve out parts of the West Bank for itself, leaving the Palestinian Arabs destitute, and with small and fragmented pieces of their own land, to live in Bantustans. Israel has refused to permit the Palestinian Arab refugees to return and has destroyed their villages and expropriated their land, orchards, houses, businesses and personal possessions for the use of the Jewish population of Israel. This was done by force, but the Palestinian Arab victims are blamed for resisting their own dispossession.

Israel wants to absorb the oPt into its territory. One of the tactics is to impose harsh conditions on the Palestinian Arabs, so that they leave, so that eventually Israel can take the oPt.

The US White House and Congress have been complicit in the illegal Israeli actions. The US has used its Security Council veto to support Israel and has blocked more than 40 resolutions criticizing Israel. The reason is that the US has a second agenda for the Middle East, and sees Israel is its tool. Many years ago, the US has wanted a strategically important location in the Middle East in order to block Soviet expansion. Today it wants to control a strategically located  part of the globe. Furthermore, there are powerful political, economic and religious forces in the US. For example, AIPAC, which is discussed in the chapter, US Support for Israel on Page 229. As a result, Israel is not questioned nor condemned, and most Americans are unaware of the reality. As a consequence, the US has lost credibility, and this has contributed to anti-American feelings and terrorist activity.

Israel’s actions, indeed Israel’s terrorism, has led to a situation from which it may be difficult to recover. It is difficult to see that even with US backing, Israel’s enormous military power will be sufficient to prevail over Arab might. Peace can only come to the Middle East when Israel complies with international law, the relevant UN resolutions, and honors its prior agreements.

Like all other colonial enterprises, Zionism was based on the complete disregard of the rights of indigenous inhabitants. As such, it is indefensible, morally and legally. Today, Israel’s obligation is to make amends, not resist a Palestinian Arab state in the oPt with East Jerusalem as its capital, or in all of Palestine, and pay reparations. All laws that discriminate against non-Jews living in Israel must be repealed.

The US has an obligation to see that justice is done. Financial aid has enabled the occupation and suppression, and a pre-condition of any further support, must be that Israel must abide by global opinion and the relevant UN resolutions. It must withdraw to its 1967 borders, and facilitate the two-state solution, or it must agree to a one state solution, in which, clearly, the Palestinian Arabs will be in the majority.

Israel tries to persuade the world to accept it as a moral and just response to the horrors of the Holocaust. Most think otherwise.

In a recent BBC poll, Israel was the fourth-most-disliked nation on the globe, behind Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan. In October 2003, the International Herald Tribune surveyed 7,500 Europeans across 15 European Union, EU, countries and determined that Israel was the single biggest threat to world peace, a threat bigger than Iran, North Korea, and Afghanistan.

The Thoughts of Some Commentators

Chomsky

The US Jewish community has found it difficult to face the fact that the Palestinian Arabs have suffered a monstrous historical injustice. Until this is recognized, discussion of the Middle East will remain stalled. “Only by admitting culpability and making amends can Israelis live with their neighbours in peace. Only then can the centuries-old Jewish tradition of being a people of high moral character be restored.”[8]

Hanan Ashrawi

Responding to a statement by US Secretary of State Madeline Albright in 2000, that Palestinian Arab rock throwers had placed Israel under siege, and that Israel was simply defending itself, Hanan Ashrawi responded:

It is Israel that is the belligerent occupant of Palestine, Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles surround Palestinian Arab villages, camps and cities, Israel deploys US made Apache gunships and fires missiles at Palestinian protestors and homes. It is Israel that is confiscating Palestinian Arab land and importing Jewish settlers and creating illegal armed settlements in the heart of Palestinian Arab territory. The settlers are rampaging in the West Bank and Israel terrorizes Palestinian Arabs in their own homes. Israel commits atrocities against Palestinian Arabs with total impunity, and yet [Albright] maintains, that Israel is besieged. Albright’s understanding and comment were laughable, wrong and shocking.[9]

Uri Avnery

World opinion, with the exception of the US, is on the side of the Palestinian Arabs who are fighting a war of liberation against a foreign occupation. We [Israel] are in their [Palestinian Arab] territory, not they in ours. We are the occupiers, they are the victims. This is the objective situation, and no minister of propaganda can change that.[10]

Author

The reality is, that although the Palestinian Arabs had no part in any prior persecution of the Jews, they were a weak and defenceless ethnic community, an ideal victim for an act of revenge against a community that has nothing whatsoever to do with any Jewish persecution using anti-Semitism as an excuse and justification. Israel is at war with the Arab world because it has committed the sin of colonialism, and not because it is a Jewish state.[11]

Edward Said

The first challenge, then, is to extract acknowledgement from Israel for what it did to us [Palestinian] Arabs.[12]

Rashid Khalidi

Justice demands an uncontested, sovereign, independent Palestinian state. Its practical, for without it there will never be peace in the Middle East. The conditions as stated above are not negotiable. Moreover, the state must be contiguous, and politically and economically viable, with no Israeli presence of any form, on the ground, in the air, or in the waters.[13]

Justice demands that Israel acknowledges the suffering and hardship that Palestinian Arab refugees have faced as a result of their eviction from their homeland and must assist in their rehabilitation and reabsorption.[14]

Ze’ev Sternhell

Israel occupied the oPt and established settlements because no one believed that the Palestinian Arabs deserved the same rights as the Jews, and they shamefully did not accept basic human rights. If a “Jewish State” that does not recognize the absolute equality of all human beings … [then we need to forge] an identity detached from the mystical ramifications of our religion and the irrational side of our history.[15]

Anat Biletzky

We must, as academics, never forget our political agenda: the eradication of evil. And the Israeli occupation of Palestine is the epitome of evil. We must constantly, as academics, identify with Palestinian teachers and students in conditions of severe repression. We must constantly, as academics, criticise the acquiescence of others in Israel to the occupation. And we must constantly, as academics, call for condemnation of the occupation[16]

[1] There are peace agreements between Israel and Jordan, however these should be seen as quite ancillary.

[2] We need to proceed leaving a lot of the details for later sections. McMahon and Hussain wrote a number of letters to each other which culminated in an agreement that Britain would assist the Arab communities in the Ottoman provinces in the Middle East to become independent in the event Britian was successful in its war time campaign against the Ottomans. In return, the Arabs joined forces with the British and fought the Ottomans. The details in Volume II, and we will refer to the agreement as McMahon-Hussain.

[3] We will have a few words to say about the mandates in a few paragraphs, and more fully, in Volume II

[4] Sykes-Picot and Balfour, like McMahon-Hussain, will also be discussed in Volume II.

[5] Jimmy Carter, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2007

[6] Hamas, which dominates the PA, and has string support in Gaza, will not recognize Israel unless it comes to the table and negotiates a solution that is accepted by a majority of Palestinian Arabs in the oPt. At that time, Hamas has said, it can accept Israel. The PLO, the PA, Hamas and the Quartet and Geneva Initiative are discussed in Volume II.

[7] The Accords and the Oslo are discussed in Volume II.

[8] Noam Chomsky, Peace in the Middle East?

[9] Hanan Ashrawi, The Progressive, December 2000

[10] Uri Avnery, “12 Conventional Lies About the Palestine-Israeli Conflict”, Palestine Media Watch, http://www.pmwatch.org.

[11] Christopher Brickhill

[12] Edward Said, The Progressive, March 1998

[13] A.S. Khalidi

[14] A.S. Khalidi, New York Times, 11^th February 1997.

[15] Professor Ze’ev Sternhell, Tikku”, May/June 1998.

[16] Anat Biletzky, Conference on the academic boycott of Israel, American Association of University Professors, 2006