By Khalid Amayreh
Thursday, 28 April 2011 13:00
Michael Weiss is a typical Zionist propagandist who wants the entire world to swallow Israeli lies and disinformation in their entirety.
I read with utter contempt the article by Israeli apologist Michael Weiss in which he asked, "Why is Amnesty hosting a Hamas-friendly publisher of racists?".
It deserves a response, not because Weiss and other propagandists for the Zionist state of Israel are right; as far as I and millions like me are concerned, they aren't, and never will be. They inhabit a murky "hasbara" world, a fact which is being acknowledged and condemned not only by Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims but also by millions of conscientious people around the globe, including many Jews. Increasingly, the creation of the state of Israel is being seen for what it was and remains; the rape of a land and people to create a racist entity devoid of any moral legitimacy.
Weiss named me in his article, so I think I have the right to respond, lest readers fall victim to furthe Zionist mendacity and malicious distortion of the facts.
From its inception, Zionism and its followers viewed Palestine as "a land without a people for a people without a land". This denial of my people's very existence didn't arise out of ignorance. It was an expression of virulent and violent racism, originating among those European barbarians who exterminated untold millions of indigenous Native Americans and called the genocide "Manifest Destiny".
The Zionists knew full well that Palestine was populated by hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims. In 1897, two Austrian rabbis visiting Palestine to assess the feasibility of making it a Jewish state, sent a pithy telegram summing up the situation: "The bride is beautiful but she is married to another man." That "other man" was, of course, none other than the Palestinians, long-established as a distinct political entity.
Michael Weiss is a typical Zionist propagandist who wants the entire world to swallow Israeli lies and disinformation in their entirety. For people like him, it has to be "Israel, right or wrong"; the truth must be cast aside if it interferes with Israeli colonialism. Even Israel's criminality must be excused due to its "exceptionalism" in Zionism's perverted world view.
The truth of the matter, which is being discovered by millions around the world, mainly thanks to the new social media and the internet, is simple: far from being the innocent victim of a hostile Arab world, Israel is a state whose very existence is based, and depends, on ethnic cleansing, land theft and lies.
In fact, it is reasonable to claim that Israel itself is a crime against humanity. How else can we describe a state imposed on the land of another people, the Palestinians, and which proceeded to drive the people from their homes in order to accommodate Zionist Jewish immigrants from around the world?
As a Palestinian who has been living under the oppressive yoke of Israeli military occupation for 44 years; who has seen three innocent uncles and several other relatives, in addition to tens of thousands of my people, killed to satisfy Zionist racism, I have no problem comparing Israel with the worst criminals in history, including Hitler's Nazis.
It is true that Israel has not introduced gas chambers into Palestinian towns and villages (although relatively innocuous tear gas is often used in confined spaces, against the manufacturers' recommendations, with often lethal results). However, gas chambers were never the only extermination method used by the Nazis. Israel has been killing and tormenting Palestinians in a variety of ways that, for sheer brutality and evil, don't differ in substance from Nazi Germany's murderous behaviour.
Moreover, it is important to remember that the Nazi Holocaust didn't begin with Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen; it was the end result of years of brutality; the "Final Solution" that began with an idea, then a book and then with state-sanctioned discrimination and terrorism of a distinct group of people. The sort of things, in fact, that are rampant in Israel 's collective thinking and actions these days as Jewish society in the Zionist state continues to drift menacingly towards religious and jingoistic fascism. Israel is a democracy, we are told; let us not forget that Hitler came to power via the ballot box.
The minute a Zionist Jew sets foot on Palestinian soil in order to live on land stolen from its rightful owners; or live in a house seized at gunpoint from its native Palestinian occupants, this Zionist Jew loses his sense of morality.
Zionism is supposed to be about "building a national homeland for the Jews". However, for the millions of its victims, Zionism is about dispossession; it is about the uprooting, expulsion and dispersion of the bulk of the Palestinian people from their ancestral homeland through organized terror and violence. Israel's state ideology has always been clear about one thing: the Palestinians have to leave their land, willingly or by force. There is ample evidence to support this statement, including documents written by and for Zionism's pioneers and Israel's founders.
In 1948, the Zionists ethnically cleansed more than 90% of Palestinians in historic Palestine. Today's Zionism ideologues are planning to "complete the task" with the "transfer" of millions of Palestinians across the River Jordan in order to maintain Israel's Jewish identity and have more "Lebensraum" for "God's chosen people".
This is not fantasy on my part, or on theirs. A conference in Ramleh on 26 April heard several leading rabbis calling for the "cleansing the land of the Arabs."
"Today there is a lot of land in Saudi Arabia and in Libya , too. There is a lot of land in other places," said Dov Lior, the extreme right-wing rabbi of Kiryat Arba, an illegal settlement built near Hebron. Such rabbis are not marginal figures in Israeli Jewish society; they have thousands of fanatical - and fully armed - followers at their beck and call.
Hence, it would be unethical and dishonest to deny let alone defend this racism, fascism and territorial expansionism (the search for lebensraum) by a state that calls itself "Jewish" while committing every sin possible.
Michael Weiss tries to discredit pro-Palestinian activism by throwing the "Hamas" card onto the table. The Islamic Resistance Movement may not be perfect and one may not agree with everything it says or does. However, Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people in elections that were declared to be free and fair by the international community, including Israel and its guardian ally, the United States .
However, Hamas has been demonised because it insists on Palestinians being given their rights as defined by the United Nations; for this the movement is listed as a terrorist organization due in no small measure to intensive lobbying by well-funded and generous Zionist groups in Western capitals.
Israel, of course, was founded on the terrorism of the Stern Gang, Irgun and even the Haganah (the forerunner of the Israel Defence Forces). Its declaration of independence is stained by the blood of Palestinian civilians butchered by the nascent state's armed militias. So it knows a thing or two about terrorism. To this day, for every innocent person killed by Hamas, Israel kills at least a hundred innocent people.
In 2006, Israel dropped 2-3 million cluster bomblets over southern Lebanon, enough to kill and maim between 2-3 million children; or half a holocaust worth of innocent people. And in 2008-2009, Israel carried out a blitzkrieg against Gaza, using state-of-the-art American-funded and built weaponry and munitions, including white phosphorus bombs, against an essentially helpless and unprotected people. Thousands of civilians were killed and maimed. Despite this, some Zionists still have the temerity to invoke Hamas as the bogey in the region.
In any reasoned analysis, Zionists are the last people who are fit to lecture the Palestinians on the evils of terrorism: Israel was born in terror; Israel is the embodiment of terror; Israel represents ultimate terror. The Israelis have destroyed our homes, stole our land, massacred our people and expelled us from our birthright. For arrogant Zionists to call us terrorists is, to quote Professor Norman Finkelstein, "beyond chutzpah".
The world is changing, and Michael Weiss and his hasbara chums should wise up; Zionism tomorrow will be as unacceptable as other forms of racism are today. The writing is on the wall, and the irony is that the Zionists know this to be true; they are fighting a losing battle. And Palestine will be free.
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