Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 13:24:38 -0600
From: Carrol Cox <cbcox-AT-ilstu.edu>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: <fwd>Edward Said - American Zionism (3)




Tobin Nellhaus wrote:

>
> Yes, particularly as almost every member of the international community has
> repeatedly and vehemently attacked Israel's actions or denied its right to
> exist, and some did so even before the state was founded.

Things as they are must be honored -- which translates in the present case to
the right of the citizens of the state of Israel to membership in a secular,
multi-national, multi-religion, democratic state of Palestine. The state of
Israel neither has nor ever had any right to exist.

>  Surely that has
> something to do with the Israeli seige mentality (and does little to
> encourage negotiations).  On top of that, not a day goes by in Israel,
> especially in Jerusalem, without fear that at any moment and without any
> warning a bomb could blow up in a market, a bus station, or anyplace else,
> brought by someone who could be just another worker.

I can understand the grief and fear of the relatives of the casualties at the
Battle of Little Big Horn, without nevertheless keeping my core sympathy with
the warriors who destroyed them. The relationship between Israelis and
Palestinians is precisely that of the relationship in the 16th-19th centuries
between the invading Europeans and the native populations of the western
hemisphers. The very existence of the state of Israel is an ongoing war crime.
The Palestinians fight with what weapons they have. As long as the State of
Israel (a state without a nation) insists on its right to dominate and oppress
the Palestinians, citizens of Israel who support that state are in the position
of combat troops. The only terrorist organization in Palestine is the state of
Israel.

Negotiations in the long run can have only one topic: the means by which the
state of Israel becomes the secular, democratic state of Palestine. All other
negotiations are merely part of the terrorist campaign against the people of
Palestine. Organizations representing the people of Palestine may well negotiate
(properly) on other topics, but they betray their followers if they give
*permanent*  recognition to the state of Israel.

Carrol Cox

P.S. Even with the achievement of such a state the battle is less than half won,
as the current condition of the people of South Africa exhibits. That is, in a
secular Palestinian state in which socialism had not been achieved the current
Israeli ruling class and many (but not all, perhaps not even most) of present
Israeli citizens would continue to dominate in fact, as do whites in that other
infamous example of settler colonialism, South Africa.



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