Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 23, 1993 TAG: 9301250261
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FAHIM I. QUBAIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
ISRAEL'S DEPORTATION OF PALESTINIANS IS A FAILED PROPAGANDA STUNT
CAL THOMAS ("Israel vs. Hamas," Jan. 6) obviously belongs to the same cadre of columnists and commentators better known as "Israel's Amen Corner" or "Israel Ambassadors in Residence" at editorial pages of many newspapers in this country. These apologists are dedicated to perpetuating the myth that Israel can do no wrong, and that the Arabs and Palestinians are evil terrorists and dictators thoroughly dedicated to the destruction of poor, little, innocent, peace-loving Israel.While today the Israeli government and its propagandists such as Thomas rail at Hamas as "a two-headed-monster terrorist group," the fact is that the growth and development of this particular organization was encouraged and even financed by the Israeli government in the 1980s to divide the Palestinians and to create a counterweight to the Palestine Liberation Organization. At that time, the PLO was regarded as the principal and most potent "enemy," and had been targeted by the Israeli propaganda machine for demonization.
Today, Israel's chickens have come to roost and the tables have been turned. Hamas, originally the Israeli government's brain child, is now not only beyond its control, but has developed and grown into a mass movement with many supporters in the occupied territories, precisely because the Palestinians are frustrated beyond depair as they see no progress in the peace negotiations, and no end to Israeli occupation and to their misery and humiliation.
The headline of Thomas' piece, "Israel vs. Hamas" would have been more appropriate had it been "Israel vs. the civilized world." The expulsion of 415 Palestinians now shivering in the winter cold of no-man's land, with no food, water or medicine, is not only an outrageous and blatant violation of the Geneva Convention and of basic human rights, but has been met with the repugnance and abhorrence of the entire civilized community of nations. It has been condemned by the U.N. Security Council, virtually every government throughout the world, including the United States, most human-rights and church groups everywhere, even by many Jewish groups here in the United States and in Europe, and by many Israelis.
The 415 Palestinians were rounded up by military order, secretly in the middle of the night. Shackled and blindfolded, they were loaded on 22 buses and deposited in a no-man's land. Not even members of the Israeli cabinet were fully informed. Some of them thought the deportation involved only a few individuals. As it turns out, however, even with the very admission of the Israeli government itself, not one of the 415 deportees was guilty of any crime or involved in the murder of the Israeli guard. All of them are middle-class Palestinians - physicians, engineers, lawyers, religious leaders, educators, etc., who constitute at least a faction of th Palestinian leadership in the opposition to Israeli occupation. In addition to the deportees, some 1,600 Palestinians from the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem were also arrested on the same day, and the Gaza strip was placed under a total curfew with no emergency food supplies allowed to enter the area.
I cannot and do not condone the killing of any human being. However, it should be noted that on the very same day the Israeli guard was murdered, 10 Palestinians were shot dead by the Israeli army. In December alone, 23 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army, eight of whom were under the age of 16. It was the highest monthly death toll in the occupied territories in more than two years.
The expulsion of the 415 Palestinians is only the latest manifestation of a systematic policy of dehumanization and demonization of the Palestinian people, which was established by both the Labor and Likud governments since 1967 and has been intensified since the Rabin government took power in June 1992. Rabin may speak softly, but in action he has exceeded even the openly hard-liner Shamir. Settlement activity continues unabated; confiscation of Palestinian land and demolition of their homes is now at a tidal high; Palestinians are arrested and tortured by the thousands; and Israeli army death squads continue their missions of outright murder.
This policy of dehumanization is propagated among Israeli high-school students, the military forces and especially among members of Shin Bet, the Israeli secret police that has absolute authority and unchallenged power in the occupied territories - the West Bank and Gaza. This view, in essence, regards all Arabs - not just Palestinians - as genetically inferior to Jews; that they have extremely limited intellectual capacities; that they do not have the same values of decency as Jews and Westerners; that they have no respect for human life - including their own; that they are by nature liars, lazy, prone to terrorism, fanaticism and dictatorship. Therefore, Palestinans are to be looked upon and treated with loathing and contempt and the only way to deal with them is by force. With such a mind-set, it became natural for Shamir to call Arabs and Palestinians "cockroaches," and for Rabin to become the father of the "Iron Fist Policy."
Many Jewish and Israeli intellectuals, religious leaders and human-rights groups - to their credit - have commented with horror about this policy and denounced it. More than 1,000 Israeli soldiers have gone to jail for refusing - on grounds of conscience - to serve in the West Bank and Gaza, and are known as "Prisoners of Conscience." Some 40 retired Israeli generals have urged their government to quit the occupied territories, and recently, 40 Israeli soldiers from the same unit petitioned their government to quit the Gaza strip.
At this moment, there are some 10,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza - some of them children - being detained and tortured in Israeli concentration camps. Since the beginning of the Intifada in 1987, more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army. More than 122,000 - some maimed for life - have been shot and injured. More than 15,000 have been jailed under "administrative detention." More than 110,000 men, women and children - almost 10 percent of the entire Palestinian population - have had the experience of Israeli jails. More than 11,000 curfews - some lasting weeks and months - have been imposed; schools and colleges have been shut down; 89,635 acres of land have been confiscated; 2,220 homes have been demolished or sealed; and more than 143,000 trees - including 1,000-year-old olive trees, have been cut down. The olive tree is not only the mainstay of the Palestinian farmer but also the symbol of the Holy Land.
In the '50s, as a result of the Cold War, a "special relationship" began to develop between Israel and the United States. By the '70s the relationship was solidified into a "strategic alliance," where Israel was regarded as a strategic ally against Soviet penetration of the Middle East, Africa, Latin and South America.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the settlement of many conflicts, the emergence of the United States as the unchallenged military superpower and the national mood of looking inward to solve our own severe economic and social problems, the rationale for the so-called "strategic alliance" evaporated.
The Israeli government was faced with the serious problem of finding a replacement for the "Soviet threat" to justify its "special relationship" with the United States to ensure, above all, the bonanza of cash and arms. The Israelis found a convenient scapegoat in a resurgence of Muslim puritanism now spreading throughout the Arab and Muslim world as a reaction to the failure of democracy and widespread corruption.
Israel and its pervasive propaganda machine in the United States went into high gear to portray the resurgence as an evil, fanatical movement of "Muslim Fundamentalism" representing a most serious threat, in particular to the United States, but also to the West in general and to U.S. allies in the Arab world. Israel, being the only "Western" country in the Middle East, is therefore the logical, essential component to combat this present and immediate danger.
The deportation of the 415 Palestinians was intended in part as a propaganda stunt to portray Hamas as a "two-headed monster" and a part of a worldwide Muslim-Arab conspiracy. Instead, the deportation turned out to be a monumental public-relations and political disaster for Israel. Not even an Israeli disciple like Thomas can deny that.
Fahim I. Qubain of Buena Vista is a retired political scientist and author of "Education and Science in the Arab World" among other books.