Just Get Out!

http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=233

(YellowTimes.org) – How many
Palestinians are dead in Jenin? Dozens? Hundreds? How many
hundreds? If the number turns out to be exactly 641, or
exactly 139, will that be a PR "victory" for the Palestinians, or
for the Israelis? As journalists are lining up to declare the
"victor," CNN runs a web poll about each side's credibility.
Soon we may see the dead jostling with the living in CNN's
sordidly named "crossfire."

As a mental exercise, let each of us decide at exactly how
many deaths the scale tips from the Israeli side to the
Palestinian side, at what point an incursion becomes a
slaughter, at what point a slaughter becomes a massacre, at
what point a massacre becomes a genocide.

This is all very important, PR-wise.

For eleven days, IDF soldiers have been preventing
journalists, medics, rescue teams and aid convoys from
entering Jenin.

This is how they "protect" the truth inside from all those
outside who might want to "misuse" it against Israel.

After all, the truth is such a terrible weapon. It would be
wrong to allow one side to have more of it than the other.
There must be balance. But only regarding the truth. There
need not be balance in firepower, for example. It is O.K. that
Israel has nuclear weapons and Apache helicopters, paid for
by American taxpayers who can't afford to pay for adequate
health care, while Palestinians fight with rifles and home-made
explosives.

There need not be balance about land either. It is O.K. that
Israelis control all the land and Palestinians none.

Nor is balance a requirement regarding liberty, or human
rights, which Israelis enjoy and Palestinians do not. But there
must be balance in describing what happened in Jenin.

That is why accuracy is very important in Jenin. Was it exactly
a "massacre," as Perez called it and then denied, or a
"devastation," or just an "incursion" that used "minimal force"
to achieve "necessary goals," such as showing Palestinians
who's the boss and what you get for upsetting him? If you use
too strong a word, if you match the expression to the stench
of the decomposing bodies, Israel will reprimand you, brand
you an anti-Semite, maybe even expel you. Be forewarned.

But what can one do? Even the cautious and pro-Israeli The
Economist saw clear evidence of war crimes. U.N. envoy Terje
Roed-Larsen described the devastation in Jenin as "horrific
beyond belief," and said it was "morally repugnant" that Israel
blocked humanitarian emergency workers from entering Jenin
for 11 days. Israel is still blocking rescue teams, while Perez is
pondering whether to send Roed-Lansen home with a note to
his parents or merely revoke his weekly allowance. The
undiplomatic words of the Norwegian diplomat, but not the
undiplomatic reality these words refer to, really hurt Israel's
highly evolved moral sensibility.

Having agreed to it earlier, the government of Israel is now
blocking the U.N. fact-finding mission to Jenin. The problem,
according to Israel, is that too many of the members have
"humanitarian" experience, and might not understand the
requirements of warfare. It is easy to imagine the people and
the resumes Israel would want to see instead: maybe a few
Latin American death-squad leaders; or Lt. William Calley,
whose experience at Mai Lai could prove invaluable in
determining what is and what isn't a massacre; or perhaps
the French General Paul Aussaresses, commander of the 1957
French paratroopers' attack on the Casbah of Algier. To top it
all, war crimes connoisseur Madeleine Albright, or even Henri
Kissinger, could provide moral leadership, as well as much
needed verbal elasticity.

As long as there is balance.

For the Israeli public and politicians, the widespread, and very
unbalanced, opprobrium is just one more affirmation that the
"whole world is against us."

Echoing popular sentiment, Israel's President Moshe Katsav
whines: "with all due respect and esteem for people of
conscience and the bleeding-heart liberals of the world, I don't
understand why they've clamped their mouths shut for a year
and a half while the cruelest of unprecedented terrorist acts
were committed against Israelis citizens everywhere."

President Katsav, are all the inhabitants of Jenin terrorists?
Are most? Is God's own standard, of requiring only ten
righteous men to save a city, too lax for you? What part of
"collective punishment is a war crime" don't you understand?

The fact that the eruption of violence during the last eighteen
months baffles you so much makes me wonder, President
Katsav. Do you understand the idea of liberty? Have you ever
read the universal declaration of human rights?

Do you understand that "universal" means "applies to
everybody equally"?

Does the declination of possessive pronouns confuse you?
Surely you are at ease with "mine" and "ours." But do you
also understand the concepts behind "yours," "his," "hers,"
and "theirs"? When I look at the map of the land grab for your
illegal settlements, I have serious doubts.

Are you troubled why "people of conscience" do not condemn
terrorism? Even to make such an accusation you must be living
in an alternate universe. But I will answer your whining twice
nevertheless.

The long answer, President Katsav, "with all due respect and
esteem," is that the suicide bombers did not land in Israel
from outer space. The explosive belts might as well carry a
label that reads "made in the Greater Eretz Israel."

The suicide bombs are the mutant flowers of Israel's
brutalizing occupation, springing from the seeds of the
54-year-long dehumanization of Palestinians. They are the
ghosts of your brutality coming back to haunt you, the
mementos of your war against memory.

The massive and deliberate destruction of Palestinian civil
records in the West Bank in the last weeks is but the most
recent chapter in a war against Palestinian memory that
began in 1948, with the annihilation of 400 Palestinian
villages. But you seem to learn nothing from history, indeed
from your own history: ghosts always return, each time more
violently.

For those ready to die, their spiritless hatred towards you is
what remains after you have bulldozed their past and their
future. Whether you like it or not, they are your bastard
offspring. Everything they know about hate, you taught them.
Everything they forgot about humanity, you made them forget.
Give them a hug now, as they have proven themselves worthy
of their parents – you.

The short answer, President Katsav, is really short: just get
out!

Call the army home. Call the occupation off. And get out of the
Occupied Territories. Just get out!

Don't mumble about how "difficult" or "complex" the situation
is. It isn't. You are the oppressor. You are the occupier. You
park your tanks on plundered land. You fill your swimming
pools with stolen water. You kill and destroy in order to
inherit. So don't bullshit about "the situation." Just get out!

Stop abusing people. Stop abusing language. Stop spinning
your own moral cocoon. Stop turning your country and your
people into a metaphor of evil. Just get out!

Don't wait for Bush. Don't wait for Arafat. Don't wait to
negotiate with the mythical Palestinian leader who will finally
accept your dominion. There is nothing to negotiate about.
Just get out!

Take your rabid Jewish fundamentalists from Kiriat Arba and
Beit El with you. Load them on buses and pump the gas pedal
until the hills of the West Bank vanish in the rear mirror. Just
get out!

Gather your thugs from the borderless "border police," give
them scholarships and send them to school again. Let them
discover there is more to life than beating people to a pulp.
Just get out!

Take your checkpoints, with all their petty humiliations and
deadly snipers, with you. And just get out!

Send the Shin-Bet packing. After 35 years, the world had
enough of your clever jailers and torturers. Take them with
you and just get out!

Let your hideous bulldozers loose on the illegal settlements of
Ma'ale Edomim, Har Homa and Gilo. There is plenty of
demolition work for them there. Let them continue until the
mountain line bears no more memory of your rape. Then just
get out!

Don't apologize. Don't justify. Don't explain. There is nothing
left to explain. Honestly. Just get out!

Don't even worry about the thousands of olive trees, symbols
of peace, you uprooted. Someone will plant them again.

Just get out!

[Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel. He is an
unabashed "opssimist." He writes his columns because the pen
is sometimes mightier than the sword - and sometimes not.
Gabriel lives in the United States.]

Gabriel Ash encourages your comments:
gash [at] YellowTimes.org

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