Holy Land Hysteria!

by Shelton Hull

The internal dynamics of a very dangerous situation.

The clashes between Palestinian malcontents and pro-Zionist soldiers have

claimed over 160 lives through mid-November, mostly Palestinian. The

violence has been depicted by traditional media as a series of isolated

skirmishes between relatively equal forces locked in a highly irrational

territorial dispute, which obscures the real theoretic base.

In the introduction to his 1996 book, Peace and its Discontents: Essays on

Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process (Vintage), Professor Edward Said

of Columbia University–the leading Palestinian-born intellectual–offers a

less-than-enthusiastic appraisal of a situation that hasn’t changed much

since: “The peace process will grant Israel what it has wanted from the

Arabs, an unequivocal legitimacy as a state built on the ruins of an Arab

society and, perhaps more important, an opportunity, with the United States,

to enter and benefit from a vast new Arab market. […] Trade and tourism

are touted as eradicators of barriers. Harmony and friendship, perhaps even

a bit of democracy for the oppressed and downtrodden, are projected for the

future. How all this is supposed to occur in a region where the wounds of

war nd conflict still fester, where refugees stagnate in camps, where

millions are denied the right to vote in meaningful elections, where women,

the poor, minorities, and the gifted are still treated as lesser human

beings and where the governments offer little inkling of how it is they are

going to convert a culture of hostility and belligerence into one peace and

openness: all this is not talked about or debated.” So let’s talk about

it….

The dispute goes back to 1947, when the displaced Jews of Europe were given

land then-held by Britain, which amounted to a transfer of colonial power

from one illegal occupation to the next. The UN partition resolution of

November 29 gave Jews 55% and Arabs 45% of what was then called Palestine.

The Arab community has never been exactly receptive to Israel, and attempted

to remove them in the failed 1967 war. Israel celebrated victory by annexing

those areas known today as the West Bank and Gaza strip, giving them 78% of

the territory. (The Red Cross reported in 1974 that 19,152 Palestinian homes

had been destroyed since 1967, sometimes with residents inside.) The

Palestinian settlements are geographically isolated from each other and

neighboring Arab states, and its residents are forbidden to own land, vote,

or other things that only Jews can do. Most of the world regards a return to

the pre-1967 borders as a reasonable compromise but, as seems true so often,

we feel differently. There are no moderates on the decision-making level in

America; all fall firmly into the “Zionism uber alles” camp.

To understand why today’s violence is especially interesting, look back to

the 1993 Oslo accords and the famous handshake between Rabin and Arafat,

which symbolized nothing less than PLO surrender. According to Said, “Far

from being the victims of Zionism, the Palestinians saw themselves

characterized as its now repentent assailants, as if the thousands killed by

Israel’s bombing of refugee camps, hospitals, schools in Lebanon, its

expulsion of 800,000 people in 1948 […] the conquest of their land and

property, its destruction of over 400 Palestinian villages, the invasion of

Lebanon, to say nothing of the ravages of twenty-six years of brutal

military occupation, were reduced to the status of terrorism and violence,

to be renounced retrospectively or dropped from reference entirely.” This is

what happens when you have movements based on an individual personality;

once Arafat grew tired of checking his bed for explosives every night, he

quit his fight and took the cause of Palestinian independence with him.

In exchange for meager land grants and the promise of “limited autonomy”

over those areas, the PLO–now tellingly known as the Palestinian

Authority–agreed in effect to serve as the brown-skinned exponents of

Israeli rule. Said says: “For the first time in the twentieth century, an

anticolonial liberation movement had not only discarded its own considerable

achievements but made an agreement to cooperate with a military occupation

before that occupation had ended, and even before the government of Israel

had admitted that it was in effect a government of military occupation.”

Thus Arafat has little credibility among his own people, who respond now to

the incendiary rhetoric of extremist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad,

and that’s the unknown factor that could make things really interesting in

2001.

Oil is a major factor in this issue–sad that inanimate substances have

arguably more weight in the debate than people. US support of Israel is

predicated on the belief that they can function as sentries for overseeing

the political and military machinations of OPEC nations. But we need their

oil more than they need our money, so a halt in production–which would shut

down the country–would make perfect sense in an united Arab offensive. The

American Zionist lobby is well-advised to push for alternate fuel technology

as a means of “freeing” the US from its dependence on OPEC without having to

drill up unspoiled Alaskan wilderness and incur the wrath of the same

massive environmental lobby that destroyed Exxon for recklessly ruining

Prince William Sound. (That’s a joke.) This would make the support of Israel

easier to maintain as the violence escalates long-term and the Arab

community coalesces. Of course domestic oil interests (as personified by the

fella who’ll probably be our 43rd President, GW Bush, a 2nd-generation

petrol flack and his VP Dick Cheney, who took a $20 million golden parachute

from his oil company before leaping into the electoral ring) would be

opposed to such a thing, which creates an interesting conflict between two

major elite forces.

It would come down to aerospace: would the Pentagon (“that 5-sided

fist-a-gon”) make more money supporting the oily folk or defending Israel?

They could probably swing both by using some “terrorist” threat as an excuse

to invade the Middle East, cement Israeli dominance, pound OPEC into total

submission, and snuff out Arab dissent permanently. But it’s more likely that

Vietnam would be Grenada compared to open warfare against a united Arab

front, and Jerusalem would be Saigon with apocalyptic overtones. And we know

it, thus a slim possibility always exists that we could abandon Israel at a

crucial moment and take the cheap oil–just like an addict would behave.

The conflict is generally easy to frame in the US. With its heavy Jewish

presence in the media and strong Zionist political lobby, the slightest hint

or accusation of sympathy to the Palestinian cause will end one’s political

career and relegate one to the outer fringes of journalism. But some things

defy spin, like the death of Muhammad al-Dira, 12, shot by Israeli soldiers

while the cameras rolled. It’s perfectly alright for snipers to take head

shots at rock-throwers from the safety of distant rooftops, but executing a

child as he tries to flee can only be explained one way, in the words of

Rabbi Yacov Perrin at the 1994 funeral of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, who

machine-gunned 29 Muslims at prayer in the Hebron mosque: “One million Arabs

are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” (“Arab” is used generally to refer to

Palestinians, Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese and others of relatively similar

ethnicity and political inclination. They don’t really like being

generalized this way, but they really don’t like being shot while trying to

pray!)

Ethnic attitudes are key. All Jews are granted dual citizenship of Israel

and their “home” country from birth and can return there at any time. The

resulting growth of Israel’s population almost necessitates a constant

absorption of Palestinian land–which is the point: Arabs are subhuman. The

barely-concealed attitude of Israeli leaders toward the indigenous

population matches old colonial attitudes toward blacks and Indians, for

good reason. Only extreme force can maintain such an illegitimate order, so

extreme force it is! Israel is noted for being the only civilized country

that openly advocates torture, but only for Palestinians. Routine abuses of

rights of privacy–searches, seizures, deportations–occur to combat

“terrorism” in whatever hazy form it may take.

So now Palestinian disruption of established order reaches a new level of

effrontery and rumors of a second invasion of Lebanon float in the stuffy

air in centers of elite opinion from the Wailing Wall to Washington. The

Israeli Knesset has dropped its support of prime minister Ehud Barak

following Barak’s preemptive announcement on Nov. 28 of new elections two

years early. The implication is that Barak may be upsetting the power base

by not cracking down harder on dissent, the more overt forms in particular.

The legislature is said to want a date in May, but Barak is brokering for

more time to “reach” a peace deal with the Palestinians. I thought they

signed one in 1993, or was that 1996? King Hussein was there, right? And

also–was that Rabin or Netanyahu on the White House lawn? Oh, yeah, it was

both–they pulled the same routine twice and now the heat’s on for part

three. It seems unlikely now, but six months is a long time to turn the

screws on Arafat, and more is even longer. From EB’s perspective, this is a

very good time for “strong, decisive action”–that is, violence: increase

the pressure, make ‘em limp to the bargaining table, book some dignitaries

for another historic handshake and reestablish total control.

In retrospect, General Ariel Sharon’s once-inexplicably ill-timed holy day

jaunt to Ramallah in the company of 1,000 soldiers, which touched off the

new series of confrontations seems like maybe a power play, a display of

authority by the man who first led his people to the promised land of

Lebanon in 1982. Barak had solid support six months ago, as solid as it’s

been since Rabin, the last legit military medium of Israeli power. Pound for

pound, ex-Mossad maestro Barak may be the most physically lethal prime

minister in their history, but Ariel Sharon is vastly more dangerous than

his name suggests. He is no Little Mermaid. It can be argued that Sharon

should’ve been running the country before Rabin, and certainly after, but

he’s been weighed down by a bad rep–apparently he did something in the ’80s

that exceeded even the usual brutal standards by which the right

measures its treatment of Palestinians. But that didn’t stop him from

becoming a member of the body that moved to remove Barak. Values change

fast, and further Palestinian disobedience could expand this

post-millennium tension to jihad proportions, in which case behavior that

seemed excessive 15 years ago would make perfect “law-and-order” posturing.

So, who do you think is running in May? Not Harpo Marx!

Interesting that both the United States and Israel would enter into

disputes over posession of executive power within days of each other. This

all but guarantees some short-term diplomatic incongruity between them. The

next president won’t even know what direction his major international ally is

going in with a situation that pulses disturbingly with kinetic energy. That

means a muddled reaction to whatever happens in the immediate future. It

might be hard for domestic audiences to handle the kind of freelance video

that could come from the region under Sharon’s control, and the new

president will be at pains to maintain his delicate balance in public

opinion after the weirdness in November. Which means that Israel could rush

into a rumble with Arabs whose response could be harsher than expected, and

the support for a US military presence could ebb at a bad time.

In writing this, I’m highly concerned that my remarks on this subject not be

construed as anti-Semitic in the least, when in fact I consider myself more

pro-Semitic, in practical terms, than most. I favor a resolution of mutual

benefit to both parties, that spares them needless time and lives wasted on

internecine conflicts. I don’t hate Israel–I admire the idea and ideal of

it. One would hope that Jews, having bravely survived what Chomsky called

“the most fantasic outburst of insanity in human history,” would be the last

group to use such brutal methods of control against other human beings. But

it happens daily in Israel, with financial and diplomatic support from the

United States. This system is bad for all involved. The costs to Arabs are

clear, as are the costs to Americans and Jews: continued erosion of

credibility, hostile conditions across the region, and 52 years of bad karma

just waiting for exploitation by the first fundamentalist zealot (ex: bin

Laden) with the rhetoric and resources to stage an intifada harder to

dismiss (or dispatch) than a bunch of kids with rocks.

America’s motivation to pursure its current course in the middle east

(besides guilt over not entering the war earlier) is simple colonialism.

America’s need to maintain an “outpost” in the region is clear, as is the

need for a strong international ally to side with us when the entire rest of

the world is opposed to our policies, like the Cuban embargo or sanctions

against Iraq. The price Israel pays for existing under these conditions is

total dependence on the US. If we ever withdraw military and diplomatic

support from Israel, they would be overrun and wiped out in six months if

their enemies could organize and focus–and I’m not confident that an

victorious Arab coalition wouldn’t fall into the hands of extreme elements

with eyes on payback. No one wants another holocaust, which is why real

moderates advocate a return to the pre-1967 borders, full Palestinian

autonomy within its territory and basic human rights for Palestinians on

Israeli turf as the only solution worth pursuing.