down to four.
But the goal is pretty much the same—to arrange the settlements
so that they separate the Palestinian areas. Big highway networks
will connect Jewish settlements and surround some little Arab
village way up in the hills. That’s to make certain that any local
autonomy will never turn into a form of meaningful self-
government. All of this is continuing and the US is, of course,
funding it.
Critics of the Palestinian movement point to what they call the
“intrafada,” the fact that Palestinians are killing other Palestinians—
as if this justifies Israeli rule and delegitimizes Palestinian
aspirations.
You might look back at the Zionist movement—there were
plenty of Jews killed by other Jews. They killed collaborators,
traitors and people they thought were traitors. And they weren’t
under anything like the harsh conditions of the Palestinian
occupation. As plenty of Israelis have pointed out, the British
weren’t nice, but they were gentlemen compared with us.
The Labor-based defense force Haganah had torture chambers
and assassins. I once looked up their first recorded assassination in
the official Haganah history. It’s described there straight.
It was in 1921. A Dutch Jew named Jacob de Haan had to be
killed, because he was trying to approach local Palestinians to see if
things could be worked out between them and the new Jewish
settlers. His murderer was assumed to be the woman who later
became the wife of the first president of Israel. They said that
another reason for assassinating him was that he was a homosexual.
Yitzhak Shamir became head of the Stern gang by killing the guy
who was designated to be the head. He didn’t like him for some
reason. Shamir was supposed to take a walk with him on a beach. He
never came back. Everyone knows Shamir killed him.
As the intifada began to self-destruct under tremendous
repression, the killing got completely out of hand. It began to be a
matter of settling old scores and gangsters killing anybody they saw.
Originally the intifada was pretty disciplined, but it ended up with a
lot of random killing, which Israel loves. Then they can point out
how rotten the Arabs are.
It’s a dangerous neighborhood.
Yes, it is. They help make it dangerous.
ann
(Ann)
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