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Israel And The Palestinians: Double Standard Equals Half Truths

By Rick Tingling-Clemmons

A U.S. citizen, husband and father of 3, a Catholic whose greatest crime was that of exercising his constitutional rights to speak for the rights of his people, the Palestinians, to justice and self-determination was murdered by terrorist operations in the U.S. What happened to guaranteed safety at home?

Although the assassination of Alex Odeh, Western Director of the ADV (American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee) was surely an act of terrorism, it was virtually ignored by the same major media which fed its hype to us in the wake of the cowardly and shameless murder of the elderly husband, father and paralyzed Klinghoffer by Palestinian hijackers on the Italian ship the Achille Lauro. This double standard, highlighted by the tragic case of Alex Odeh, should concern African/Americans supporting justice in South Africa (and being systematically murdered in the U.S.) where freedom fighters are called terrorists. Maybe the $15 million terrorist-catching fund should be used in Alex Odeh's case.

In October Israel launched a fierce airstrike against the PLO headquarters in Tunisia (a place where the U.S. had guaranteed safety to the PLO after they were forced to flee in the face of Israel's brazen invasion of Lebanon two years ago. This action took place while 6 or more U.S. battleships were docked off the coast of Tunisia, a standard since the 1973 oil embargo, and the U.S. government refused to condemn the cowardly attack on women and children, though it was condemned by the freedom-loving Jewish community in Tunisia, at home, and worldwide.

When did this all begin? I will start with some brief glances at the histories of these two great peoples beginning with the Moor's introduction of their Jewish brothers to a vanquished Europe and their decision to stay after the moors were driven back to south to Africa. Anti-Jewish sentiment, easily fanned over the centuries due to the positions of Jews as tax collectors and money-changers, was made easier because the Jewish people were easily separated out due to fiercely sustained cultural differences. It almost brought this landless people to extinction and culminated in the Nazi-let slaughter during World War II. In the words of Israel Zangwill, one of the founders of political Zionism, the Jews have been "a people without land" in search of "a land without people"—similar to Columbus "finding" the Indians and "discovering" America, or the Dutch "Finding an unpeopled land in South Africa." In this case the displaced people were to be the people of Palestine.

Political Zionism, as opposed to the cultural and religious variants, is a nineteenth-century colonial movement of some European Jews to found an exclusive Jewish colony, preferably in Palestine. It is a secular Jewish nationalism dedicated to the purpose of founding a Jewish state. The father of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, talks of Jews returning to their historical "fatherland and representing Western civilization." He also asserted that the Jewish state was designed to "form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism." Zionists deny that the state of Israel is a settler colony and argue instead that Jews have eternal and exclusive entitlement conferred by God to Abraham and his seed. Yet an equally important aspect is the assertion of the colonist's superiority over the native. The most pernicious claim to specialness is the one that invokes God. This invocation is the total and ultimate justification. Usurpers become agents of God's will; human acts are transmuted into a divine calling and responsibility is avoided.

The United Nations, forced and instigated by the U.S. and Great Britain, violated its own charter on November 29, 1947, and permitted the World Council to partition Palestine against the will of its people. The partition of Palestine is unique in history of the UN: the firsthand only example of involuntary partitioning. In the final voting the Philippines, Liberia and South Africa were for the partition, resulting in the forcible implantation of the Zionist state of Israel on the threshold of the emerging Third World without obtaining the voluntary recognition of a single Arab or African state. This incident exploited the backward and racist actions of those western countries and the historically shameful use of the Jewish people as scapegoats.

According to a 1922 census, approximately 750,000 persons lived in Palestine, only about 80,000 of whom were Jews. In 1931, an official census stated that there were one million people in Palestine, including approximately 175,000 Jews. No official census was taken after that date but estimates indicate that approximately two million people lived in Palestine before the outbreak of the 1947-48 war including approximately 600,000 Jews who owned about 7% of the total land area. After the fighting ended in 1949, only 156,000 Arabs (of 900,000 who lived there before the fighting broke out) remained in the land occupied by Israel, which constituted 80% of the area of Palestine. Another 500,000 Palestinians were driven out after the 1967 war.

That the exodus was planned Zionist policy is confirmed by Brigadier General Sir John Bagot Glubb who relates a conversation between a British officer of the Jordan Arab Legion and a Palestine Government official who was Jewish. The British officer asked whether the new Jewish state would not have many internal troubles in view of the fact that its Arab inhabitants would be equal in number to the Jews. The Jewish official replied: "Oh no! That will be fixed. A few calculated massacres will soon get rid of them"

The Palestinians' Liodice is not called My Lai but Deir Yassin. It happened on April 9, 1948. Before May 15, 1948, 800,000 Arabs had fled the Zionist terror. And the Arabs continued to flee, the women and children first of all; the men stayed to defend the towns and villages. Soon, Jaffa, Haifa, Lydda etc were "cleaned " of their Arab population. Many expelled Palestinians settled in a small Lebanese villages near the border. They wanted to be among the first to return home after the fighting as al refugees became entitle to do according to the UN resolution on Palestinian refugees. We all know that did not happen. The Israeli authorities allowed no Palestinian Arab to return, and any Jew can gain citizenship except Black Jew Falashas or Black Hebrews. The Zionists wanted the country but not is people, and this was so from the beginning. The Palestinian liberation movement has been forced to answer violence with violence; it has sacrificed itself in the unequal struggle and it has been forced to face death every day. And it has continued, as was evident what another hostage related his experiences:

"One or another of the guards asked me more than once whether I was aware of what had happened when the battleship New Jersey was off the Lebanese coast, shelling. They spoke of houses being pulverized by the cannon fire. My captors were incensed at what they regarded as terrorism by the U.S. Navy, and I had nothing to say to counter it. The shelling was supposedly in retaliation for what had happened to the U.S. Marines when their camp was car-bombed, a terrible thing and a loss of a large number of lives at the same time. I don't think there was much sense in what seemed just random shooting into the mountains to say we didn't like it."

These words were spoken by Rev Benjamin Weir, a 61-year old Presbyterian missionary in Lebanon since 1953, who was held hostage by Leanese Shite revolutionaries from May 8, 1984 until September 14, 1985. Upon his return Rev Weir suggested real negotiations, using more carrot and less stick in future dealings with the Middle East war for independence. I was reminded of Vietnam and what happened to unarmed civilians in what we called "retaliation" against Vietnamese defending themselves and in their country, too. It is a grim reminder that we live in a world where regional wars can rapidly turn into global wars.

Since the Second World War and the founding of Israel, every U.S. President has issued or endorsed policies stating America's willingness to use military force to influence policy in the Middle East. Much like the Palestinians today, Jews were in search of a homeland and, like the PLO, were betrayed by people they wanted to help them. Like Jews, the extermination of Palestinians now stands at near holocaust proportions. Our government has access to and uses bases in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Oman, Egypt, Diego Garcia, Morocco, Kenya, Somalia and Israel. Vladmir Jobotinsky, in an essay entitled "The Iron Law, 1925" wrote, "If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find a benefactor who will maintain the garrison on your behalf."

Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls on the question of armed forces. There lies the important role of the Jewish lobby, U.S. tax dollars, and the unholy alliance and similarity that exists between Israel and South Africa and their reciprocal military agreements (mainly because of similar relationships with their indigenous people).

As we once used and threw away veterans, as recently as in the aftermath of Vietnam, it becomes clearer everyday that our fight, as Americans, is right here, against a number of abuses: tens of thousands of American farmers and homeowners have and are being foreclosed on; hundreds of thousands of auto and steel workers will never again work in those area; Black infant mortality rates are passing the rate of inflation; drug, alcohol and child abuse are claiming more victims every second; and divorce and separation statists have exceeded marriage figures. Millions of our unemployed are watching their desperately-needed, hard won benefits being voted away by fickle politicians trying to hang on to their own jobs and voting in more war and destruction and less peace and improved quality of life.

If you are one of the fortunate few who has a job, you may well be finding working conditions more dangerous and demanding, with fewer benefits and less pay. More unorganized (due to deregulation and union-busting) and runaway shops (in the name of more profits) are turning great cities into bombed-out shanty towns of malnourished, sick, hungry and homeless people. Yet, prison construction continues. One might ask whether or not our government's interference in the internal affairs of other countries, mostly in the Third World (Asia, Africa, Central and South America and the Caribbean) has made the possibility of a face-lift for the Ugly American a more remote possibility than it need be. Meanwhile, big businesses are still reporting record profits while this great nation has become the largest debtor nation in the world.

The solution to the war for independence in the Middle East does not lie in U.S. arms sales thinly veiled as "peace talks". It must begin with a recognition of the rights of all involved, in an atmosphere of mutual respect. It is only through the recognition that no people or nation has the right to supersede the right to self determination of any other that true peace can be achieved—in the Middle East—or anywhere else in the world.

Rick Tingling-Clemmons
VVAW—Washington DC