By Alan Hart
06/03/08 "ICH" -- -
Some Israeli and other Jewish opponents of Zionism’s
colonial enterprise have described Israel as a “fascist”
state. I think the more appropriate terminology is lunatic
asylum. But I don’t blame the inmates (the Jewish citizens
of the state) for what’s happening. They are as much the
products of Zionist brainwashing as are the supporters of
Israel right or wrong throughout the mainly Gentile
Judeo-Christian world. I blame the wardens and management of
the asylum (Israel’s military and political leaders)
Israel’s leaders still
believe that by means of brute force and reducing them to
abject poverty, they can break the will of the
Palestinians to continue their struggle for their rights.
The assumption being that, at a point, and out of total
despair, the Palestinians will be prepared to accept crumbs
from Zionism’s table in the shape of two or three bantustans,
or, better still, will abandon their homeland and seek a new
life in other countries. In my view the conviction that
Zionism will one day succeed in breaking the Palestinian
will to continue the struggle for an acceptable minimum of
justice is the product of minds which are deluded to the
point of clinical madness.
There is, however, one
solid piece of evidence that a majority of Israeli Jews are
not as mad as their leaders. It’s in the fact that 64% of
them have said their government must hold direct talks with
Hamas. Less than one-third, 28%, opposes such talks. (Those
were the findings of a Ha’aretz-Dialog poll. It was was
conducted, under the supervision of Professor Camil Fuchs of
Tel Aviv University, before Israel’s escalation of its
confrontation with Hamas in Gaza; and it could be, because
of the international condemnation of Israel’s massively
disproportionate action of the past few days, that even more
than 64% now favour direct talks with Hamas).
That’s on the one
hand. On the other is the fact that Hamas has long been
calling for a ceasefire or truce, which, it has indicated,
could be extended indefinitely. The problem is that Hamas’s
leaders are insisting - they would be as mad as Israel’s
leaders if they were not - that a ceasefire must be a
two-way street. And that means Israel would have to end its
incursions of Gaza and abandon its policy of targeted
assassinations.
Israel’s leaders are
not going to do that. Their present strategy for Gaza is to
make life hell for all of its people in the hope that they
will abandon Hamas. And when that doesn’t happen? Israel
will seek to annihiliate Hamas. I mean competely, not bit by
bit.
Question: When is a
war crime not a war crime?
Answer: When the
perpetrator is the Zionist state of Israel.
