Imagine a place like Vietnam when the country was split in two: A North that adhered to the communist system, and a South that adhered to the Capitalist system. They had a civil war in which the French and then the Americans intervened, but for the purpose of this discussion, those interventions will be considered beside the point. We ignore them and concentrate on the fact that people were split into a couple of factions, each having equal claim to the land, the culture, the history and all that made Vietnam the homeland that it was … and still is.
Now imagine a place
like Algeria between the decades of the 1830s and 1960s. A low intensity war
was ongoing there during most of that time. It seemed like a civil war until
the decade of the 1950s when the war intensified, and it became apparent that
the combatants were not one and the same people. It also became obvious that
this was not a civil war but one of liberation where French colonial troops
were trying to make of Algeria a “Nouvelle-France” in the style of New England.
They fought to subjugate the indigenous Algerian population that wanted to
retain its Arab-North-African identity.
Well, my friend, you
can see the difference between the Vietnamese case where you had one people
split into a couple of factions that had equal claims to the homeland — and the Algerian case
where you had two peoples; one that was authentic and indigenous to the land, the
other that was an alien imposter pretending to be of the land in a transparent
attempt to legitimize his theft of it.
Now, put on the hat of
a human rights official. You and your team are mandated to investigate and
adjudicate cases where war crimes were committed, with each side accusing the
other of committing them while exculpating the self. What instructions do you
give your team at the outset so that they stay focused on what is relevant to
the investigation? The answer is simple. You tell your team that each side has
the exact same rights and obligations. They must be treated and judged in
accordance with one and the same standard.
Still wearing the hat
of a human rights official, you are now mandated to investigate and adjudicate
the Algerian case. What instructions do you give your team at the outset? You
tell it that an occupation is an act of war, the ultimate form of violence someone
can inflict on a people. It is the duty—not just the
right—of every able body to resist the occupation, which means fight back with
every means at their disposal. Because the occupier has the upper hand, fortified
by lethal weapons, the occupied cannot be faulted for resorting to
unconventional means to fight back, however ferocious the means may be.
How can that fictional
presentation of actual historical events be useful in clarifying what is
happening today in Palestine? We must agree that the situation in Palestine
resemble the Algerian case and not the Vietnamese case. Not only does “Israel
proper” occupy Palestinian territory, it imports foreigners from around the
globe, arms them, sends them to live on Palestinian lands, and guards them with
soldiers of the Israeli military who are equipped with the most lethal weapons
America produces and gives to Israel free of charge. All that, while America
dedicates its financial and diplomatic weight to keep the Palestinians from
getting the weapons they need to defend themselves, or even going to court
seeking relief from an occupation that has lasted three generations already …
with no end in sight.
What we have here is a
grotesquely skewed theater of war that cries out for the application of two
unequal weights to level the field as much as possible, thus give the
disadvantaged side a minimum semblance of equal chance and equal justice.
This is what pundits
of the Jonathan S. Tobin kind fight against as they try to maintain the
existing status quo of inequality. But it is clear that Tobin is pretending to
be offended by what he falsely claims is the unfair treatment of the settlers
whom he describes as doing nothing more than legitimately kill Palestinians and
legally confiscate their possessions. Even the French in Algeria or the
Rhodesians in Zimbabwe or the Afrikaners in South Africa were too smart to
advance arguments as criminally-minded as this. They respected themselves by
respecting their audiences, something that Jonathan Tobin cannot bring himself
to emulating.
Here, in condensed
form, is what he wrote:
“To the casual
observer of news from the Middle East, the biggest story coming out of Israel
is the surge in settler violence against Palestinians. The number of attacks by
Jews living in West Bank settlements neighboring Arabs is up by 50 percent.
Radical Jews inspired by hatred for Arabs are guilty of shootings, along with
attacks in which Palestinian property is vandalized. The question we should be
asking is not whether it’s true that residents in Jewish communities have
committed violence. It’s whether the decision on the part of the media to treat
these incidents as emblematic of why it is wrong for Jews to live in the
territories is justified. The double standard is outrageous. The Israelis who
live in the occupied territory are held responsible for the crimes of a few. Yet
at the same time Palestinian violence is considered justified. It’s clear that
the subject here is the delegitimization of Jews. Those who treat this as a reason to
demonize Zionism are inflating the problem to support a cause whose aim is to
destroy the Jewish state”.
So, here is
what these people think: Unless Jewish home-invaders are brought from around
the world and allowed to act on their hatred for the Arabs by shooting them and
confiscating their properties, Jews the world over, will be delegitimized and
the “Jewish state” will be destroyed.
Well, since this is
insulting the human race like we’ve never been insulted before, it is time that
we show these Jews who we really are. We collectively root for the Palestinians
to get justice and the restoration of their rights in full.
When this is done, the
Jews will not be delegitimized anymore than were the French when the Algerians
won their freedom, were the Rhodesians when the Zimbabweans got back their
country, or were the South Africans when they saw Nelson Mandela walk out of
jail. In fact, the only thing that will be delegitimized is the theft of
Palestine —
the greatest heist in all of history, realized by a band of armed Jewish
marauders.