The War Against Palestine

The ongoing tragedy of Gaza ignites a mixture of feelings of deep sadness and anguish. Israel’s daily demonstration of brutality and military ferocity fills our screens with images of the sufferings of innocent, helpless people. Civilian casualties are facts of war; however, the ratio of civilian deaths and injuries caused by Israel’s highly trained and well-equipped military is mind numbingly high. While the Israeli Government is indeed entitled to launch war to protect its citizens, it seems conveniently to forget that it also has the ultimate responsibility for protecting the citizens of the occupied territories. Israel, with the support of the USA and the international community, has refused to accept an independent Palestinian State without a comprehensive peace agreement and, accordingly, Israel, is responsible for protecting the civilians of Palestine. Hamas, a terrorist organization, actually has no legal standing and no responsibility towards the people of Gaza, Israel does! What ratio of inadvertent civilian deaths does the Government of Israel consider acceptable? And if, Hamas is indeed using innocent civilians as human shield, the question remains the same, what ratio of civilian deaths does Israel consider acceptable, remembering, that Israel, not Hamas, who holds the responsibility for protecting the lives of the non combatants in the occupied territories.

Naturally, when a defenseless population is being so ruthlessly attacked, any force fighting back is seen as righteous and courageous resistance. While the resurgent anti Islamist wave has caused many in the Arab World to turn a blind eye towards the suffering in Gaza and blame Hamas for it, indeed a small loud minority has actually been voicing support for Israel. Yet, the majority of Arab and Muslim people have again been seduced by the daring of Hamas, they are seen as the only force in the Arab World actually standing up to Israeli aggression and defending the defenseless. Once again, Hamas have become heroes and are now being labeled the Resistance. Alas, it is not the State of Israel that Hamas and the so-called Palestinian and Islamic Resistance are resisting, indeed it is Palestine, the State of Palestine is resisted by an unholy alliance of both Hamas and the Israeli right wing Government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

The days of armed resistance against Israel were the days when Israel said there was no such thing as Palestine, when Israeli spin was all about Jordan being the Palestinian state, when Golda Meir told the world, it was she, who was indeed a true Palestinian, but just didn’t like the name Palestine.  All of this came to an end with the Oslo Accords; Israel recognized the Palestinians as people and the road towards the Two State Solution commenced. The Israeli right wing never liked the Two State Solution and neither did Hamas, both rejected it, both for their own distinct reasons. The Israeli hawks fundamentally believe that any sacrifices made by Israel would endanger it needlessly and they believe that time is ultimately, on their side, much like it has been since the Arab rejection of the 1947 UN Partition Plan.  Benjamin Netanyahu articulated his positions over the years, from the days of his youth, when he went by Ben Nitay, to his years in the opposition as a Likud leader; his acceptance of peace in Government has been nothing but mere lip service, his actions speak of his strict adherence to his earlier beliefs.

Moreover, Hamas, unwittingly but with full diligence, does aid the Likud in achieving their objective of thwarting the establishment of a Palestinian state. It is indeed such a sad irony that the military wing of Hamas, named after Izza’din Al- Qassam, a man whose violent anti Jewish hate in the twenties and thirties contributed to the ascent of Jabotinsky and his more exclusive brand of Zionism; Hamas follows in his very same disastrous footsteps. It is hard not to wonder what the shape of Palestine would be today had it not been for the massacre of Jews in Hebron and Safed. For it was only following these tragedies that Nationalist Zionism dominated the Jewish agenda in Palestine. Likud co-opts Hamas’s words and actions again and again to achieve its racist exclusionary goals.

Hamas leadership is keenly aware of the impossibility of eradicating a state that enjoys vast military and technological superiority and has wide backing from world powers. So, what drives Hamas to continue in a winless fight?  Ultimately it is hate! Hate both for the injustice and for those who it sees as responsible for that injustice and hate for Jews.  Hamas leadership has redefined short-term victory to mean the ability to fight submission to the will of Israel; sadly at the expense of the defenseless people of Gaza. Moreover, under Hamas’sdoctrine, no peace is possible without eradicating Israel, so with the current power disparity, the struggle must continue for hundreds of years if need be. Neither side must know or live in peace and normalcy the conflict must remain open-ended. Today, Hamas’s immediate struggle is against the Two State Solution. Such a strange set of goals for a war and, Hamas’s long-term resistance to Israel translates into immediate resistance for the establishment of a Palestinian State!

Many Arabs and Muslims dream of the re-establishment of Palestine in its full historic boundaries and remain invested in the idea of reversing the gross injustice that befell the people of Palestine. Yet, the sons and grandsons of the those Israelis who massacred the Palestinians in 1948 and burnt their villages following their flight are hardly responsible for the crimes of their fathers and grandfathers. Fact is absolute justice is, not only not attainable, but it is also impossible to define and achieve without new major new injustices.

Despite of their difficult lives as refugees, in the 1970’s the Palestinians used to pride themselves for being the most educated amongst Arab people and boasted about having higher percentages of advanced academic degrees than most Arabs. These days are long gone; the refugee camps are over filled and today Palestinians face crises in education, in employment and in healthcare. Today, the Palestinians suffer a great deal for basic human dignity and are becoming poorer every year.  For Palestine from the River to the Sea is a luxury dream, only the ordinary people of Palestine pay for. It is time for the Arab and Muslim intellectuals to speak up for the people of Palestine, whose lives today are ultimately more important than the land and the historic justice.

Rather than counting the number of rockets from Hamas, Israel should be looking at the ratio of explosive power and destruction and ask itself for how long it can escape international justice and accusations of war crimes and genocide, how long can it work to evade the establishment of a Palestine. Hamas cruelty towards the people of Palestine today, resisting the establishment of an independent Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza to keep the conflict going, hoping that future generations can eradicate Israel, is a crime against the people of Palestine who deserve the best they can have now, today!

Ayman S. Ashour

August 3, 2014

The Muddle East

Everything is the Middle East is the fault of USA and Israel .. and if you dig deeply you will also find British hands too, this is the accepted conventional wisdom in this wonderful region. So let’s now move on to get some clarity on what has been going on in this great neighborhood. 

The Muslim Brotherhood was formed in Egypt in late 1920’s as Islamist resistance against the  British… Between the 1920’s and the 1950’s the Brotherhood cooperated alternately with Nazi Germany, the British and the Egyptian King …lots of interesting history, lots of accusations and smoking guns, sometimes a bit more!

The British used the Muslim Brotherhood against Nasser and Egyptian army in the 1950's ... but the Muslim Brotherhood were fierce fighters against the British before 1952!

Starting from the 1960's Saudi Arabia and the USA became the main backers of the Muslim Brotherhood, seeing them as counterbalance to Nasser and Egypt which was then in alliance with the Soviets pushing socialist Arab nationalism, dangerous stuff!

Egypt and Israel went into wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, but have signed a peace treaty in1979 and have since then been at peace…

Egypt’s Nasser helped Start the PLO and Fateh to combat Israel in the 1960's ... 

Israel countered by supporting the establishment of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine to be known as Hamas as counter balance to the PLO ... later Hamas turned on Israel..

Everyone is scared of Iran ...

Iraq and Iran had a ten year war then Iraq invaded Kuwait ..everyone then invaded Iraq ..Iraq fired rockets on Israel ..

Qatar, a country with immense wealth and very few people, was worried that Saudi might just take it, so it became buddies with Iran and started Al Jazeera Satellite TV

Iran hates the USA ...

Qatar invited the USA to have massive military base, the largest US airbase in region, is now in Qatar, the most friendly Gulf Arab State to Iran ...

Qatar helps Hamas, but has minimal animosity towards Israel, indeed some commercial ties ...

Iran hates Egypt, USA and Saudi so it is siding with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt ...

USA is neutral on Egypt, gets blamed by both liberals and Islamists for supporting the other side ...

In Syria, Iran and Russia fight the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qada and other non Islamist Sunni forces ...

AlQada is off shot of Muslim Brotherhood who thought it too moderate, they occasionally ally again. One has a green flag, the other a black flag .. Both flags could be seen in Pro Muslim Brotherhood and pro Morsi marches in Egypt … 

Saudi Arabia supports Egypt against Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar supports Muslim Brotherhood against Egypt ....

Israel is, largely, minding its business, building more settlements and facts on the ground ...  The Palestinians are divided .. Hamas like the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and Syria and the PLO like Egypt and Saudi, later is supporting Syria Muslim Brotherhood.....

Anything that goes wrong is blamed on Israel and the USA so don't tire your brain if you are from the muddle east, it's easy!

And if you are American, the mission in Syria is very clear, as you can see from this tidy picture of the Muddle East, so let's bomb Syria!

AA

August 31, 2013

They hate us!

They are horrible to us! they hate us so much, they don’t think of us as humans. It is so deep in them, this hatred; it is very naïve of us to think that we can be at peace with them, that one day we can have a normal relationship with them.

They kill our people indiscriminately, they don’t care if they are killing a young boy or girl, an old man or women, a mother, a disabled person, a pregnant woman

Their hate blinds them so much they just want to wipe us, all of us, out!

And just look at them ..whenever they had the chance to have power over us, they tormented us. They ethnically cleansed their lands of us, they disposed us ...humiliated us!

The only language they understand is power and force. We have to be careful not to get fooled thinking that we can ever have real peace with them, they want more, they want us out, all of us out. They can’t conceive any form of coexistence with us and we can’t coexist with them!

These are virtually the same sentiments, thoughts, words that I get from my friends and acquaintances across the political, religious and ethnic spectrum.

This is what I hear and read from most Jews and Israelis thinking of Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims and, not surprisingly, an identical, word for word, emotion for emotion to what I get from most Palestinians, Egyptians, Muslims, Arabs, etc.

Perhaps awareness of the mutuality of anxiety, anger, uncertainty, fear and sadness driven from these ideas and thoughts of the other, awareness of how identical they are, and the mirror image  on the other side can open some eyes, a small hope for peace in this large sadness of war, fear and hopelessness.

AA

November 18, 2012

Farting Against Thunder

It is a crude British expression, but I can’t shake the image it creates as I think of Gaza. Not only is it a crude expression, it is inappropriate in many important ways. Flatulence may be offensive but it’s generally harmless. Yet the Hamas rockets are more than just offensive, they kill and maim and, no doubt, cause fear, panic and nightmares. Moreover, Hamas rockets are not just innocent or involuntary flatulence, they are deliberate creations that people work very hard to produce, move and launch. Many die for their sake; these are not just simple farts! The rockets are aptly named Qassam, after a man who spent his life in futile fighting and who played a hand in planting seeds of hate beyond his declared targets. Qassam was fighting everyone and everywhere and was engaged in killing innocent civilians; just as his namesake rockets do today.

The image of thunder is also inappropriate. Thunder is not manmade, it is an act of God and it surely is indiscriminate in its effect. Indeed, conspiracy theorists in the Middle East absolve the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular of all blame by assigning almost God-like qualities to Israel and the USA. Much like Saddam was said to have invaded Kuwait because the US made him do it, or that Hezbollah was forced into starting the 2006 war in Lebanon by Israel’s manipulation, or that Hamas massacred Fateh in Gaza as part of an Israeli plot to justify the ensuing blockade and misery. The all-powerful USA and Israel are always scheming and plotting and Egyptians, Palestinians, Lebanese or Arabs have no will of their own and merely play their pre ordained role in the theater with Israeli directors and American producers.

What makes the image stick in my mind are the parallels in terms of scale. Thunder is infinitely more powerful than mere flatulence, so as I listened yesterday to the very articulate Bibi Netanyahu recounting the number of rockets to justify the massive Israeli retaliation, I thought that the sheer tonnage of explosives is a much more appropriate measurement rather than just mere numbers. The explosives on all of the Hamas and Jihad rockets over the last ten years may not add up to just one hour of Israeli bombings. Thunder is an act of God, which does not discriminate, so the young innocent helpless sisters and many others are slaughtered by the brutal thunder. The rockets are in a peculiar way similar to flatulence, they damage those around them more than those far from them. They must, however, make the Hamas operatives feel better after they release them.


With nearly 400 people dead, thousands injured and perhaps two million people living days on end in terrible anxiety and fear, would such a silly little expression be appropriate even to think about let alone to write about and share? How can this horrible suffering go on and on and all we get is the same as we’ve seen over the last sixty years? More condemnations of Israel, more arguments from Israel about self defense and more cruel tales of the thousands of innocent civilians being mere collateral damage? Israel: the rockets are awful granted, and they should be condemned, but at what price of Palestinian blood are you willing to stop to eliminate the rockets? Would a thousand dead Palestinians children be too much to eliminate the Qassams for one month? Why only one month? Because surely they will come again! How much cruelty on ordinary people will you dish out to punish Hamas?

For Americans and for the USA, how can we tolerate sitting in silence, witnessing such horror, such massacre? Is this the kind of self defense we had in mind when we supplied Israel with a huge arsenal of deadly weapons? Does Israel need our latest technology for this? What ratio of innocent civilian to Hamas fighter deaths are we unwilling to accept? Haven’t we finally learnt in Iraq that we save more of our troops by working harder to protect the ordinary people?

And Hamas, how many dead Palestinian children is it worth for you to keep launching rockets? Do you want all Gazans to suffer so your fighters can savor the joy of killing one or two Israeli kids every month? Is the total destruction of Gaza and the killing and maiming of thousands of Palestinians worth it, so that you can just carry on with your rockets?

December 31, 2008
AA

Hamas Invasion of Egypt!

After several weeks of travel, I am finally back home. I had a lot of interesting feedback to my essay about my visit to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Most interesting was the change in the feedback I had from some of my friends & family from Egypt. The email feedback was generally negative or just sarcastic about me going and about my pro normalization comments. By the time I made it to Alexandria and Cairo the Gaza / Egypt crossing had taken place.

Sadly in a way for the Palestinians, and fortunately in a way for the Egyptians and Israelis, Hamas had done what 30 years of peace could not achieve. Most Egyptians I met for the first time, since the first days after the Sadat visit to Jerusalem, looked at Israelis as normal people and some used words such as "the right is on Israel” ..or “what can they do?" Even very religious people were re-examining the recently normal hatred of all things Jewish and discovering references in Islam and in Islamic history about friendship and harmony with Jews. The same people who sent me disapproving emails just a couple of weeks before were now asking me more what Tel Aviv was like, Did you really go running on the beach and in the streets of Tel Aviv? Did people know you were Egyptians? Etc.

The Egyptian press was strange; cruel in a way, in stirring up anger at the ordinary Palestinians, but also fair in reminding people of the suffering of Egypt for the Palestinian cause. Some editors referred to the “Hamas invasion of Egypt”, others were full of praise of Sadat, “the hero of war & peace” and drudging up decades old anger at the Palestinians by reminding the readers of the joy of Arafat and the Palestinians at the news of the death of Sadat and the fact that no Palestinian leader has yet showed the courage and decency to visit Sadat’s grave.

Essam El Areean of the Brotherhood wrote in one of the opposition papers in support of Hamas and clearly felt the need to articulate the whole case for Hamas and what it is doing in Gaza, both in terms of rejecting Abbas’s approach for peace with Israel and taking control. The fact that he had to repeat the argument put forward verbatim by Hamas made me wonder if they were feeling that they were losing the average Hassan on the streets of Cairo.

For a long time advocate of peace and reconciliation, it was really good to see the change in Egypt. Sadly, as a supporter of the rights of the Palestinians I was also sad to see that anger at Hamas was turning Egyptians into anger at the Palestinians as a whole.

It is hard for me to characterize the opinion in Egypt from very few days in Cairo and Alexandria. But I don’t remember anything like this in Egypt for many years.

Anyhow, always fun to be in Egypt, but great to be back in the snow!

February 26, 2008

Once Upon A Country ...Once Upon A Peacemaker - Book Review - Sari Nusseibeh

This is a truly important book for anyone wishing to understand fully the Arab / Palestinian - Israeli conflict. It sheds tremendous light on very important events, thus far not fully presented from the Palestinian side, especially that of the non rejectionist Palestinian camp. Sari Nusseibeh is a truly visionary man with tremendous courage and is a highly gifted activist and indeed very clever politician despite his own denials.

I have thoroughly enjoyed, and was often moved by, the first half of the book which dealt with the history of Nusseibeh's family and contained his even handed description of the events leading to 1948 and all the way through the 1967 war and his subsequent return to live in Palestine with his British wife. Nusseibeh's portrayal of the lives of the Palestinians between the wars of 1948 and 1967 was very helpful.

In the second half of the book Nusseibeh hammers in, over and over again, on the tacit unspoken alliance of the extremists on both sides and shows how Israel supported the creation of Hamas as a counter weight to the Fateh and PLO. He coherently and very persuasively presents the thought process that he went through to move from the one state solution to the two state solution and demonstrates very effectively the threats that prolonging the conflict would cause to it.

Nusseibeh was often right at the center of things or at least presents himself as such; we see him as a leading figure in standing up to the Israelis and to the Islamists, we see him as the key engine behind the first intefada, or uprising, and we see him winning the respect and approval of Yasir Arafat. In this, second, half, this book moves from being a truly exceptional account of the personal and family history more into an aggrandizing politician's memoir. This should not reduce nor detract from the tremendous personal sacrifice and commitment Nusseibeh made to his cause.

I have heard of the peace work of Dr. Nusseibeh and read some of his articles and interview for some years and while I admire him more than any other Palestinian public figure, this book troubled me in a number of ways. Unlike the other three Palestinian memoirs, originally written in English, that I have read (Gada Karami, Fay Kenfani & Edward Said) Nusseibeh sought to justify every action he has ever taken, to defend his various historic positions and to settle the scores with those of differing views. Most unlike the other three biographies, the book contained virtually no retrospective sole searching whatsoever and important topics such as his obvious passion and skill for politics vs. his academic eccentric persona were packaged for the purpose rather than thought through. Nusseibeh repeatedly simply presented himself as the reluctant professor, yet left us wondering about his very savvy organizational, political and survival skills. He seemed to know exactly how to deal with wily old Arafat, Hamas, the Israeli intelligence and the various factions of the PLO yet retain the freedom to advance his own agenda as well as build important relationships with Israelis.

The tremendous heights, in which, Nusseibeh holds his father, a former Governor of Jerusalem, ambassador and member of cabinet gives the feeling of an immature biography lacking in the distance to be objective. Indeed the first half of the book contains rework of the some of the father's own unpublished memoirs. Obvious points such as the father's commitment to an idealistic form of pan Arabism, albeit non Bathist and non Nasserist, and Nusseibeh own movement into being Palestinian nationalist, seeing Palestine being in natural alliance with Israel did not cause him to reflect further on the role and thinking of his father. A respectful critique and contrast of the views would have enhanced and not hindered the understanding of his father and need not be disloyal to his memory.

Most grating perhaps is the competitiveness displayed with other Palestinian peace advocates and the various attempts at discrediting them. This was particularly evident in describing the efforts that led to the Geneva Accord, which Nusseibeh referred as the plan by the name of the Israeli negotiator, thus marginalizing the Palestinian partner. At some point Nusseibeh clearly fell out with Hanan Ashrawi and Dr. Barghouti, both articulate advocates of the Palestinian cause and for peace and coexistence with Israel, he made his disdain of them very obvious and has not troubled himself to analyze their positions even in retrospect.

Land of Blood and Agony

….. and the cycle goes on

  Sharon feels justified in going after Hamas as perpetrators of   terror;

  the killing of the Palestinian children is just an unfortunate collateral damage

  Hamas feels that killing the Israeli kids is also a collateral damage … in a just struggle against the occupation

  Sharon argues the occupation is crucial for protecting the security … of the Israelis

  and Hamas believes Israel can never have security as long as Palestinians are not allowed back to their homes and farms,

and Israelis feel this ……
  and Palestinians feel that ...
  and  Hamas feels ...

  Meanwhile more kids will never grow up,
  will die before they can love
  before they can live ..

  will just be plain extinguished in a horrible game of hate ….counter hate and more hate…

  …a game of political one-upmanship played by adults who have had their full sorry lives to live …

 and deny the poor kids even a chance at a sorry life, ... acceptable collateral damage …that's all, that's all!

  (1991 - 2001)
  buried here Collateral Ben Damage
  a.k.a. Collateral Ibin Damage
  Killed accidentally by Hamas trying to kill Sheikh Sharon
  Killed accidentally by Sharon trying to kill Hamas
  ..Rest In Peace …
… in this Land of blood & agony…
….rest

AA
December 11, 2001