Palestine, change in the air
Excerpt, minor editing by Carolyn Bennett
Today on “Democracy Now!”, … as conflict again heightens and
hits headlines, Palestinian-Lebanese American Middle East historian Rashid
Khalidi and Israeli Defense Forces veteran turned researcher and “anti-occupation
activist” Eran Efrati
Violence persists
Serious talks nonexistent
“In a lot of ways,” Eran Efrati said, “the United States completely
controls the political situation in Israel. … The political atmosphere is
extremely violent and fascist and the United States not only enabled that; it is
backing it up with money and with support.”
Efrati said, large sums of money are being transferred into
Israel, money that comes mostly but not only from “evangelicals.” The incessant
violence, conflict and nonexistent substantive talks to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli
issues are the consequence of incitement by “right-wing Zionist movements” together
with “the settlement movement in East Jerusalem, all over the West Bank, and to
the right-wing parties in Israel”; and the ever-present weapons industry and
their lobbyists.
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The
principal enabler
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| USA |
of violence, conflict and nonexistent substantive talks,
Rashid Khalidi said, is the United States of America. “By its diplomatic support,” Khalidi said, the
United States “prevents any real pressure on Israel to stop it from occupation,
settlement and repression.”
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| Palestine |
The United States is “running interference for Israel,” Khalidi said. “Whenever anybody tries to do anything—British Parliament, the Spanish
Parliament, the Irish Parliament, the Swedish government—the United States
objects.
“Whenever anybody tries to do anything diplomatically or in
a nonviolent manner, such as boycott, divestment and sanctions,” they (these actions
and those who carry them out) are labeled “anti-Semitic.” In the meantime, “the Palestinians
are supposed to lie down and let the bulldozers and the settlement enterprise
and the repression run over them and return to negotiations, which Netanyahu
has already told us can never lead to an end to occupation.”
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| Gaza Strip |
The current state of affairs is, “to a very large extent” the
“doing of the United States” – rhetoric of the US president notwithstanding. “As
long as American money is used to support the repression of Palestinians,” as
long as the US Department of Justice Department and US Treasury permit “US 501(c)(3),
supposedly ‘charitable,’ organizations to funnel tens, hundreds of millions of
dollars to settlement activities, to the repression of Palestinians,”
presidential rhetoric, the president’s public words are “meaningless.”
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| East Jerusalem |
We are complicit in repression. “This is an American-Israeli
enterprise,” he says. “The money is largely from the U
nited States” and “the weapons
are from the United States.”|
U
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sing the authorities, police and military, the former Israeli soldier says,
“the goal is to make people’s life miserable.” Eran Efrati said soldiers were told they
were preventing “terror attacks” so they needed “to make their (Palestinians') life
miserable so they will be afraid all the time and they will not have time to
plan terror attacks."
In reality, Efrati said, "The end goal” is
“to make them want to leave,” also to make them “want to do crazy things like
attacks on Jews and on Israelis.”
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| Middle East |
Rashid Khalidi reflected on the fact that "you do not control a
region by oppressing the people and turning them into your enemies, what Israel has been doing for 47 years.” And the international mood is changing.
Change in
the air
"Among younger people,” people on campuses, people who do not consume mainstream media, Khalidi
observes, “there is an awakening…, an enormous change in public opinion below
the level of the mainstream media.
"In Europe, there is an enormous shift: four
major European countries have had parliaments or governments actually take a
stand.” While that has not yet been translated into “effective pressure to stop
the acts of oppression,” he says, “…we are getting there.
“Everybody in Europe knows what’s going on. What the American media does not tell the Americans, the European media does tell Europeans”; so “at least from Europe and the rest of the world, you’re going to see increasing pressure on Israel. The problem is here,” Rashid Khalidi concludes,…in this country,” the United States of America.
Sources and notes
DEMOCRACY
NOW! today
“‘Palestinians Always Live in Fear’: Jerusalem Killings
Follow Months of Tensions, Settlement Growth,”
November 19, 2014,
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/19/palestinians_always_live_in_fear_jerusalem
RASHID
KHALIDI
Author and academic Rashid Ismail Khalidi’s most recent
books include Resurrecting Empire:
Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004); The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian
Struggle for Statehood (2006); Sowing
Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East (2009): Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has
Undermined Peace in the Middle East (2013). Khalidi’s research focuses on the
history of the modern Middle East, on countries of the southern and eastern
Mediterranean, the emergence of various national identities and the role played
by external powers in their development. His work also covers the effect of the
press in forming sense of community; the role of education in construction of
political identity; developing narratives in the region in the past centuries. This
Palestinian-Lebanese American and Middle East historian served in 1994 as President
of the Middle East Studies Association of North America; in later years editor
of the Journal of Palestine Studies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashi
ERAN EFRATI
Former member of the Israeli Defense Forces (combat soldier
to “anti-occupation activist”), Eran Efrati is an investigative researcher into
the Israeli military; and formerly chief researcher of “Breaking the Silence,”
an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers working to raise awareness about
the reality in the Occupied Territories. Efrati has “collected testimonies from
IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) soldiers, guided political tours to the West Bank,
lectured before Israeli and international audiences. The collected testimonies
appear in the booklet ‘Operation Cast Lead’ and their most recent release ‘Our
Harsh Logic.’” His current research focuses
on “international military and police partnerships, and the global arms trade.”
http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/eran-efrati
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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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