It's Palestine Stupid!

[Sorry for the long post. A friend just sent this excellent letter to me. It's not available online, as far as I know. Thought I'd share it with you! Peace.]

The London bombings have resulted in a plethora of articles about us and them, the terrorists, that is. Journalists and commentators have had a field day in addressing the war on terror. Some have even been so brave as to question why it is that Islam is turning against us, the benign West. Few, if any, from what I have read, have considered that Palestine might just have a role to play.

Why do young British people, of Arab and Muslim extraction, with everything to live for, become suicide bombers? Let me tell you. It is not because they are upset over poverty in Africa, nor that they have concerns over globalisation. And neither are they radicalised by greenhouse gases, global warming, or even the reliance by the West upon oil, and the determination of the West to have access to oil, oil situated below Arab countries. From my reading of history, nor does it appear to me that militant Islamists are intent on converting Christians, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists or whoever, to Islam. Islam has in fact been a religion of tolerance throughout its thirteen centuries, unlike, at particular times, what might be said of others.

Some of these issues might get the odd Muslim excited, even angry. They do not cause an 18 year old Leeds boy to blow himself up and hope in doing so that he will take as many of his fellow citizens with him as he can.

No, it is none of these things. It is something far more personal than that. It is racism practiced against his fellow Arabs and Muslims, if not himself. It is injustice on a mammoth scale. It is humiliation daily thrust upon his brothers – a humiliation of ninety years standing which continues today as strongly as it commenced during the British Mandate. It is Palestine.

That is not to say that it is only Palestine. There is Chechnya. There is Kashmir. There is the arrogance of the West in Iraq, and Iran, and Syria. But Palestine is where it started. And Palestine is where it continues, and is at its heart.

This article is not a history lesson. I will leave people who do not know it to turn to any serious and unbiased history of Palestine in the last 125 years. Those readers who do not know it should ensure that before they live much longer that they do know it. It affects their lives in so many ways. They must learn how Zionism set about the ethnic cleansing of the Holy Land and succeeded – succeeded with the assistance of the West as embodied firstly in the British Empire (Balfour Declaration, Mandate), and then the United States (banker, military supplier, co-belligerent).

Peter Mansfield in his book The Arabs (Pelican, 1978), when speaking of the Treaty of Versailles and its granting of a Mandate to Britain to implement the Balfour Declaration and create a home for Jewish people in Palestine notes:

It is scarcely necessary to go any further than this to find justification for the Arab’s sense of betrayal by the West and their special bitterness over Palestine. If the West has a feeling today that the Arabs are taking their revenge it should be easy to understand the reasons.

And that in 1978, pre the 1988 Intifada Meeting of the Palestinian National Council whereby the Palestinians agreed to accept the Israeli State within the ’67 borders; pre Oslo, where the Palestinians re-committed to that idea; and pre another 27 years of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in the face of UN Resolution 242.

This is an occupation designed to result in the expulsion of all Arabs from West of the Jordan River. In the words of the Koenig Memorandum of 1976 (Israeli Ministry of the Interior): “We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation; and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.”

There can be no doubt that that has in fact been the nature of the occupation. A new settlement is started. Jewish settlers from the Bronx, or Melbourne, come on to the Palestinians’ land and uproot the olive trees that the local men tended with their fathers and grandfathers as children. Alternatively the Jewish settlers simply confiscate the trees to themselves. They are needed for security. Arabs might hide behind them as snipers.

The Israeli government justifies such action on the basis that the land is required for security purposes. The same government never discusses what is to happen to the land when it is no longer needed for security. But there can be little doubt as to what will happen to the land. It will become a “fact on the ground”, the phrase used by George W Bush to explain why Israel could not be expected to withdraw to the internationally recognised pre ’67 borders.

The settlers do not behave thus in a meek way. They act with the arrogance of the racially superior. When asked, they scream “This is our land”, and totally disregard the fact that the Palestinians’ ancestors have lived in the Holy Land from time immemorial. The basis of the claim is a ridiculous Biblical promise to Abraham, who was the father of all Arabs, Christians and Muslims, as well as Jews.

If the Palestinians resist the actions of the settlers, they are labelled terrorists. Not only do the settlers and Israeli government so label them, but the West, and the West’s media take up the cry. The Palestinians’ brother Arabs, and brother Muslims see this. And they feel the same pain, the same humiliation. They have felt the same pain, and the same humiliation for sixty years. That pain and humiliation does not dissipate, because the injustice continues. The injustice has never been addressed. The parents and grandparents of many Arabs were expelled from their homes, and the homes of their ancestors, in Israel in 1948 and never compensated. They lived their miserable lives in refugee camps in Lebanon and Gaza, Jordan and the West Bank. They died without compensation. Their children remember them, and dream of revenge.

May I quote Peter Mansfield again. In his book The Arabs he records a conversation in the 1970s with an intelligent and sensitive Palestinian who worked for the Arab League and was therefore familiar with all the Arab states. The usual US-Israeli thesis that Arab governments only use the Palestinians as a convenient diversion from their own domestic problems was put to him. Mansfield records:

His reply was categorical. Palestine was in the heart and mind of every Arab wherever he was living. It was the first thing he thought about in the morning and the last thing at night.

As I have indicated, it is not only Palestine. But Iraq is a convenient extension. The West needs Iraq’s oil. It cannot afford there to be non-access. And so a war is necessary. It is made the easier because the inhabitants of Iraq are Arab and hence inferior. And who implements the war? The answer is the usual suspects – Britain and the U.S. They are aided by their Anglo-Saxon cousin, Australia. These are the rulers, and the Iraqis, like the 1917 and 1947 Palestinians, are the ruled.

As if it is not bad enough that these rulers invade and occupy, but they must praise themselves as bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. Whilst patting himself on the back, the U.S. President visits Iraq, but he does not speak to the Arab street. He avoids Iraqis. It would be beneath him to speak to them. If readers believe that these views might exaggerate the position, consider that young Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, Saudis, Egyptians and Iraqis may not think so. Their Muslim brothers in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Indonesia might just agree with them. They might just have a feeling that history might be repeating itself. They are aware of one occupation that has been continuing now for nearly forty years – that in the West Bank and Gaza. They may not want another. And when they hear Bush and Blair and Howard assert that the insurgents are foreign terrorists, they really hear them saying: “These people are of such an inferior culture and state of development that they simply couldn’t actually want to just have their own country back”. In other words, they recognise inherent racism when they see it.

Let me return to the theme of this paper. The phrase “war on terror” is virtually meaningless, like a war on fear, or a war on stupidity. The war on terror commenced on 11 September 2001. It has been rather convenient. Putin has used it in Chechnya. And of course Sharon has used it in Gaza. But we are not allowed to ask what might be the causes of terrorism. Any policeman confronted by any crime looks for a motive. George W Bush does not like to ask what may be the motive. He puts no motives forward. He does not want people to question whether what Israel is doing in the Occupied Territories might just be a root cause of terrorism. If that were allowed the World might demand that the occupation ends.

Oh yes, look to Palestine. Terrorism will thrive wherever there is injustice and illegitimate occupation. And it will thrive all the more the longer that injustice and occupation continue.

Paul A. Heywood-Smith QC
Australian Friends of Palestine, South Australia