Hanan Ashrawi: Sharon's Message to the Palestinians

Greetings,

As Israel continues its fascist (yes, fascist) policies, we can only be
thankful that we have an Ashrawi and a Said to speak the truth.  
Sometimes even the best of us internalize the discourse of the
oppressor as exemplified by Elie Wiesel himself.  In this essay,
Ashrawi does an excellent job representing the Butcher of Palestine
(Oh, I forgot, that title is restricted for Arabs and Muslims only) -Khaldoun

"Put down those stones and accept your extermination or we will
continue to kill you"

Subj: Forwarding an article by Hanan Ashrawi
Date: 3/15/01
From:    nsakhnini@home.com (Nizar Sakhnini)
Reply-to:    Al-Awda@yahoogroups.com
To:    Undisclosed-Recipient


SHARON’S MESSAGE TO THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE -By Hanan Ashrawi*To every man,
woman, and child in the Palestinian territories. YOU are my target; you will
be made to suffer; and you shall pay for the original crime of being a
Palestinian—and for being there.

Every camp, village, town, and city is hereby declared a prison. Instead of
arresting each individual and having to build even more incarceration centers
and foot the bill for your detention, I shall simply instruct the army to dig
ditches and build barricades around your population centers, thus with one
sweep render your isolation complete. Wherever you are, you’re under arrest
at your own expense and in your own home.

School children may not reach their schools and college students are to stay
home. Some of you might try to climb over the dirt barriers or walk around
the ditches. Take your chance! After hours of misery you might find a tank
(or more) lying in wait for you. You might find snipers on your hilltops or
armored vehicles at your crossroads. Defy the siege at your own peril, and if
you die don’t blame me. In my book, you’re guilty of the subversive act of
seeking education. The same applies to your teachers and school
administrators who are guilty of the equally heinous crime of attempting to
teach. Besides, I can’t close down all your educational institutions with a
military order: That would tarnish my new and improved image in the West (and
my new ally Shimon might not like it). This way, your institutions will
collapse by themselves and ignorance will prevail.

All patients seeking treatment (including cancer, kidney, and heart patients)
are hereby forbidden to reach their hospitals and clinics. You shall suffer
in silence and you shall die in silence, for you are guilty of daring to
claim the same human treatment reserved for real people—not for subhuman
genetic terrorists like you. All pregnant women will deliver in their own
homes, or in ambulances and at checkpoints if they dare defy the siege.
Should you suffer complications leading to the death of your infants (or to
your own death), you have only yourselves to blame. For you are guilty of the
ultimate crime of attempting to give birth to even more Palestinian
terrorists. All mothers should know that no vaccination will be allowed to
reach your children, for they deserve no protection against infancy and
childhood diseases. They too will grow up to be a threat to our security.

All shopkeepers, tradesmen, industrialists, construction workers, businessmen
(and women—we don’t discriminate) are hereby forbidden from engaging in any
kind of gainful activity. Since you cannot go anywhere anyway, you might as
well stay home and watch your families starve even if your warehouses are
full of products you cannot market. You too are guilty for attempting to
conduct a normal life in defiance of the occupation.

This applies even more directly to farmers and peasants and all those
involved in agricultural activity. Is it not enough that we confiscated most
of your land to build settlements for those brave settlers who had defied
real hardships in New York, London, Moscow, and other such hostile places to
come to the Land of Milk and Honey? You had no business being there, tilling
the land and feeding your children. Now, we have to confiscate even more
lands for these settlers to build by-pass roads (i.e. to bypass your reality)
and to connect them to Israel directly without having to witness the mere
fact of your existence. You call it apartheid? We call it security by the
power of the gun.

If our brave settlers used their guns against you, uprooted your trees,
destroyed your crops, and terrified your children, that’s the least they
could do given the hardships they endured in their drive to grab more land.
We, of course, are more than happy to provide them with the full protection
and support of our army while they wreak havoc amongst you, and will distort
our laws to find them innocent no matter whom they kill, maim, or injure from
amongst you. When will you learn that you do not count? They do, and we will
make sure that in this equation you finally learn that you are the zero.

Let me be painfully frank with you. I blame you for forcing us to besiege
you, kill you, shell your homes, assassinate your activists and leaders, and
perform other such distasteful tasks (even though, I must admit I have had a
long and rich experience in invading Arab lands, murdering civilians and
prisoners of war, and massacring Palestinians wholesale while destroying
whole villages). You are truly exasperating. We made you a generous offer
whereby we would annex only parts of your land (including our settlement
clusters), expand settlements according to need (and will), annex Jerusalem
and keep it under our sovereignty (while trying our best to render it
Palestinian-free), and totally deny the Palestinian refugees their right to
return. Yet, ungrateful wretches that you are, you persisted in your stubborn
refusal. You claim international law and legitimacy? What nonsense! Only our
law prevails, and we deem you illegal.

Despite all our attempts at persuasion (our gun ships, tanks, sniper fire,
and military checkpoints are very subtle means of persuasion), you continued
to deny us our rights to your lands and rights. We have to be able to help
ourselves to that which is yours—what else is occupation for? What other use
of power if not to be unleashed on the weak?

I therefore find you guilty and deserving of the utmost punishment (we may
not have the death penalty in our laws, but we can carry out as many
extra-judicial murders and assassinations as we please). You are guilty—for
holding on to your humanity, for daring to exercise a collective (and
individual) will, for refusing to succumb, for daring to claim equal rights
before the law, for maintaining your dignity and a stubborn yearning for
freedom.

We, on the other hand, should be free to inflict any type of pain and
brutality on you, and it should be your lot to lie down and die quietly. You
must not be allowed to disturb our peace or security. We have the right to
drive you to desperation, and should you protest or react, not only will you
be conveniently branded as terrorists, we will also pound you into submission
while calling on you to "stop the violence" and "end terrorism."

Not only that, but we will stand up before CNN (and all the friendly Western
press) to expose you for not accepting our hand stretched out to you in
peace. Don’t worry. They’ll swallow it hook, line, and sinker. We’ve been
feeding them our spin for years to the point where they’ve lost not only
their critical judgment and journalistic integrity, but also their sense of
sight and hearing when it comes to your image and narrative. They’re
guaranteed to pay attention only when you harm an Israeli or provide them
with a negative proof of our stereotype. So don’t count on any audience or
sympathy in the world—for you are guilty and will be blamed.

And if you suffer from any misguided notion that the UN or any other global
body will come to your rescue, rest assured it ain’t gonna happen!

Kofi Anan has been dispatched forthwith to prevent the destruction of statues
(cultural heritage) in Afghanistan; he can’t be expected to deal with human
reality at the same time. Besides, we might promise him a role in the peace
process provided he behaves himself and looks the other way. We might have a
harder time with your European friends, but they too can’t afford to irk us.
As for the new US administration, don’t hold your breath. It, too, has
decided to give me time to demonstrate my peace making skills. And I’m busy
demonstrating those to the hilt, as you can see and feel. I will make peace
with you if it takes everything that you have, including your land, lives,
rights, and freedom.

My colleagues (including Chief of Staff General Mofaz and Minister of Defense
General Ben Eliezer) concur with me. It is wonderful to be able to do my
worst and still have Labor instruments (like Fuad) and apologists (like
Peres) on my team. They certainly clean up my image! Besides, I’m not doing
any much worse than Barak did. At least I’m not shelling your homes for now
(the Americans didn’t like our use of their apaches for that purpose, and it
didn’t look good before the cameras anyway).

So, if you know what’s good for you, please behave like good little natives
and kiss the hand that beats you. Say YES to peace, my way, and I guarantee
you an efficient apartheid system. In the meantime, stop the violence and
stop being the terrorists that you are. As for me, I remain forever a
pacifist and a humanist (my way). If only you would see it my way.

p.s. Note from Shimon (Peres). I really am pained at what you have to endure,
but I’m truly helpless—having cast my lot with the Sharon’s, Lieberman’s
and Ze’evi’s of this world. However, I will continue to work for my vision
of new realities in the Middle East. This is only a sample of what it has in
store for you. I have to rush and meet with my European colleagues and
members of the press to let them know that Sharon isn’t all that bad. He is a
new man for a new age. Given my (and his) history and age I have a tough job
selling that spin! What do you think?


*Secretary General of the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global
Dialogue & Democracy (MIFTAH), and Member of the Palestinian Legislative
Council.

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Subj: [GNAA] British Arabs and Jews unite to commemorate Deir Yassin
Date: 3/16/01 12:49:29 AM !!!First Boot!!!
From:    shehrezadm@yahoo.com (Sherri Muzher)
Reply-to:    GNAA@yahoogroups.com
To:    freedom@pal.net, freepalestine@egroups.com, GNAA@yahoogroups.com
CC:    pmwatch@egroups.com


Arabs and Jews unite to commemorate massacre

By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent

15 March 2001

As the Palestinian-Israeli war continues to grow ever
bloodier, a group of British Jews and Arabs in London
is to commemorate the Israeli massacre of Arab men,
women and children at Deir Yassin in 1948, the
slaughter that contributed more than any others to the
mass depopulation of Palestinians from their land at
the time of the founding of the Israeli state.

Two senior Progressive Rabbis – Rabbi John Rayner and
Rabbi Jeffrey Newman – will join Palestinian and Arab
diplomats on 1 April "toremember Deir Yassin and the
flight of the Palestinian people from their homes".

Already, "Deir Yassin Remembered", the Jewish-Arab
organisation behind the night of poetry and music at
the Peacock Theatre in London, which includes the
Palestinian scholar Edward Said among its board of
advisers, is being condemned by supporters of Israel
who claim it will give "a propaganda coup to the
Palestinian authorities".

But Rabbis Rayner and Jeffrey believe that
acknowledgement of the cold-blooded killing of Arab
men, women and children will "contribute towards a
future in which Jews and Palestinians live together".
One supporter of the commemoration has compared a
British-based Likud party official, Colin Leci, with
deniers of the Jewish Holocaust for saying the Deir
Yassin massacre never happened.

The facts of the slaughter were never denied at the
time. The Arab village of Deir Yassin was attacked by
Jewish commandos of the Stern Gang and Irgun, then led
by Menachem Begin, on 9 April 1948; after its capture,
they murdered more than 100 – perhaps as many as 254 –
men, women and children. Some women were butchered
with knives, others were shot with their children.

Official Zionist leaders of the Haganah denounced the
killings. Several victims lived an hour longer than
their families as they were taken by truck through the
streets of Jeru-salem, then returned to the quarry
outside Deir Yassin where they were killed and their
bodies burnt by Jewish gang members.

Today, the few central buildings left in Deir Yassin
are a mental hospital. A fuel storage depot has been
built on the spot where the executions and
body-burnings were committed. The name Deir Yassin
appears on no Israeli map. It is now called Givat
Shaul, and stands in sight of the Israeli memorial to
the Jewish Holocaust at Yad Vashem. The organisers of
the 1 April commemoration take the Holocaust museum's
timeless message "never to forget man's inhumanity to
man" as a slogan for their own act of remembrance,
which will include dramatised readings of medieval
Arab and Jewish philosophers, poems by Michael Rosen
and a prayer for peace read by the two rabbis.

In Menachem Begin's mem-oirs, he wrote that "Arabs
throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales
of 'Irgun butchery' were seized with limitless panic
and started to flee for their lives... The political
and economic significance of this development can
hardly be overestimated".

Marc Ellis, a Jew who is an American-Jewish studies
professor at Baylor University in Texas, says Jews and
Arabs should celebrate Jewish survival from the
Holocaust while mourning "the Palestinian
catastrophe". For Jews to remember Deir Yassin, he
says, "is a tribute to our martyrs and the martyrs of
all peoples: that their lives will not be lost to
history". For Rabbi Sidney Brichto, the remembrance
"will give a propaganda coup to the Palestinian
authorities by diverting attention from the fact that
they began an unprovoked intifada after rejecting
peace proposals which had led Yasser Arafat to praise
Ehud Barak as 'a courageous man'." The Palestinian
leadership, Rabbi Brichto adds, "still think they can
obtain through violence and media coverage what they
could not at the negotiating table".

The flight of at least 750,000 Arabs, partly induced
by the Deir Yassin massacre, caused the Palestinians
to lose most of what was then mandate Palestine. Mr
Arafat has been negotiating for some of the remaining
22 per cent.