Justice
First: On the “Situation” in Gaza
What
do we mean when we say there can be no peace without justice? It means that
peace cannot grow in injustice. Peace cannot grow under occupation. Occupation is injustice. So let us just do away with the fig leaf of
the "peace process." What kind of peace process requires that people
come to the negotiating table, as supplicants, like dogs with their tails
between their legs? How can the USA be
an honest and just broker for peace when their every utterance begins with “We
firmly believe in the right of Israel to defend itself!”? How can peace or justice prevail in a process
where the scales are weighted in favour of one side?
It is impossible. We can’t even talk about the
“situation” in Gaza, the West Bank and the Occupied Territories, in honest
language. The parameters of the
conversations are circumscribed by narrow social conventions and fear of being
seen as anti-Semitic. We have actively closed
off many valid critiques of Israel because of the threat of that dreaded
accusation. We silence ourselves in the
face of the injustice and dehumanization we can plainly see that the
Palestinians suffer daily and have for many years. Even Jewish people around the world and
citizens of Israel whose conscience rage against these injustices are silenced.
Notwithstanding the corruption of their political representatives, and perhaps
incompetence of leadership, the plight of Palestinian people, vis-a- vis Israel
is unjust!
So
I will not preface my long held feeling that the Palestinian people have long
borne the freight of an injustice not committed by them. And in the current geo-political
climate the odds will never be in their favour. We have limited the space where
we can talk honestly and constructively about what is happening, and why. I
will not preface my feelings that the Palestinian people have a right to
struggle against this injustice and oppression and subjugation and dehumanization. They have a right to resist the
capriciousness of occupying forces. They have a right to struggle against
despair and annihilation. To deny the validity of their struggle is to rub salt
in their wounds.
Understandably,
Palestinians have used violence in their resistance struggle and in the process
they have killed innocents on both sides. But the collective punishment meted
out by the Goliath that is the Israeli military against what can be argued are
at times feeble, wrong-headed and self-defeating tactics of a long-oppressed
and out gunned people, is overkill. Particularly in a space the size of Gaza, I
imagine it is like shooting fish in a bowl.
How can bombing schools and hospitals and razing blocks and decimating the
foundations of Gaza be a reasonable response?
I
recently heard a journalist commenting on a radio program that at the heart of
the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was that two people wanted to live on the same
dot on the map! I nearly drove off the
road over at this wrong-headed simplistic drivel. The continued displacement of the Palestinians
due to occupation and continuing encroachment upon and resettlement of their
lands is not the same as two people wanting to be on the same dot of land. It is this and other similar glib
“assessments” that obfuscate the roots of this intractable conflict.
In the West we know well of the Holocaust in
Europe that killed millions of people, including 6 million Jews. It is right that we “never forget!”
However in the aftermath of WW2 came the “Nakba” for the Palestinian people
when the modern state of Israel was conceived.
We can’t ask them to forget and accept what happened to them when
European powers reshaped their lives and futures at meeting and conventions at
which they were not present. Imagine the
bitter pills Palestinians swallow whenever they see Jewish people from around
the world finding refuge in lands from which they have been exiled, with no
right of return. Imagine the “insult to injury” of not being able to speak or
be heard on that righteous grievance. As we should make those who deny the
Holocaust be forced to face the truth of that horror and its root causes, we
ought to at least grant the Palestinians the decency of a real and unvarnished
examination of their suffering, its origins and the hard choices that will have
to be made to bring about a resolution. However in the “give and take” of
negotiations, one side can’t be expected to do all the giving! Absent that, the
seeds of peace will continue to fall on and wither in the rocky grounds of
injustice. There can be no hope for
reconciliation in the face of the world’s amnesia or ignorance to how and why
the Palestinian people are as dust. 7/28/14
