Archivio Palestinese: Middle East Mind Lock The Occupation Within

giovedì 20 settembre 2007

Middle East Mind Lock The Occupation Within

James Brooks, CounterPunch, 07/09/07. Israel's "right to defend itself" assumes the "harsh necessity" of its military and civilian occupation of Palestinian land, which is an illegal act of war. Self-defense = Aggression

Israel's security depends upon the continual provocation of forces that will threaten Israel's security when provoked. Security = Promotion of insecurity

Israelis' freedom depends upon the imprisonment of another people. (2) Freedom = Denial of freedom

Israel's democracy depends upon the racist exclusion of its indigenous citizens and the empowerment of the most intolerant of its privileged citizens. (3-5) Democracy = Apartheid

Israel is a "bastion of religious freedom" in which civil law is based on an "orthodox" version of a single religion. (6) Religious freedom = Religious exclusivity

Israel's continued prosperity requires "market liberalization" that dramatically increases poverty and consolidates wealth at the top. (7,8) Prosperity = Poverty

Israel's commitment to the rule of law and sound economic policy (which promises to earn it a seat at the OECD next year) is reflected it its continuing slide down international corruption indexes, an unending string of serious political scandals, and thriving organized crime. (9-11) Legality = Lawlessness

Peace for Israel requires its negotiating partners to accept terms that fall far short of their people's minimum standards for peace. Whether or not these terms are met, the formula is: Peace = Continual war

Prospects for peace are enhanced when negotiating partners collaborate in banning, imprisoning, and isolating their constituents who oppose Israel's terms. Such actions also signal the negotiating partners' "commitment to democracy". (12-14) Peacemaking = Democracy = Unconstitutional oligarchy, collective punishment, and civil strife = Illegitimacy and probable failure of any agreements reached between Israel and its partners = Continual (land-grabbing) war.

Ideologies create the authoritative psychic space within which the unthinkable can become possible. At one time, few could have imagined that the west's Christian democracies would support a concrete wall splitting the little town of Bethlehem in two, or that the United States would pay for decades of bloody ethnic cleansing in the Holy Land. Israel's ideology (to some extent crafted to appeal to western powers) supplied the framework of justification that made it possible.

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James Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel. He can be contacted at jamiedb@wildblue.net

Notes

1. John McMurtry, Value Wars: The Global Market Versus the Life Economy (London and Sterling Va.: Pluto Press, 2002), 277 pages.

2. Prison within a Prison, Gideon Levy, MIFTAH, 8/27/2007

3. GDP per capita of Arab Israelis third of that of Jews, YNetNews, 1/18/2007

4. IRIN reports on the devastation caused to Bedouins by the Israeli forces in the Negev Ma'an News Agency, 6/27/2007

5. Mr. Lieberman Comes to Washington, Will Youmans, CounterPunch, 12/8/2006

6. Only Orthodox conversions accepted in Israel, Boim stresses, YNetNews, 5/23/2007

7. NII report: 100,000 newly poor, half of them children, Ha'aretz, 9/1/2006

8. Netanyahu: Cut taxes for rich to help poor, Dalia Tal, Globes Online, 6/26/2007

9. A supreme effort is required, Ze'ev Segal, Ha'aretz, 5/27/2007