Israelis and their Zionist Supporters Continue to
Persecute the Palestinian People
By James J
Zogby
Al-Jazeerah, CCUN,
May 17 2018
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A Palestinian woman near the rubble of her house |
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Palestinians: The Invisible Victims
This
year will mark the seventieth anniversary of the United Nations
partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish regions, and the anniversary
of the first Middle East War of 1948. In the West, these are
commemorated as the events which paved the way for the founding of the
State of Israel, “the return of Jewish rule to the land of Zion.” For
the people of the East however, they have a very different meaning.
There, 1948 is known as the “Year of the Disaster”, the year of the
destruction of Palestine, and the dispossession and dismemberment of its
people.
As a result of the “1948 Disaster,” hundreds of thousands
of the indigenous people of Palestine were forced into exile becoming
stateless refugees waiting to return to their homes, while others were
reduced to aliens in their own country living under Israeli military
rule.
The Israeli conquest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
in 1967 further compounded this national tragedy of the Palestinian
people—creating almost a half-million new refugees and at the same time,
placing more than an additional million Palestinians under Israeli
military rule.
While these events have produced a nightmare for
the Palestinian people they have, for the most part been ignored in the
West. Repeated Palestinian appeals for recognition and justice have not
been heard, especially in the United States, above the din created by
those who noisily celebrate the “joys of the Jewish homeland” and the
military victories that have made that “homeland” possible. That this
Jewish “homeland” (and the 1967 expansion of it) was based on the
displacement of the Palestinian people and the denial of their human and
legal right to self-determination is ignored, as is the intense
suffering that this displacement and denial of human rights has caused.
Palestinians have been victims—but in the U.S., they have been invisible
victims.
Americans
know Israelis as people, as Jewish people who have suffered. But
Americans do not know Palestinians as people. On the contrary,
Palestinians (and Arabs, in general)
have been subjected to years of defamation, campaigns of disinformation
and negative stereotyping. Consequently, Palestinians
are not seen in the U.S. as human beings with equal rights. When
Palestinians are considered at all, they are referred to as the
“Palestinian problem” confronting Israel, the “problem” that must
somehow be resolved so that Israelis can have peace.
With this in
mind, over four decades ago I wrote a little book "Palestinians:
The Invisible Victims." It was not a catalog of Israeli acts of
repression against Palestinians. Rather, it was an examination of the
ideology and practice of the movement of Political Zionism and its
patron, British imperialism, that together were responsible for the
denial of Palestinian rights and the subsequent campaigns of
disinformation and the repression against the Palestinian people.
Political Zionism,
the dream of some Jews for “national liberation,” denied the humanity of
the Palestinian people. It was Political Zionism that created the
conditions that resulted in the victimization of Palestinians. To the
extent to which Westerners view the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through
the lens of this ideology, they cannot see the nightmare it has created
for the Palestinians—they cannot see the Palestinians themselves.
This story of how Political Zionism dealt with the Palestinian
people is not ancient history. Rather, it sets the stage for what is
happening in Palestine today and it helps us better understand both
Israel’s systematic efforts to dispossess the Palestinian people of
their land and rights and the West’s continued failure to address these
Israeli violations. Palestinians remain invisible—their personal stories
have been ignored. Or they have been objectified and are seen merely as
threat to be neutralized or a problem to be solved in order to ensure
Israel’s security.
In the intervening years, since I first wrote
"Palestinians: The Invisible Victims" much has changed, but much has
remained the same. The Oslo Peace Process, which was once a source of
hope, is now dead. Israeli politics have decidedly moved to the right
with members of the current government saying and doing things that echo
the harshest and most racist statements and policies of the early
proponents of Political Zionism.
In recent decades, Palestinian
citizens of Israel have faced down enormous challenges and have emerged
as a political force fighting for equality and justice for themselves
and their compatriots—those under occupation and those who are refugees.
Those Palestinians who live under harsh occupation, despite a
dysfunctional and divided leadership, continue to resist and demand
freedom. And despite their dispersal, dispossession, and efforts to
erase their identity, Palestinians have built institutions and
maintained their attachment to their land.
Among governments in
the West however, little has changed. Palestinians are now increasingly
recognized as a political issue with Western politicians offering
support for a vague “two-state solution.” But the formulas they offer
are, more often than not, predicated on the need to protect Israel’s
Jewish population from being swallowed up by what is referred to as the
“Palestinian demographic time-bomb” that will threaten Israel’s “Jewish
character.” What the West does not address are Palestinian human rights
and the suffering and the humiliation they are forced to endure on a
daily basis as a result of an oppressive occupation. In that sense, the
Palestinian people remain invisible and their rights are still
ignored.
One of the more hopeful developments to occur in
recent years is the emergence in Israel and in the West of voices who
are challenging the exclusivist idea of Political Zionism. They are
partnering with Palestinians to oppose the occupation and to defend
human rights.
In recent years, almost weekly, articles appear in
publications in Israel or in progressive publications in the US making
the same arguments about Israel's ideology or behavior that I made (and
for which I was denounced) forty years ago when my book was first
published. There is growing awareness that was once ignored or
considered taboo, must now be addressed.
And so, I am proud
that working together with the folks at Mondoweiss, this week, we are
reissuing "Palestinians: The Invisible Victims" in the hopes that it
will: educate a new generation of readers about the history that has
created the situation that continues to plague both Israelis and
Palestinians; provide context in which to understand the enormity of the
injustice that has defined the Palestinian reality; promote recognition
of the human rights of this beleaguered people; and spur a much-needed
debate about the dangers inherent in the exclusivist vision of Political
Zionism. For there to be a just and lasting peace for Israelis and
Palestinians, an understanding of this history is a necessity.
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