Germany's Penance: UNCONDITIONAL SUPPORT OF ISRAEL!

Here is a forceful, well argued and well written article by Germany based Anis Hamadeh. It is reproduced here (with minimal changes) with the permission of the author, as it first appeared on his blog. The original can be seen in German and English at http://www.anis-online.de/1/essays/24.htm.

Gulamhusein A Abba





Finkelstein Banned in Berlin: A Democracy that isn't a Democracy

Anis Hamadeh,

February 18, 2010, http://www.anis-online.de/1/essays/24.htm





“By calling the genocide of the Jews the "original crime",

the unique and incomparable act, every other crime is

devalued as being not so important’.



“Germany has decided to do penance for the Nazi crimes

by means of supporting the State of Israel”



“Hitler has won in the end, for the violence that made this

criminal a criminal in the first place, this violence has not

stopped. On the contrary: the compulsive "Never again!"

serves as a justification of violence and killing. This works

only because the genocide of the Jews was taken out of

its historical context and floats around freely”.



*****************************



Dr. Norman Finkelstein has written several books in the field of Israel/Palestine/Holocaust and is one of the most sagacious analysts of our time. Like Professor Ilan Pappe, he formulates sharp criticism in respect to past and present of the State of Israel. Both use very rational arguments and are reliable researchers.







Especially after the mass murders in Jenin and Gaza, these two men and many other Jews (also in Germany) speak out, because they do not want to be counted among supporters of violence by a state that arrogates to itself the right to speak on behalf of, and act in the name of all the Jews worldwide.





As is known now, both the Heinrich Boell Foundation and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation have canceled Finkelstein talks that were already scheduled in Berlin. While the foundation close to the Green party did not even bother to explain its behavior, the board of the foundation close to the Left party explained its drawback in a media info with the empty statement that such a talk would be "explosive" ("brisant"). One wonders what is going on there. Does Finkelstein call for violence? Are his views outside legal norms? Does he disesteem human rights? Nothing of all this. On the contrary.





The reason for banning him is the veto of groups that seek to avert criticism of Israel, connecting this issue with the reproach of anti-Semitism. This is an old chestnut and not specifically interesting. What is interesting, though, is that the German public buys this nonsense and denies a man, who lost his family in German concentration camps, to talk on German soil. What is interesting is that the German public tolerates his being labeled an anti-Semite for his reflections on violence in Israel. The same thing happened only some months ago to the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in Munich, when the city's Lord Mayor canceled a scheduled talk. Pappe



then wrote in an open letter that his father "was silenced in a similar way as a German Jew in the early 1930s".





The German Self-Conception





So let us revisit the German self-conception and then take a short look at the historical background to understand this apparently great fear that is going around in Germany. Recently, when the Israeli politician Shimon Peres talked on the occasion of the Holocaust Memorial Day in the German Bundestag, he received a standing ovations. The few, who did not stand up because of their rejection of Peres' and Israel's violent policies, were publically attacked.







There is, for example, the quote of a member of the Bundestag: "The Nazi crimes, the Shoa, and the war of annihilation are the original crime of humanity. (...) The Jewish victims of National Socialism are memorized on January 27 in the Bundestag memorial. On this occasion, only they and the reminder of 'Never again!' can be the topic. Everything else in this context is a relativization of the Nazi crimes." It is a quote typical for Germany and reveals the German angst as well as the great danger that goes with it.







The genocide of the Jews in this quote is taken out of any historical context and declared a unique event. Firstly, this reveals a "We (We!) are the greatest" narcissism. Secondly, it reveals a pro-Jewish racism, as if one racism could make up for another one. It is not victims in general who are important, Only the Jewish victims are! The Nazi killing of Sinti and Roma (The Nazis also killed Sinti and Roma -- considered "gypsies" -- communists, homosexuals and others) thus is kind of OK. And how much then will the killing of Palestinains be OK if conducted by Jews.







Put in a more general way: by calling the genocide of the Jews the "original crime", the unique and incomparable act, every other crime is devalued as being not so important. Finkelstein and Pappe do not fit in here. They disturb the celebration by entering the historical framework, which is all the more embarrassing as they are Jews with family ties to Nazi victims. Banning them shows that in the end even Jewish Nazi victims are not what the whole circus is about, despite all the pathetic oaths and solemn declarations. This is what Germany fears, that people realize that the public "Remembering the Holocaust" is a fake and that Finkelstein and Pappe are eloquent and powerful enough to unmask this farce.







Germany has decided to do penance for the Nazi crimes by means of supporting the State of Israel. When it stands in solidarity with the Zionist state, then Germany would fulfill its historical responsibility. This dogma is not questioned, although it is beyond any logic to support Zionism, of all things, in order to do penance. Perhaps not beyond logic because there had been fruitful cooperation between Nazis and Zionists. (It was in the interest of both ideologies to bring Jews out of Germany.) What is much worse is that violence is not recognized as the problem.







Thus Hitler has won in the end, for the violence that made this criminal a criminal in the first place, this violence has not stopped. On the contrary: the compulsive "Never again!" serves as a justification of violence and killing. This works only because the genocide of the Jews was taken out of its historical context and floats around freely.





The Israeli Self-Conception





Both Finkelstein and Pappe write about the missing historical context and this is what people are afraid of, because both use their arguments brilliantly, even compellingly, and they are concerned as Jews whose families have Nazi experiences. Like Goldstone, Chomsky, and some others, the two academics are subject to hate and rejection of the ruling Zionism and its strenuous friends. Finkelstein lives in the USA, where Zionism is even stronger than in Israel, and he does not lead an easy life. Pappe needed to go to exile in England, because life in Israel became unbearable for him. He wrote the book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" in which he clearly shows how the Israeli state was built on heavy violence. Considering that both authors face bans in Germany it is no wonder that there is not much heard of the events around 1948 other than flat stereotypes.







According to the Israeli self-conception the Zionist state emerged out of a "War of Independence". In this view, the Jewish victims of National Socialism created a state to protect themselves and were immediately attacked by their evil Arab neighbors. This version of the story is sacrosanct and is defended with great hysteria, be it in Israel or in Germany, because it does not stand up to a neutral analysis. The fact is that when Israel was founded in May 1948, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine had already been going on for half a year.







This was called "Plan Dalet/Plan D" and everybody can read about it. Hundreds of indigenous Palestinians were killed and hundreds of thousands were expelled from their villages by Zionist militias. According to the Israeli self-conception, many Palestinians went away voluntarily, as if anybody would voluntarily leave their home and property just like that. International pressure, orchestrated by US arm twisting, led to the UN partition plan which deprived the native population of a little more than half of Palestine which was to be given to the Zionists.







Yet the Zionists were not content with that. They received weapons and took more of the land by force. When they then built a state on this land, they did not do it in agreement with anybody, but unilaterally and surprisingly. The dogma of the "right of existence" was invented so that people would not talk about these events anymore. Here is the seed of the problems we are confronted with tilll today. It is possible to begin earlier, with the Sykes Picot Treaty or the first settlers from abroad who, for the most part, did not integrate, but appeared aggressively. One can talk about the British and about Zionist and Arab terrorism, about Jabotinsky and other pioneers.







But it is the founding of the state and Plan D which show most clearly why history is escalating until today. The massacre of Deir Yassin happened in the framework of this plan. Iit was covered in the world press. Nobody was ever held responsible for this blood-spree and thus a precedent was created which is working until today. Nobody has been taken to account for the mass murder in Gaza either, or for nay of the other massacres that Israel habitually commits. The Plan D land theft is another precedent. Up to this day the Israeli territory gets wider while the Palestinian territory shrinks. All this is inherent in the biased concept of "right of existence", as are the race laws from 1950 which guarantee all Jews in the world a "right of return" to Israel while the expelled native population has to keep out, an unprecedented act in the long history of the country. Their land and property was confiscated by the new masters who clung to a blood-and-soil ideology.







A lot of this reminds one of the Nazis, which by no means is a wonder when you consider the victim/perpetrator dynamics. It is known that victims, because of their traumas, are prone to become perpetrators and it is so obvious that it takes a whole lot of energy to suppress the respective discourse. It is suppressed in militarized Israel just as it is in Germany. It is taboo. For this reason, a government of right-wing extremists in Israel is not a problem. Right-wing extremism is not right-wing extremism, when it comes to Israel!.





The Tip of the Iceberg





The cancelation of Finkelstein's talks are but the tip of a huge iceberg. Even as these lines are written, Palestinian houses in Barta'a Ash-Sharqiya are being demolished, and, in Sheikh Jarrah/Jerusalem new land thefts are scheduled. A big historic Arab graveyard is to be confiscated to build a "Museum of Tolerance" on it while in Bil'in the nonviolent resistance against the wall enters its sixth year. The protesters are injured by the army on a regular basis, and also killed.







The world press says almost nothing about the heroes of nonviolent resistance, because it does not fit the image. Russian Jews in Be’er Sheva in the Negev have just killed a Bedouin boy and heavily injured another, while a group of fundamentalist settlers have injured a Palestinian child in Hebron. About 11.000 Palestinians are kept in Israeli prisons. The "checkpoints" to Nablus have been closed down recently so that nobody can enter. The Gaza fishermen are being shot at by the Israeli navy and Gaza is still under siege. The head of the Dubai police just confirmed that according to police investigations there is a very high probability that the Mossad is behind the murder of a Hamas politician in the Emirates.







Every day you can read on www.theheadlines.org what happens in the country and that since 1948 there has been no change of the routine. In Germany, the Palästina Portal is one of the sources one can turn to. Most of what happens remains unknown to us.Our media skips most of it, for fear of inciting an increasing "anti-Semitism". It is for the same reason that we are not to listen to Finkelstein and Pappe, for they verify the terrible events and the historical development sketched above. Instead, we are fed with "information" on "terrorism".







It is well-known to some of the leading politicians and opinion-leaders that the Israeli policy can only lead to the self-destruction of the State of Israel. Call it a culture of death. Maybe self-hatred is another reason for this behavior, something human rights advocates like Finkelstein and Pappe are labeled with by exactly those who display it themselves. But even according to our mainstream dogmas we have a big problem here, for this development is bad for the Jews, too, the Zionists among them and the anti-Zionists.







Norman Finkelstein (www.normanfinkelstein.com) will talk about Gaza in Munich on Feb. 24, 7 p.m. Amerikahaus, Karolinenplatz 3, and on Feb. 25, 7 p.m., Kulturhaus Milbertshofen, Curt-Mezger-Platz 1

NAKBLINKA

The Cleansing of CoExistence

TransGalactic Publications, 2010. 108 pages. $9.95
Available at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

BOOK REVIEW

by Gulamhusein Abba

In the shadows of Palestine
Out in the wilderness
Of an emaciated Present
Are the dampened ashes
Of a people
Incarcerated by hope
And the choiceless visions
Of tomorrow!

— Dom Martin
Excerpt from “The Damnation to Exist”

Dozens of books have been written by competent writers recording the injustices and cruelties heaped on the Gazans, and their pain, suffering and loss. But it takes an imaginative artist or a gifted poet or a visionary to effectively capture and eloquently and poignantly convey the essence of the terrible saga of Gaza.

Dom Martin is a unique combination of all three – a renowned artist whose paintings adorn the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa, a poet who has penned gut-wrenching poetry, and a visionary who has created prophetic images. His latest volume of poetry, NAKBLINKA: The Cleansing of Co-Existence, commemorates the first anniversary of the brutal attack on Gaza by Israel. It is a step beyond other books on the subject.

Filled with thought provoking and emotional poems, arresting photos and unique drawings and paintings, the 108 pages of NAKBLINKA: The Cleansing of CoExistence, will grip the reader from the onset and move one to tears. But more importantly, the volume speaks to an understanding of what the Gazans are up against, with admiration for their tenacity, resilience, courage and unflinching resistance in the face of the brutal, illegal, and longest lasting current occupation by Israel of their land.

Those who appreciated Dom Martin’s CoEexistence: Humanity’s Wailing Wall (2006) and Genocide: The New Order of Imperialism (2008) will appreciate his latest work even more. The title itself is a play on words, recalling both Nakba (the “day of catastrophe” when Palestinians were expelled from their homeland in 1948) and Treblinka, where the Jews suffered unimaginable inhumanity at the hands of the Germans during the Nazi regime. As Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate (1976) has observed in her Foreword to this book: “Dom Martin cries out for an end to the infliction of cruelty and death upon the oppressed peoples of the world”.

Among the poems in the book are ones with such challenging titles as: The Displacement Of Humanity; The Second Crucifixion; Icons Of Innocence; Omer Abed Al-Aziz Mosque; and The Discoloration of CoExistence.


For a preview of the book and to read the Foreword go to: http://www.propheticimagery.com/Nakblinka%20Book/Index.htm

NAKBLINKA: The Cleansing of CoExistence (2009)
Dom Martin
Pencil on Paper (16cm x 18 cm)

PALESTINE'S WAILING MT. RUSHMORE (2009)
Dom Martin
Pencil on Paper (18cm x 12 cm)

PALESTINE IS DYING ON YOUR WATCH

Robert Fisk,
January 30, 2010

Photo: NASSER ISHTAYEH / AP
Palestinian women huddle amid their belongings after Israeli

forces demolished their homes in the West Bank village of

Khirbet Tana, near

January 30, 2010
In the West Bank's stony hills, Palestine is slowly dying
In the richest of the Occupied lands, Israeli bureaucracy is driving Palestinians out of their homes.

Robert Fisk reports from Jiftlik

Area C doesn't sound very ominous. A land of stone-sprinkled grey hills and soft green valleys, it's part of the wreckage of the equally wrecked Oslo Agreement, accounting for 60 per cent of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that was eventually supposed to be handed over to its Palestinian inhabitants.

But look at the statistics and leaf through the pile of demolition orders lying on the table in front of Abed Kasab, head of the village council in Jiftlik, and it all looks like ethnic cleansing via bureaucracy. Perverse might be the word for the paperwork involved. Obscene appear to be the results.

Palestinian houses that cannot be permitted to stand, roofs that must be taken down, wells closed, sewage systems demolished; in one village, I even saw a primitive electricity system in which Palestinians must sink their electrical poles cemented into concrete blocks standing on the surface of the dirt road. To place the poles in the earth would ensure their destruction - no Palestinian can dig a hole more than 40cm below the ground.

But let's return to the bureaucracy. "Ro'i" - if that is indeed the Israeli official's name, for it is difficult to decipher - signed a batch of demolition papers for Jiftlik last December, all duly delivered, in Arabic and Hebrew, to Mr Kasab. There are 21 of them, running - non-sequentially - from numbers 143912 through 145059, all from "The High Planning Council Monitoring [sic] Sub-Committee of the Civil Administration for the Area of Judea and Samaria". Judea and Samaria - for ordinary folk - is the occupied West Bank. The first communication is dated 8 December, 2009, the last 17 December.

And as Mr Kasab puts it, that's the least of his problems. Palestinian requests to build houses are either delayed for years or refused; houses built without permission are ruthlessly torn down; corrugated iron roofs have to be camouflaged with plastic sheets in the hope the "Civil Administration" won't deem them an extra floor - in which case "Ro'i's" lads will be round to rip the lot off the top of the house.

In Area C, there are up to 150,000 Palestinians and 300,000 Jewish colonists living - illegally under international law - in 120 official settlements and 100 "unapproved" settlements or, in the language we must use these days, "illegal outposts"; illegal under Israeli as well as international law, that is - as opposed to the 120 internationally illegal colonies which are legal under Israeli law. Jewish settlers, needless to say, don't have problems with planning permission.

The winter sun blazes through the door of Mr Kasab's office and cigarette smoke drifts through the room as the angry men of Jiftlik shout their grievances. "I don't mind if you print my name, I am so angry, I will take the consequences, " he says. "Breathing is the only thing we don't need a permit for - yet!" The rhetoric is tired, but the fury is real. "Buildings, new roads, reservoirs, we have been waiting three years to get permits. We cannot get a permit for a new health clinic. We are short of water for both human and agricultural use. Getting permission to rehabilitate the water system costs 70,000 Israeli shekels [about £14,000] - it costs more than the rehabilitation system itself."

A drive along the wild roads of Area C - from the outskirts of Jerusalem to the semi-humid basin of the Jordan valley - runs through dark hills and bare, stony valleys lined with deep, ancient caves, until, further east, lie the fields of the Palestinians and the Jewish settlers' palm groves - electrified fences round the groves - and the mud or stone huts of Palestinian sheep farmers. This paradise is a double illusion. One group of inhabitants, the Israelis, may remember their history and live in paradise. The smaller group, the Palestinian Arabs, are able to look across these wonderful lands and remember their history - but they are already out of paradise and into limbo.

Even the western NGOs working in Area C find their work for Palestinians blocked by the Israelis. This is not just a "hitch" in the "peace process" - whatever that is - but an international scandal. Oxfam, for example, asked the Israelis for a permit to build a 300m2 capacity below-ground reservoir along with 700m of underground 4in pipes for the thousands of Palestinians living around Jiftlik. It was refused. They then gave notice that they intended to construct an above-ground installation of two glass-fibre tanks, an above-ground pipe and booster pump. They were told they would need a permit even though the pipes were above ground - and they were refused a permit. As a last resort, Oxfam is now distributing rooftop water tanks.

I came across an even more outrageous example of this apartheid-by- permit in the village of Zbeidat, where the European Union's humanitarian aid division installed 18 waste water systems to prevent the hamlet's vile-smelling sewage running through the gardens and across the main road into the fields. The £80,000 system - a series of 40ft shafts regularly flushed out by sewage trucks - was duly installed because the location lay inside Area B, where no planning permission was required.

Yet now the aid workers have been told by the Israelis that work "must stop" on six of the 18 shafts - a prelude to their demolition, although already they are already built beside the road - because part of the village stands in Area C. Needless to say, no one - neither Palestinians nor Israelis - knows the exact borderline between B and C. Thus around £20,000 of European money has been thrown away by the Israeli "Civil Administration" .
But in one way, this storm of permission and non-permission papers is intended to obscure the terrible reality of Area C. Many Israeli activists as well as western NGOs suspect Israel intends to force the Palestinians here to leave their lands and homes and villages and depart into the wretchedness of Areas B and A. B is jointly controlled by Israeli military and civil authorities and Palestinian police, and A by the witless Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas. Thus would the Palestinians be left to argue over a mere 40 per cent of the occupied West Bank - in itself a tiny fraction of the 22 per cent of Mandated Palestine over which the equally useless Yasser Arafat once hoped to rule. Add to this the designation of 18 per cent of Area C as "closed military areas" by the Israelis and add another 3 per cent preposterously designated as a "nature reserve" - it would be interesting to know what kind of animals roam there - and the result is simple: even without demolition orders, Palestinians cannot build in 70 per cent of Area C.

Along one road, I discovered a series of large concrete blocks erected by the Israeli army in front of Palestinian shacks. "Danger - Firing Area" was printed on each in Hebrew, Arabic and English. "Entrance Forbidden." What are the Palestinians living here supposed to do? Area C, it should be added, is the richest of the occupied Palestinian lands, with cheese production and animal farms. Many of the 5,000 souls in Jiftlik have been refugees already, their families fled lands to the west of Jerusalem - in present-day Israel - in 1947 and 1948. Their tragedy has not yet ended, of course. What price Palestine?

January 30, 2010

Note: The original was published in the "Independet" and can be accessed at: http://www.independ%20ent.co.uk/%20news/world/%20middle-east/%20in-the-west-%20banks-stony-%20hills-palestine-%20is-slowly-%20dying-1883669.%20html