[A-List] Paul Foot on Palestine

[Anne Williamson]

Michael:  Thank you for the Paul Foot article.  I was near tears 
from reading such simple truths plainly stated.  Such an article
would never see the light of day on this side of the pond. -Anne

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Keaney Michael <Michael.Keaney at mbs.fi>
To: A-List (E-mail) <a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 4:16 AM
Subject: [A-List] Paul Foot on Palestine


Anne Williamson writes:

Course the Israelis are smart - they spread $100-$200 million
of the billions in US taxpayer funds they receive annually
around K Street, into the pockets of lawyers, lobbyists and
ALL pols on international and aid committees.

=====

In defence of oppression

Paul Foot
Tuesday March 5, 2002
The Guardian

The cycle of death goes on and on. Nearly 50 Palestinians dead in the
Israeli army attacks on refugee camps over the past couple of days; 10
Israeli soldiers dead at an army checkpoint near Ramallah. In the west
there is a universal shaking of sophisticated heads and a weary, liberal
sigh.

Tut tut, there they go again. Two enemy peoples in a far-off land,
caught up in an age-old conflict, swapping atrocity for atrocity, and
endlessly killing each other out of some primeval hatred. There is
nothing civilised and humane observers can do about it, apparently,
except perhaps to hope that sooner or later one side (the strong) will
annihilate the other (the weak).

The beauty of this approach is that it requires no intellectual effort,
no analysis, no history, above all no need to distinguish between the
violence of the oppressed and the violence of the oppressor. Nothing
could be clearer from the conflict over Palestine than that the Israelis
are the oppressors and the Palestinians the oppressed.

The refugee camps invaded by Israeli troops last week are inhabited by
people whose parents or grandparents were flung out of their homes and
their lands more than half a century ago and have had to watch those
lands being occupied and confiscated by Israelis. The reason Israeli
troops have the audacity to invade those camps today is that their
predecessors, by means of entirely illegal military invasions, conquered
the West Bank of Jordan, divided it up into cantons or bantustans and
imposed on them equally illegal and ludicrously privileged
"settlements".

The violence of the Israeli army and police in those regions is the
violence of the oppressor, and the consequent violence of the
Palestinians is the resistance of the oppressed. Anyone who favours the
Israeli occupation of the areas, or the settlements, or who denies the
right of violent resistance to the Palestinians is siding unequivocally
with the oppressor against the oppressed.

Assuming a "plague on both your houses" approach is not just a travesty
of the facts. It shuts out all prospect of a solution. If one side is as
bad as the other, then any settlement is out of the question since both
sides will go on killing each other in any event. A rational assessment
of the roles of oppressed and oppressor, on the other hand, tells us not
only why people are killing each other, but also how they can be stopped
from doing so.

If the reason for the violence is the illegal occupation of Palestinian
territory, then the obvious solution is for the Israelis to get out of
that territory and disband the settlements. If the Israeli government
just won't budge on either withdrawal or the settlements, then the
obvious answer is for the west to impose sanctions - to cut off the
massive economic subsidies and arms shipments that have built up the
Israeli economy and its military machine.

Remember the indignant hullabaloo when a shipment of arms, bound
apparently for the Palestinians, was intercepted. Whoever complains
about arms shipments a hundred times greater that pour regularly from
our factories and those of the US into Israel? Anyone in the United
States or Britain who opposes such sanctions is taking up an unequivocal
stand on the side of illegal occupation, military conquest and economic
oppression.

Especially pathetic on the part of our apologists for Israeli oppression
is their bleating about anti-semitism. For the sort of oppression they
favour is the seed from which all racialism, including anti-semitism,
grows. There is a solution to the Palestine conflict. It depends on the
withdrawal of Israeli forces and the disbandment of the settlements.
Such a solution is easily within the grasp of western diplomacy, and
would stop the killing.

Full article at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,661939,00.html

Michael Keaney
Mercuria Business School
Martinlaaksontie 36
01620 Vantaa
Finland

michael.keaney at mbs.fi