Interesting read.  There are many other informative articles at this site.

By Gabriel Ash
YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States) (YellowTimes.org) – How many 
Palestinians are dead in Jenin? Dozens? Hundreds? How many hundreds? If the 
number turns out to be exactly 641, or exactly 139, will that be a PR 
"victory" for the Palestinians, or for the Israelis? As journalists are 
lining up to declare the "victor," CNN runs a web poll about each side's 
credibility. Soon we may see the dead jostling with the living in CNN's 
sordidly named "crossfire." As a mental exercise, let each of us decide at 
exactly how many deaths the scale tips from the Israeli side to the 
Palestinian side, at what point an incursion becomes a slaughter, at what 
point a slaughter becomes a massacre, at what point a massacre becomes a 
genocide. 

This is all very important, PR-wise. For eleven days, IDF soldiers have been 
preventing journalists, medics, rescue teams and aid convoys from entering 
Jenin. This is how they "protect" the truth inside from all those outside who 
might want to "misuse" it against Israel. After all, the truth is such a 
terrible weapon. It would be wrong to allow one side to have more of it than 
the other. There must be balance. But only regarding the truth. There need 
not be balance in firepower, for example. It is O.K. that Israel has nuclear 
weapons and Apache helicopters, paid for by American taxpayers who can't 
afford to pay for adequate health care, while Palestinians fight with rifles 
and home-made explosives. There need not be balance about land either. It is 
O.K. that Israelis control all the land and Palestinians none. Nor is balance 
a requirement regarding liberty, or human rights, which Israelis enjoy and 
Palestinians do not. But there must be balance in describing what happened in 
Jenin. That is why accuracy is very important in Jenin. Was it exactly a 
"massacre," as Perez called it and then denied, or a "devastation," or just 
an "incursion" that used "minimal force" to achieve "necessary goals," such 
as showing Palestinians who's the boss and what you get for upsetting him? If 
you use too strong a word, if you match the expression to the stench of the 
decomposing bodies, Israel will reprimand you, brand you an anti-Semite, 
maybe even expel you. Be forewarned. But what can one do? Even the cautious 
and pro-Israeli The Economist saw clear evidence of war crimes. U.N. envoy 
Terje Roed-Larsen described the devastation in Jenin as "horrific beyond 
belief," and said it was "morally repugnant" that Israel blocked humanitarian 
emergency workers from entering Jenin for 11 days. Israel is still blocking 
rescue teams, while Perez is pondering whether to send Roed-Lansen home with 
a note to his parents or merely revoke his weekly allowance. The undiplomatic 
words of the Norwegian diplomat, but not the undiplomatic reality these words 
refer to, really hurt Israel's highly evolved moral sensibility. Having 
agreed to it earlier, the government of Israel is now blocking the U.N. 
fact-finding mission to Jenin. The problem, according to Israel, is that too 
many of the members have "humanitarian" experience, and might not understand 
the requirements of warfare. It is easy to imagine the people and the resumes 
Israel would want to see instead: maybe a few Latin American death-squad 
leaders; or Lt. William Calley, whose experience at Mai Lai could prove 
invaluable in determining what is and what isn't a massacre; or perhaps the 
French General Paul Aussaresses, commander of the 1957 French paratroopers' 
attack on the Casbah of Algier. To top it all, war crimes connoisseur 
Madeleine Albright, or even Henri Kissinger, could provide moral leadership, 
as well as much needed verbal elasticity. As long as there is balance. For 
the Israeli public and politicians, the widespread, and very unbalanced, 
opprobrium is just one more affirmation that the "whole world is against us." 
Echoing popular sentiment, Israel's President Moshe Katsav whines: "with all 
due respect and esteem for people of conscience and the bleeding-heart 
liberals of the world, I don't understand why they've clamped their mouths 
shut for a year and a half while the cruelest of unprecedented terrorist acts 
were committed against Israelis citizens everywhere." President Katsav, are 
all the inhabitants of Jenin terrorists? Are most? Is God's own standard, of 
requiring only ten righteous men to save a city, too lax for you? What part 
of "collective punishment is a war crime" don't you understand? The fact that 
the eruption of violence during the last eighteen months baffles you so much 
makes me wonder, President Katsav. Do you understand the idea of liberty? 
Have you ever read the universal declaration of human rights? Do you 
understand that "universal" means "applies to everybody equally"? Does the 
declination of possessive pronouns confuse you? Surely you are at ease with 
"mine" and "ours." But do you also understand the concepts behind "yours," 
"his," "hers," and "theirs"? When I look at the map of the land grab for your 
illegal settlements, I have serious doubts. Are you troubled why "people of 
conscience" do not condemn terrorism? Even to make such an accusation you 
must be living in an alternate universe. But I will answer your whining twice 
nevertheless. The long answer, President Katsav, "with all due respect and 
esteem," is that the suicide bombers did not land in Israel from outer space. 
The explosive belts might as well carry a label that reads "made in the 
Greater Eretz Israel." The suicide bombs are the mutant flowers of Israel's 
brutalizing occupation, springing from the seeds of the 54-year-long 
dehumanization of Palestinians. They are the ghosts of your brutality coming 
back to haunt you, the mementos of your war against memory. The massive and 
deliberate destruction of Palestinian civil records in the West Bank in the 
last weeks is but the most recent chapter in a war against Palestinian memory 
that began in 1948, with the annihilation of 400 Palestinian villages. But 
you seem to learn nothing from history, indeed from your own history: ghosts 
always return, each time more violently. For those ready to die, their 
spiritless hatred towards you is what remains after you have bulldozed their 
past and their future. Whether you like it or not, they are your bastard 
offspring. Everything they know about hate, you taught them. Everything they 
forgot about humanity, you made them forget. Give them a hug now, as they 
have proven themselves worthy of their parents – you. The short answer, 
President Katsav, is really short: just get out! Call the army home. Call the 
occupation off. And get out of the Occupied Territories. Just get out! Don't 
mumble about how "difficult" or "complex" the situation is. It isn't. You are 
the oppressor. You are the occupier. You park your tanks on plundered land. 
You fill your swimming pools with stolen water. You kill and destroy in order 
to inherit. So don't bullshit about "the situation." Just get out! Stop 
abusing people. Stop abusing language. Stop spinning your own moral cocoon. 
Stop turning your country and your people into a metaphor of evil. Just get 
out! Don't wait for Bush. Don't wait for Arafat. Don't wait to negotiate with 
the mythical Palestinian leader who will finally accept your dominion. There 
is nothing to negotiate about. Just get out! Take your rabid Jewish 
fundamentalists from Kiriat Arba and Beit El with you. Load them on buses and 
pump the gas pedal until the hills of the West Bank vanish in the rear 
mirror. Just get out! Gather your thugs from the borderless "border police," 
give them scholarships and send them to school again. Let them discover there 
is more to life than beating people to a pulp. Just get out! Take your 
checkpoints, with all their petty humiliations and deadly snipers, with you. 
And just get out! Send the Shin-Bet packing. After 35 years, the world had 
enough of your clever jailers and torturers. Take them with you and just get 
out! Let your hideous bulldozers loose on the illegal settlements of Ma'ale 
Edomim, Har Homa and Gilo. There is plenty of demolition work for them there. 
Let them continue until the mountain line bears no more memory of your rape. 
Then just get out! Don't apologize. Don't justify. Don't explain. There is 
nothing left to explain. Honestly. Just get out! Don't even worry about the 
thousands of olive trees, symbols of peace, you uprooted. Someone will plant 
them again. Just get out! Gabriel Ash encourages your comments: <A HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">
[log in to unmask]</A> YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be 
reproduced, reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction must 
identify the original source, http://www.YellowTimes.org. Internet web links 
to http://www.YellowTimes.org are appreciated

    
    
    
    

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