McReynolds: Who Knows the Truth About Israel? Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - David McReynolds [This letter to "Tova" from David McReynolds is an extraordinarily tolerant and gentle answer to the defensive, self-righteous, increasingly strident, racist and ultra-rightist) Israelis who still claim not to be Nazis. Israel is surely on its own final road to self-destruction, cheering their own psychotic leaders all the way, that seems clear. Similarities noted, naturally, between their population of sheep and the USA's, their cheerleading public and the USA's. Their despicable rulers, and the USA's. To David's reply we would only add one thing: Tova must be a citizen of the USA too, since she says "WE gave them [Palestine] billions in aid..." If she is Israeli, she ACTUALLY means that the USA supplied billions (a few crumbs from the murderous largesse the USA has dispensed to Israeli apartheid for 50 years). Otherwise, who is "we," Tova? Which fact, if nothing else does, certainly compels all US citizens of conscience to speak out loud and long about what has been done with their tax money. It seems the ultimate chutzpah to demand silence and compliance with genocide when it's being carried out with other people's money, but these are the depths of dehumanization to which even formerly 'decent' Israelis have sunk. "Never Again -- Until we do it. Then, shut up, and pay for it." -- NY Transfer] * Dear Tova, Nothing is easy, nothing is simple. We both know that. When I read your posts, and those of some others in Israel (and I respect the fact you write from Israel, not from New York) it would be very easy to back off. To say "I really don't know - they are there and I am here". You sound so certain. And after all, I've never been to Israel or Palestine (and have no great desire to go to either place). I'm sending copies of this to others because some of my points need to be heard - even if they offend. And I'd like to be heard (even offending) by more than one person, given how little time people in your area have, whether you realize that or not. Years ago, as a youth in Los Angeles, long before I was in the South, I heard from Southerners - from my uncle from Texas and from other whites - "Y'all don't understand the nigra's. You folks think we hate the nigra's and we don't. I was raised by a colored woman, we have colored folks as help. We KNOW them - and y'all just don't. We love them - they're just different and y'all will never understand." Often said with a coldness and certainty that closed the conversation and made me doubt my young liberal intentions. Well, I did get South eventually, not at all courageously - my two arrests in North Carolina in 1964, while connected to the Civil Rights movement, were both entirely accidental. And my trip through the deep South by Greyhound back in 1951 was a frightened young man's effort to sit as close as he could to the colored section without actually taking a serious chance of being lynched. And I learned. I learned that you, Tova, are wrong. I don't have to go where you are to know you are wrong. Years ago I heard the late Paul Jacobs, a good man, secular radical Jew (which means, I suppose, that in some ways he wasn't Jewish at all) report that he had sat in apartments in Tel Aviv and in Cairo and in Beirut. He said "The tragedy is the people are pretty much the same, being defined by class. They listen to the same music, they eat the same food. And on both sides they are convinced the other side is totally different. Each side thinks it 'knows the other' and in fact it is only looking at its fears". (This is a quote I've invented - don't hold it against Paul -it is an approximation). I don't know Arafat. I shook his hand one time when he was at the UN and I'd gotten an invitation as an NGO - and went only because the Jewish Defense League insisted he'd never leave the city alive. I feel sorry for him in some ways. He certainly began life as a terrorist. He certainly is trapped both by the hopes of his people and by his own position - as Chairman he can't resign. He has been humiliated by Sharon, not really a smart thing to do to anyone. Everyone who follows the situation knows the PA is corrupt. Whether Arafat is, I don't know. If so, it is not a corruption that has led him to flee to safety or make a deal with his captors. But I do know the terrorists we are currently dealing with began with Hamas, not the PA. I do know that to the Palestinians the suicide bombers are heroes. And I do know it is a simple lie when you say you don't target civilians. Do you realize it is a lie? Who did you think got killed when Israeli jets bombed refugee camps in Lebanon to "punish" the "terrorists" for shelling across the border? I know that Israelis are smart, but smart enough they can bomb a refugee camp with bombs that only kill the terrorists and not the kids? Bush tells us our smart bombs can do this, but the Canadians don't believe him. The Afghans don't believe him. And I doubt you believe him. No, Tova, your "purity of arms" faded long ago - which is why you have reservists who refuse service. Nobody's arms were ever pure, not even the nonviolence of the pacifist (because in our world, nothing is pure - we work with what we have and do the best we can. Gandhi knew this. King knew this. Any struggle is less than pure - the problem is that without the struggle things are much much less pure). You - Israelis - had a choice long ago. To get out of the Occupied Territories. You weren't trading "land for peace". You were trading land for your soul. You can't occupy and dominate people when they have no voice, no control, no authority. (And the PA you permitted was a shell - with Israelis maintaining key control - you were determined, dictated as much by internal politics there as anything else - to hold onto the settlements). Was Arafat wrong on things? Sure. Was Barak? Yes. Is the Labour Party implicated? Of course. (And when you speak of corruption - let us not forget your Prime Minister to come - the one man no one in Israel trusts - Bibi - but who will win the election). Tova, you defend Jenin by saying war is nasty (what else is new?). In fact it was a remarkably heroic defense by a relative handful of "terrorists" against a very large Israeli military force. The NY Times account yesterday did full credit to the fight, how it began, and how outgunned and outnumbered the "terrorists" were. Did they hide among the civilians? Yes. Did the civilians support them? Yes. Had this been the Warsaw Ghetto it would have been seen by Jews as heroic. These battles don't determine who is right and who is wrong - only who is still alive. And at this rate, and you know it, Israel is going to lose. Sooner or later, it will lose. If it thinks it can maintain itself in the Occupied Territories - with all the oppression and humiliation this has meant for decades - then it is blind. I know you are trapped. Israel has been trapped from the beginning. I am more sympathetic than you realize. And, as you know, many of the early founders of Israel didn't quite blame the Arabs for hating them, knowing (often "off the record") that Israel was in reality an "incursion by the West" into an Islamic area. Jewish scholars, yes, they had been there forever. But a Jewish homeland? No. That it wasn't. That is what was created. That is why there was tension. Why Israel felt every step had to be chosen carefully - to stay alive. And why so many of those steps were "short term wise / long term stupid". But as Lord Keynes said "In the long run we are all dead" so who can blame you for taking "short term wise" steps, such as supporting the French in Algeria, or foolishly thinking you could reclaim the Suez Canal without that war leaving deep, permanent scars on the Arab psyche. You don't trust them? Tova - they don't trust Israel, and based on your record, I think their judgement is just as sound as yours. Neither of you has any real reason to trust the other. The most serious tragedy is that events have moved you away from where there is hope - events (on both sides) have undercut the only hope, which is a "moderate center" which, really means a courageous and heroic determination to cut a new path. And that path you aren't on. Shalom, David McReynolds * [And... here is the nasty piece of work from "Tova," to which David McReynolds replied] As a former card-carrying member of that august body, I say: So what? Are you under the impression that it is only the American Left that is moral and good and, most important, knows all the issues involved? The most vocal among you know the least. You're good at patting yourselves on the back for being "the moral ones" who risk nothing but your voices. It was the left in Israel that Arafat was able to manipulate into thinking that he was serious and who convinced the rest of the country that he was serious. That's why the left has been keeping a very low profile lately. (Many or most of its members, including me, have moved considerably toward the center and a bit further.) Only those who can't admit they've been had (Shulamit Aloni, Yossi Beilin, most of the Ha'aretz staff, and others) have stayed on. The reason for the human rights focus in Jenin is that the left positively refuses to see what the rest of us see clearly: that Arafat is an incorrigible terrorist who has stolen uncountable millions of dollars that would have gone to rehabilitate Jenin and who know how many other refugee camps he maintains. Arafat never had any intention of following Oslo for purposes of establishing a state; the Palestinians have said that Oslo was simply one step in a plan to destroy Israel. They had planned "Intifada - the Sequel" long before Sharon's walk on the Temple Mount. He may have been stupid for doing it -- although CNN and other apologists conveniently ignore the fact that Arafat's deputy, Jibril Rajoub, cleared the event in advance. But regardless, the current war of attrition was about as spontaneous as gravity. War is not a humanitarian experience. But war has rules, and Israel's army hews more carefully to the laws of war than any other. You on the left are welcome to call yourselves pacifists, anti-war, whatever the hell you'd like. We here in the real world know that war exists and -- at least as regards the one going on here -- is quite painful for everyone concerned. We also know that when war is prosecuted against us by a band of terrorists marauding under the banner of the United Nations, we must fight. You condemn us for that fight, one we put up with only defensive intentions. We don't want to fight with anyone; precisely the opposite. We put up billions of dollars in aid and, help us, weapons in a good-faith effort to jump-start the Palestinian Authority's efforts to build a future for its people. Arafat responded by mobilizing the psychopaths and sheep among his minions to blow up children in malls. Where is your voice of outrage? The civilians we have killed have died as accidental casualties of a war forced upon us. To equate this with people who aim to destroy babies is beyond sick. It's easy to be a pacifist and moralize when someone else is doing the dirty work, yes? All the best. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytmid-04.23.02-06:04:47-32559