Jewish editor sacked for publishing article
This article was sent to Debbie Ducro, an American-Jewish journalist with
the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. She published it, and was fired the next
day.
Quest for justice
By Judith Stone
I am a Jew. I was a participant in the Rally for the Right of Return to
Palestine. It was the right thing to do.
I've heard about the European holocaust against the Jews since I was a
small
child. I've visited the memorials in Washington, DC and Jerusalem dedicated
to Jewish lives lost and I've cried at the recognition to what level of
atrocity mankind is capable of sinking.
Where are the Jews of conscience? No righteous malice can be held against
the survivors of Hitler's holocaust. These fragments of humanity were in no
position to make
choices beyond that of personal survival. We must not
forget that being a survivor or a co-religionist of the victims of the
European Holocaust does not grant dispensation from abiding by the rules of
humanity.
"Never again" as a motto, rings hollow when it means "never
again to us
alone." My generation was raised being led to believe that the biblical
land
was a vast desert inhabited by a handful of impoverished Palestinians living
with their camels and eking out a living in the sand. The arrival of the
Jews was touted as a tremendous benefit to these desert dwellers. Golda Meir
even assured us that there "is no Palestinian problem".
We know now this picture wasn't as it was painted. Palestine was a land
filled with people who called it home. There were thriving towns and
villages, schools and hospitals. There were Jews, Christians and Muslims.
In fact, prior to the occupation, Jews represented a
mere seven per cent of
the population and owned three per cent of the land.
Taking the blinders off for a moment, I see a second atrocity perpetuated by
the very people who should be exquisitely sensitive to the suffering of
others. These people knew what it felt like to be ordered out of your home
at gun point and forced to march into the night to unknown destinations or
face execution on the spot. The people who displaced the Palestinians knew
first hand what it means to watch your home in flames, to surrender
everything dear to your heart at a moment's notice. Bulldozers levelled
hundreds of villages, along with the remains of the village inhabitants, the
old and the young. This was nothing new to the world.
Poland is a vast graveyard of the Jews of Europe. Israel is the final
resting place of the massacred Palestinian people. A short distance from the
memorial to the Jewish children lost to the
holocaust in Europe there is a
levelled parking lot. Under this parking lot is what's left of a once
flourishing village and the bodies of men, women and children whose only
crime was taking up needed space and not leaving graciously. This particular
burial marker reads: "Public Parking".
I've talked with Palestinians. I have yet to meet a Palestinian who
hasn't
lost a member of their family to the Israeli Shoah, nor a Palestinian who
cannot name a relative or friend languishing under inhumane conditions in an
Israeli prison. Time and time again, Israel is cited for human rights
violations to no avail. On a recent trip to Israel, I visited the refugee
camps inhabited by a people who have waited 52 years in these
'temporary'
camps to go home. Every Palestinian grandparent can tell you the name of
their village, their street, and where the olive trees were planted. Their
grandchildren may never have been
home, but they can tell you where their
great-grandfather lies buried and where the village well stood. The press
has fostered the portrait of the Palestinian terrorist. But the victims who
rose up against human indignity in the Warsaw Ghetto are called heroes.
Those who lost their lives are called martyrs. The Palestinian who tosses a
rock in desperation is a terrorist.
Two years ago I drove through Palestine and watched intricate sprinkler
systems watering lush green lawns of Zionist settlers in their new
condominium complexes, surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire in the
midst of a Palestinian community where there was not adequate water to drink
and the surrounding fields were sandy and dry. University professor Moshe
Zimmerman reported in the Jerusalem Post (30 April, 1995), "The [Jewish]
children of Hebron are just like Hitler's youth."
We Jews are suing for restitution, lost wages, compensation
for homes, land,
slave labour and back wages in Europe. Am I a traitor of a Jew for
supporting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their
birthplace and compensation for what was taken that cannot be returned?
The Jewish dead cannot be brought back to life and neither can the
Palestinian massacred be resurrected. David Ben Gurion said, "Let us not
ignore the truth among ourselves...politically, we are the aggressors and
they defend themselves...The country is theirs, because they inhabit it,
whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to
take away from them their country...".
Palestine is a land that has been occupied and emptied of its people. Its
cultural and physical landmarks have been obliterated and replaced by tidy
Hebrew signs. The history of a people was the first thing eradicated by the
occupiers. The history of the indigenous people has been all but
eradicated
as though they never existed. And all this has been hailed by the world as a
miraculous act of God. We must recognise that Israel's existence is not
even
a question of legality so much as it is an illegal fait accompli realised
through the use of force while supported by the Western powers. The UN
missions directed at Israel in attempting to correct its violations of have
thus far been futile.
In Hertzl's 'The Jewish State' the father of Zionism said: "We
must
investigate and take possession of the new Jewish country by means of every
modern expedient." I guess I agree with Ehud Barak ( 3 June 1998) when he
said, "If I were a Palestinian, I'd also join a terror group."
I'd go a step
further perhaps. Rather than throwing little stones in desperation, I'd
hurtle a boulder.
Hopefully, somewhere deep inside, every Jew of conscience knows that this
was no war; that this was not G-d's
restitution of the holy land to
it's
rightful owners. We know that a human atrocity was and continues to be
perpetuated against an innocent people who couldn't come up with the arms
and money to defend themselves against the western powers bent upon their
demise as a people.
We cannot continue to say, "But what were we to do?" Zionism is not
synonymous with Judaism. I wholly support the rally of the right of return
of the Palestinian people.
Contact Independent Catholic News tel/fax: +44 (0)20 7267 3616 or email
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