I’m fairly certain that Greg Sheridan actually believes his own propaganda and rhetoric. He’s certainly fallen for the Hamas propaganda about Jews generally and Israelis in particular or at least thinks others have, but has ignored entirely the propaganda that the Israeli Zionist extremists put out about Arabs generally and Hamas in particular, all stuff, incidentally that can also be found easily on the net.
The bottom line, however, is not the propaganda and rhetoric of either side, no matter how virulent and violent the hatreds towards each other appear to be, but rather, the geopolitical reality of what the intentions of the Zionist extremists are. Their goal is simple; to have the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank removed (transferred) from these places to the Sinai and/or Jordan so that eventually the Israelis can colonise them and ultimately annex them to Israel in pursuit of their aspirations for a Greater Israel, just as they did to the Golan Heights. Hamas on behalf of all of the Palestinian peoples, on the other hand, simply want all of the lands back that have been taken by the Israelis.
For all of Greg Sheridan’s propaganda and rhetorical nonsense about Hamas, the reality is this; firstly, it is Israel that is on land that does not belong to them, not the other way round, and the Palestinians are fighting to get it back. Secondly, it is Israelis that are doing the killing. Thousands of Palestinians have been murdered over the years by Israelis and thousands more have been kidnapped and imprisoned in Israel, many of them without trial, simply for resisting Israeli aggression. Hamas rocket attacks against Israelis are both in retaliation to Israeli attacks against the Palestinians and in an effort to get their lands back from the Israelis.
The people of the Gaza and the people of the West Bank are the same people – they’re all Palestinians. The Israeli assertion that the Gazans had been given back their lands when the Israeli settlements were withdrawn and that therefore the Gazan people should now have no cause to fight the Israelis is a complete nonsense. The withdrawal of the settlers by Ariel Sharon was merely a tactical move dressed up in propaganda to make it look as though the Israelis were making concessions to the Gazans. In fact Sharon pulled out the settlements simply because they were over stretching the Israeli Defence Forces who were defending them. He knew that one day that the Israelis would force the Gazan Palestinians out and that the settlers would then return to the Gaza Strip which would eventually become part of Greater Israel just as he hoped the West Bank and the south of Lebanon up to the Litani River would also be.
The people of the world should ignore the propaganda of the extremists, including the likes of Greg Sheridan, and support the founding of a binational one-state solution whereby Palestinians and Israelis live peacefully together in one democratic secular state.
There is no other way. The quicker the world wakes up to this simple fact the better!
AUSTRALIANS AT WAR
THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.
4 comments:
Why on earth would you deny the Jewish people the right to national self-determination?
(not to deny the Palestinians either, by the way)
Do you extend this to any other peoples, or just the Jews?
Also it's a bit rich to demand that those who have lived on their traditional land for thousands of years may not have a state, when we speak as white anglo saxons with absolutely no connection to this land. Which, moreover, we have only had a presence in for a mere 200 years.
You'd sooner have to advocate the dismantling of Australia than the Jewish state.
Don't you think Israelis would look at this suggestion from a white Australian invader with jaws dropped.
First off of course, the vast majority of Jews throughout the Diaspora aren’t in the slightest bit interested in whether or not there is a Jewish state; they are quite happy to be wherever they are now, so it’s not a question of ‘denying the Jewish people the right to self determination’, it’s more a case of denying Zionist extremists the right to come to a land that they have not, as you assert, ‘lived on for thousands of years’ and displace Palestinians who have.
The answer is simple; a binational secular democratic single state for both Jews and Palestinians.
As for your analogy about ‘white anglo-Saxon’s’ in Australia, I couldn’t agree more, but don’t count me amongst them; first, while I live here permanently, I am not Australian per se and, secondly, before arriving here in Australia, I actually wrote to the local Aboriginal people asking them if I might be allowed to live in their country. Naturally, they were quite chuffed that someone had even bothered to ask them!
Firstly, good on you for asking the local Aboriginals before coming.
Second, if you're not preaching as an Australian, but instead as a Brit (or Spaniard, or French, or Italian, Dutch or Portugese for that matter), the same would really apply.
Why would Jews seeking independence in a homeland on their traditional land, on which they have existed since the formation of their religion (there has never NOT been Jews living there at any one time in history), have to take lessons from those colonial cultures and civilisations that usurped and stole their way to land claim through murderous acts of genocide.
And it's neither here nor there what Disapora Jews think of this, (there are still 6 million Jews living there now by the way), just as irrelevant as expatriate British, who've seen fit to leave the UK's shores, would be reason enough for its dismantlement.
No matter how choose to couch your terms, such as by using Zionist (those who want a Jewish homeland) in a manner that attempts to isolate the "other", your theory would of course have the same result: Denying the Jewish nation the right to national self-determination.
Again, do you apply this to any other peoples, or just the Jews?
Regardless of where I am in the world, whenever anyone asks me where I come from I always simply answer: ‘Here’. The upshot is this; I’m not ‘preaching’ as a person from anywhere except planet earth. Where I come from doesn’t matter; it’s not about me.
The vast majority of Jews throughout the Diaspora cannot lay claim to having lived on traditional lands in Palestine for thousands of years. Even the majority of Jews that are now in Israeli cannot lay claim to having lived on traditional lands in Palestine for thousands of years. Most have come to Israel from lands elsewhere that they had settled centuries ago. Palestinians and other Arabs have a greater claim than Diaspora Jews. Your argument is nonsense.
As I mentioned before, the answer is a binational one-state solution governed by a secular, democratic government made up of both Jews and Palestinians.
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