People of Faith CT

by Mazin Qumsiyeh

Those who still had any illusions that peace is possible with a racist Zionist ideology should just look at reality.  Benjamin Netanyahu’s “speech” recently illustrates the litany of lies, distortions, and demands made that can only remind one of speeches by European colonial generals who gave similar speeches after committing massacres and genocides in Africa and Asia.  It shows that there is no Israeli left or right since their differences are merely cosmetic (both now agree to solve the problem of having too many Palestinians remaining on the coveted land by creating a castrated entity for them called a “state” while denying us all basic rights.

Netanyahu says he does not want to rule over Palestinians but merely wants to keep our stolen lands and want to control their airspace, water, entry and exit and otherwise relegate us to Bantustans in order to achieve the illusory security for him and the other colonizers/occupiers.  To him this is all the “Land of Israel” and yet he recognizes there are some people who remain “here” and who while having no right to their own lands, can be tolerated as long as a) they accept that the ethnic cleansing in which 530 Palestinian villages and towns were completely depopulated was legitimate (i.e. that is what is meant by accepting Israel as “a Jewish state”), that Palestinian rejection of colonization and occupation was an abnormal phenomenon and illegitimate (that is what he means by accepting no right of self-defense for the native people), and that any Palestinians allowed to continue to live in the “land of Israel” would do so as servants and subservient to the Jewish chosen people (economic peace, no Palestinian self defense or any semblance of sovereignty).

Netanyahu avoided all the vocabulary that would indicate any semblance of possibility of peace: Palestinian sovereignty/freedom, ending the occupation, complying with International law, obeying UN resolutions, respecting Palestinian rights (including rights of refugees), ending colonial settler activities, ending home demolitions, giving freedom of movement etc. Instead he cited irrelevancies (like the peace treaty with Egypt and Jordan (forgetting to mention that there is a dramatic difference since Israel sits on top of Palestine) and (like Obama) forgot to recognize that Palestinians are the ones who need security after 61 years of massacres and ethnic cleansing.