Abu Mazen didn’t say anything wrong [Archives:2005/806/Opinion]

If Abbass Abu Mazen was to be able to relate to his fellow Palestinian listeners during his campaign for the Chairmanship of the Palestine Authority, about the only common factor that will put him at par with his listeners is that they are all victims of the transgressions of a state founded on demagogic chauvinistic principles. No one should forget that the state founded on the principles of Zionism, as it is called by its founders and advocates, came into being only after the indigenous people of Palestine, including Abu Mazen were all uprooted from their homeland. Let it be remembered also that to this very day the Zionist state is exerting all its energy towards eliminating any real hope of a Palestine state in one of the most brutal systematic ethnic cleansing campaigns of modern times. Thus, it is difficult to see the rationale for the outcry by the Zionist state and its worldwide network of supporting media against the reference made by Abbass Abu Mazen to the “Zionist enemy”, because both words are still very much applicable to the facts on the ground in Palestine. Zionism has not been denounced by anyone within the Zionist state nor by any of Israel's supporters and the animosity towards the Palestinian people is manifested by the terrible persecution the Palestinians are being victimized by under Israeli occupation of the little that remains of Palestinian territory, which continues to shrink day by day. Surely a sweetheart would not be behaving in the manner that the Israelis have behaved ever since the Zionist state came into being. Surely the aggressive use of massive force against a relatively unarmed population, under different pretexts, but in the end leading to clearly defined Zionist objectives, has yet to find the sweet terms to describe it that will render it obsolete.

When one looks at the appalling descriptions that the anti occupation resistance is given in the Israeli official statements and the not very much differing language followed by the pro Zionist media in the west, no one hears criticism of the continuous association of resistance to occupation with terrorism, which is in fact one of the fundamental modus operandi of Zionist ideology. One is led to discern from Zionist propaganda that the Palestinians should have no gripes for being driven from their homes or for facing such harsh occupation policies that the whole world has time and again condemned. How many civilian Palestinians have been eliminated by so called retaliatory or “defensive” acts unleashed against helpless farmers, urban civilians or schoolchildren on their way home? Are these the acts of a friendly neighbor? Israel continuously calls the Palestinians and their leaders “terrorists” day and night, when the whole world recognizes that a cruel Israeli occupation is the root cause of Palestinian resistance. Israeli arrogance and insistence on its right of manifest destiny in the Holy Land can only be expected to lead to a legitimate right to defend whatever rights that the Palestinians still have a very fragile hold of. As such, unless Israel abandons its insistence that whatever it does against the Palestinians is right and legitimate and ignores any rights of the Palestinians, even as ordained by international law, then it can only be viewed as an enemy by the poor victims of this tortuous humiliating occupation.

If Abu Mazen did not say anything nice about the Israelis, then it is because there is really nothing nice to say about them from the perspective of the Palestinian constituents, who daily watch as Israeli tractors mow down donems of their olive groves, without any consideration to the consequences of this on its owners, who are supposed to be cuddly with their “good neighbors”, whose neighborhood has no territorial limits. So, people whose livelihoods are eliminated by a systematic campaign to disenfranchise them, not only of their human rights and civil liberties, but also of their right to dignified lives.

It should be borne in mind that there is nothing in Israeli attitude or behavior that is not inimical in spirit or deed and the fact is undisputed that such attitude or behavior is surely manifest of an engrained animosity embedded by Zionist doctrine and philosophy and ruthlessly interpreted on the ground by the most ferocious and inhumane tactics. So, if Abu Mazen, being the moderate that everyone likes to make out of him says the “Zionist enemy”, he has clear justification by continued Israeli intransigence and arrogance and contempt for the rights of others against his people, who have already lost so much, especially nowadays, thanks to the unabashed stubborn Likudnik mentality that continues to prevail in the Israeli Government.

How sensitive the Israelis are to words uttered out of the frustration implanted by continuous Israeli aggression and how insensitive they are to the thousands of innocent lives that have fallen by Israeli ordnance and bullets. How sensitive are the Israelis to any criticism of their outrageously disproportionate “measures of retaliation or self defense” and how insensitive they are to the thousands of confined prisoners they are holding without due process and mostly without due cause (not to mention that the whole population of the West Bank and Gaza are all practically prisoners per se under a ruthless occupation that has no precedence ever since the days of the Nazi occupation of Europe.

Until the Israelis abandon their animosity towards the Palestinians and show that they are truly interested in a lasting peace, whether under Arafat or under Abu Mazen, then every Arab and Moslem at the grassroots level, and not just the Palestinians, will continue to view the Israelis as 'Zionist enemies”, simply because that is how their actions define them and their attitude translates them. After all, it is they who forcefully implanted themselves on land that is not theirs by any edict, Divine or human and it is they who continue to unleash their systematic aggression against a helpless defenseless people, which can only be viewed as acts of animosity and surely do not connote any friendly inclinations perceived on the part of the Zionist enemy.
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