Terrorists, freedom fighters, or schlemiels? You pick
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
Condi
Rice: “What we’re seeing here, in a sense, is the growing birth
pangs of a new Middle East.”
Jon
Stewart: “Birth pangs? Yes, I believe today’s contraction took
out a city block.”
On
January 21, President Obama telephoned the King of Jordan, the Prime
Minister of Israel, the President of Egypt and Mahmoud Abbas,
President of the Palestinian National Authority, before dispatching
former Senator George Mitchell to spearhead peace negotiations. He
excluded Hamas leaders from his phone tree, although they had won the
2006 election to represent the people of Gaza. Obviously, Hamas has
also won the label “terrorist” and, as Israeli Foreign Minister
Tzipi Livni proudly if not smugly assured members of the National
Press Club in Washington DC, Israel would not talk with Hamas. “We
do not negotiate with terrorists,” she asserted,
moral
indignation dripping from her words. (January 16)
Her
father, Eitan Livni, proudly served as chief operations officer of
the Irgun, a right wing Zionist gang that in the post 1945 period
sent letter bombs to the British occupying authorities and in 1946
blew up the King David hotel in Jerusalem. Some Jews died in that
terrorist act along with others who had no relationship to the issue
of an Israeli state. Some British intelligence officials also got
blown away.
Livni’s
ops dressed up as Arabs. Who would suspect benign Arabs? “People
who looked like they might be violent Zionists would have attracted
suspicion,” wrote Juan Cole. “Later generations of rightwing
Zionists have attempted to convince the rest of the world that the
Arab kaffiyah is an icon of terrorism; but their parents were
perfectly willing to display it as a sign of innocence (and perhaps
with the intention that the Arabs should take the fall).”
(http://www.juancole.com/2007/09/tzipi-livni-aboutface-now-against.html)
In
2006, Likudnik and former Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi”
Netanyahu commemorated that bombing, also honored by surviving Irgun
members. In 1948, Irgun members also participated in what Arabs call
a massacre of Palestinian civilians at Deir Yassin. Israeli
historians differ as to whether the more than 100 dead, including
many old people, were shot or died as a result of the battle. Tzipi
has not repudiated her father’s actions, but feels no apparent
sense of shame or even contradiction when she labels her current foes
as terrorists with whom she will never negotiate. Well, maybe she
never negotiated with her father! Oh, he wasn’t a terrorist; he was
an Israeli patriot!
As
a supposedly anti-terrorist action, Israel dropped thousands of tons
of bombs on Gaza in December and January. It had tried a similar
“anti-terrorist” tactic against southern Lebanon in 2006. Unlike
the relatively primitive explosives used by the old terrorists, like
Eitan Livni, Israel today employs white phosphorous and cluster bombs
— anti-personnel weapons originally designed for use against large
numbers of troops on a battlefield, but not to be deployed against
civilians. Israel dropped these people killers on Lebanese farms just
before its army withdrew. Deterrent or child killer? Let’s not
quibble over definitions!
President
Shimon Peres called both cluster bomb dropping and the Lebanon war
itself “mistakes.” Those mistakes have become history which, in
the United States, remains “bunk” (Henry Ford). Since the past
seems relevant only in five, 10, 25 and 50 year commemorations, the
media didn’t see the need to provide a more immediate context for
its readers and viewers; so Livni’s father’s activities did not
get reported widely.
Nor
did the media offer necessary context about the origins of Hamas and
Israel’s role in its creation.
A rare
exception came from UPI reporter Richard Sale in 2002. Using as
sources “several current and former U.S. intelligence officials,”
Sale confirmed that “beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave
direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.”
(6/18/02)
In
the early 1970s, Sale reported, Israeli leaders, anxious to dilute
the appeal of the newly arisen and secular PLO, tried to induce a
rival to challenge PLO authority. They even contributed money to
religious elements in the occupied Palestinian territories. By
supporting madrasas (religious schools) mainly in Gaza, the religious
elements would educate young men in Islam rather than in the quickly
spreading ideology of Palestinian nationalism. “The Israelis wanted
to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation
Organization),” said Anthony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the
Center for Strategic Studies.
Israel
also allowed Islamic associations to receive money from abroad. The
Gulf oil-producing states contributed as well. With these funds, the
religious based groups established clinics, orphanages and schools.
Skilled artisans taught women crafts and social workers administered
help to the poorest.
Behind
these superficially benign Islamic associations, however, stood
organizers of the Muslim Brotherhood, dating back to 1928 in Egypt.
After the 1967 Six Day War, these organizers went into refugee camps
and began to provide the only services available. “Social influence
grew into political influence, first in the Gaza Strip, then on the
West Bank,” said an administration official who spoke on condition
of anonymity.
In
1978, Hamas legally registered in Israel with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
leading the group as spiritual leader. He emerged later as the leader
of the strategic arm of Hamas as well. In 2004, the Israelis
assassinated
this blind quadriplegic.
Sale
quoted an unnamed U.S. official: “The thinking on the part of some
of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the
others, if they gained control, would refuse to have any part of the
peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place.” He
concluded that “Israel would still be the only democracy in the
region for the United States to deal with.”
Former
State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson told Dale:
“The Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting
terrorism. The Israelis are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and
then tries to put it out by hitting it with a hammer. They do more to
incite and sustain terrorism than curb it.” (UPI, June 18, 2002)
After
the month long 2008-9 war, and the 1,400 Palestinian fatalities,
Hamas still outdraws Fatah in Gaza, and Middle East reporters claim
Hamas has won over Fatah adherents in the West Bank and that Fatah
forces repressed Hamas rallies. (NY
Times,
Jan. 5)
When
the PLO signed the 1993 Oslo
accord
that gave Palestinians limited self-rule in the Gaza Strip and parts
of the West Bank, Hamas denounced the agreement and sporadically
attacked Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Western and
Israeli leaders appealed to PLO leader Yassir Arafat to suppress
Hamas’
attacks.
Arafat tried but failed to suppress all of them.
After
Oslo, Palestinian unemployment grew as did Jewish settlements on
Palestinian land. By 2000, Hamas’
popularity
increased because it provided services while Fatah officials provided
extortion. When the second Intifada exploded against Israel in
September of that year, they had clearly become a force to be
reckoned with.
Hamas’
terrorism
also killed innocent Israelis, helped weaken the peace movement
inside Israel, and unified Israelis on a hard line. Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, his successor, pledged to
fight “Palestinian terror.”
With
or without anticipation, Israeli policies helped shape the kinds of
enemies that pledge to sacrifice their lives to fight the Jewish
state in the name of Islam. Fatah’s militant nationalism paled in
comparison to the passion of Hamas organizers and their kindred
spirits throughout the Arab and Muslim world — all determined to
defeat Israel in the name of Allah.
The
word “terrorist” in the mouth of Israeli officials rings hollow.
Indeed, the word makes little sense in a Middle East convulsed in
war. “Hundreds of millions of Arabs around us,” wrote Uri Avnery,
“will see the Hamas fighters as the heroes of the Arab nation, but
they will also see their own regimes in their nakedness: cringing,
ignominious, corrupt and treacherous.” (In Gabriel Kolko,
www.counterpunch.org, 1/21/09)
If
President Obama’s inner sensitivities correspond to what the world
witnessed on January 20 as his external sensibilities, he too will
recoil from “terrorist” rhetoric and also reject the angelic
façade that fits Israel like a fine leather glove on the hoof of a
pig. “Change is coming in the Middle East as it is in the United
States,”
Obama
might tell Israeli leaders, “and Washington will play a role over
there. So make the necessary concessions to facilitate a viable
Palestinian state. And include Hamas — or else!”
Saul
Landau’s films are on DVD (www.roundworldproductions.com). He is an
Institute for Policy Studies fellow and author of A
BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.
