Replies to post #2420 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[sylvester80]

Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you. You are persistent and definitely a bully who’s out looking for trouble. And you just don't get it! So get ready for a flood from the mouth of a Jew, that sees it like you will never see it from. From , fact rather than your fiction, experience rather than your bedroom computer, and truth rather than propaganda.

Let's see if you have the guts to read every one of them...

[sylvester80]

"Prevention of terror, I hear you say. Let me use the wonderful words of my friend Ishay Rosen-Zvi: "You are 'fighting against terror'? What a joke. The Israeli government, in its policies of Occupation, has turned the Territories into a greenhouse for growing terror!!!"
We have sown the seeds, grown them, nurtured them - and then our blood is spilled, and the centrist-right-wing politicians reap the benefits. Indeed, terror is the right-wing politician's best friend.
You know what? When you treat millions of people like sub-humans for so long, some of them will find inhuman strategies to fight back. Isn't that what the Zionists, and other Jewish revolutionaries, argued about a hundred years ago in order to explain the questionable strategies of survival that Jews used in Europe? Didn't our forefathers say, "Let us live like human beings, and see how we'll act just like other human beings"?

http://www.guidedones.com/issues/regions/meast/openletter.htm

[sylvester80]

"So here's the deal. I hope that the first part of this letter made it clear that I don't buy the "they want to throw us into the sea" crap. It's just a collective self-delusion of ours. But more importantly, I don't see tribes. I see people, human beings. I believe that the Palestinians are human beings like us. What a concept, eh? And before everything else, before EVERYTHING else, we must treat them like human beings without demanding anything in return. And no (to all die-hard Barak fans), throwing them a couple of crumbs in which they can set up pitiful, completely controlled Bantustans in between our settlements and bypass roads, and believing it to be a great act of 'generosity', does NOT come close to answering this basic requirement. This requirement is NOT negotiable; moreover, in a perfect demonstration of historical justice, it is a vital requirement for the survival of our own State.

After that, and based on the lessons of modern history, especially that of the Arab-Israeli conflict (as was briefly described above), I do believe that the Palestinians will calm down, and that the elusive 'Security' and peace will finally come upon us (as it did, incidentally, for almost two whole years between the Wye Accord of 1998 and Camp David 2000). I don't have any insurance policy for that (well - almost none, except the solemn promise of the entire Arab world), but remember - I have this funny notion that they are human beings. In any case, we are seeing now all too well what type of insurance policy the opposite paradigm is providing us.

In the meanwhile, I refuse to be a terrorist in my tribe's name. Because that's what it is: not a "war against terror", as our propaganda machine tries to sell. This is a war OF terror, a war in which, in return for Palestinian guerrilla and terror, we employ the IDF in two types of terror. The more visible one are the violent acts of killing and destruction, those which some people still try to explain away as 'surgical acts of defense.' The worse type of terror is the silent one, which has continued unabated since 1967 and through the entire Oslo process. It is the terror of Occupation, of humiliation on a personal and collective basis, of deprivation and legalized robbery, of alternating exploitation and starvation. This is the mass of the iceberg, the terror that is itself a long-term greenhouse for counter-terror. And I simply refuse to be a terrorist and criminal, even if the entire tribe denounces me."

http://www.guidedones.com/issues/regions/meast/openletter.htm

[sylvester80]

"In the meanwhile, I refuse to be a terrorist in my tribe's name. Because that's what it is: not a "war against terror", as our propaganda machine tries to sell. This is a war OF terror, a war in which, in return for Palestinian guerrilla and terror, we employ the IDF in two types of terror. The more visible one are the violent acts of killing and destruction, those which some people still try to explain away as 'surgical acts of defense.' The worse type of terror is the silent one, which has continued unabated since 1967 and through the entire Oslo process. It is the terror of Occupation, of humiliation on a personal and collective basis, of deprivation and legalized robbery, of alternating exploitation and starvation. This is the mass of the iceberg, the terror that is itself a long-term greenhouse for counter-terror. And I simply refuse to be a terrorist and criminal, even if the entire tribe denounces me."

http://www.guidedones.com/issues/regions/meast/openletter.htm

[sylvester80]

"And that brings me to the second specific issue, that of the Nazi allusion.
Some readers thought that the way the Tikkun ad said "obeying orders" was an allusion to Nazi murderers' claim that they were "just obeying orders." Rabbi Lerner has rightly pointed out to these readers, that automatic execution of orders is a characteristic of all dictatorship, not just the Nazi one, while refusal on moral grounds is a sign of democracy. I agree, but let me be less polite and politically correct. After all, it's just my country that's going up in smoke as I write. What is this? Does Israel have the exclusive monopoly of labeling all its rivals as Nazis, and everyone else has to shut up, even when reality starts speaking for itself?

Parties that support the essentially Nazi idea of deporting all Palestinians from the country, have been part of our Knesset and our 'legitimate' political map since 1984. Recent opinion polls show that 35% of the Jewish public now supports this 'solution', as it is sometimes called. Leaders, Rabbis, and just plain folk feel free to call openly in the mass media to eradicate Palestinian cities with or without their tenants. Last weekend, Gen. (res.) Effi Eitam, fresh out of the military and all ready to take the leadership of the religious public and become a deputy or alternative to Netanyahu, received a flattering cover story on Haaretz supplement. He unfolded his chilling ideology, calling to expel those Palestinians who don't want to remain in the Galilee and West Bank as serfs, to Jordan, and from Gaza to Sinai. And he said this: why should us, the country poorest in land resources, bear the burden of solving the Palestinian problem? Well I don't know about you, but I remember some of the Nazi rhetoric in that dark period between the Kristallnacht of 1938 and the beginning of the war, when Jews were expelled from Germany but could find no safe haven anywhere else. When I see a retired IDF general and rising political star use the exact same Nazi rhetoric on Israel's most 'liberal' newspaper, without any criticism by his interviewer or the editors - my hair just stands on my head in horror."

http://www.guidedones.com/issues/regions/meast/openletter.htm

[sylvester80]

"Let's move from the political scene back to the ground. My friend, Captain (Res.) Dan Tamir, decided to refuse to serve in the Territories about a year ago, after he realized what he'd done as a reserve regiment's intelligence officer a few weeks before that. He realized he had laid out the plans to convert a large Palestinian town into a closed ghetto. You can find his full statement on our website, http://www.seruv.org.il/. The vast majority of Palestinians in the Territories now starve in such ghettos; in those days of mercy when they are allowed to leave them by foot and perhaps catch a taxi, these taxis are forbidden from using most of the paved roads in the region.

But why listen to a 'leftist'? Let's hear it from senior IDF officers. One of the top commanders in the Territories was quoted in Haaretz (Jan. 25) as saying that in order to prepare for potential battles in dense urban neighborhoods, the IDF must learn, if necessary, how the German army 'operated' in the Warsaw Ghetto. A week later, the reporter confirmed this quote and the fact that this is a widespread opinion in the IDF, and went further to morally defend it. A small number of people, including myself, tried to raise a scandal over this. One letter to the editor was published in Haaretz. A much tougher letter, which I wrote, was never published, nor was my plea for a phone discussion with an editor ever answered. The issue just died down. No one in Israel or in the Jewish public abroad was interested. Where were all these holy souls, who now scold Tikkun because they indirectly allude to the Nazi horror, where were they all when a senior IDF officer proudly called, "in order to beat the Palestinians, let's be Judo-Nazis"?

In my letter to Haaretz I went further. Knowing the IDF mentality and adding one to one, I concluded that the IDF is operationally prepared to invade refugee camps - an utter, indefensible war crime - and through this leak to the press it is starting to pressure the government and prepare the public opinion for the invasion. The letter was not published. It was sent on February 2. A few weeks later we all saw the horrors of the refugee camp invasions and the bloody revenge attacks that followed. And you know what? Army generals and colonels morally and professionally pat themselves on the back, because these invasions "prevented terror", and killed only dozens and not thousands. (Note: in fact, the major reason limiting the bloodshed was the 'terrorists' responsible decision not to turn the camps into all-out battlegrounds. But this may change in the next round.)"

http://www.guidedones.com/issues/regions/meast/openletter.htm

[sylvester80]

"Let me end this 'Nazi' discussion with Jose Saramagu's brave statement a couple of days ago. In case you haven't heard (no such case, I presume), he visited Ramallah and said that the reality imposed by Israel in Palestine is a crime. A crime that can be compared with Buchenwald and Auschwitz.
Now Saramagu is no fool; he knows that there are no gas chambers in the Territories yet. But his keen writer's eye has perceived, that we are already well down the mental road that may lead there. This man is a true friend, and a true friend tells you the ugly truth in the face. Indeed, if you thoroughly brainwash yourself that "it's us or them", where does it lead you when push comes to shove?
Saramagu's cry is intended to shock us, to wake us up to what we have really become, to what we are really doing, and to how all this might end. In this sense, he is trying to do exactly what we refuseniks tried to do with our letter, and I thank him for what he's done even though his words may have been too strong to swallow for most people."

http://www.guidedones.com/issues/regions/meast/openletter.htm

[sylvester80]

"But not the Palestinians. Because the Palestinians are too painfully close, like a rival sibling (and - may I add - because they have always been so weak), we have singled them out for a special treatment. Having them under our rule, we've allowed ourselves to trample them like dirt, like dogs. We've been doing it even to our own Palestinian citizens (especially before 1966), but we have perfected our treatment in this strange no man's land created in 1967, and known as the Occupied Territories. There we have created an entirely hallucinatory reality, in which the true humans, members of the Nation of Masters, could move and settle freely and safely, while the sub-humans, the Nation of Slaves, were shoved into the corners, and kept invisible and controlled under our IDF boots.

I know. I've been there. I was taught how to do this, back in the mid-1980's. I did and witnessed as a matter of fact, deeds that I'm ashamed to remember to this day. And fortunately for me, I did not have to witness or do anything truly 'pornographic', as some friends of mine experienced."

http://www.guidedones.com/issues/regions/meast/openletter.htm

[sylvester80]

"Since 1987, this cruel, impossible, unnatural, insulting reality in the Territories has been exploding in our face. But because of our unshakeable belief that the Palestinians are monsters who want to throw us into the sea, we reacted by trying to maintain what we've created at all costs. This meant of course employing more and more and more force, with the natural result of receiving more and more and more force in return. When a fledgling and hesitating peace process tried to work its way through this mess, one major factor (perhaps THE factor) that undermined it and voided its meaning was our establishment's endless fear and suspicion of The Other. To resolve this fear and suspicion, we chose the insane route of demanding full control of The Other throughout the process. When this Other finally decided that we're cheating him out of his freedom (and having too many mental disorders of his own to accommodate ours as well), violence erupted, and all our ancient instincts woke up. There they are, we said in relief, now we see their true face again. The Arabs want to throw us into the sea. There's no one to talk with ('no partner', in our beloved ex-PM's words), and they understand only force. And so we responded as we know and love, with more and more and more force. This time, the effect was that of putting out a fire with a barrel of gasoline. And that's the moment when I said to myself, NO, I'm not playing this game anymore."

http://www.guidedones.com/issues/regions/meast/openletter.htm

[sylvester80]

Yes, I'm done! If you have any decency and you really care to know the truth (not the propaganda that the right wing politicians and media are feeding you), you will read this letter 4 times in its entirety, from a Jew who has seen and knows first hand what reality really is. Let your conscience take you from there...

http://www.guidedones.com/issues/regions/meast/openletter.htm