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"HEBRON NOW AND
FOREVER!" SAY BIBI'S MEN
ANOTHER HOLOCAUST AHEAD?
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By Mark A. Bruzonsky*
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"They continually
scream against 'terrorism', but just as
continually they practice
their own forms of it while
creating the very crucibles
that incubate it."
MER - Washington - 8/22/97:
It's more and more obvious what the Likud-wing
of the Israeli Zionist establishment really wants. Even the grossly distorted
imagery of highly co-opted and completely subservient Palestinian nationalism
is too much for them. They want to bring even that deception instigated
by their Labor-wing to a crash by stripping Arafat of even the illusory
hopes he has so sadly, and so corruptly, manipulated to keep his people
in line. All the while, of course, "on the ground", Apartheid-like
policies have continued to take ever-firmer root making all aspects of
life far worse for the Palestinian population than before the "peace
process" began.
.
For the Likudnicks this imagery of flags and
stamps and "police" -- even though everything is tightly controlled
by Israel with Palestinian towns looking more like reservations by the
day -- is in itself going too far. Their policies are actually designed
to either bring Arafat's "Palestinian Authority" completely to
its knees, discredit the PA regime so badly that it collapses onto its
many contradictions, or foment a crippling Palestinian civil war. They
continually scream against "terrorism", but just as continually
they practice their own forms of it while creating the very crucibles that
incubate it.
.
Whatever, the Likudnicks believe that Palestinian
nationalism can and should finally be dealt a fatal blow. After all, killing
off this nationalist fervor is really what lies behind Israeli policies
going way back to Israel's origins and the collusion with the Jordanian
Hashemite Regime to divide Palestine between them. That collusion continues
these days more in the open, the Israelis and the Hashemites across the
Jordan still intent as has always been the case to control and to subvert
Palestinian nationalism.
.
No matter what soothing words they may sometimes
utter, the Laborites as well have no intention of reversing basic Zionist
policies now generations old. Rabin was not transformed; he simply saw
that with the collapse of the PLO collusion was now possible as well with
its carcass, with Arafat himself. It was a Machiavellian opportunity Rabin
was finally persuaded would fulfill his public promise (when he was Yitzhak
Shamir's Defense Minister in 1988) to "break their bones" and
crush the "Intifada". These indeed were the goals of Oslo and
one of the central purposes of the post-Gulf-war "Peace Process".
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After all, the basic policies in place today
-- that of settlements, that of "separation", that of "autonomy"
-- all originally came from Labor. Just like the recent "Har Homa"
settlement earlier this year, Likud has mostly implemented what Labor has
begun; in the case of Har Homa, Netanyahu only doing what Peres himself
had promised to do, and did it precisely on Peres' publicly stated schedule.
Likud rhetoric is often more harsh and always more direct; but that shouldn't
cause serious people to overlook the gross contradiction between Labor's
soothing rhetoric and actual policies.
.
These are the bleak realities facing the Palestinians,
the Arabs, and indeed the entire world. These are the bleak realities driving
the radicalization of the Arab world, the escalating arms race in the region,
and the possibility of nuclear/chemical/biological war in the years ahead.
And this is the context in which the some of
the top leaders in Israel have just this week publicly expressed a new
slogan purposefully designed to further inflame and infuriate:
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"HEBRON NOW AND FOREVER!"
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Danny Naveh, Cabinet Secretary, David Bar-Illan,
Director of Policy Planning and government spokesman, and Uzi Arad, Foreign
Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister (and incidentally my old classmate
at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton), have jointly just come forward
to publicly adopt this slogan as their own. Clearly they could not have
done so without the Prime Minister's personal knowledge and blessing.
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This triumvirate is not only working to make
any future "final settlement" between Israelis and Palestinians
impossible, but to symbolically divide Jews and Arabs behind hostile barricades
even within the historic city of Hebron. Despite the duplicitous American-arranged
deal earlier this year, the Israeli army still occupies Hebron and most
importantly still controls all means of coming and going to the city.
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How tragic that the very city of Abraham, and
the very site where the biblical father of both peoples is buried, is being
so manipulated and so violated not just by fanatical settlers, but by the
most senior leaders of Israel.
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It is a terrible historical travesty that the
Zionist movement has brought and whose future ramifications loom ominously.
It will certainly lead to more bloodshed, more repression, and then much
more bloodshed in a cycle that now feeds on itself. The hatreds created
today will have their reverberations in the years still ahead.
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And somewhere down the historical road ahead
all this could still lead to annihilation. For the outlines of a possible
new holocaust can already be seen on history's horizon. And if this outline
begins to take more definite shape it could be leading to another major
cataclysm for the Jewish people, as well as the Palestinians and maybe
the entire region.
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Pulitzer prize-winning author, Seymour Hersh,
wrote THE SAMPSON COMPLEX about Israel's nuclear weapons program some years
ago. It's even more relevant today then it was then.
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Ironically, should this possible dark future
develop in the years ahead -- and some of the most astute and independent
analysts are beginning to predict just this -- it will have been nurtured
by a fervent Jewish extremism. And yes, it should be said, also by a peculiar
Zionist form of racism whose destructive psychological roots can be found
in the European holocaust of the past -- that one perpetrated by Christian
Europe while Jews were living peacefully in Muslim countries.
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* Mark Bruzonsky is Publisher of MID-EAST
REALITIES and former Washington representative of the World Jewish Congress.
His edited books about the Middle East have been published by the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian, Congressional
Quarterly, and National Geographic (film). Bruzonsky produces the weekly
TV program MID-EAST REALITIES and has visited the Middle East region over
150 times. For detailed bio and publication information see: http://WWW.MiddleEast.Org/mab.htm.
Bruzonsky can be contacted by email to MAB@MiddleEast.Org, phone (202)
362-5266 (Ext 278) or fax (202) 362-6965.
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M I D - E A S T R E
A L I T I E S
(202) 362-5266, Ext 638 Fax:
(202) 362-6965 MER@MiddleEast.Org
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