It's Not "the Occupation"!

Excerpts from "Speaking the truth to Jews" by Paul Eisen:

What Israel and Zionism have done, and are doing, to the Palestinians is indefensible, yet so many Jews defend it. How and why do they do this? And why does the rest of the world seem complicit and unable to speak out?

The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, like most instances of ethnic cleansing, was intentional, premeditated and planned.

This was the original sin. Since then, the sin has been compounded many times over, as Israel has continued its assault on Palestinians and Palestinian life. From border raids and massacres to the occupation and the settlements, to the slaughter of 20,000 in Lebanon, through provocations, closures, expulsions, demolitions, arrests, torture and assassinations, right up to the chicaneries of Oslo and the Roadmap where Palestinians were to be bamboozled into going into their cage quietly, Israel and Zionism have sought to destroy the Palestinians, if not always physically, then certainly as a people in their own land.

For a relatively small number [sic] of Jews, support for what is being done to the Palestinians is a relatively easy matter. God gave the land to the Jews, the Palestinians are Amalek, and if they will not submit to Jewish rule they must, and will, be destroyed.

But for most Jews things are not so simple. Defending the indefensible is never easy, and many Jews, intellectually sophisticated, secular and liberal in their instincts, require more than just careful selections from the Bible to justify what is being done to the Palestinians. These Jews have had, over the years, to tell themselves a lot of stories.

Many Jews, now aware of the injustice associated with the establishment of Israel, but still unable to relinquish their belief in Israel's essential innocence, have congregated around the slogans: "End the occupation!" and "Two states for two peoples!"

That there is no 'occupation', and that there will never be a true Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, are simply denied.

Israel in 1967 was not the innocent party threatened with annihilation by the Arab states (though its population probably thought it was). Israel had been preparing for such a war for years. Neither was Israel's victory anything other then totally expected by anyone who was even a little bit in the know. Like the 1947-48 conflict, the war of 1967 was an opportunity gladly taken for the take-over of the remaining 22 percent of Palestine. This was the fulfilment of Zionism's historic mission.

There is, then, no occupation. There never was an occupation. If there had been an occupation, and the Israelis had the slightest intention of ending it they would have done so years ago. The fact is, that no Israeli government, either of the left or the right, has ever shown any intention of fully withdrawing back to the 1967 border. No Israeli government, left or right, has shown the slightest inclination to permit anything even remotely resembling a real Palestinian state to be established on the West Bank and Gaza. Any state that could emerge would be tiny, fragmented and weak, being simply a legitimisation of Palestinian surrender. The occupation, in fact, has been a fig-leaf to conceal the reality of the final conquest of Palestine.

Nevertheless, for many Jews the occupation is the bedrock of Israel's essential innocence. Occupations are temporary and can be reversed, and this one, they believe, was the result of a war which Israel did not seek. So, Israel and Zionism are still, at heart, innocent. The Jewish state, established at the expense of another people's national life, is still blameless. It is the occupation that has 'forced' Israel into the role of oppressor, and if only Israel would withdraw to the borders of 1967 all would be as it had been, only better: the gains of 1948 would then be secured, Jews would have their Israel with its 'moral foundations', and the Palestinians would be contained within a bantustan with a semblance, but not the reality, of justice. For many Jews, this would mean that they could have both their empowerment and their consciences.

Source article: http://www.righteousjews.org/article19.html

P.S. It's not the occupation that's the problem! It's ZIONISM! It's zionism in Palestine! It's zionism in the USA! It's zionism in the world! It's ZIONISM!