ZGram - 7/19/2001 - "Palestinians can absorb whatever Israel hurls at them"

[Ingrid Rimland]

 Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

 ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

 July 19, 2001

 Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Here is one heck of a column by well-known conservative columnist, Charley
Reese.  Subject: "Palestinians can absorb whatever Israel hurls at them,"
published in the Orlando Orlando Sentinel | July 13, 2001

[START]

 The Israelis bulldozed another 14 Palestinian homes this week in a refugee
camp in Gaza. The United States said the act was "provocative."

 Actually, it was a war crime. Actually, what the Israelis have been doing
to the Palestinians has been correctly characterized by the International
Red Cross as war crimes and by a United Nations official as "an affront to
civilization."

 But, hey, you misled, sleeping Americans, you don't know what a
breakthrough it is for the U.S. State Department to utter even the mildest
criticism of some Israeli atrocity.

 "Provocative."

 Wow. Golly gee whiz. Old George W. Bush promised he would provide
leadership, and that's real leadership, calling a war crime "provocative."
Finally, after eight months of refusing to utter even that bland a
criticism, he managed to say the destruction of homes so precious to such
terribly poor people is "provocative."

 It is such an improvement over Warren Christopher. When he was secretary
of state, the Israelis were indulging in one of their periodic and
gratuitous artillery attacks against villages in South Lebanon.

 A group of about 100 Lebanese women and children fled to a United Nations
compound for safety. It didn't matter. The Israelis fired on it
deliberately, as a subsequent U.N. investigation demonstrated. They were
all killed, along with the U.N. peacekeepers. Bits and pieces of their
flesh hung like grotesque decorations, dripping blood from shattered debris
and blasted trees.

 Do you know what Christopher said?

 "The United States urges both sides to show restraint."

 I wonder how he expected the shattered flesh of the dead Lebanese women
and children to show restraint. Perhaps he thought that they should not
bleed so profusely from their wounds. I think that was the very first time
I felt ashamed to be an American, listening to that rat-faced, cold-blooded
international lawyer brushing off an atrocity like a crumb on his expensive
coat sleeve.

 One day, Americans are going to wake up from more than 50 years of Zionist
propaganda and suddenly feel like strangers in a strange land, to borrow
the title of an old science-fiction work. They're finally going to see the
simple truth:

 Israelis drove Palestinians out of their own country and confiscated their
land and wealth. Israelis refused to allow (and still refuse) Palestinian
refugees to return, despite United Nations resolutions instructing them to
do so.

 In 1967, the Israelis attacked and took the West Bank, Gaza and East
Jerusalem. Since then, they have ruled it and still rule, despite U.N.
resolutions against their actions.

 Now, after dragging out so-called peace negotiations for 10 years - how
can the simple question, "When are you going to withdraw from the
territories you illegally occupy?" take 10 years? - the drama is heading
toward a climax.

 The Israelis have tried economic strangulation. They have tried to force
the Palestinians to accept a chopped-up pseudo-country. They have tried
killing their children, demolishing their homes and assassinating their
leaders.

 They tried uprooting their agricultural orchards and sealing the
Palestinians off from normal travel.

 By the way, where are you environmentalists while the Israelis commit this
environmental atrocity? Don't you know how long it takes for an olive tree
to reach maturity and start bearing fruit? I thought you were concerned
about the environment. Oh, excuse me - not when it's a Palestinian
environment. My mistake. I sometimes forget who is a hypocrite and who
isn't, because there are so many these days.

 What's next, of course, is for the Israelis to take off the bloody glove
and commit one super massacre in an attempt to drive the Palestinians out
or to break their spirit. This is what the Palestinians expect. They are
bracing for it. They know that the Israelis have elected the one
politician, Ariel Sharon, willing to do it.

 They figure they can absorb that blow. If the survivors can rise from the
rubble and say to the Israelis, "You can bury us here, but you can never
drive us out of our own country," then the Israelis will have exhausted
their options. They will dump Sharon and replace him with somebody who will
finally, at long last, do some serious talking.

 It's already terrible what the Palestinians are going through, and this
new assault, when it comes, will be far worse. They need the support now of
decent people with the courage to stand up for human rights. As you can
see, the Bush administration prefers to remain on its knees. Most members
of Congress are afraid even to do that. They prefer the supine position,
total prostration.

 If you can't find the courage to speak out against evil financed with your
tax money, then at least watch as Palestinian children show you how real
men and women live and die with honor.

 Reach Charley Reese at creese@orlandosentinel.com.

[END]

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Thought for the Day:

"The meek, the terrible meek, the fierce agonizing meek, are about to enter
into their inheritance."

(Charles Rann Kennedy)