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by Peter A. Belmont / 2011-11-14
© 2011 Peter Belmont
I do not struggle to understand the self-righteousness of Israelis when it comes to international criticism or condemnation. Israelis do not want to feel themselves criminals, so their fall-back is self-righteousness.
When Americans (or English, etc.,) came to North America as colonists, they felt they had a right to live here. That implied to them a right to displace the savages. “Savages”? Well, if you feel that you have a right to displace someone else, you identify them by names that sound like “bad names” to you. “Indigenes” is not “bad” enough. The longer you live there, the longer you pursue your project of colonization and displacement, the more secure you feel (the more secure you MUST feel, to preserve your sanity or your self-respect) in your “right” to displace the “other”.
The intending-to-be-Israelis arrived in Palestine in a colonial mood. The need to displace the “other” was clear and become clearer, especially when the “other” fought back. They said, “I want a Jewish state, nothing wrong with that noble—and indeed necessary—desire”. So when the “other” said, “not in my backyard”, they decided that they had the right to take over that entire “backyard.”
They decided, in short, that they could use force and violence to take for themselves what they had persuaded themselves that they had a “right” to. They knew they could never get their own “Jewish State” by any means other than the use of force and violence. They also knew that they would have to remove the existing non-Jewish residents of the land if they were to acquire a majority-Jewish State. What we today call “ethnic cleansing” was seen as a necessary element to state building from the first. Even at a time (the immediate post WWII period) when the nations were writing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which declared the right of people to return to their own homeland[1]
Nowadays there is a very slight (slight because so fiercely suppressed) international criticism of the extremely ugly face of Israeli colonialism—generated, I suppose, because Israel was not satisfied to take what it took in 1948 and said, with Oliver, “Please, sir, I want MORE”. This business of taking MORE has become very ugly.
International criticism is indeed justified. The taking (and whatever else is Israel’s settlement project in the West Bank than a “taking”, intended to be as permanent as any Tausendjähriges Reich) violates international law and agreements, and the manner of the taking has involved Israel is 44 years of violations of international law and agreements and in multitudinous war-crimes.
The Israeli, however, never identified the territorial extent of her beloved “Israel” and thus never felt the need to say, “I have a right to this much, but no right to any more.” The Israeli territorial ambition was always, and remains, boundless. The idea that there existed a necessity (to take land from the other) justified anything and everything. If 1948 was not a crime, and Israelis of course felt it was not a crime, because it was necessary to fulfil their dream, then the events of 1967-2011 were also not a crime. All is justified. If international law and agreements, and the sensibilities of the people of the world disagree, then too bad for them. No skin off Israeli teeth.
So, while I have no trouble understanding the self-righteousness of Israelis when it comes to international criticism and condemnation, I must nevertheless fight the occupation tooth and nail.
The very interesting idea of “let my people go” rings thrice for me.
First, of course, it rings for my Palestinian people, who need to be freed. Second, it rings for the human race, also my people, whose voice of condemnation of the Israeli occupation has been suppressed. And, third, it rings for those among the Jewish people who have lost their way, seduced by the idea that a mistakenly-viewed-as-necessary end justifies any and every means, no matter how cruel, violent, or illegal.
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[1] Article 13.
* (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
* (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
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