-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2000/503/re4.htm
}}>Begin
Shame on you, Mrs Albright
By Hanan Ashrawi
In her interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" (Sunday 8 October 2000), US
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright epitomised the willful blindness, moral
emptiness, human insensitivity, political cynicism, and strategic ignorance
that have characterised the US's handling of the Arab-Israeli "peace process"
and the Palestinian question in particular. When asked about the US's
abstention on UN Security Council Resolution 1233 deploring the [anonymous]
"provocation carried out at Al-Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem on 28 September
2000" and condemning [also anonymous] "acts of violence, especially the
excessive use of force against Palestinians," Albright immediately waxed
apologetic.
She was not defensive about diluting the text of the resolution and eliminating
any explicit reference to Israel's culpability, about abstaining when the US
should have cast an affirmative vote in condemnation of the horrific and tragic
loss of Palestinian lives (mainly children), or about American passivity before
the very visible crimes against humanity that are being committed by Israel
with impunity and arrogance. Rather, Mrs Albright expressed contrition at not
casting a veto on this hesitant, apologetic, and inadequate expression by the
international community of minimal recognition of Palestinian humanity and
suffering. Why? Because the US wants to "safeguard" its role as an "even-handed
peace broker."
To the Palestinians, this came as a complete surprise, since the US has never
been even-handed or fair, or even remotely human, in its brokerage of the peace
process. Given the chance to atone, however modestly, for such double standards
and bias, the US once again has insisted on failing the test of moral integrity
and humanity. Worse yet, Mrs Albright (with a straight face) declared in a cold
and deliberate tone that the Palestinians have "placed Israel under siege." I
immediately assumed that she had confused her nouns, and that she had
inadvertently given the converse version of reality. In the next breath,
however, and with the same deadpan, expressionless, emotionless, glazed look,
Mrs Albright repeated: "Those Palestinian rock throwers have placed Israel
under siege," adding that the Israeli army is defending itself.
At the risk of tediousness and redundancy, it is appropriate to remind Mrs
Albright of a few basic facts that may have escaped her notice. It is Israel
that is the belligerent occupant of Palestine (and not the other way around).
Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles are surrounding Palestinian villages, camps
and cities (and not the other way around). Israeli (American-made) Apache gun
ships are firing Lau and other missiles at Palestinian protesters and homes
(and not the other way around). It is Israel that is confiscating Palestinian
land and importing Jewish settlers to set up illegal armed settlements in the
heart of Palestinian territory (and not the other way around). The settlers on
the rampage in the West Bank are Israelis terrorising Palestinians in their own
homes (and not the other way around). The homes that are being demolished at
the hands of the Israelis are Palestinian homes (and not the other way around).
The armed soldiers and Special Forces at checkpoints throughout Palestine are
Israeli (and not the other way around). The more than a hundred murdered
civilians and thousands of injured are all Palestinians being shot by Israeli
occupation troops (and not the other way around). It is Israel that has closed
down the Palestinian airport at Gaza, thereby preventing badly needed medical
supplies from reaching the Palestinians (and not the other way around). The
crossing points to and from Palestine as well as entrances and exits to and
from all Palestinian inhabited areas are manned and controlled by Israeli
soldiers who have completely prevented all freedom of movement (and not the
other way around).
To state the obvious once again, Israel is committing atrocities against the
Palestinians with total impunity, and yet Mrs Albright maintains that "Israel
is besieged." To add insult to injury, she admonishes the Palestinian
leadership for not ordering its people to "stop the violence," as though she
were entirely oblivious of the fact that all it takes is an order from Barak to
his "disciplined" occupation army to stop killing Palestinians. No, we will not
lie down and die in silence, even to accommodate you, Mrs Albright, for cold-
blooded murder is not a phenomenon we condone. I suggest that the siege is in
the minds of American officials and apologists for Israel, who willfully
persist in blaming the victim, finding a false symmetry between occupier and
occupied, adopting a double standard on the value of human lives and rights
while totally dehumanising the Palestinians, in treating Israel as a country
above the law and Palestinians as a people not worthy of the protection of the
law, in manipulating and inventing a peace process that would accommodate such
a racist and stereotypical version of reality rather than a reality of justice
and evenhandedness, and in evading and distorting moral responsibility towards
the Palestinian victims rather than celebrating the violence of the oppressor.
Granted, Mrs Albright, Milosevic is a war criminal (although his army did not
massacre the Serb opposition that brought about his downfall), but what about
Ariel Sharon and even your good friend Ehud Barak? Whose blood is dripping from
their hands? Granted, Mrs Albright, "the people have spoken" in Yugoslavia, so
why don't you listen when the Palestinian people cry out for justice? As a
woman, a mother and grandmother, you surely understand the pain of children and
their parents when they get hurt; what about the agony of the senseless and
brutal murder being visited on Palestinian children? I suggest, Mrs Albright,
that before you go on television in front of the whole world to pontificate on
issues Palestinian, you start by examining the facts, and then start to examine
your own conscience.
Related stories:
Focus on Palestine
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The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
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