obmar
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Can you really not see?Can you really not see?
By Amira Hass
Let us leave aside those Israelis whose ideology
supports the dispossession of the Palestinian people
because "God chose us." Leave aside the judges who
whitewash every military policy of killing and
destruction. Leave aside the military commanders who
knowingly jail an entire nation in pens surrounded by
walls, fortified observation towers, machine guns,
barbed wire and blinding projectors. Leave aside the
ministers. All of these are not counted among the
collaborators. These are the architects, the planners,
the designers, the executioners.
But there are others. Historians and mathematicians,
senior editors, media stars, psychologists and family
doctors, lawyers who do not support Gush Emunim and
Kadima, teachers and educators, lovers of hiking
trails and sing-alongs, high-tech wizards. Where are
you? And what about you, researchers of Nazism, the
Holocaust and Soviet gulags? Could you all be in favor
of systematic discriminating laws? Laws stating that
the Arabs of the Galilee will not even be compensated
for the damages of the war by the same sums their
Jewish neighbors are entitled to (Aryeh Dayan, Haaretz
, August 21).
Could it be that you are all in favor of a racist
Citizenship Law that forbids an Israeli Arab from
living with his family in his own home? That you side
with further expropriation of lands and the
demolishing of additional orchards, for another
settler neighborhood and another exclusively Jewish
road? That you all back the shelling and missile fire
killing the old and the young in the Gaza Strip?
Could it be that you all agree that a third of the
West Bank (the Jordan Valley) should be off limits to
Palestinians? That you all side with an Israeli policy
that prevents tens of thousands of Palestinians who
have obtained foreign citizenship from returning to
their families in the occupied territories?
Could your mind really be so washed with the security
excuse, used to forbid Gaza students from studying
occupational therapy at Bethlehem and medicine at Abu
Dis, and preventing sick people from Rafah from
receiving medical treatment in Ramallah? Will also you
find it easy to hide behind the explanation "we had no
idea": we had no idea that the discrimination
practiced in the distribution of water - which is
solely controlled by Israel - leaves thousands of
Palestinian households without water during the hot
summer months; we had no idea that when the IDF blocks
the entrance to villages, it also blocks their access
to springs or water tanks.
But it cannot be that you don't see the iron gates
along route 344 in the West Bank, blocking access to
it from the Palestinian villages it passes by. It
cannot be that you support preventing the access of
thousands of farmers to their land and plantations,
that you support the quarantine on Gaza which prevents
the entry of medicine for hospitals, the disruption of
electricity and water supply to 1.4 million human
beings, closing their only outlet to the world for
months.
Could it be that you do not know what is happening 15
minutes from your faculties and offices? Is it
plausible that you support the system in which Hebrew
soldiers, at checkpoints in the heart of the West
Bank, are letting tens of thousands of people wait
everyday for hours upon hours under the blazing sun,
while selecting: residents of Nablus and Tul Karm are
not allowed through, 35-year-olds and under - yallah,
back to Jenin, residents of the Salem village are not
even allowed to be here, a sick woman who skipped the
line must learn a lesson and will be purposefully
detained for hours. Machsom Watch's site is available
for all; in it are countless such testimonies and
worse, a day by day routine. But it cannot be that
those who are appalled over every swastika painted on
a Jewish grave in France and over every anti-Semitic
headline in a Spanish local newspaper will not know
how to reach this information, and will not be
appalled and outraged.
As Jews we all enjoy the privilege Israel gives us,
what makes us all collaborators. The question is what
does every one of us do in an active and direct daily
manner to minimize cooperation with a dispossessing,
suppressing regime that never has its fill. Signing a
petition and tutting will not do. Israel is a
democracy for its Jews. We are not in danger of our
lives, we will not be jailed in concentration camps,
our livelihood will not be damaged and recreation in
the countryside or abroad will not be denied to us.
Therefore, the burden of collaboration and direct
responsibility is immeasurably heavy.
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The Inquisitor
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Excellent post, obmar.
I concur completely with this article. It is very powerful.
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