False Inheritance by Rice

Author:Rice [Rice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781136159817
Google: 9OYrBgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-11-12T04:43:33+00:00

7

The Political Reality

The belief that Israel is a special kind of state1 and its Jewish citizens a special sort of people has bedevilled the search for a solution to the crisis which Israel′s continued refusal to conform to acceptable patterns of behaviour presents to the world. From the outset the arrogance of Israel has been a formidable barrier to any sort of understanding with the Arab states. Israel was the haven for which European Jews had yearned; that it occupied land which was the birthright of another, disorganised, largely friendless and unlettered people mattered not at all. ′There is no such thing as Palestinians′, as Mrs Meir, a Prime Minister of Israel, was later to remark, ′they do not exist′.2 Such offensive nonsense is like the remark quoted earlier, of another Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, whose principal role in the creation of the Israeli state was as a leader of the murderous Stern Gang responsible for the killing of the United Nations negotiator Count Bernadotte, of Lord Moyne and of others less distinguished, when he was moved to say, with a fine sense of near-Biblical rhetoric, ′From this mountain top and from the vantage point of history I say that these people [the Palestinians] are like grasshoppers compared to us.′3 The Israeli establishment seems to be much given to contemptuous dismissal of the Palestinians in entomological terms. Thus General Raphael Eitan, the one-time Israeli Chief of Staff, speaking contemptuously of the Arabs, said, ′When we have settled the land all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.′4

It is difficult indeed to argue with such posturings; all these comments, however, demonstrate that contempt which has become the hallmark of so many of Israel′s leaders when they are forced to consider the Palestinians not merely as ′terrorists′ but as a people which they have greatly wronged. It is difficult not to see such remarks as nakedly racist.

To some degree, however, it is possible to understand the Israeli disregard for the Palestinians which still so evidently persists amongst the older generation of Israeli politicians. One of the more extraordinary aspects of the presence of the Israeli state in Palestine was that, for more than the first twenty years of its existence, Israel experienced very little effective opposition either from the Palestinians or from the Arab states as a whole. The wars of 19565 and 19676 provided opportunities for Israel to gain more territory and to reduce her vulnerability to the danger of any serious attack by the Arab states; the 1967 confrontation, a disaster of catastrophic proportions for the Arabs, increased Israel′s sense of superiority which came to be expressed in an increasingly arrogant and dismissive attitude towards the Arabs. The Israelis did not apparently foresee the dangers which they were storing up for themselves by their occupation of lands on the west bank of the Jordan and in Gaza, which twenty years later would come back to haunt Israel like the Furies.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.