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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Letters to the Editor
Thursday 04 September @ 15:03:16 |
 Re: From the Midwest to the Middle East
In her August 20 “response” to the letter signed by Polly Mann and myself (August 6), of which I was the principal author, Fields seems far more intent on maliciously attacking Polly than on engaging in “open and honest debate.”
Fields’ tendency to generalize without reference to specifics has impaired her concentration on the actual content of our letter. For example, her revisiting of the situation on the eve of the 1967 war constitutes a misreading of the statement by Menachem Begin that we quoted, in which he verified that Israel attacked Egypt freely, not defensively. Does she think she knows better than Begin? Fields’ global assertion that Israelis don’t want war while Palestinians do, or that “all Arabs…have sworn to annihilate” Israel, again unveils her unfortunate lack of historical perspective or background knowledge. She would do well to read, for example, a book that I edited in 1984 by the highly regarded Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, entitled Before Their Diaspora, a detailed history of the Palestinians from the late 19th century until 1948. Horrified at a reported comparison between the majority of Israelis and “good Germans,” Fields skates over the fact that it was not Polly (or myself) who made that comparison, but rather a bona fide Israeli woman. Likewise, she not only denies but also excuses the Israeli racism against Palestinians attested so vehemently by the same Israeli witness. Altogether such maneuvers on Fields’ part are strange tactics for a “college educator.”
The “Palestinian-led” International Solidarity Movement recognizes-in line with international law-the right of an occupied population to resist military occupation through “legitimate armed struggle.” However, the ISM itself and its members are “committed to the principles of nonviolent resistance” (see the organization’s website: http://www.palsolidarity.org). Has Fields heard of former ISM member Rachel Corrie, and if so does she believe that Rachel was launching a violent revolution on March 16, when she was murdered by an American-made Israeli bulldozer? No matter; for Fields, “Palestinian-led” is probably equivalent to “terrorist.”
I have to wonder how many Palestinians Fields has ever spoken with, whether here in the Twin Cities or in Israel/Palestine. I wonder whether she has experienced any slice of daily life on the West Bank or the Gaza Strip: How about a few hours in bullet-ridden Rafah? Or a day or two in the Deheisha or Balata or Jenin refugee camps? If she had spent this past weekend in Nazlat Isa, a village north of Tulkarm near the Green Line, she would have seen industrial equipment demolish 4 houses, 2 garages, and 140 shops in a single day, inflicting 15-20 million dollars worth of damage-why? To make way for the so-called security fence, according to Israeli soldiers interviewed on the scene.
The elephant in the room, which Fields incredibly never acknowledges, is the Israeli military occupation and the whole apartheid system that goes with it. To deflect attention from Israel’s dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in their own land, Fields must demonize the “Arabs” as primordial enemies arbitrarily bent on Israel’s destruction.
Avraham Burg, a Labor Party member of the Knesset, published an essay in the Jewish weekly The Forward on August 29, in which he wrote: “Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centers of Israeli escapism. They consign themselves to Allah in our places of recreation, because their own lives are torture. They spill their own blood in our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites, because they have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated.”
Like Burg, those who are truly committed to justice and peace should do their best to find and speak the truth.
Elizabeth Burr
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