"The Wall"

Bilal Hashmi, Ph.D.*

The courageous stand by the Liberal Canadian MP, Pat O'Brien, against Israeli fascism is admirable. Mr. O'Brien has placed  his own  political life in jeopardy by telling the truth about the life of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Political Zionism is actively engaged in expansionism while justifying its encroachments  with  racist institutions supported by revisonism and ideological superstructures. No wonder Palestinians are reliving the brutal experience of the Blacks in South Africa under apartheid . Whereas  the whole world is moving toward national unity and breakdown of tribalism, Israel is moving in the opposite direction by creating a Bantustan amidst Palestine. The ancestors of a majority of  Israelis had been subjected to extreme form of European tribalism and genocide in the twentieth century. However, the survivors of this holocaust and their descendants are at present engaged in committing similar atrocities upon another group of

Semites,-- this time

  the Palestinians. The late philosopher Yeshayahu Leibovitz was right when he declared that "the occupation of Palestine has ruined every good part and destroyed the moral infrastructure upon which Israeli society exists."

Mr. Pat O'Brien in his attempt to capture an expansive mutilated life experience of the Palestinian generations under Israeli occupation, makes  use of an analogy of  "concentration camps."  I believe this is quite appropriate in this context, and as such,  is a useful  heuristic strategy for a narrative of  hundred of thousands of Palestinians who are locked up in Bantustan-like conditions. No wonder the Palestinians, whether through their few spoken words, or through reactive violence in response to Israeli state terrorism, are conveying a message to the world that they have been reduced to be "the Jews of the Jews" in their own homeland.  Furthermore, through their talking and walking the Palestinians refuse to become part of the dust-bin of history.

It must be understood that an analogy in everyday discourse is  not a description of an exactitude, but only a device used to inform about the similarities in some respects between things otherwise unlike. In other words, analogies  are only a partial resemblance between two or more phenomena. According to Webster's New World Dictionary, an analogy refers to the "process by which new or less familiar words, constructions, or pronunciations conform with the pattern older or more familiar." From this perspective Mr. O'Brien is quite justified when he observes that, "The wall denies basic human rights to the Palestinian people and further reduces the West Bank and Gaza strip to the status of concentration camps."

There is no denial of the historical anti-Semitism against the Jewish population of Europe and North America. However, evidence of the last three decades consistently supports the conclusion that such negative dispositions and practices toward the world Jewry have been steadily declining. The continuous exploitation of the Nazi holocaust by some groups for political and  economic gains, however,  has become in the words of Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry. On the other hand, even prior to the 9/11, there was  a steady  increase in hostilities toward another Semitic group amidst us; this time the Arabs/Muslims of North America.  America's bogyman is the Arab. Thanks to the TV. Arabs including  Palestinians, have been portrayed by the mass media as either 'billionaires or bombers',  rarely 'victims'. There is a narrative of a seven years old Arab child who was watching TV one Saturday afternoon, when he suddenly called out: "Daddy, Daddy, they have got some bad Arabs

 on TV." According to Jack G. Shaheen, a CBS News Consultant on Middle East Affairs and  a Professor Emeritus of Mass Communications at Southern Illinois University, describes that the child was "watching that great American morality play, TV wrestling. Akbar the Great who liked to hear the cracking of bones, and Abdulla the Butcher, a dirty fighter who liked to inflict pain, were pinning their foes with "camel locks.'' Rarely one ever sees a humane Arab on the screen." The Arab still remains North America's whipping boy, and more so when the West is at war with them. Such a hatred against the Arabs, thanks to the ideology of orientalism among other factors, is an old phenomenon. For instance, in his memoirs Terrel Bell, US's President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of education, writes bout the right-wing staffers at the White House who dismissed Arabs as "sand niggers". Sadly enough, such insults have multiplied and intensified since 9/11, this time with further blessings

 and  the legitimacy of the US government. It is in this racist environment that the Anti Defamation  League of Bi'nai B'rith and other such groups operate. Human decency demands that Israel's atrocious racist, ethnocist and expansionist policies in Palestine be condemned, and condemned loudly. Rather than asking for a 'repudiation' of a rare truth expressed by Mr. O'Brien, B'nai B'rith should have joined hands with Mr. Pat O'Brian for his courage in criticizing the inflammatory actions of Sharon and Israel's policies of Palestinian "politicide." Of course, this is a wishful thinking on my part.

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Apparently, Israel's oppression of the Palestinians has no limits. However, despite its fascist vision, a courageous minority of Israeli intellectuals and activists are coming forward. Take for instance; Baruch Kimmerling, a professor of sociology at Hebrew University who published a homage to Emile Zola, a French novelist and critic who lived from 1840 to 1902, entitled "I Accuse," in  the February 1, 2002, issue of the Hebrew weekly Kol Ha'Ir. His savage indictment of Sharon and Israel's military leadership is worth quoting here: "I accuse Ariel Sharon of creating a process in which he will not only intensify the reciprocal bloodshed, but is liable to instigate a regional war and partial or nearly complete ethnic cleansing of the Arabs in the 'Land of Israel' ... I accuse the military leadership, spurred by the national leadership, of inciting public opinion, under the cloak of supposed military professionalism, against the Palestinians. Never before  in Israel have so many

  generals in uniform, former generals, and the past members of the military intelligence, sometimes disguised as 'academics,' taken part in the public brainwashing... Let's stop this march of fools and build society anew, clean of militarism and oppression and exploitation of other people... And I accuse myself of knowing all of this, yet crying little and keeping quiet too often."

The story of Palestine remains unfinished, which must be told with honesty and integrity as it unfolds in front of our eyes. ________________________________________________________________________

(Dr.) Bilal Hashmi, is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology, at Eastern Washington University, Cheney/Spokane, WA. (USA)