The Israeli government will resume settlement building in and around Jerusalem, in defiance of the law and in defiance of previously-signed peace agreements. This tells the world the regard in which the Israeli govenrment holds peace with its neighbors and with Palestinians: as unimportant, and as irrelevant to its own goals. If they believe otherwise, they can show us. Israel is dismissive of U.S. government “dismay” at continued settlement building. “An aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday dismissed United States anger at Israel’s approval for new homes in a settlement near Jerusalem, saying it was part of a routine building programme.”
The advice of a growing number of Americans fed up with this blatant disregard for peace: Cut off the money and weapons shipments to Israel from the U.S. All of it. We are fed up, too. We have never been willing to fund any anti-peace government and are even less willing now. Every settlement Israel builds threatens U.S. safety and security. The Netanyahu government clearly does not care. It’s time for Obama to get tough with Israel.
Boy in Gaza after the war.
Boy in Gaza after the war.
An open letter to Barack Obama
Haidar Eid, a professor of English, political commentator and resident of Gaza City, asks whether the president of the United States remembers anything from his long-ago meeting with the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said.
November 19, 2009
Dear Mr. President:
You will probably not read this letter due to your busy schedule and the huge number of messages you receive from presidents, kings, princes, sheiks and prime ministers. Who is a Palestinian academic from Gaza, after all, to have the guts to write an open letter to the president of the United States of America?
What has triggered this letter is a picture of your Excellency sitting with the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. That, of course, happened before 2004–i.e., before you underwent a process of metamorphosis which I personally think is unprecedented in history.
Seeing you with Edward Said, I must say, surprised me. Said, a true public intellectual, must have said something to you about the suffering of the Palestinian people. In the picture, you and your wife seem to be listening attentively and admiringly to him.
But the point remains: Did you really understand his eloquent, passionate defense of the rights of the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine? Judging from your recent policy shifts, I very much doubt it. It is precisely the incongruity between the photograph and these policy shifts that has prompted this letter.
The letters are below.
Mr. President:
The whole world celebrated your election as the first African American president of the U.S. I did not. Neither did the inhabitants of the concentration camp where I live.
Your sympathetic visit to Sderot–an Israeli town which was the Palestinian village of Najd until 1948, when its people were ethnically cleansed–your first visit three years earlier to a kibbutz in northern Israel in support of its residents, and your pledge to be committed to the security of the state of Israel and its “right” to retain unified Jerusalem as the capital city of the Jewish people, to give but few examples, were all clear indications of where your heart lies.
Another reason for the writing of this letter is shock at the indifference and arrogance with which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissed Palestinian concerns about Israel’s illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank. Only a few weeks ago, you made the admirable statement that all Jewish settlement construction must halt, and you made it clear that this included the expansion of existing settlements as well as the construction of new settlements.
However, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu let it be known that he had no intention of stopping settlements, you missed a historic opportunity to draw a line–no more billions and no more weapons for Israel unless and until this condition is met. Now Secretary of State Clinton has the Herculean task of pretending that your position on Jewish settlements has not changed, though it is clear you have chosen not to use the very real power at your disposal to bring Israeli policy into line.
About six months after your election, you gave a speech in Cairo, addressed to the Arab and Islamic worlds, which some people found impressive. I found it impressive in form, but not in substance, because your actions have not matched your rhetoric.
Why did I not buy the new language of the new American administration? Because while you were giving your speech, we were burying my neighbor, a terminally ill patient who needed treatment in a hospital abroad, since–thanks to the siege imposed by your own administration and Israel on the Gaza Strip–the facilities that would have saved his life are not available in Gaza. Like more than 400 terminally ill people in Gaza, my neighbor lost his life.
In spite of the fine Arabic words of peace, “Salaam aleikum,” you made it crystal clear that the point of reference in any negotiations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Israel’s security. By doing that, Mr. President, you are effectively marginalizing the whole issue of Palestine, and unfortunately setting the stage for renewed Israeli assaults against a starving Gaza–an entity that has, thanks to your “unbreakable” ties with Israel, been transformed into the largest concentration camp on Earth.
Your failure to support the Goldstone report from the United Nations, and your indifference, not to say your contribution, to Palestinian suffering and the process of “politicide” against the Palestinian people of Gaza is, to say the least, unfathomable, coming from a man who listened so earnestly to Edward Said.
Your advisers must have told you about the cutting off of medicine, food and fuel to the concentration camp where I live. Patients in need of dialysis and other urgent medical treatment are dying every single day. A majority of our children, many the same age as your two beautiful daughters, are badly undernourished.
You must have skimmed through the executive summary of the Goldstone report detailing the horror inflicted on 1.5 million civilians for 22 days–horror caused by F-16s, Apache helicopters and phosphorus bombs made in American factories. Hundreds of children were burnt to death by phosphorus bombs; pregnant women were brutally targeted in what Israeli soldiers boasted of on their T-shirts: “1 bullet, 2 kills.” And yet, not a single word of sympathy, Mr. President!
Edward Said had this to say upon his first visit to Gaza: “It’s the most terrifying place I’ve ever been in…It’s a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa.” This was back in 1993, Mr. President, before conditions dramatically deteriorated. Gaza has now become, as the leading Israeli Human Rights Organization B’Tselem describes it, “the largest prison on Earth.”
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Mr. Obama:
Unlike your predecessor, you seem to be a smart man. You must have realized that a two-state solution has been rendered impossible by Israeli colonization of the West Bank, by the war on Gaza, by the construction of the apartheid wall, by the expansion of so-called Greater Jerusalem, and by the increase in the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank. You must have realized also that there are 6 million refugees, most of whom live in miserable conditions waiting for courageous, visionary leaders committed to true democracy, human rights and international law to implement UN resolution 194.
And yet, you and your secretary of state, like every U.S. president since 1967, have decided to support Israel in creating conditions that made the two-state solution impossible, impractical and unjust.
Were you a supporter of the Bantustan system in South Africa under the apartheid system? Are you opposed to equal rights and the transformation of Israel/Palestine into a state for all its citizens? The two-state solution means the Bantustanization of Palestine, a solution you, to our knowledge, never supported for South Africa.
Are you, Mr. President, opposed to civic democracy, which is the demand of most Palestinian civil society and grassroots organizations? This is what people like Martin Luther King and Steve Biko died for. Was Nelson Mandela wrong to spend 27 years of his life in prison in pursuit of justice by demanding equality for the indigenous people of South Africa? Do you realize that what you are supporting in the Middle East is a racist solution par excellence? A solution based on “ethnic nationalism”?
Your secretary of state and your envoy to the Middle East unashamedly stood, with beaming smiles, next to Avigdor Lieberman, who not only defends openly the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, but also calls for a new genocide in Gaza! Do you realize, Mr. President, that this Hitlerite fascist might become Israel’s next prime minister, thanks to your administration’s complacency and support?
Our only immediate demand is that your administration insures that Israel fulfills its obligations in terms of international law. Is that too much to ask?
Mr. President Barack Hussein Obama:
We, the Palestinian people, are fed up!
Sincerely,
Professor Haidar Eid
Gaza, Palestine
Human rights should be for everyone. It will be difficult to get the pandering politicians in the usa to even consider any word of reproach for these and many other atrocities committed against these people. The problem seems to be that those in government really believe that their god will curse those who curse their god’s people. They may actually believe that because one obnoxious group of people calls themselves part of a chosen people via a made up a story about a man named Moshe, that it’s true and those who oppose the descendants of Abraham on any point will be cursed by a deity. To even entertain the thought that those who left Egypt in an unrecorded and unverified exit long ago is unthinkable. No archaeological evidence for any nomadic people living in the desert for 40 years. No historical evidence or corroboration for any of it and the people are so ready to dismiss the non-Israeli occupants as refuse and ‘paying the price’ because they were weaker than Israel. Unless and until the religious insanity is given up in favor of science, doesn’t seem to be an end to this. It’s difficult to understand how some of these very highly-educated people can believe in any religion with it’s sun setting in a marsh or four corners of an earth that is spherical and other tales from an earlier time when humankind was trying to make sense of the world around him. One girl from the usa was murdered by an Israeli who was driving heavy equipment when she was purposely run over. She had gone to demonstrate against Israeli excesses. The Amerikans didn’t know how to react to it. Had she been killed by a Palestinian representative, the Amerikans would have been gnashing their teeth for blood, blood and more blood. Surprise, surprise, she was killed by a wonderful Israeli who ran over her, broke her back and died a miserable death trying to help others have a decent or equitable life. The Amerikans didn’t know what to do. Rather than have their heads explode or implode, they just took on a blank look and rationalized it away ‘Well, if you go over there and protest, what do you think is going to happen?’ They satisfied themselves it was alright, never facing the fact that in reality it wasn’t alright with them if they had been true to themselves. What can they do? The killers serve a higher power and can do no wrong in the eyes of the Bronze Age religionists. If people will discard the favoritism of their god and stop supporting unfairness and murder, things might get better. What merit is there to any of their religions? Is it making the world a better place? If so, for whom? There is no reason to treat ungrateful elitists with reverence when they are so hateful that they would kill someone for believing differently than they do. They don’t have god’s favor because of who they claim to descend from. If you want to be in favor with any force for good, be good, do good and love they neighbor.