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"My visit back home in Galilee, coincided with the genocidal Israeli attack against Gaza. The state, through its media and with the help of academics, issued a unanimous voice - even stronger than that heard during the criminal attack against Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Israel is once again devoured by a sacrificial fury that results in destructive policies in the Gaza Strip.
This self-justification for the appalling inhumanity and impunity is not only disconcerting, but it is a subject on which linger if you want to understand the international immunity to the slaughter raging in Gaza. E 'based on lies, first transmitted in a mere Newspeak that recalls the darkest days of Europe 1930. A newsletter every half hour on radio and television described the victims as terrorists in Gaza and the killing of hundreds of people as an act of self-defense. Israel presents itself his people as the sacrificial victim who defends himself against a great evil.
The academic world is recruited to explain the demonic and monstrous is the Palestinian struggle, whether it is led by Hamas. These are the same scholars who demonized the last Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the first period and delegitimize his Fatah movement during the second Palestinian intifada. But the lies and distorted representations are not the worst part of all this.
What angers most is the direct attack on the last traces of humanity and dignity of the Palestinian people. The Palestinians in Israel have shown their solidarity with the people of Gaza and are now branded as a fifth column in the Jewish state, their right to remain in their country is called into doubt because of their lack of support for Israeli aggression.
Those who have accepted - wrongly, in my opinion, to appear in the local media have questioned and questioned, as if they were prisoners in the prisons of the Shin Bet. Their appearance was preceded and followed by humiliating and racist remarks are subject to accusations of being a fifth column, a fanatical and irrational people. And yet this is not the most vile practice. There are some Palestinian children treated for cancer of the occupied territories in Israeli hospitals. God knows what price they have to pay to be able to shelter their families. Israeli radio goes every day in hospitals to require poor parents to tell listeners what has Israel in its right in his attack on Israel and Hamas is as demonic in his defense.
There are no limits to hypocrisy that produces a sacrificial fury. The speeches of the generals and politicians are moving erratically between complacency on the one hand humanity shows that the army in its operations "surgical" and the other on the need to destroy Gaza once and for all, of course, in a way human. This sacrificial fury is a constant phenomenon in the Israeli expropriation, and even before the Zionist Palestine. Every action, whether it ethnic cleansing, occupation, massacre or destruction has always been represented as morally correct and how the simple act of self-defense committed by Israel against his will in the war against the worst kind of human beings. In his excellent book "The results of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Culture in Israel," Gabi Piterberg examines the ideological origins and the historical progression of this fury. sacrificial.
Today in Israel, from right to left, from Likud to Kadima, from academia to the media, you can listen to this sacrificial fury of a state that is much more busy than any other state in the world and resulting in the destruction of a population native. It 's very important to examine the ideological origins of this behavior and to derive from his widely known, the necessary political conclusions. This fury is a sacrificial shield for society and for politicians in Israel from censure or external criticism. But even worse, is always translated into policies of destruction against the Palestinians. With no internal mechanism of criticism and without any external pressure, any Palestinian becomes a potential target of this fury. Given the firepower of the Jewish state can only end in more massive killings, massacres and ethnic cleansing.
The absence of any morality is a powerful act of self-denial and justification. This explains why the Israeli society can not be changed by words of wisdom, logic or persuasion of diplomatic dialogue.
And if you do not want to use violence as a means of opposition, there is only one way forward: challenges head-on this absence of morality as an evil ideology intended to hide human atrocities. Another name for this ideology is Zionism and the only way to counter this lack of morality is to blame the international Zionism, not only of particular Israeli policies.
We must try to explain not only the world but also to the Israelis that Zionism is an ideology involving ethnic cleansing, occupation, and now massive massacres.
What is needed now is not so much a condemnation of this massacre. but also the de-legitimization of the ideology that has produced such policy and the morally and politically justified. We hope that important voices in the world can say that this ideology of the Jewish state and the overall conduct of the state is intolerable and unacceptable and that as long as they continue, Israel will be banned and subject to penalties. But I'm not naive. I know that the massacre of hundreds of innocent Palestinians will not be sufficient to produce this change in Western public opinion, is even more unlikely that crimes committed in Gaza move European governments to change their policy towards Palestine.
But we can not let 2009 be another year, significantly less than in 2008, the year of commemoration of the Nakba, which has failed to realize that we all had high hopes for its potential to transform the behavior of the western world towards Palestine and the Palestinians. It seems that even the most horrendous crimes, like genocide in Gaza is treated as a separate event, unrelated to anything that has already happened in the past and is not associated with an ideology or a system.
In this new year, we have groped to relocate the public understanding of the history of Palestine and the evils of the Zionist ideology as the best means for explaining operations such as genocide in Gaza is to prevent the worst things in the future.
This has already been done at an academic level. Our biggest challenge is to find an effective way to explain the connections between the Zionist ideology and policies of destruction of the past with the present crisis. It may be easier to do while in these terrible circumstances, the world's attention is directed once again to Palestine.
could be even more difficult when the situation seems to be "Calmer" and less dramatic.
In moments "quiet", the focus of short duration on the edge of the Western media would once again the Palestinian tragedy is disregard for the horrific genocide in Africa or the global economic and ecological doomsday scenarios for the rest the world.
While the Western media do not seem very interested in the historical dimension, only through a historical analysis can show the size of the crimes committed against Palestinians in the past sixty years. Therefore, the role of alternative media activists and scholars is right in insisting on these historical contexts. These actors do not should stop educating public opinion and, hopefully, to influence politicians, more honest look at the facts in a wider historical perspective.
Similarly, we may be able to find a better way to ordinary people, as distinct from academic intellectuals, to make it clear that the policy of Israel - in the sixty years - the result of hegemonic ideology Zionism called racist, defended by many layers of sacrificial fury.
Despite the obvious accusation of anti-Semitism and the like, is time to relate the public the Zionist ideology with the historic landmark and the now-familiar ground: the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the oppression of Palestinians in Israel during the days of military rule, the brutal occupation of the West Bank and now the massacre in Gaza. Like the ideology of apartheid has explained very well the policies of government oppression in South Africa, this ideology - in its most simplistic and reflected variant, allowed all Israeli governments, past and present, to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they were and fight to destroy them.
The means have changed from one period to another, from one place to another, as did the narrative that has hidden these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern that can only be discussed in academic ivory towers but must become part of political discourse in contemporary reality of Palestine today. Some of us, especially those who are dedicated to justice and peace in Palestine, unconsciously avoid this debate, focusing, and this is understandable, the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) - the West Bank and Gaza Strip. To fight crime policies is an urgent mission.
But this should not convey the message that the Western powers have willingly taken on the suggestion of Israel, that Palestine is only the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the Palestinians are the only people living in those territories. Should we extend the representation of Palestine geographically and demographically telling the historical narrative of the events from 1948 onwards and require equal civil and human rights for all people who live, or who were accustomed to living in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories.
placing in relation to the Zionist ideology and policies of the past with the atrocities of this, we will be able to give a clear and logical explanation for the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions. With non-violent means to challenge a state ideology that is morally self-justifying, which allows with the help of a silent world, to expropriate and destroy the native population of Palestine, a cause is just and moral.
E 'is also an effective way to stimulate public opinion not only against the current genocidal policies in Gaza, but, hopefully, also to prevent future atrocities. Even more important than anything else, this should vent fury sacrificial suffocating the Palestinians whenever swells. This will help to end the immunity of the West against the impunity of Israel. Without this immunity, it is hoped that more and more people in Israel start to see the true nature of the crimes committed in their name and their rage could be directed against those who have them and the Palestinians trapped in this cycle of unnecessary bloodshed and violence. "
* Ilan Pappe (http://ilanpappe.com http://electronicintifada.net) teaches in the Department of History University of Exeter, England
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