The Crisis in Palestine and Israel:
Zionism, Terrorism, and Holy War
By Dean Sayers

A man is walking the streets of Ram Allah with his children, and suddenly a car explodes nearby. Israel has performed an assassination of a leader of Hamas suspected in terrorist – related activities. The bomb kills the suspect, the man and his children and wounds several others nearby. The next day, a man runs onto a bus in Israel and detonates a bomb, killing himself as well as many Israeli civilians.

This is an every day experience for the people of Israel and Palestine. Both sides have their justifications: Israel claims that it acts merely in defense, while Palestinian militants claim precisely the same interest for their own people. Some Zionists claim manifest destiny in the region, while many Palestinians claim that Israel, being born of European interests and displacing millions of Arabs, has no right to exist at all.

Author’s note: the term “Zionism” appears regularly in this paper, and refers to the beliefs and activities of those who advocate a theocratic Jewish state as the primary governing force for the middle - eastern regions of Israel and those teritories occupied by Israel. Furthermore, this paper is in no way directed against the Jewish people, and I recognize that Zionism, whatever its form, is not representative of the Jewish, Semitic or Israeli people. I stand firmly behind my friends who advocate pacifistic Zionism, or for that matter any solutons to the Israeli – Palestinian problem that do not undermine human rights.

The militant Zionist perspective comes from a concept, claimed to be taken from the Torah, which justifies Jewish ownership and control of the land occupied by the Israelites more than two millennia ago, according to Jewish and Christian tradition. However, many, like Noam Chomsky and Albert Einstein, have stated opposition this militant concept of the Torah, claiming that Zionism merely respects the rights of the Jews to have access to the land, and that a theocratic state should not be established in the region.

To many Israelis, however, the question is hardly about Zionist interests. Many Israelis have friends or family members who have been victims of Hamas’ and Fatah’s terrorist campaigns in the nation. As Israel has compulsory military service, many families face the prospect of losing their relatives in the military to militants in the region. This compulsory military service applies to all Israelis, regardless of creed or ideology, so often the Palestinians face military activity that has no Zionist interest. This has led to a protest movement of “Refuseniks,” a largely Jewish movement of soldiers who feel that incursion into the occupied territories is against Israeli interests, and refuse to serve in the occupied territories. They also point to U.N. declarations on the occupation’s illegal nature as reason to refuse service in the occupied territories.

Israel regularly carries out bombing campaigns against villages and cities in Palestine. The military demolishes houses errantly, due to an incredibly difficult process that Palestinians must go through in order to obtain building permits. Israel is building a wall in order to defend the state, but has destroyed water lines and blocked off farmland from the people who own it, and displaced many families in Palestine. Israel regularly bombs houses suspected of housing militants or access to tunnels which go under Israeli walls, usually with as little as 30 seconds of alert and sometimes repeatedly The military continues to build settlements exclusively for Jewish Zionists, often razing villages and arbitrarily taking land in order to build them. Israel is responsible for civilian casualties in Palestine on a nearly daily basis. Israel recently toppled the democratically elected government of Palestine and destroyed the only sources of water and electricity in Palestine, in order to reduce Palestinian national power and capture and torture suspects in terror campaigns. Israel has recently been accused by scientists of using enriched Uranium and Tungsten in nuclear and experimental U.S. bombs in Lebanon and Palestine; the weapons have links with cancer and are illegal or not recognized by international law.

The result of all this is that the guerilla terrorism continues; Hamas refuses cease-fires based on these threats to Palestinian soverignty. However, Hamas does not have well – established military control over its guerillas, and many terrorists claim no official affiliation to the major resistance groups. Also, “periods of relative calm” (As C.N.N. refers to them) are usually marred by extensive Israeli militancy even amidst cease-fires. So, not only does this encourage support for militancy in Palestine, but it leaves the Israeli dimplomats with less capability to have a productive dialogue with the Palestinians. Hamas’ leader recently expressed the spirit of his organization’s aims: “while the Palestinian people do not hae peace, neither will the Israeli people.” This concept of eye – for – an – eye has left a myriad of Israelis with both lost children and a desire for a new generation of bloodshed, and the celebration of terror aimed at Israel serves to cement cultural political, and class barriers between the two peoples.

There is a third force acting in favor of the Status Quo in Israel; perhaps the worst: the United States’ interferance in the region. It says a lot that the single larget U.S. lobbying firm is the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – self described as “America’s pro – Israel lobby.” It does not help that organizations with friendly names such as the “Anti – Defamation League” are in fact fronts for black – listing of authors of pro – Palestinian art and have damaged U.S. media credibility with threatening leatters. The A.D.L., for instance, encouraged C.N.N. and other U.S. media outlets to stop using the terms “occupation” and “settlement.” A study indicated that only 4 percent of U.S. media reports on the Israeli – Palestinian conflict mention that the conflict is an occupation, and East Jerusalem, one of the most conflict – ridden Zionist settlements, was referred to as a “relatively calm Jewish neighborhood” by Dan Rather in a recent report on the region.

This slant runs deep into the mindset of Americans when they consider what their own opinion on the conflict should be. Jimmy Carter was recently called a “racist and an anti-semite” on C-SPAN – presumably for his recent work on the Israeli – Palestinian conflict: “Peace, Not Apartheid.” I do not - and I probably never will – know why the U.S. has chosen to attack human rights so much in the Middle East. (Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land – Media Education foundation, 2004)

Despite a majority opposition to the occupation in Israel, and the fact that it is an illegal occupation scorned by the U.N. and most nations as a human rights crisis, Amir Peretz continues to allow his military to encroach on sovereign Palestinian land as occupiers. The acts of the state of Israel are clearly acts of terrorism meant to destroy the local economy, society and people of Palestine, and to drive them away. The truce by Hamas has been broken after Israel basically ignored it, and now the people of Israel will have to suffer for the crimes of its own undemocratic nation.