Suddenly, the past and the present are one entity, no matter how hard I try to break them apart, to view them separately, they daunt me with annoying persistence.
Every time Israeli Prime Minister Sharon utters a few words in public, his past words, speeches, vows and threats clog my head. The man remains unchanged, his racist perception of Palestinians is the same. Israel and most Israelis are the same, united in their hatred for Palestinians, modest in their criticism of their war makers. American politicians are the same, bought and sold to the highest bidder. The past and the present are inseparable, but are we learning anything?
On July 22, 2001, Sharon met with the Likud Central Committee. Sharon, 72, who was dubbed by American newspapers in past months as the “Jewish grandpa” looked like an altered version of superman, strong, determined, but evil. He spoke of his government’s continued policy of assassination, telling Likud party officials that his method in dealing with the intifada was successful. “The gang of terrorists in Bethlehem who thought they could threaten the people of Israel, they are no longer around,” he exclaimed. The “gang” he referred to, according to Al-Haq human rights office in Ramallah included “three (who) were uninvolved in political activities, whose deaths were merely ‘acceptable collateral damage’.”
Sharon’s latest gangsterism brought about an inconceivable massacre in the West Bank City of Nablus. Eight people, including political activists, journalists and two young brothers — Ashraf and Bilal Khalil, ages 11 and 6 — fell to their death under tons of rubble, when two Israeli-directed missiles intruded the peaceful building in Nablus. While Israelis have always supported the killing of freedom fighters (as if that were a permissible act under international law), occasionally, a few Israeli voices reject unnecessary killings. Now here is when the unpleasant past interjects.
In 1953, when Sharon was the commander of the infamous 101 unit, solely formed for the purpose of annihilating “terrorists”, he justified every atrocity committed against unarmed civilians with logic, crudely and abhorrently. One of his unit’s heroic tasks was to attack the Palestinian refugee camp of El-Bureij in the Gaza Strip. The mission aimed at terrorizing the refugees was a full success, as dozens of innocents were mercilessly butchered by the unit’s commandos. Then, a number of officers objected to the nature of the mission, protesting “are a few hundred miserable refugees, including women and children, our real enemy?”
Sharon replied with the same tone used time and time again on similar occasions, “the women are the whores of the Arab infiltrators who have been attacking our civilians. If we don’t act forcefully against the refugee camps, they will turn into comfortable nests for murderers.”
If you wonder how such a vile war criminal could survive all of these years to hold a top position in the Israeli government and finally become prime minister, I too wonder. I wonder however with much more anger, for it happened that my mother and her mother were two women from El-Bureij refugee camp, and unlike what Sharon said, they were as pure as saints.
And here the past leaps forward with us again to 1982, when Sharon was entrusted to “eliminate” the PLO and the Syrians from Lebanon. Although Sharon’s history in Lebanon and elsewhere is spotted with blood and shame, one must not make the mistake of blaming it all on Sharon — a man who is merely an accumulation of decades of racism, bluntly sculpted with Zionist principals and openly embraced by his society.
The Sabra and Shatila massacre too was a part of that Zionist culture of murder. Sharon’s strongly held beliefs, and frequently used words of “annihilation”, “extermination” and “destruction” were also widely used by the Israeli Army and by government decision-makers. Sharon’s massacre of nearly 30,000 people in Lebanon (according to the International Commission of inquiry into Israel’s crimes in Lebanon,) is only a larger illustration of his assassination policies currently under way in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel offered many “logical” justifications to explain its loathsome invasion of another country and the destruction of dozens of villages, refugee camps and an entire economy.
But sadly, the international support that Palestinians have been praying for to halt Sharon and to end the killing spree of the “Bulldozer” may never arrive. If the international community could have made a difference in the unbalanced Arab-Israeli conflict, it would have done so many years ago, especially following the massacres of Sabra and Shatila.
And the same United States that gave the “green light” to Israel to invade Lebanon through its Secretary of State Alexander Haig, is at it again, by now justifying Israel’s assassination policy through Vice President Dick Cheney and others. Even when thousands of people were massacred in Beirut and as the Red Cross was busy estimating final death tolls, the US was consumed by hailing Israel for ordering an investigation to the massacre, an investigation that was a political ploy to keep the Likud in power. Former US Secretary of State George Shultz, while on a trip to Hong Kong on Feb. 9, 1983 had little to say about the massacre and much to narrate about Israeli democracy. Israel has presented yet “another outstanding example of the way a democracy can conduct itself.”
While Palestinians are being killed, individually (in clashes) or collectively (by missiles) before the eyes of the world, Israel, its Likud, its war generals and its phony democracy remain unmoved, now led by one of the world’s most notorious war criminals, Sharon. The same logic is being used, and the world that witnessed Sharon’s past massacres has done little to prevent his ongoing carnage of Palestinians.
Sometimes learning from history is an asset, other times it is a curse. With history repeating itself, we almost know for sure what is going to happen in the Middle East, what crimes are going to be committed by Sharon, and sometimes we even know when. In fact, the Israeli Cabinet has now composed and has openly approved of a list of Palestinians to be killed.
The world has never known a worse war criminal, so arrogant, racist and inhumane. But the greatest shame is that while Yugoslav and Rwandan war criminals are tried and sent to rot in jail, Israeli war criminals are applauded, and their crimes, thanks to the US government, are justified.
