Some Palestinians become Zionized
By
Adel Samara
It was the 59th
anniversary of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians when Ilan Pappe, the neo,
but real, Israeli historian delivered a speech in Ramallah explaining how he
uncovered the actual and deliberate ethnic cleansing of most of the Palestinian
people from Palestine in the 1948 war.
Pappe
spoke openly, smoothly and fluently that the Zionist leadership evicted
Palestinians by force, a fact which we did not learn by heart only through our
history but also from the narrative of the victims. Unfortunately, we failed to
explain and disseminate it to the world. Accordingly, the speaker's work was
great not only because he uncovered the truth, but also because he is a
Jew.
He referred to the
deep pain and suffering of world media correspondents at that time who reported
to their papers, radio stations and regimes the details of ethnic cleansing,
but what was published was just the opposite: the stories of the Palestinian
suffering were false.
Listening to Pappe, I
truly wondered why he did not refer to the main aspect of the international
position, which is that the world capitalist center supported the Ashkenazi
Zionist regime (AZR) – Israel, and continue to support and feed it today. The
point I am raising here is not eastern Marxist rhetoric, but a historical and
current fact.
In the 59th
anniversary of Palestinian Nakba, all Palestinians were very busy, "busy
bees" to use the false description of the World Bank and IMF of their
staff. Palestinian comprador and sub-contract capitalists were looking for the
best dresses to attend Davos conference that is being held on the Jordanian
side of the Dead Sea to do businesses with the same Jewish Israeli capitalists
who stole Palestine.[1] Arab rulers and the PA leadership were
embracing the Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, and apologized for the mistake of
Hezbollah, which defeated him.
A smart friend phoned
inquiring: “Are you going to join the national-Islamic organizations gathering
in Ramallah at the day of al-Nakba?” I replied:” No. I neither participated in
al-Nakba, nor did I say that "our goal is the termination of the effects
of 1967 war". I have always been in support of the Palestinian Right of
Return (ROR).” “Then, I guess, you will not even attend Ilan Pappe's speech”
she continued. “Sure, I will”, was my response.
A ‘funny sign”
awaited the guests as they entered the hall. The first row in the hall was
vacant, reserved for the leaders, ministers and NGOs managers. To be treated as
the elite! I have never sat in the row. But I decided to do so. Why not, I
figured, since "business class ticket" is free!
As noted, the
man spoke simply but sharply. He emphasized that he proved by facts that the
Zionist leadership decided to evict the entire Palestinian people from its
land, and to pretend that they left by themselves. He noted that other Israeli
neo-historians saw and used the same documents he did, but justified ethnic
cleansing. He did not mention Benny Morris by name. Pappe said openly that the
"beast" will never be satisfied with 80% of Palestine, and that
Palestinians will never get a state, a real state. The space for democracy is
minimized in Israel and that is why he decided to leave. Those who are against
the Zionist regime are just a few, but genuine. The struggle now should be for
a one-state not for two-state solution, the Zionists will never agree on a
two-state solution. We must approach the civil society in the west to support
us. It is a difficult task, but it is necessary and will deliver. These were
among the main points Pappe highlighted in his speech.
istening to him,
however, I wondered if the speaker knew the political attitudes of his
audience. Most of the attendees were designers, supporters and beneficiaries of
the Oslo Accords, of the "peace for capital". Many of them are
supporters of the two-state solution, i.e. ignore the right of return for
Palestinian refugees. Others were NGOs employees whose role was mainly to
penetrate the leftist circles and deplete the national movement of its class
content.
It was ironic that in
the anniversary of al-Nakba, a progressive Jew is telling the Palestinians who
support a two-state solution, that there is no workable solution without the
ROR. They listened, but did not argue. It appeared as if the Jew became a
Palestinian, and the Palestinians became Zionists.
Pappe concluded
his speech with a call for tolerance and openness. He mentioned the late Edward
Said and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod as examples of people who choose this approach.
In fact, this approach
contains at least two main defects: (a) it is a form of post-colonial discourse
that compromised with colonial crimes, and (b) it ignores class interests and
class struggle.
There was no time to
ask Pappe why he never touched on the role of the imperialist center in the
Arab-Zionist conflict, and why he never mentioned neither the ‘Zionist’ Arabs
who support the Ashkenazi Zionist regime (AZR) – Israel nor Arab popular
classes, which represent the progressive and socialist future of the region. Is
it because Pappe, like many leftist Jews, still blindly rejects Arab
nationalism? But even if that the case and in spite of rejecting Arab
nationalism, he must deal with the role of Arabs as a part of the conflict, and
they should be mentioned in all cases.
I thanked the speaker
for his clean research on the ethnic cleansing, but I noted that to avoid
falling again into the same trap of peace for capital, the Oslo Accord, the
one-solution of a Democratic State is a vague slogan. To make it a program, it
must contain at least four main conditions or tasks to be achieved:
1- The implementation
of the ROR of the Palestinian refugees of 1948.
2- The disintegration
of the Zionist military establishment.
3- Nationalization of
land.
4- Nationalization of
the main developed economic acmes.
The speaker mentioned
the boycotting of the apartheid regime in South Africa, as an effective
pressure to be used against the AZR. I think that, in the Palestinian case, the
ANC model is more applicable more than boycotting. The deep integration of the
Zionist capital in the world capitalist order is deeper than that of the white
South Africans. But even the most important argument (which is that the role of
the AZR in the region is to block/terminate development and to maintain the
region’s subjugation to the theft of the capitalist center), doesn't encourage
the globalized capital to boycott its own interest.
To talk about a
one-state solution, and a similar struggle like that of the ANC, you do not
become a target for the Zionist regime only, but also for many Palestinians who
never thought that a Jew ‘might’ be non- Zionist. It is not strange, especially
when we see many ‘Zionist’ Arabs!
None of the attendees
argued for the two-state solution except a lady who said that Palestinians can
no longer wait. That is why the best solution is to have their state and to
continue the work for one-state at a later stage.
But, who cares about the
Palestinians and whether they can or cannot wait, when they are fighting each
other for a self-rule in Gaza, and when their capitalists are signing business
contracts with Israeli Jewish capital on the warm shores of the Dead Sea, and
when Arab regimes have designed a heavily compromising ‘initiative’ practically
‘begging’ Israel to accept their willingness to normalize relations with
it…etc.
Finally, and to be
absolutely clear, I must ‘announce’ that I was happily smiling throughout
Pappe’s speech. Not because I was watching a comedy, but because most of our
guest's speech was a negation of the ideas and policies of most of those who
attended the event but never argued. Is that due to an inferiority complex? No,
I doubt. It is because they are loyal and adherents of the ‘peace for capital’.
It was in the same
hall, about ten years earlier, when the French structuralist Ettiane Balibar
spoke on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Communist
Manifesto. In contrast, the speaker of 1998 was invited by a renegade
Israeli Marxist Jew who, and most of the Palestinian attendees were
ex-communists, Marxist, leftists and progressive. Aren’t all these good reasons
to smile!
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[1] For a detailed information on how Palestinian capitalists, like
Abdelmalek Jabber, Talal Nassereddinn, Said Khoury were thirsty for business
normalization with Israeli Jewish capitalists see: Israel Corp., Palestinian
Deal Blocked, Plans China Car Maker, By Simon Clark :http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=abNkP3XU8o8M&refer=home.
According to al-Quds newspaper (13 May 2007), many Palestinians will attend the
Davos conference including PA Chairman Abu Mazen, Minister of Finance Salam
Fayyad, Muhammad Mustafa chairman of Palestine's Investment Fund, Munib
al-Masri, Abdulmalek Jaber, Hasan Abu Libdah, Talal Nassereddin, Samir
Hilailah…and others.