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支持巴勒斯坦難民返鄉權,便是向種族主義說“不”

艾蘭·佩普 · 2012-01-29 · 來源:紀念若雪巴勒斯坦資訊網
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首先我要感謝這場會議所有的籌辦者,他們花了很大的工夫才使我們能夠聚在這里。但是由于以色列的控制,我們不能在巴勒斯坦會面,我希望有一天我們能在那兒見面,而不是專程跑到德國斯圖加特(Stuttgart)冰冷的山丘來。


(2008年愛丁堡“魂之歸”展覽,Jane Frere作品,描繪的是巴勒斯坦種族清洗。)
 
首先我要感謝這場會議所有的籌辦者,他們花了很大的工夫才使我們能夠聚在這里。但是由于以色列的控制,我們不能在巴勒斯坦會面,我希望有一天我們能在那兒見面,而不是專程跑到德國斯圖加特(Stuttgart)冰冷的山丘來。

但這也正好告訴我們猶太復國主義(Zionism;另一常見譯名為錫安主義)是怎么一回事了,它不允許一般人過著普通生活或者建立正常友誼,人們必須艱辛地通過層層障礙,才能滿足共同生活這最基本的人類欲望。

我們存活在一個詭異的年代。一方面我們無法如改革者一般訴諸一個更好的以色列政府。我認為這個政府的一切作為早已讓任何對猶太復國主義之復雜分析都 顯得 多余。我們非常容易揭穿以色列之政策,以及其背后種族歧視(racism)的意識型態。另一方面,以色列是過去三年里西方世界最為成功的經濟體,表現比起 德國還好上許多;它有穩定的銀行體系,它的貨幣是世界上最為強勢的貨幣之一,西方經濟體近三年來所遭遇的困境,以色列也完全沒有。

這結果是一般西方人與以色列人,特別是以色列猶太人,在看待以色列這件事情上,有著令人困惑的落差,后者自認為生活在一個非常成功的社會,他們相信以阿沖 突基本上已經結束,巴勒斯坦的問題已經不存在,他們會說:“噢,是的,是還有些加沙的問題,或者黎巴嫩真主黨的問題,但這些都不是以色列獨有的問 題,這 些只不過是所謂反恐戰爭的一部份?!?BR>
我們存活在一個詭異的年代,因為盡管以色列的政策經常遭受外界嚴厲的批評,也不斷有示威游行,抗議發生在加沙的屠殺,或是抗議以軍對開往加沙船隊之襲擊, 然而卻沒有人敢挑明以色列這些政策背后之意識型態。我們的抗議行動從來不直指猶太復國主義,因為歐洲議會甚至曾將反猶太復國主義的示威抗議譴責為反猶主 義。

想象一下,南非也發生過種族隔離,倘若在當時我們被禁止針對種族隔離進行示威抗議,而只被允許抗議發生在索韋托(Soweto)的屠殺,南非的種族隔離會 有消解的一天嗎?……相比之下,以色列似乎頗為成功地規避了對其真正罪行之批判。而德國對以色列這項勝利也有相當大的貢獻。以色列的主要問題、主要國家犯 罪之因素并沒有被切實分析、沒有被碰觸,也沒有被討論過;眾所觸及到的,只有表面癥狀。我不是個醫師,也不具醫療專業,但至少我曉得,僅僅處理表面癥狀而 非從病因處著手,病人是無法痊愈的。

因此我認為,作為改革行動者,我們必須要改變我們的行動策略。這并不是說我們必須要改變我們那頗為成功的抵制以色列商品的運動,或是我們在德國以及世界各 地聲援巴勒斯坦人民的活動,這些都是歐洲公民社會令人動容的力量之展現,絲毫不比昔日反對種族隔離的抗爭運動遜色。但是我們,我們之中大部分的人,并沒有 使用最恰當的語言來描述我們所面臨的問題,這使得我們無法直指并成功傳達問題的核心究竟是什么。

外界對以巴問題最大誤解之一在于,一來,以巴問題絕不如他們想象中的復雜難懂,我們對這類事件應該感到熟悉才對:外來的歐洲殖民者對于當地原住民不只加以 屠殺也加以驅離,在這點上,以色列復國主義者絕非首例。另一方面,以色列在包括德國在內的盟友的縱容之下,發展出一個對以巴問題的非常復雜的詮釋, 復雜 到只有他們自己才能理解,其他人不懂于是也就不容置喙,尤其你如果是德國人的話,你不被允許插手這件事,因為事情非常復雜。

但事情不是這樣的,問題并不復雜。這也是為什么了解歷史是那么地重要。去了解那段并不復雜的、關于猶太復國主義者向來如何對待那些原生居民的歷史是 理解 的關鍵。是的,我同意,還有其它事件也有關系:歐洲猶太人的悲劇、納粹大屠殺,還有像是……基督教與猶太教之間超過兩千年的關系等。但是這些都只是以巴問 題的題外話,這些都不是故事的主軸,它們也許是故事的一部份,但不應從它們去理解以巴問題。

這也是為什么以色列人,甚至是那些身為以色列公民的巴勒斯坦裔學生,當他們開始學習他們自己國家的歷史時,他們得先從敖德薩屠殺(譯注:十九世紀下半期至 二十世紀初期,俄國境內多地,包括Odessa地區,發生數波迫害與屠殺猶太人之事件,促發了日后之猶太建國運動。)開始。我記得我在以色列大學任教時, 我的一位巴勒斯坦裔學生問我:“你能解釋為什么像我們這些出生在拉…、薩…、或是內蓋夫(Negev)的人,學習自己的歷史,得要從發生在敖德薩的事件開 始呢?”他們甚至不知道敖德薩在哪里。于是我告訴他們,這是因為即便身在以色列,他們也如同身處在西岸地區或者是加沙走廊的巴勒斯坦人一樣,處于被占領之 狀態。以色列國內的巴勒斯坦人也同樣被占領、同時被殖民。假使我們不明白這點,我們將無法打開問題的癥結。

因為那始于1967年的所謂的“和平進程”實際有如發生在火星上、月球上……因為這是我所知道的歷史上唯一與待解決之問題毫不相關的和平進程。無論是 1977年的日內瓦、1991年的馬德里,還是1993年奧斯陸的和平進程,都甚少涉及以巴問題的本質。我同意它們或許處理了表面癥狀,但是并未觸碰到問 題的核心。

這便是以色列的另外一項重大勝利:“和平進程”同公眾輿論一樣,都無法處理到以巴問題的核心。所以當我們回溯歷史,并尋找描述事件的恰當當代用語時,這不 表示我們是不合時宜的(anachronistic)—因為我們使用了十九世紀之詞匯如“殖民主義”,描繪了二十、二十一世紀的現象。我們不但并非不合時 宜,而且實際上還恰好符合當代需求。接下來我將進一步闡明。

猶太復國主義就是殖民主義。你若能有此理解,你就是我遇過的最年輕且成功掌握時代脈動的歷史研究者。任何威嚇你不準這么說,并且告訴你這是無助于現況的過 時說法,或者說這是反猶主義的人,他們才是真正不合時宜之人、是住在月球或是火星上的人,而且執意以偏離現實世界之方式,談論現實問題。的確,你如果懂希 伯來語,你會知道在希伯來語一而再、再而三用來指稱1882年至今的復國主義運動的單字 “hityachwut、hituachahut”,只能有一種 翻譯,那就是“殖民化”(to colonize)。再沒有別的意思了。

十九世紀末,當殖民主義受到公開支持的時候,猶太復國主義運動是非常樂意使用“殖民化”這個譯名的。但是之后,當他們發現殖民主義不再那么受歡迎時,他們 改變了譯法。他們發現英文里“定居、屯墾”(settlement)這個單字帶有其它含義,于是他們采用這個單字來替換原先的殖民一詞。復國主義者會這么 說:“是的,我們是來這里‘定居、屯墾’的,我們不是來‘殖民’的。兩者有所不同,這是相當復雜的,而且只有我們以色列猶太人才能理解,理解為什么以色列 在巴勒斯坦的殖民與白人在非洲的殖民是不一樣的?!?BR>
依照猶太復國主義者的說法:你若不是以色列猶太人,你就不能理解,尤其你若不是猶太復國主義者的話,你當然更不能理解為什么兩者之間有所差別。所以我認為 非常重要的是,無論我們是在課堂授課、公開辯論,或是與西方的政治精英交涉時,我們都要明確地告訴他們:你們是在對付現代最后一個殖民主義運動。這詞匯聽 來雖然讓人感到不合時宜,但是即便處在二十一世紀,他們確實依然實行著如同十九世紀殖民主義者的手段。

所以我認為西方社會所有秉持良知的人,如同那些在殖民時代里曾挺身反對殖民主義的先人一樣,是無法站在殖民主義陣營這一方的。我相信我們能夠說服他們,但 首先我們必須厘清我們的用字、還有厘清思考上的干擾,并且不要在意不明就理的人怎么說。他們怎么說都無關緊要……因為即便你表示支持以巴“兩國共存”之方 案,他們也會把你當做反猶份子,因為他們會說你理解問題的方式與他們不同。因為你不理解問題,所以你以為這兩國方案應該包含讓加沙及西岸建立成一 個主權 獨立的國家……但他們仍然會說你不懂的,這是錯誤的理解。

現在巴勒斯坦人住的地方就像兩個南非的班圖斯坦,西岸地區被切成12塊、加沙地區則像個集中營,兩者間完全無法通行,并且僅在拉馬 拉 (Ramallah)有基本統治雛型的“政府”,而以色列猶太人或是復國主義者會說,“這就是巴勒斯坦人的國家,如果你并不明白這就是個國家,這就顯 示了 你顯然還并不明白以巴問題的復雜性”。

我希望大家能夠明白,殖民主義是描述今天以巴問題最為恰當的概念。以巴沖突的兩造不是兩個獨立自主的國家,而是殖民者與被殖民者的關系。 我們也應該持續 吸引那些曾經對抗過殖民主義的老將,或者是年輕的改革者,共同對抗這應該是普世所譴責的殖民主義,抗議這個破壞原生居民生活的外來勢力。猶太復國主義者在 1882年以及1948年就已經持續著殖民活動了,甚至昨日在內蓋夫和西岸就這么做了,如果我們持續偏離現實,談論著所謂的和平協商、兩國論、以及其他與 實際現實毫無關聯的概念,殖民主義的暴行將持續下去。

第二個我認為以巴問題上很重要、并且必須持續傳達出去的觀點是:無論是當下持續暴行下的受害者,或者是每年一月我們都會追悼的在2009年加沙遇難的受害 者,或是每年五月都會追悼的1948年以軍暴行的受害者,他們全都是種族凈化(ethnic cleansing)的受害者。

種族凈化雖然是晚近才發展出來的概念,起源自九零年代的南斯拉夫戰爭。但是更早之前,這類意識型態及政策已經為國際社會所譴責;與之相比,只有種族滅絕 (genocide)才更為嚴重,而且如同我們在其它地方所見到,兩者間經常存有關聯。當一個政權實行種族凈化或是種族滅絕之政策時,兩者所一貫訴諸的手 段,就是將驅離或是殺戮的目標“非人化”(dehumanization)。如同我在以色列控制下之巴勒斯坦所看到的那樣,普通的巴勒斯坦人被徹底地非人 化。

任何人像我一樣在以色列住得夠久的人,都曉得在以色列服役會使得士兵變得麻木不仁。一位以色列士兵看到一個巴勒斯坦的嬰兒,他不是看到嬰兒,而是看到一個 潛在敵人或者未來的炸彈客,倘若哪天那個士兵把嬰兒丟出房子或是直接殺害,我們也用不著吃驚。因為即便是幼童,也同樣徹底遭到非人化。發生在巴勒斯坦的種 族凈化暴行進一步轉變成種族滅絕的那天已不遠矣。
這就是為什么我認為種族凈化政策就是嚴重的國家犯罪,我們不能將之簡單理解成以色列政權的政策問題,而是應視之為嚴重的以色列政權的犯行。

我們應該這么做是因為只有法西斯式的思考才會宣稱在所有歷史情境中政權與國家乃是同一回事。不,他們是不一樣的。有時候一個政權可能是發生在一個國 家中 最糟糕的一件事。對于巴勒斯坦的人民來說,最糟糕的一件事便是以色列這個政權。如果我們想要給巴勒斯坦帶來和平,并使生活其中之人都能夠享有平等,使他們 在各方面都能比中東其它地區更好,甚至超過歐洲某些地方,便是去改變以色列國家之政權。我知道這并不容易,而且這也并非在質疑任何國家存在的權利。

我們是個別的行動者,我們沒有能力去挑戰任何國家存在的權利,我們更無法去消滅一個國家(以色列才有能力,我們沒有)。我們擁有的只是道德力量來告訴他 們,他們所建立的國家是什么樣子的,并且告訴他們,他們所維持的國家是會如何嚴重傷害其人民的。這個創立于1948年的以色列國將半數巴勒斯坦原住民 驅 離了家園。請告訴我,歷史上還有哪些時期或哪些地方,有國際小區是這么打著和平的口號并且高論著:“為了使這個國家成為和平之地,我們必須把此地一半的居 民趕走”?

只有在以色列和巴勒斯坦,我們才得以見證到這詭異的歷史發展,代表國際社會集體意志的聯合國,竟然告訴全世界,它允許以色列以和平之名趕走半數巴勒斯坦的 原住民。如果你一旦這么開始述說以色列的歷史,那么一切就變很難溯往與改變了,你必須勸對方好好去讀讀歷史,告訴他們1947年領土分割的想法是不 道德 的,盡管你在1947年也許還不能確定這并非是個良好、現實的政治構想。我能理解在1947到1948年間,你也許會說:“讓我們試試看吧,看看把這塊土 地分割成兩塊會是什么樣?!边@想法也許可以成功,又有誰能未卜先知呢?

但是六十年已經過去了,我們還能爭辯當初把嬰兒(領土)分割為兩部分的決定是否為妥當的嗎?你們都知道所羅門王針對兩個母親爭奪一個嬰兒所做之判決 的典 故,對吧?所羅門王知道,只有真正的母親才不希望她的孩子被切成兩半,所以故意提議將孩子切割。在以色列和巴勒斯坦的狀況中,我們大概知道誰總是想分割嬰 兒,另外誰才是孩子真正的母親。所以我們可以見出種族凈化的發生與國際之默許與縱容有著莫大關聯。從聯合國決議到后來的歐洲共同體和美國都說巴勒斯坦唯一 可能獲致和平的方式就是讓以色列驅逐足夠多的巴勒斯坦人,以及取得足夠多的巴勒斯坦領土,然后再建立所謂“中東地區唯一的民主政體”。

猶太復國主義者的計劃,徹底顛覆了西方在四零年代末到五零年代初的所有常見用語。讓我們看看他們是如何建立“民主”政權的。難道為了建立一個猶太人占多數 的國家,便可以驅離當地的原住民?但這也正是目前以色列年輕人心中所相信的。他們在政治學科中學到,為了建立一個多數決的民主社會,你有必要先界定誰是 “多數人”--亦即猶太人,即使必須先屠殺另一半人口來獲致也無所謂,然后你才可能確信誰能在民主選舉中勝出。

以色列人對于透過種族凈化或種族滅絕政策以創造出來民主所需之“正確選民”這回事,一點也不感到奇怪。許多西方人稱以色列為民主國家,因為他們只看到多數 決的那一面。而事實是,以色列為了維持他們心中認定該有的多數,而對巴勒斯坦人持續進行著種族凈化、殖民、殘殺,或囚禁他們于加沙這樣一個巨大貧民窟之 地……這些都是當外人談到以色列民主時,從來不視之為其問題的一部份。

所以我認為我們應該挑明白、講清楚的是:依照猶太復國主義的思維,唯一能夠維持他們民主政體的辦法,就是不惜采用種族清洗的手段,持續作為一個罪犯國家。這如同讓惡貫滿盈的一群罪犯,握有一個民主體系,然后以真槍實彈、暴力,以及絕對的權力,維持著這個體系。

在談過殖民主義和種族凈化這兩個概念之后,我最后要談的概念與這兩者也都有著很大的關聯,那就是:驅動以色列這樣一個猶太國家背后最主要的意識形態,其實 就是殖民主義和種族凈化。當然,不管是作為生長在以色列的人,或是世界各地支持以色列的人們,我們向來不是這樣被教導的。我們被灌輸了另外兩套意識形態: 其一,猶太人為了尋找一塊能夠安全生活的地方,而選擇來到了以色列/巴勒斯坦。但實際上我們知道以色列對猶太人來說并不是一塊安全之地,相反地,自 1948年之后,猶太人在此地喪生的人數遠比在世界其它各地都還要多。另一個說法是,以色列是猶太人唯一能夠展開民族運動、重新界定民族身份的地方,在這 兒,他們才能夠實踐其民族自決權。

但是我們知道以色列對于猶太民族自決權其實并不感興趣,這是為什么還有為數眾多來自世界各地的非猶太人移居以色列。因為對于以色列來說,最重要的是確保這 里是一個非阿拉伯國家。所以如果你是巴哈伊教徒、你住在喜馬拉雅山,但你確定不是個阿拉伯人,那么你將可以立即獲得以色列猶太公民的身份。只要你愿意來的 話,猶太拉比會擔保你是一個猶太人,只是你得經過痛苦的割禮就是。總之只要你不是阿拉伯人,你將因此而受到歡迎。但如果你是一個阿拉伯化的猶太人, 你得 先“去阿拉伯化”,否則你在以色列猶太人的社會是不可能受到歡迎的。

我要談的關于以色列的第三個、也是最后一個問題,就是種族純凈(ethnic purity)。以色列對于種族純凈的追求也與難民返鄉權有著很大的關聯。 大部份的人,包括我們最好的朋友如Noam Chomsky(他和Uri Avnery,還有其他人都是我的好朋友,我不是在嘲諷他們,我和 Noam Chomsky 最近才合寫了一本書,但是我在這點上完全不同意他們的觀點。)他們反對公開擁護難民回歸的權利。他們認為基于現實考慮,告訴那 些難民有一天能夠回歸故土是不切實際的,他們認為應該鼓勵難民替自己設想不同的未來。但我會說,如果你的分析只受制于強權政治之操控的話,那么這種漠視道 德原則的分析才真正是不切實際的,不會是好的政治訴求。因為假使這種分析的基礎所派生出的論點是有效的政治訴求,那么這似乎是在說權力平衡的考慮決定了我 們的態度。

但是就我們目前所看到的,權力天平的兩端分別是掌握中東最強大軍事力的政權和全世界最弱小的武力。如果我們仍然讓權力平衡的想法影響我們的態度,我們甚至 無須為了解決以巴問題在這里聚會,只要讓事況任由以色列擺布就好了。但我們曉得以色列非常清楚知道自己想要什么,他們想要盡可能地占領巴勒斯坦,并且使這 片土地上愈少巴勒斯坦人愈好。復國主義者早在1882年就這么想了,直到2010年他們還是這么想。他們從沒有改變,只是手段有了些改變,因為現實環境也 改變了,但是那個成功、繁榮的以色列遠景—愈少阿拉伯人愈好、愈多巴勒斯坦土地愈好—從來沒有改變。所以假使政治現實應該決定我們的態度,那么我們只須屈 服于現狀即可。

所以當我們主張難民返鄉權時,我們不只是把它當作一個政治訴求來提到它,我們還要藉此來挑戰以色列政策背后的真正意圖。因 為以色列人至今以來始終拒絕談 論難民回歸權利的原因,并非如某些人所想的那樣,是因為他們有著嚴重的良心愧疚,不愿意承認他們在納粹大屠殺終結不過三年后,就在巴勒斯坦同樣犯下驅逐及 屠殺原住民的罪行。我必須承認,我也曾經這么認為,當時我是滿懷希望的,因為我天性樂觀,加上我也不高,只能看到叢林的下半部,看不到全景。所以我以為以 色列人不想談論難民之返鄉權是因為像Uri Avnery這樣的猶太人,直接經歷種族凈化那段不太愉快的歷史。所以當你談到返鄉權時,他們會極不愉快,因 為你挑起了他們所不愿面對的記憶……壓抑這記憶成為了這疾病的解藥,成了一種萬靈丹。

不過很遺憾的,事情并不是這么一回事。避談難民回歸權對于復國主義者來說有很大的意義。因為他們并不歡迎阿拉伯人,無論是那些被以色列人驅逐的巴勒斯坦 人,還是我們從未接觸的阿拉伯人,或者是那些不愿“去阿拉伯化”的阿拉伯猶太人,復國主義者都不歡迎他們!一個民主政體是應該接納多元民族的,但是猶太復 國主義者盡管嚷著要民主,卻希望維持國族的純凈,這就是問題主要的癥結,這也就是為什么以色列始終拒絕談論難民回歸的權利。

所以當你們公開主張巴勒斯坦難民的返鄉權時,你們不只是支持了那些被驅逐之難民如果他們想要選擇回歸故土時的權利;你們不只是清楚認識到以色列 在 1948年所犯下的種族凈化罪行;也不只是遵守了聯合國決議中所清楚明載的返鄉權;而且,你們同時也是非常明確地向中東唯一奉行種族主義的政權說 “不”。

我同意中東國家的政體都不是很好,沒什么特別值得稱許的地方,我不會將他們宣傳為未來社會發展的雛形,但很重要的是,其中除了主張猶太人之國度的以色列 外,沒有一個是種族歧視的國家。而我們若要有效對付這個種族歧視之國,方式之一便是公開主張難民返鄉的權利。這無關政治現實,但它卻能夠觸碰到這猶太國家 的敏感神經。我們要借著這主張告訴他們—種族主義不是什么新鮮事,但是在二十一世紀的今天,持續地公開殖民以維持種族歧視之國家政策,是不被國際社會所接 受的,尤其是在今日我們所聚會的這個國家(德國)。謝謝各位。

講稿原出處:2010.11.26,Stuttgart Conference
(責任編輯:aishaHS)
Pappe483

Supporting The Refugees’ Right Of Return Is Saying NO To Israeli Racism

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

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I begin by thanking all the organizers; I know it took quite a lot of efforts to bring us all together. It is a great achievement, and as Mazin Qumsiyeh and Haidar Eid, mentioned, and Lubna Masarwa, yesterday, you also provided a great opportunity for us to meet and we are very grateful to you for this opportunity to meet you and to meet each other. It is easier because of the Israeli oppression to meet here than to meet in Palestine where we should meet and hopefully one day we will all be there without the need to go to the frozen hills of Stuttgart to create a joint life!
And I think that’s the gist of the Zionist story that it does not allow people to meet normal life and to be normal friends that they need to go through all that hardship in order to fulfill a very elementary human impulse to live together.
We live in very bizarre times. On the one hand, we could not have wished as activists for a better Israeli government. I think that this particular government makes any sophisticated analysis about what Zionism in Israel is all about quite redundant. It is very easy to expose not only the Israeli policies, but also the racist ideology behind them. On the other hand, Israel is the most successful economy in the West in the last three years; it has done much better than the Germany, much better than most of the economic powers of the West; its banking system is very stable, its currency is one of the strongest in the world and it doesn’t suffer at all from all the hardships that had affected the Western capitalist economies in the last three years.
The result is a very bewildering gap between what average and decent people in the West think about Israel and the way the Israelis, specially the Israeli Jews, think about themselves. They think that they live in a very successful society, they believe that the Arab-Israeli conflict is over, that the Palestinian question has ended, yes, you have a problem in Gaza, yes you have a problem with Hezbollah in Lebanon, but this is a global problem, this is not a particular Israeli problem; this is part of the so-called war against terror.
We also live in bizarre times because despite of the – and Mazin Qumsiyeh talked about it yesterday in very details way, so I don’t have to repeat it - , we also live in a time where particular and specific Israeli policies are severely criticized. People go and demonstrate against the massacre in Gaza, people go and demonstrate against the attack of the flotilla to Gaza, and yet, nobody dares to attack the ideology that is behind these policies. There is no demonstration against Zionism, because the European parliament even regards a demonstration against Zionism as anti-Semitism.
Imagine, in the days of apartheid in South Africa, if you were not allowed to demonstrate against the apartheid in South Africa, but only against the Soweto massacre... And this is still a great Israeli success. And Germany plays a very important role in this success, that the main problem and the main reason for the criminal policies is not analyzed, is not discussed, is not touched upon, only the symptoms. I am not a doctor, I am not a physician, but I know that if you deal with the symptoms and not with the cause of the illness, you don’t cure the patient.
So, I think that what we really need as activists, and it’s easier to talk to you than I think to people who know nothing about the conflict or are totally on the other side of the coin, that we have to change a little bit what we are doing. Not in terms of our very successful BDS campaign, or the kind of things that we do in Germany and elsewhere in solidarity with the Palestinian people. I think this is an impressive chapter in European civil society activity, nonetheless impressive as was pointed out yesterday than the chapter in the struggle against apartheid, but we are still most of us, are still not using the right language. We, most of us, are still not employing the kind of dictionary that we should employ in order to drive the message home of what are we dealing with.
Because one of the greatest paradoxes of what goes on in Israel and Palestine, is that on one hand it is not a complicated story – we have been there before, European settlers coming either genociding or kicking out the indigenous people. The Zionists have not invented anything new in this. And on the other hand, Israel succeeded with the help of its allies everywhere, including in this country, to build this complex explanation that is so complex that only they can understand it. And you are not allowed to interfere, especially if you are Germans, you are not allowed to interfere in this analysis, because it is very complex.
No, it is not, it is really not complex. And this is why history is so important. Understanding the not so complex history of what the Zionist movement was and is doing to the indigenous, native people of Palestine is what the story is all about. Yes, there are other stories connected to it, I agree, the fate of the Jews in Europe, the holocaust,… I don’t know, the relations between Christianity and Judaism over the last 2’000 years, but these are sidebars. These are not the main story, they belong to the story, but you don’t begin with these.
This is why in Israel, even unfortunately Palestinian students who are Israeli citizens, when they learn about the history of their own country, they begin in Odessa. I remember my Palestinian student in the university saying “can you explain to us why we were born in R...or S... or in the Negev, have to begin our history in Odessa?” They did not even know where Odessa was. And I said, that is because you are under occupation even inside Israel, not just in the West Bank, not just in the Gaza strip, Palestinians inside Israel are also under occupation, and are also under colonization, and if we don’t understand this, we will not break the deadlock.
Because what is called the “peace process” that began in 1967 is taking place on Mars, on the moon...This is the only peace process in history that I know of that had no relevance whatsoever with the problem it was supposed to solve. What they were talking about in Geneva in 1977, in Madrid in 1991, in Oslo in 1993, had very little to do with the essence of the problem. It dealt with the symptoms, I agree, but not with the essence.
And this is the second greatest Israeli success. That not only the public opinion does not deal with the essence, but also the peace process very successfully succeeds in avoiding it. So if you go back to history, and you are using today the right language, you are not anachronistic, as someone was trying to say this morning, you are not anachronistic, you are actually a very relevant updated person. I will explain what I mean.
If you say that Zionism is colonialism, you are the youngest and most updated student of history I have met. Anyone who would try to deter you by saying this is anachronism, this is not helpful, this is anti-Semitism... is anachronistic. And lives on the moon or in Mars, and can continue to talk about something which has nothing to do with what is going on the ground. Actually, if you know Hebrew, you know that the whole Hebrew language, from 1882 until today, which was constructed to describe what the Zionist movement is doing in Palestine, uses, again and again, the word “hityachwut, hituachahut”, and the only way of translating these words is TO COLONIZE. There is no other translation.
So, the Zionist movement in the late 19th century, when colonialism had very good public relations, was very gladly using the word to colonize. But then, they learnt that colonialism was not so popular, so they translated it differently, they found the word settlement, which means something else in English, and they found the word “yes, it is colonized, but it is not like “colonize”, it is a different kind. Again, it is complex, and only we, the Israeli Jews understand why Israeli colonization and why white colonialism in Africa is not the same.”
But if you are not an Israeli Jew, you cannot understand it, if you are not a Zionist Israeli Jew, of course you cannot understand it! And I think this is important to bring back in our teaching, in schools, in our approach to the public, in our negotiations with the political elite in this country, and in the West, to say to them: you are dealing with the last colonialist project and as bizarre as it sounds, even in the XXI century, this colonialist project employs the same tactics of colonialism in the XIX century.
And I think that every decent person in the West, like in the time of colonialism, will not stand on the side of colonialism. But you have to clean your language, you have to clean your mind and you have to think that it is totally irrelevant what people say about what you say. It does not matter what they say... they will regard you as anti-Semitic even if you support the two-state solution because it means you don’t support the two-state solution as they understand it. Because you don’t understand the problem, you think that the two-state solution is a sovereign, independent state over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, no, you don’t understand it.
The state for the Palestinians are two Bantustans, divided to twelve in the West Bank, contained like in a concentration camp in Gaza, has no connection between it, has a little municipality in Ramallah which will be called the government, this is a state. And if you don’t understand that this is a state, it shows that you still have to learn about the complexity of the conflict.
Now, colonialism is one message from the past that we should accept and we should deal with, and we should recruit the veterans as well as the younger cohorts of activists to work for something which universally should be very easy to recruit people for : the fight against colonialism, the fight against the idea that someone from the outside has the right to demolish the life of people in the inside. And they have done it in 1882, in 1948, and they have done it yesterday in the Negev, or in the West Bank and they are going to do it next week if we will continue to talk about peace negotiations, two-state solutions, all kind of irrelevant concepts that have nothing to do with the realities on the ground.
The second concept from the past which I think we should insist on conveying to people, whether we try to protest against something Israel is doing today or whether we will commemorate in January what Israeli had done in the Gaza Strip or when we commemorate in May the crime that Israel committed in 1948, and this is the ethnic cleansing.
It is a concept of course which was developed in the 1990s, clearly because of what happened in the Balkans wars, but even before that, this was regarded by the international community as an unacceptable ideology and policy. Only genocide is regarded by the international community as worst than ethnic cleansing. And quite often the two are interconnected, as we can see in other places, and as we can see in Israel and Palestine. When you are allowed to pursue a policy of ethnic cleansing, don’t be surprised if these perpetrators would one day move to genocide. Because in both cases you have to totally dehumanize the people you are expelling or massacring, even if they are children, they have to be totally dehumanized.
And anybody who lived in Israel long enough as I did, knows that the main corruption of people through military service is the total dehumanization of the Palestinians. That is why a soldier when he sees a Palestinian baby, he does not see a baby, he sees a potential enemy. The road from kicking out the baby from the house, or killing the baby, is not very long. And I think, the message of ethnic cleansing is the message of criminalizing, not the policies of the state of Israel, but criminalizing the state of Israel. And we should do this.
We should do this because only a fascist approach to life would say that in every historical condition a state and a country is the same thing. No, it is not. Sometimes the state is the worst thing that can happen to a country. And the worst thing that happened to Palestine is the state of Israel. If we want to make the country of Palestine a place where people could live as equals, in fact live in many ways better than in other parts of the Middle East, may be even better than in some parts of Europe, is to bring the country back at the expense of the state. I know this is not easy, and this is not about questioning the right of states to exist.
We are individuals, we are activists, we don’t have the power to challenge the right of a state to exist, we cannot eliminate states (Israel has the power to eliminate states, we don’t have the power to eliminate states), what we have is a moral power to say to the people that the kind of state you have founded, and that the kind of state that you are maintaining, is destructive to the country in which you exist. The creation of that state led in 1948 to the expulsion of half of the native population of Palestine. Show me any other situation in history where the international community, under the slogan of peace, would come and say: in order to make this country a peaceful place, I have to kick out half of the people who lived there.
Only in Israel and Palestine we have this bizarre historical moment where the United Nations, embodying the international community’s will, is telling the world that it allows Israel to kick out half of Palestine population in the name of peace. And once you start like this, the history of Israel, it is very difficult to retract; you have to explain that actually you have to study history, and go back to 1947 and 1948, and say that partition, or the idea of partition is an immoral idea. It’s not even a good real politic idea, but that of course you could not know in 1947. I can understand that in 1947-1948, you would have said “let’s see, if we divide the country into two” it might work. Who would have known?
But 60 years later, can you argue that dividing this baby, if you want, is different from the Salomon trial? It is not surprising, you know about the Salomon trial, right? You know about the baby and the two mothers, and that the real mother does not want the baby to be cut into two. We know who is the real mother in the case of Israel and Palestine, we know who is willing all the time, supposedly, to partition it. So I think that the whole idea of the ethnic cleansing is connected to the international support for it, not direct support for it. But the agreement, and the consent of the United Nations, and later on the European community, and later on the United States, to say that this is the way peace can only be possible in Palestine, that the Israelis kicked out enough Palestinians, and took over enough of Palestine to create the “only democracy in the Middle East”.
They corrupted every common sense languages that we had in the West in the late 1940s and early 1950s, with the Zionist project. That’s how you create a democracy? By kicking out the indigenous population, so that you can have a Jewish majority? But that’s what all the young Israelis believe. They learn in the political science departments that in order to build a democratic society, where the majority can decide what to do, you are entitled first to define who are the majority, even by means of killing the other side, so that you will be sure what would be the result of the democratic elections.
Israelis don’t find it at all bizarre that if you create a democracy, you can also perpetrate ethnic cleansing, and genocide, so that you get the right electorate for the future democracy. But a lot of people in the West will talk about Israel as a democratic state; because they would say the majority votes and decides what to do. The fact that the majority has to be kept all the time by ethnic cleansing people, by massacring them, by colonizing them, by putting them in great ghettos like in Gaza, is never discussed as part of the Israeli democracy.
And I think we should bring that to the fore. The only way to keep Israel as a democratic state, according to the Zionist ideology, is to continue to be a criminal state. It is almost like allowing people in the worst kind of prison, the worst kind of criminals to have a democratic system, by the force of the guns, by the force of the brutality, by the force of their sheer power.
Now the third and last concept I would like to talk about is, which comes out of colonialism and ethnic cleansing – which are the main driving ideologies behind the Jewish state -, ethnic cleansing and colonialism are the reasons that we have a Jewish state in Israel. This is not what we are taught of course, either as Israelis who were born there, or people who support Israel around the world, we are not told. We are told about two different ideologies : we are told about the need to find the Jews a safe place, and we know it’s not a very safe place for Jews, it’s the opposite (the only unsafe place for Jews is to be in Israel, that’s there most of the Jews have been dying in great numbers since 1948), and this is the place where Jews can recreate themselves as a national movement where they can exercise their rights for self-determination.
But we know that Israel is not interested in the right of self-determination for the Jews, this is why it brings hundreds and thousands of non-Jews from all other the world, to settle in Israel, because what is important for Israel is not self-determination for the Jewish people, what is important for Israel is not make sure that it is not an Arab state. And if you are a Baha’i, and you live on a mountain in the Himalaya, but you are definitely not an Arab, you will become an Israeli Jewish citizen in no time, if you are willing to come over. There is no problem. The rabbis will make sure that you are a Jew, and they may cause you to go through some painful operations – if you are a man -, but all in all, you are welcome because you are not an Arab. And if you are an Arab Jew, you will have to “dearabize” yourself, otherwise you will not be welcome in the Israeli Jewish society.
Now, the third and last concept, and I reach to the end in a few minutes, is the ethnic purity. The ethnic purity of the state and this is related to the right of return. Most of the people, and specially some of our best friends, and I mean it not ironically as I just published a book with Noam Chomsky, I am including him in this, some of our best friends are against the right of return. And their practical explanations, they would say it is unrealistic to tell the refugees that they should look forward for the possibility of returning, that they should be encouraged to think about a different kind of future, and I would say that the departure point for this analysis is not practicality, is not real politic. Because if their basis for analyzing, as Uri Avnery does, as Noam Chomsky does and all out very – and I am not cynically saying our good friends, they are my good friends - , but I totally disagree with them on this, if the basis for analyzing the situation is real politic, then it means that the balance of power determines your attitude.
Well, the balance of power, as we heard yesterday, between the largest and strongest army in the Middle East, and the weakest military powers in the world, right, if this balance of power determines our attitudes, we should not even meet here today. We should give in to the Israeli dictate. We know the Israelis are very clear to what they want, they want to have as much as Palestine as possible, with as few Palestinians as possible, they wanted in 1882 and they want it in 2010. This has not changed. The means have changed, the historical circumstances have changed, but the vision of what would be a thriving successful Israeli society is a society which has as few Arabs as possible, and as much of Palestine as possible. That has not changed. So if real politic determines our attitude, we should give in to this vision.
So in any case, we are not dealing with real politic when we are challenging what Israel wants. And the reason the Israelis refuse even to acknowledge the right of return, let alone practically implementing the right of return, is not because as some people would think because they have a very serious consciousness problem of admitting that they have kicked out and massacred people three years after the holocaust. I once thought that this was the main problem, I admit it. I once thought so, I was hopeful because I am an optimistic, I am not very tall, I would see the bottom half of the glass. So I thought the Israelis don’t want to talk about the right of return because people who were, like Uri Avnery for instance, involved in the ethnic cleansing itself, feel unhappy about it. And if you talk about the right of return, you bring back … this is kind of the panacea, the remedy for the illness.
No, I don’t think this has anything to do with it, unfortunately. It makes a lot of sense from the Zionist point of view, Arabs are not welcome. Whether these are Arabs we kicked out, whether these are Arabs we have never touched, whether these are Arab Jews who want to insist to remain Arabs even if they are Jews, they are not welcome because we want to be a democracy! And this people would want to come in. That’s the major thing, which is behind the Israeli refusal for the right of return.
So when you support the Palestinian, and with this I will end, when you support the Palestinians right of return, you are not only supporting, which I understand we all do, the right of the people who were kicked out to come back if they want to. You are not only acknowledging the crime of the ethnic cleansing in 1948, you are not only abiding by the United Nations resolutions that very clearly support the right of the people to return, and you are saying a very simple NO to racism. That’s what you are doing. You would just say NO to the only racist state we have in the Middle East.
We have not very nice regimes in the Middle East, I agree, the political regimes in the Middle East are nothing to write home about, I would not publicize them as recommendations for future societies to build their politics on this basis, but not one of them is racist. The only racist state is the Jewish state of Israel. One of the only ways of engaging with this racist state is to challenge it on the right of the refugees to return. Not because it is practical, or not practical, because it deals with the genetic code of the Jewish state. The idea that you can colonize is not new, but the idea in the XXI century that you can maintain this colonization by openly maintaining a racist state, should not be acceptable, especially not in this country. THANK YOU.
The text of this lecture has been established by Claudine Faendrich on the basis of the video recording of the Stuttgart Conference, November 2010.

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