The dentist
I don't care much for Hamas. I don't think it is my place to judge the ethical validity of strategy in independence struggles from my perch in the United States, but, nonetheless, I think they have problems with thuggishness. I had the rare opportunity of seeing Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, of the Independent Palestine, speak and remain convinced that if more people knew of him, that he would be revered as a modern day Ghandi, King, or (I hate to add it to the list, but a lot of Americans revere the guy) Dalai Lama. There is a reason that Barghouthi keeps getting arrested by Israel before elections. He's the greatest threat: he's rational, eloquent, believes in peaceful change, and identifies the Israeli state as an apartheid state.
That said, the media's treatment of Hamas winning the election is simply appalling. Hamas is a group that believes in using violence, and particularly terror, to achieve its aims. In article after article, this is given as reason enough for Hamas to be banned from the table: unrecognized, nonnegotiable, poison for the peace process. People are forgetting the dentist. Who is Bush to dismiss a group with a military wing? He is the "war president." He used the strategy of "Shock and Awe;" it was terror with a brand name. He has the military in two countries openly and is speaking of invading another. It isn't as if these countries are far from the middle east, either. We, the United States, are currently engaged in two imperial invasions in the middle east and the mainstream press acts as if the election of a militant party is heresy that can not be tolerated on the world stage. Israel, with its apartheid wall, is much like the United States. Both have vibrant, if weak, peace movements. Both use the excuse of law and order to oppress specific populations: Palestinians there, African-americans and latinos here. Both use brutal violence under the guise of peace.
Israel's government has done many things, but I always think of the dentist. He was a peace activist. Not that this fact makes him any better than if he was a militant, but it does illustrate the brutal hypocrisy of zionist proponents. You knew quickly that he was a peace activist because Israeli peace activists decried his death immediately. His name was Thabet Thabet (also spelled Thabit Thabit). He worked with Fatah, had been under house arrest for several years, but had a number of facts about him that were surprising. He attended the funeral of an Israeli Reservist. Weeks before his death, he secured the safety of twenty israeli soldiers who'd wandered into the wrong area in which two Israeli soldiers had been killed months before. Thabet intervened and made sure the twenty soldiers came to no harm. Israeli peace activists all said that he wanted change, but that he spoke of peace and how to make change happen through conversation and working together, Israeli and Palestinian.
Thabet was leaving his house one day and Israeli forces assassinated him with long range machine guns. This was part of a "liquidation" policy of the Israeli state: targeting members of the independence movements and killing them. It sounds like mafia: the dentist got wacked. It was mafia-style. Peace activist? Peace process? What does it mean when political opponents, even peace activists, can get mowed down on their front lawn?
Now Hamas looks to have been elected. I like Mustafa Barghouthi. But am I to critique the riots after Martin Luther King was assassinated? Am I to chide the days of rage when the army was dropping Napalm on families in Vietnam? (Now we know they are using white phosphorus, which burns through flesh, as an offensive weapon in Iraq. Napalm isn't over.) Can we truly question the election of Hamas without a cold hard look in the mirror? At what point do the writers of these articles realize that they are liars? At what point do they acknowledge they are disinforming? At what point do they type the words "peace process" and realize that it, their typing, is a sham that perpetuates a terrible crime against the Palestinian people? The problem isn't the election of Hamas. The problem is much greater. To reduce it to the election is a lie. Don't forget the dentist.
That said, the media's treatment of Hamas winning the election is simply appalling. Hamas is a group that believes in using violence, and particularly terror, to achieve its aims. In article after article, this is given as reason enough for Hamas to be banned from the table: unrecognized, nonnegotiable, poison for the peace process. People are forgetting the dentist. Who is Bush to dismiss a group with a military wing? He is the "war president." He used the strategy of "Shock and Awe;" it was terror with a brand name. He has the military in two countries openly and is speaking of invading another. It isn't as if these countries are far from the middle east, either. We, the United States, are currently engaged in two imperial invasions in the middle east and the mainstream press acts as if the election of a militant party is heresy that can not be tolerated on the world stage. Israel, with its apartheid wall, is much like the United States. Both have vibrant, if weak, peace movements. Both use the excuse of law and order to oppress specific populations: Palestinians there, African-americans and latinos here. Both use brutal violence under the guise of peace.
Israel's government has done many things, but I always think of the dentist. He was a peace activist. Not that this fact makes him any better than if he was a militant, but it does illustrate the brutal hypocrisy of zionist proponents. You knew quickly that he was a peace activist because Israeli peace activists decried his death immediately. His name was Thabet Thabet (also spelled Thabit Thabit). He worked with Fatah, had been under house arrest for several years, but had a number of facts about him that were surprising. He attended the funeral of an Israeli Reservist. Weeks before his death, he secured the safety of twenty israeli soldiers who'd wandered into the wrong area in which two Israeli soldiers had been killed months before. Thabet intervened and made sure the twenty soldiers came to no harm. Israeli peace activists all said that he wanted change, but that he spoke of peace and how to make change happen through conversation and working together, Israeli and Palestinian.
Thabet was leaving his house one day and Israeli forces assassinated him with long range machine guns. This was part of a "liquidation" policy of the Israeli state: targeting members of the independence movements and killing them. It sounds like mafia: the dentist got wacked. It was mafia-style. Peace activist? Peace process? What does it mean when political opponents, even peace activists, can get mowed down on their front lawn?
Now Hamas looks to have been elected. I like Mustafa Barghouthi. But am I to critique the riots after Martin Luther King was assassinated? Am I to chide the days of rage when the army was dropping Napalm on families in Vietnam? (Now we know they are using white phosphorus, which burns through flesh, as an offensive weapon in Iraq. Napalm isn't over.) Can we truly question the election of Hamas without a cold hard look in the mirror? At what point do the writers of these articles realize that they are liars? At what point do they acknowledge they are disinforming? At what point do they type the words "peace process" and realize that it, their typing, is a sham that perpetuates a terrible crime against the Palestinian people? The problem isn't the election of Hamas. The problem is much greater. To reduce it to the election is a lie. Don't forget the dentist.
""Anyone who says this is going to destroy the peace process has not been paying attention to the fact that there isn't a peace process to destroy."Michael Tarazi
posted by History Is A Weapon at 9:35 PM
1 Comments:
u neglect to mention the at least two-decade support that israel gave to Hamas, from 1978 to at least the mid-1990s. everything from financial donations to busing Hamas activists in to bust up or usurp leftist palestinian protests during the first intifada. UPI recently did a pretty good article on the subject, and chomsky and others have written about it previously.
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