Nakba

Here’s a comment that President Bush made while speaking to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s statehood.

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” the President said to the country’s legislative body, “We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is –- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Many are considering this an attack on Obama’s foreign policy stance, especially concerning Iran.  But, honestly, Republicans and Clinton have criticized Obama on this point many times before.  I am more repulsed by what this comment says about Palestinians.

 

Here Bush goes again, like much of Pro-Israeli America, completely diminishing Palestinians as human beings whose lives were uprooted by the Nakba – the catastrophe that was the founding of Israel.  (Read more about how Palestinians are “celebrating” here.)

 

Let’s put aside all the usual attacks on people like me who recognize Palestine’s right to exist – anti-semitic, pro-terrorism, and so on.  I don’t want to get into that.  Suffice it to say, (in my world anyway) understanding a desperate people’s situation is not the same as justifying certain of their actions.  That is to say, by recognizing that the Palestinian struggle is legitimate, I don’t condone the suicide bombings and violence. 

 

Let’s just keep this literal.  Apparently, sitting at the table with Palestinian leadership is the same as sitting at the table with Hitler.  Palestinians – fighting against majority world opinion, with any means they have, out of desperation, to secure their natural right to exist.  Hitler – single-handedly responsible for the massacre of millions of Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies to stoke his desire for power.  Does that seem fair?  Should I expect anything more from our president?

 

To go to the Knesset and speak so reverently in front of the Israelis, and then to diminish an entire downtrodden people.  Nice.

 

(There’s a great interview with Palestinian hip-hop group, DAM, on democracynow.org - An example of a positive reaction to years of oppression.)