The game has never changed since so many years of that tragic struggle: Every time the Israelis lose their nerve, they show off their veritable evil face without make-up. If it is not a butchery committed in the dark in an isolated village or a refugees’ camp, as so many occurred all along the conflict, demolishing houses, expelling people, devastating plantations, and lately striking the P.A. symbols will do. The last “discovery” of the “brave” Israeli army consisted in blowing up the Palestinian broadcasting center in Ramallah, a few hours before merely re-occupying the West Bank town of Tulkarem. Such hatred is really rare in mankind history. Indeed, all the colonization’s systems committed crimes against the indigenous populations that resisted them. But the Israeli system has reached an unmatched level of regulated horror.
And this is not so because the Israelis kill innocent people, but particularly because despite all their crimes they are still claiming they are a democratic society. Thus, the raids on the Palestinian civil population, with F-16s, tanks, armored cars, missiles, and other warfare machines, are not only “justified” as “self-defense” but also supported by the “very democratic” Israeli society!
Israeli tolerance é if it ever existed- has reached the ground zero so many times that this recurrence is in itself a proof against the pretenders who claim that Israel is the only democracy in the region. The greatest sham of all times was perhaps the former Soviet Union, since it was hiding the ignominious Gulag under the pretensions of popular rule. But the Israelis have absolutely nothing to learn from their ex-masters of the red empire. As a Russian Jew, Sharon was not a gift to the Middle East region. Compared to Stalin, he would even surpass him in sadism. And if some people are still enough naéve to tell us ” he has been elected”, we should remind them that so many criminals have succeeded to deceiving people about their intentions and got even more electors than Sharon will ever have even in his dreams. So, if Israel is still a democracy after all these dismaying crimes, let us salute lowly and humbly all the Arab dictators, whom we used to condemn. If Israel is still democratic after that entire military rampage, let us yell: God bless the Arab dictators!
Why not? If you condemn a behavior and do exactly like the party you condemned, what are you? The point is that the Israelis who blame the Palestinian extremists are not only doing like them, but even surpassing them: For six persons killed by a single man on a banquet hall last week, they would retaliate in wiping out the whole broadcasting center, re-occupy a whole town, and kill and arrest people by dozens! The fact that the P.A. has condemned all those suicide operations does not matter for Sharon, since he holds Arafat personally as responsible for the individual acts of some militants. Has he not made of him a hostage in Ramallah? Had he not already taken in custody other Palestinian symbols é like Orient House é and destroyed others? And despite these facts, Mr. Bill Clinton who lately stopped in Israel to collect a honorary doctorate from Tel Aviv university, thought it “convenient to peace efforts” to blame a besieged man é Arafat- for his mistakes, reiterating that he had rejected a “generous offer” from the Israelis!
But who ever would explain to Mr. Clinton that nobody could be generous with others’ propriety?
Hichem Karoui is a writer and journalist living in Paris, France.
