It is not longer possible that Arab human rights organizations ignore the governmental approach, both Arab and western, towards the Israeli practices considering them in isolation and overlooking the systematic policy they follow.
It is time we consolidate a more progressive and positive approach towards those practices and the continuous violations by the successive Israeli governments throughout their history.
We look forward to serious and tangible actions that aim to expose this Israeli state, isolate it and work towards freezing its membership in the UN.
We realize that this is a difficult and long term task that has to being by simple and slowly mounting, although clear and solid, actions.
We take this statement to be an initial and simple step on the way towards this achievement of this task. We wish it to be the beginning of an international campaign that may involve, among others, regional and international meetings and joint actions.
I leave it to readers to debate whether this is useful or not. You may want to keep in mind the current situation in Gaza.
English:
It is time to freeze Israel’s membership in the UN (1)-1.doc
Arabic:
تجميد عضوية اسرائيل-1.doc
The issue I always have with these campaigns is that while Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories are hardly laudable, it seems like there are plenty of other actors on the world stage who deserve attention. (Sudan, Myanmar and North Korea spring to mind.) If the test is to be denial of others’ national rights, then do Turkey and Iran also get booted by Kurdish groups? China because of Tibet?
Many in the U.S. are also rising up to quell the domineering Israeli lobby. Their powerful lobbyists use fearmongering, threats, and a host of other reprisals for not backing Israel implicitly in whatever actions they deem fit. The U.S. is finally seeing that Israel is out of control, irresponsible and a constant thorn to any peace efforts by the U.S. in the region.
The U.S. is now awakening to the heavy price they have paid for that support.
Well, as much as I disagree with the Israeli assault on Lebanon, its neverending (and completely self-destructive, btw) occupation of Palestine, and other violent and racist policies of that state, this seems to me just another one for the political dustbin.
Either the U.N. is for perfectly-behaving states only, in which case I’m sure Switzerland and Norway will enjoy vetoing each other — or it is, as today, an organization for all recognized states. Period. If there’s room for an ultra-repressive dictatorship such as North Korea (slave labour and concentration camps), an occupying power such as Morocco (W. Sahara), or a genocidally violent government such as Russia (in Chechnya) or Sudan (in Darfur) — then surely, there’s room for a mildly imperfect democracy which occupies some territory, and will smack up its (rather belligerent) neighbours every now and then. Bad as it is for the victims — and I’m NOT trying to diminish the grotesquery and bloodshed that is the colonization of Palestine — even they will recognize that an occupation by nearly every other state in the area would have been even more painful. Imagine Syria facing something like the Intifada – the Baath wouldn’t break arms and legs of the protesters, but heads and spines. Hey, imagine Hama 1982.
Point is, globally speaking, Israel is far from the worst guy on the block — so very, very far. It’s completely understandable that many Arabs take special offense at its actions, since they’re the ones being actually repressed and ethnically cleansed, and no-one in their right mind will blame Arab states and Arab public opinion for singling out Israel and trying to counteract this. Anyone in that situation would, and indeed, should.
But to work on the assumption that the rest of the world will also perceive Israel as a globally threatening supervillain, when in fact it’s not, is just to waste one’s breath. It makes perfect sense to campaign for Israeli war criminals to be tried in other countries and in international courts, and to try to start boycotts, information campaigns, etc — those are realistic and politically achievable goals.
This, however, is pure posturing, and what’s worse, a kind of mindless posturing that will make many potential sympathizers in the West lose confidence and back away. And those are the people who could, in the kind of world we unfortunately live in, make a difference: Western foreign policy moderates are the swing voters of the world, if you will.
The pro-Palestinian movement really has an easy case to make, politically. It’s a shame it can’t seem to shake this narrow, secterist and hardline attitude, and try to appeal to the crucial potential supporters among outside moderates instead of digging deeper and deeper into its own, eminently powerless, support base.
Brian and Alle, I agree with you. The UN isn’t exactly a club of do-gooders. I think this is in part the action of people who have no lobbying power with their own governments and thus are taking their cause to an international level.
Hazmaq, I don’t see the US waking up to anything right now…
To me this looks like a sad document. It accuses Israel of everything, as if Israel alone is horrible. Like others above said: Israel is worse than North Korean, Russia, China? Not to mention Egypt, Saudi, Iran, and the PA? These people speak as if they’ve never cast a critical eye upon themselves.
Just the mention of the “massacre” at Jenin ticks me off. I presume they mean the 2002 “Battle for Jenin.” It’s a massacre that didn’t happen, and everyone knows it. But they just list it anyway. (Unless I am *horribly* mistaken, in which case, forgive me and set me right, but it’s my understanding that hundreds and thousands were not killed in Jenin, as initially claimed, but that about 50 were killed, mostly militants, and the number of non-militants is arguable but in any case very low.)
Israel is far from blameless and I wish it acted differently, say, seven out of ten times, but for all these orgs to imagine it as the absolute villain (“blackmailing the international communitey”!!) and the Arab world as the absolute victim, as if the Palestinians are not at all responsible for anything–I just don’t even know what to say to that. How can anyone expect progress if they don’t accept even in principle that Israel alone is not to blame for everything horrible in the Middle East or even everything horrible in Gaza specifically.
Just the other day even a Hamas member said: “We have always been accustomed to pinning our failures on others, and conspiratorial thinking is still widespread among us…” and “It is strange that when a great effort was made to reopen the Rafah Crossing in order to make [life] easier for the residents, somebody fires a missile towards the crossing.” ((Full link: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD126806 — I know, I know, how typical of me to link to Memri, feel free to excoriate me.)
In no place did this guy suggest Israel is great or innocent, or that he liked it, or even that he accepted its right to exist. But at least he acknowledged that the Palestinians have screwed themselves at least as much as Israel has. He even suggests what everyone knows, that Gaza militants themselves bomb the own damn crossings they then complain are kept closed.
I don’t know… how can so many organizations fail so completely to grasp how the world works? Just the idea of kicking any nation out of the United Nations is totally contrary to the idea of the United Nations in the first place….
Anyway this comment is a bit of a rant and probably poorly thought out but reading stuff like this doc, from supposed reformers no less, just angers/depresses me.
Dan, I would say 99% of Palestinians are perfectly aware how much they have been fucked by their own — leaders, resistance groups, basically everyone in power. Not to mention how completely they have been cheated by the Arab world. But that’s kind of secondary to their root problem, which is statelessness, and also constantly used by Israel for cheap propaganda points — really cheap, since the corruption and inefficiency of the PNA is hardly a reason to keep enfeebling it and preventing it from turning into a real state. So of course it’s not their main complaint to would-be sympathizers, but they sure KNOW it, and it IS discussed, if mostly away from CNN cameras. Indeed, it’s possibly the main reason Hamas is now in power, instead of Fatah.
Now, this doesn’t get through as easily to the rest of the Arab world, since not even the Israeli line (on Palestinian corruption, self-destructiveness etc) is heard clearly there. There, the message picked up is on the need for unconditional solidarity, and that’s what’s given. Why not?
Same thing with Hizbullah, by the way. I think the one country in the Arab world where there is a real critical debate on the ups and downs of Hizbullah, is Lebanon; even to some extent among Shiites, who are very much able to see it up close and in action. But in Syria, Egypt, etc, they’re simply Heroes Battling The Bad Guy, and most people don’t even seem to know about the reservations of Lebanon’s Sunni — not to mention Christian — communities.
The most interesting aspect of all this, I think, is how Arab opposition figures are trying to capitalize on these radical currents, and tie it to the passivity of their own governments. Many regimes are tied down by commitments to the U.S. and by being in power — they can’t be too militant. But the opposition(s) can say whatever it wants in that regard (few Arab states will jail you on a charge of being too anti-Zionist), and it desperately needs to connect to popular feeling and the nationalist credentials involved.
So, you see the democrats protesting the attack on Lebanon in Cairo, and getting smacked down by Mubarak’s thugs, and you see these tiny little intellectual reformist groups dispatching rabidly pro-Hizbullah communiques all over the Arab world. It’s a smart strategy, to capitalize on nationalist resentment when the regimes are unable to, and I’m sure there’s an element of that in this NGO statement (bad as at is). Unfortunately, it doesn’t resonate as well in the West — but then again, that’s not the intended audience.
And, oh yeah, stop using Memri for anything other than to wipe your electronic ass.
I agree with this article. There is a gap between arabic governments regulations and their citizens. The people want (and they are right in their demands) that backward Israel shall disappear from the Middle East.
That might sound absurd from today's perespective, however, That is truly the best solution. Let me explain:
Before 1945 there was no israel in the Middle East. There was Palestine.
And Palestine is arabic within Arabic countries.
So what is more natural to have other than an arabic country existing within other arabic countries. The growth is programmed.
Backward israel is a collection of innocent Jews from all over the world, mostly from Russia and Europe. These people have been deceived by Zionism propaganda with headquaraters today in backard israel, that backward israel is their dream land. They come here to find themselves want to re-immigrate to USA or Canada.
Thats it. Down with israel the fake society in both ways: inside and outside.