Chava Gurion

CHAVA GURION: SARA ROY AND THE AIM OF DIVIDING ISRAELIS INTO BAD ONES AND VERY BAD ONES (04/2008)

Chava Gurion RIGHT AND DISPROPORTION - Israels Lebanon War 2006 in Austrian Media

Chava Gurion The European Thorn in Israel 's Bosom

ChavaGurion Unpublished Letter to the Editor, an answer, sent December 12, 2005, to the piece “Tactical Rhetorics” by John Bunzl, in: Der Standard, December 12, 2005

9/2004: About Fences

The democratic nation I. actually is erecting an impenetrable, multiple security-fence, endowed with most modern technology providing protection against intruders, more than 280 miles long, 20 ft. high, some yards broad, to hinder fundamentalistic, Islamistic terror-groups and single suicide terrorists from P. penetrating the country. There is no point to be mentioned by the international press. The international community of nations sits back watching and thinks it is correct and good right, because in this case I. stands for India and P. for Pakistan. Indians are not Israelians, Indians are allowed to do that. The basic issue at stake also there is very similar: a relatively large territory (in the north-west between both countries) had  - if at all - "always" a predominant Islamic population. Therefore the Islamic nation Pakistan lays claim to it, but by release of both nations from the British colonial power into freedom 1947, the territory has been added to the Hindu nation India. Since then the conflict between both nations simmers from time to time up to boiling, brought hundred thousands of victims, Hindus fled to India, Muslims fled to Pakistan, countless terrorist attacks followed from the beginning - when the most famous victim, the non-violent freedom-fighter Mahatma Ghandi was murdered. Now, after more than fifty years, the Indians are fed up with terrorist attacks and erect the fence. Most of the Europeans are not aware of the fact, that this conflict was looming to escalate to a nuclear war several times until today, while they generally blame Israel to be threat number one to worldwide peace.

Of course, this situation cannot be compared with the Near-East-conflict. First of all, the powerful British Empire could part their colony India, conquered by military superiority, at their own discretion, couldn't they? Second, at the same time Palestine has not been a British colony but their mandated territory (although conquered in the same way by military superiority in World War I). Third, during and after World War I, the British, being almost every time right by power, could easily promise Palestine as a free and sovereign country to both of the two applicants, Jews and Arabs, at the same time and for multiple own interests of British policy. Give independence and part the given up - this had been the British democratic prescription, which had been acknowledged 1947 also by the UNO. The Jews were satisfied and wanted to build their own nation Israel on their part, the Arabs wanted the whole thing for themselves. One can freely admit, that the borders between Israel and the Arab neighbour states from 1948 until 1967 had been just a result of the military success of the Israelian Army in the Independence War 1948. One can also freely admit, that the Israelian increase in territories since 1967 - the Golan, West-Jordan and the whole Sinai - has been just a result of military superiority of Israel in all the won wars since then - conquered territory, yes.

Especially in front of the European perspective we can admit this. The European map, the division of European state territories still is based on borders which have been drawn just between winners and losers in both the World Wars. In Europe, the same period of half a century sufficed to forget: Poland, "always" of Polish culture, just a play ball in wars between Russia and Germany; the "always German" territories Silesia, East Prussia, the Sudetenland, the Egerland - to whom do they belong today? Alsace-Lorraine, today for a long time acknowledged French territory. South Tyrol, for a long time Italianised by settlers (!) from South Italy and an authoritative pure Italian administration. South Tyroleans who did not accept Italianisation had been expelled and forced to leave back their "always" Tyrolean properties, to leave the country and to look for a new existence somewhere else. In case they could prove to be German, they could go to Germany by the German-Italian treaty, but the many others fled to North Tyrol, East Tyrol or Carinthia. Yes, there had been terrorist attacks and even bombings by South Tyrolean extremists in the Fifties and Sixties, although their targets never had been human beings but infrastructure of Italian properties. Interestingly, the Austrian justice then showed remarkable mildness against Austrian terrorists acting in South Tyrol. Extradition to Italian justice was mostly refused, penalties were generous. Maybe therefore Austrians in general also show remarkable understanding for Palestinian terrorists against Israel. Anyway, nobody of former South Tyroleans today would raise the idea to call his home out of South Tyrol "refugee-camp" (after more than fifty years), to perpetrate terrorist attacks in whole Italy, to blow up public busses in Rome by suicide bombing, to claim for restitution of grandfather's property or even for an own state given by the Italian government. Therefore Italy does not need a security fence. Just to avoid being suspected of hyper-Germanness: The Brenner-border and almost all of the other European state borders are military borders, borders of war, borders of conquest, borders of victory, which served as a basis of peace treaties and left the losers without territories until today.

The key question is, if the losers put up with this for long. In Europe they do, in Near East they do not. Strange, that Europeans of all people, first of all European foreign politicians, are in agreement with the Arab world, that military conquered territories are due to the winner of war - worldwide and in principle - but must be handed back inch per inch to the loser of war, when the winner of war was Israel. By the way, Israel is the only nation in the world who already has handed back the broadest part of her military conquered territory, when at least we remember the Sinai. According to European perception and European action, Israel could erect the security fence not only some yards on Palestinian territory (at some few places), but at the state borders to Jordan and Egypt, and could expel Palestinians who refuse naturalization to these Arab or Islamic countries - like most of the European countries expelled similar acting “displaced persons” after World War II.

A former idea of Israelian policy, to hand back West-Jordan to the Kingdom of Jordan and the Gaza-stripe to Egypt, very wisely was rejected by both Islamic states - no, thanks. At least Jordan still has the tiresome trouble with extreme Palestinians in mind, who not only claimed for their own state at times when West-Jordan belonged to Jordan but for the whole power in Jordan by overthrow of the Hashemite royal court. "Black September" - already forgotten? A pure intra-Arabic conflict with revolutionary Palestinian groups. Better let have Israel the trouble, isn't it?

From the position of military conquered increase of territory, which slipped the corporate mind of the European Union but still works in Europe, one could say: every inch of Israelian occupied territory handed back to Arab states is a generous concession. Today Europeans argue with a completely different position, one of an accomplished, by wisdom and senses victorious conception of democratic systems, which deplorably cannot be transferred to Near East, because in this area Israel is the only nation with a working democracy offering political diversity. The simple "left-moderate-right"-thinkers in Europe only can dream of a political diversity in the Knesset, which additionally tolerates at least three different meanings of each of the representatives at the same time. But naturally, in the face of fallen walls in Berlin and a completely removed "iron curtain", European arrogance can easily look down on fences and walls in other areas of the world. Not so much on the one between democratic India and democratic Pakistan, but on the one between democratic Israel and an imagined one-party-state of the PLO and some extreme Islamistic groups.

Overstated phrased, the European Union successfully has developed and achieved the exact counter concept to the former colonial power Great Britain. Instead of "draw back, part between succession states and give them independence" now it says here "extend, join the states together and make them dependent (from European handicaps)". Without any question, this is an enviable victory over nationalism.

Maybe exactly the idealistic dreamers of  Great Israel had something similar in their mind. A large, democratic State of Israel, in which later on also the Palestinians could learn democratic principles, could live and work together in common with the Jews, like today the Arab Israelians do already. Deplorably, extreme Palestinians want something (not so) similar the other way round: Great Palestine, by expulsion and deportation of those belonging to the "Zionist object", meaning all who did not settle there before 1948, tolerating the rest of Jews, while the quick extinction of them would be a biological, real perspective.

Seen from this position, a temporary partition into two states seems to be the only feasible solution, which does not exclude a later economical joint after one or two generations who learnt to coexist and to keep peace.

Europeans totally disapprove - often by referring the fallen walls in Berlin and the removed "iron curtain" between the former communist East and the democratic West - of the Israelian security fence. Some in principle and at all, some others just concerning its geographical position including some few Jewish settlements which exist at least since 35 years. Both groups - even their most brilliant thinkers - confuse a security fence with a border fence, which would enact a state border. This seems all the more strange, as Europeans are really experts for fallen borders and for security fences. In Europe, protection of life and property just has moved from state borders lined out in maps to individual borders. Without any individual trouble of actual or experienced torment, Europeans are wise enough to protect their life and property with more and more high-Tec-security systems, just having the criminal statistics in mind. No unlocked car, no car without alarm system, front doors and doors to the apartment are locked with three special locks, intercoms, video technology, joist locks and infra-red barriers prevent unauthorizised admittance, every proving grip on articles is filmed in department stores, walls and fences around every little house and every little farm provide for security. Employees of big enterprises have to pass a security code system to attain their working place. Even leisure activities often can be reached only by being scanned. Yes, Europeans erect fences because they want peace - although war is very far away from them.

But all this cannot be compared with Israelian security need - European security systems only aim against crimes, are protecting against murder, robbery, larceny, are protecting life and property!

The most lenient European critics on the Israelian security-fence argue, because of too few passages and too stringent controlling it would hinder also decent Palestinians to attain their working places in Israel quickly and directly. For this problem at least one very good solution does exist: Working places for Palestinians within the territory they claim for their own. If the Palestinian authority would have employed the exorbitant European economic aid properly and not for arming terrorist organizations, these working places could have been provided for a long time. With the argument of lacking working places and increasing unemployment Europe - former a continent very friendly to foreign workers - knows best how to shut up fortress Europe and how to turn away foreigners looking for work. Unemployment in Israel is far higher than in Europe, high enough to provide the job-market with Israelian citizens only. But this would be very inhuman by Israel, wouldn't it? To shout "the boat is full" is only Europe's just due. Europa locuta, causa finita. Just whatever Israel does, in any case and comprehensively is nationalism, Zionism, oppressing of poor Palestinians. The fence has to be taken away, it is inhuman and contemptuous.

This says Europe, the continent with complex networks of countless security systems and impenetrable fences around every little garden plot, around every banal but defined property. Oh yes, the European criminal statistics. Why don't the Europeans give a laudable example, let simply all their doors open and just put a gun under their pillows? After all, with their security systems they hinder poor murderers, robbers and thieves, who deplorably never became acquainted with a different perspective, to realize their concept of living....

Incomparable, because the protection against crimes like terrorism, murder, robbery and larceny is legal in every country in the world. Now we just have to agree on the question, if illegal penetrating into a country for the purpose of terrorist raids, firing small range rockets on school-busses, placing of bombs, suicide bombing in public transport for the purpose of murdering as many civilians as possible, especially children, are crimes or not. Or - just against Israelians are not.

Jewish people, Austrian Social-democracy and the Near-East-conflict, 7/2003

Europe is haunted by a ghost...manifested in a new form of anti-Semitism, which – in self-denial to be such – shows itself as latent anti-imperialism (against the USA and therefore against their protected countries), as anti-Zionism (at the terms of argumentation this would occur “even” between Jews and in Israel) or as antagonism against Israel, which can refer to worldwide consent because of these reasons and which uncritically turns all European Jews and Jewish women to “Israelis”, directly responsible for the respective behaviour of the Israelian government, no matter changes and political orientation. More or less willing executors of this new form of anti-Semitism are – beside right parties – deplorably also Austrian Social-democrats, even in European or international dimension, who naturally repulse sharply every faint of such reproaches and counter with “Jewish paranoia”.

In people’s voice this is manifesting more clearly. And what is it, if not anti-Semitism, when Austrian citizens, living and working there since decenniums and once had been outing themselves as Jews (which should be possible in a democracy since 1945), even while harmlessly shopping, suddenly are confronted with the personal reproach: What you do to the poor Palestinians is a load of filth!

The field for self-nominating experts for Near-East obviously is unlimited. Enough to have one or two of them (with academic reputation) in the country, enough to let some few points of their particular views be communicated by media, in fact every consumer of these media, at the terms of his own (and sometimes poor) talents to grasp the written, spoken and seen, feels enforced enough to produce himself as a well informed Near-East expert.

In the process to shape public opinion, the pleasant and interesting of the Near-East-conflict is to be far away and to enable distraction from own problems. Besides, even wrong opinions will not have any consequences. If one would concern about the problems in the own country with similar enthusiasm and similarly sound conclusions, one could find himself as a victim of wrong policy or even as voter for the wrong party. More self-esteem as a politically thinking person is possible by finding Israel on the maps, reading from people or knowing them who have been there, or even having been as a tourist at the Red Sea and analysing local problems at these terms. Whenever one meets people – Jews assignable to Israel - in his own country Austria, fine to haul them over the coils, quasi as an emotional compensation for the Austrian restitution, payable from recent budgets after such a long time after the persecution of Jews.

Of course, a political party like the Austrian Social-democrats theoretically has no influence on shaping public opinion by mass media, and if, less in the position of opposition. One cannot make a party responsible for this general development in the free and independent media, but in an idealistic point of view one could believe it would be different in a party organ like the Zukunft and a basic consent between official party line and published opinion would exist.

Also concerning freely released articles by Social-democratic Members of the European Parliament, focussing the Near-East-conflict, tirelessly and costly published and however financed, it should be presumable that the party’s officials would not tolerate deviation from the party line of a equidistant basic consent - even then, when these publications of tireless MEPs are not endangered to become mass media.

Examples for such (possibly intended) deviations or strays from the subject, e. g. Iraq in: Hannes Swobodas Standpunkt IV. Eine Expedition nach Mesopotamien, 02/2003, p. 13: “...The list of nations which offend against UN-resolutions is leaded by Israel (32 cases)....” (cit., my translation). The same Hannes Swoboda in a speech about the situation in Iraq in Strasbourg  on 12.02.2003, (ibid., p. 20): “...Don’t we know in this house how many UN-resolutions are not performed? Don’t we know that, concerning this very region, even an UN-resolution from the year 1947 is not yet performed?...Yes, we should strive to get all the resolutions performed! But all the resolutions – the one on Iraq but also the one on Palestine. Then we would have a real European position...” (cit., my translation).

Yes, this would be a “real”  European position.

Obviously the UN-resolution for the partition of Palestine (1947), including a partition plan and the erection of two states, a Jewish one and an Arab one, is meant and was realized only unilaterally by Israel in Swoboda’s point of view, simply forgetting that it was only the part of all the Arab neighbour states not to accept the UN-partition plan and the UN-resolution and to aggress this Jewish state from all sides for war. In this war, the kingdom of (former Trans-)Jordan annexed the one part of Palestine, West Jordan, and Egypt annexed the other part of Palestine, the Gaza-Stripe, which both parts had been destined by the UN to build the Arab state of Palestine. This annexing of a possible Arab state Palestine by Jordan and Egypt lasted nineteen years (1948-1967) - for a generation! - and could happen without any remarkable excitement by the UN or by just now waking up and self-nominating humanists. It might have contributed, that the region Near-East has been a very welcome projection surface of the Cold War and the Soviet Union a protecting power for Egypt at this time.

A second article of the same author, Tour d’Europe, Ein Europäisches  Tagebuch von Hannes Swoboda, Kapitel 25, 11/02-01/03, which subtly and also openly spreads antagonism against Israel almost exclusively on ten pages (16-25) contains: “I never have thought it was possible that a people, whom had been done so much injury, could oppress another people so much and treat it so inhumanly.”  (Cit., ibid. p. 22, my translation).

I never have thought it was possible that a social-democratic representative, endowed with all academic qualifications for an objective, on comprehensive comparison of facts and methodical correctness based point of view and presumably experienced in dialectics, could secrete such an undifferentiated, one-dimensional pamphlet.  A rare intellectual achievement in it is the concession to the Jews to be a people. Deplorably this is not yet in the perceptive faculty of the Palestinians, who are supported by MEP Swoboda within his European domain in such a vehement way, lifted off from all the historical and actual facts and not missing a chance for an unfair hint. (See Palestinian National Charta.)

In the strict Palestinian point of view Jews are whether a people nor a nation with assignable beings (whom one had to concede a basic right on an own territory) but a simple religious group, whose confessing members belong to the nation on the territory of which they live. In principle this is the point of view of Islam, which traditionally at least tolerates other but older religions and their (decently carried out) practise, even within Islamic domain and Islamic states. According to this, the oriental Jewry found possibilities of existence and tolerance in the Ottoman Empire from the beginning – reception of the Sephardim (together with the Islamic Moors) after their expulsion from the Iberian peninsula 1492 by the Roman-catholic Christians and the possibility of a – not always frictionless but liveable – co-existence of Jews and Moslems in Palestine as a part of the later Turkish Empire until 1918.

Even moderate Palestinians have this status in their mind, a free and completely Arab state Palestine “from the river to the Sea”, in which Jews who settled there “before the Zionistic invasion”  (1918? 1922? 1933? 1945?) would have rights of living and religious practice as “Jewish Palestinians”.

Palestinian extreme groups like Hamas or Al-Aksa-brigades want something different – as an “oppressed and so inhumanly treated” people they try their utmost - even in generous abuse of international and European economic aid for weapons and explosives and even by sacrificing their own civil population (as martyrs by suicide bombing or by using women and children as living shields) to bomb whole Palestine free of Jews.

Now it is not by far in accordance with the facts, that Jews would not have settled in Palestine before the “Zionistic invasion in the 20^th century. The territory, which we Europeans understand as “Palestine” since the Roman Empire (See also: Josephus Flavius, De Bellum Iudaicum – About the Jewish War 66-73 AD), historically all the times extended to the desert far eastern from the Jordan river, containing the western part of contemporary Jordan, and has been populated more or less, but always also by Jews.

Until 1918 the rule of the Turkish Empire extended over Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine to all the populated coastlands of the Arabic peninsula, Arabia herself was a blank area, limited to the uninhabitable desert. Inland this Turkish Empire Jews settled all the times, not only but particularly in historical Palestine including contemporary Jordan.

It had to be Europeans – first of all the British and the French – to come to the region in 1918, to spread there ideas of the 19^th century like colonialism, imperialism and nationalism together with conflicts rising from this, and to invent borders for Near-East which did not exist before. Only then they empowered the idea of an Arab nation and Arab national pride to win them for allies against the Turkish Empire.

The insoluble matter of conflict in Near-East is based on the fact, that for own interests and by military superiority British policy promised two people – Arabs and Jews – the very same at the same time: a state for their own, deplorably in the same territory. Concerning the Arabs as their allies the reasons were clear, concerning the Jews more diffuse. (See also: Declaration of Min. Balfour, 1917). According to the pogroms against Jews in tsarist Russia and the rising anti-Semitism in Europe, which already had lead the founder if Zionism, Theodor Herzl, for a visit as a petitioner before the Sultan of Constantinople, this could be read as a humanistic sign in British foreign policy at this time. Gentlemen are coming along great in history books. My own point of view is, that in international policy it is always better to support a persecuted and expelled people founding a state for their own – as far away as possible – than to find them as asylum-seekers possibly in the own country...

For the first time in history the Jordan-river as a border appeared in 1918, as an European invention and as the first partition of historical Palestine into a predominantly (but not completely) Arab populated part and a Jewish-Arab populated part, when the French mandated territory Syria and the British mandated territories Palestine and Transjordania had been established and the historical east of Palestine had been awarded to Transjordania.

Very interesting is the partition plan for Palestine, according to the UN-resolution in 1947: After Great Britain realized to be unable to fulfil both former promises concerning her mandated territories and to satisfy both sides, Arabs and Jews, this plan intended the second partition of historical Palestine and – although some “modern” Europeans like MEP Swoboda still urge to perform it today – it expected both parties, Arabs and Jews, to accept a territory for their own each of which was chopped in three parts and connected only on two points each. This would have made border crossing from one country to the other or to the next part of the own one very easy:  Two turnstile-doors would have been enough to satisfy both states and the whole region. The seeming almost balanced division of areas is deceptive, because the biggest part intended for the Jews was the desert Negev only, while many Jewish settlements would have been given to the planned Arab state. For Jerusalem “internationalisation” had been provided, a well sounding name for a condition which could not even internationally be performed frictionless and hands down again 182 particular matters of conflicts minimum. Nobody can divide a town vertically according to historical grown developments.

Must we be thankful therefore, that the Arabs – in contrary to the Jews – did not accept this UN-partition plan as well as the UN-resolution and at once attacked the new (and again) born Jewish state and in succession on and on, again and again? At least this allowed the necessary defence of the Israelian state in the independence war 1948 for survival and a connected territory, hardly to organize but at least administrable, although Jewish settlements – legally acquired by former purchase - still remained on the Arab’s side. These Jewish settlements have been accurately marked in the UN-partition plan 1947, but did not rise a problem to the UNO since an economical cooperation between both the Jewish and the Arab state was provided, which also was denied exclusively by the Arabs. So far about the question, who took territory from whom. The fact, that within the Arab war against the young state of Israel in 1948 Egypt annexed the Gaza-stripe and Jordan annexed the West Jordan territories so that only these both countries then foiled an independent Arab-Palestinian state “Palestine” as planned by the UNO, escaped the attention of both the Palestinian narratives and those of Israelian scholars from the far left, supported by others, who broadcast these narratives to make a name for themselves at least in this way, if not possible in a common scientific way. Europe in astonishment welcomes them with arms wide open – in this way they can reconcile economical interests (e.g. friendship with oil-producing Arab states), anti-Zionism and anti-Semitic sediments in the political right and left, also anti-capitalism, open anti-Americanism and anti-Imperialism.

The rest is well known, named Near-East-conflict and can be analysed by each of the “Near-East-experts” like readers of the “greatest” newspaper of and TV-consumers in Austria. As far as I am concerned, I have already  explained my point of view (see: Die Gemeinde, 11/2002) and do not want to repeat myself.The “real” European position concerning Jews and Israel today has arrived where it has been historically all the times: The extreme right says: Jews to Palestine. The extreme left says: Jews off Palestine. The broad field between says: well yes, but....This “but” contains well known positions of crypto-anti-Semitism like: Israel is an illegal state, but I can’t be an anti-Semite, I know three Jews and one of them is a friend of mine. So what is up, where should we go? In, out? In any case away from there where we are now and under no circumstances there where we are not yet. Arctic, Antarctic, Moon? Or suicide?

My basic interest here is the explanation of those new forms of anti-Semitism, which can spread more and more by anti-Zionism, anti-Imperialism and unanimous but one-sided, simplistic, wholesale Israel-criticism even on social-democratic brains, which are very thinking in other matters. Especially in the European dimension we must ask: cui bono? And in what a way? To win reputation as a conflict breaker by digging out half a century old plans, which are discarded even by Palestinian officials meanwhile? Or does this violent palming serve some other particular interests? Vanity or advantage, that is the question. Such a violent engagement for the Palestinian side should keep an eye on the fact, that extreme Palestinian exponents, who already have established a real state within the imaged state Palestine, who control and have occupied all the resources and funds for themselves still deny Israel’s right of existence, while officials of the Palestinian Authority have accepted this, have discarded the UN partition plan 1947 and gamble only on a basis of the frontiers pre-1967 for negotiations.

Who ever makes himself such an engaged advocate for the extreme position of Palestinians and never misses a chance for verbal attacks against Israel, but never finds a simple word concerning Israel’s right of existence must reckon on being suspected anti-Semite even when he – different to Palestinian extremists - recognizes the Jews being a people and a nation. After all it has been a stage of development in anti-Semitism to judge Jews not as a religious group only, but as a people, a nation, a unique “race” even, which allowed a pejorative “classification” of certain national “marks” of mentality or character and took the last resort for Jews to escape of the Shoa by conversion.

Therefore it is completely wrong to imply not to be anti-Semitic just because of recognising the Jews as a people and nation. The last development shows that it is not even enough to be a Social-democrat. What has begun with former chancellor Vranitzky and officially should be continued until today – reappraising the past and a critical look at the “brown stains” also within the own party – is counteracted by autonomous initiatives of some Austrian Social-democrats by means of the trendy Trojan horse Israel-criticism. As if there would not exist much more important links to the European and international dialogue.