“Israel has the military might to wipe out its enemies easily. Why doesn’t it?”
This speech was delivered at the College of Staten Island on 10/23.
I would like to begin by quoting a famous leader who most of you probably have seen on TV or at know through some other way.
“I don’t know something called International Principles. I vow that I’ll burn every Palestinian child (that) will be born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child is more dangerous than the man, because the Palestinian child’s existence infers that generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger. I vow that if I was just an Israeli civilian and I met a Palestinian I would burn him and I would make him suffer before killing him. With one hit I’ve killed 750 Palestinians. I wanted to encourage my soldiers by raping Arabic girls as the Palestinian women is a slave for Jews, and we do whatever we want to her and nobody tells us what we shall do but we tell others what they shall do.”
The quote I just read to you was from the current Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. Today this is the man supposedly defending Israel from the threat of terror.
This speech was delivered at the College of Staten Island on 10/23.
I would like to begin by quoting a famous leader who most of you probably have seen on TV or at know through some other way.
“I don’t know something called International Principles. I vow that I’ll burn every Palestinian child (that) will be born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child is more dangerous than the man, because the Palestinian child’s existence infers that generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger. I vow that if I was just an Israeli civilian and I met a Palestinian I would burn him and I would make him suffer before killing him. With one hit I’ve killed 750 Palestinians. I wanted to encourage my soldiers by raping Arabic girls as the Palestinian women is a slave for Jews, and we do whatever we want to her and nobody tells us what we shall do but we tell others what they shall do.”
The quote I just read to you was from the current Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. Today this is the man supposedly defending Israel from the threat of terror.
My name is Vladislav Davidzon, and I am one of the many people around the world who is loudly and clearly saying “NO!” to the Israeli government’s policy of racism and murder. Not in my name! Not with my tax dollars!
Last summer, I spent nearly two months in Historical Palestine helping the Palestinian people resist the brutal occupation and protest the theft of their land and destruction of their communities by taking part in non-violent actions such as protests and civil disobedience. Tear gas, sound grenades rubber bullets have been tossed my way. I’ve been threatened on numerous occasions with death, having had clicking guns waved in my face. I visited morgues and saw bodies of civilians who were shot without reason by the Israeli army. And I lived in Palestinian refugee camps of people who were kicked out from their land when Israel was illegally created by the United Nations in 1947, or left in the war afterwards. I say illegally created because the United Nations has no power to create nations – only to recognize that the people living on a certain piece of land have democratically chosen to become a nation.
I am here today to tell you that we have all been intentionally misled by our corporate, corrupt media and equally corrupt political leaders into believing that there is some sort of balance in the conflict in the Middle East. We are told that Israel is acting in self-defense, that she has to defend herself, that there is a threat of those evil Arabs all out to kill the Jews. We are told that one cannot negotiate with the terrorists — that they are just out to kill and they hate Israelis and also us, Americans, just because well… because they just hate us. And we are told that if we do not support Israel in killing those evil terrorists, they will come and kill us next.
These are all lies. They are simply not true. I am here today to tell the real truth about what is happening, and to make the case that the reason the terror attacks continue to occur in Israel is because it is in the interest of the Israeli government who is directly guilty of murder of their own Israeli citizens in order to allow for theft of land under the guise of the occupation. The real terrorists driving all the killing is the current Israeli Government, led by Ariel Sharon, the very man whom I quoted before.
As a side note, I speak as someone who has relatives in Israel near Tel Aviv, so I have a particular stake in moving towards real peace and democracy in the region. I also speak as a person of Jewish heritage. This is important to note because supposedly these crimes are being committed to make me safer.
Let us begin by backtracking to 1947 when Israel was illegally created. Before that time, for many centuries Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in historical Palestine in relative peace. It is really important to realize that this is not a conflict that has just been going on for a long time. It was only truly enflamed when the United Nations overstepped its boundaries in forcing upon the people of historical Palestine a new set of borders and a country called Israel. In doing so, the United Nations overstepped its charter and violated International law. In creating Israel, the United Nations essentially allowed millions of immigrants to come and throw out the Christian and Muslim Palestinian peoples who lived on the land for centuries. It is very important to understand that this conflict is not about two peoples who simply cannot get along – it is about one group of people, the Jews, to essentially plot to wipe out another group, the non-Jewish Palestinians.
It is critical to realize that the goal of creation of Israel was based on stealing land for creation of a Jewish state. This is the very heart and soul of what Israeli racism is all about – this isn’t about two people’s who cannot get along for some strange reason, but it is about a systematic plot to create a Jewish state in a place where for thousands of years, Jews, Arabs and Christians have lived in relative peace by kicking out the non-Jews. It is ethnic cleansing with the goal of creating a perfect, one-race state… not all that different from the ideal that in 1939 another government wanted to advance, the government of Adolph Hitler who also wanted a single-race, perfect state.
However, let us fast forward to more recent times. In 1992 Yitzhak Rabin had come to power as the Prime Minister of Israel and began a campaign towards peace. The Oslo agreement was signed, and there was real viable hope that there would be lasting peace in the Middle East. However the right-wing elements within the Israeli society shattered that hope. On November 4, 1995 Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by a young law student, Yigal Amir who specifically told the judge that the assassination was meant to halt the peace process. He was successful, and after Ehud Barak was elected, the first suicide bombings began.
And that brings us to here and now. Israel over the past few years has been quite busy literally demolishing what is left of the Palestinian society. The economy has been destroyed – while just a few years ago the unemployment was under 10%, it is not over 85% due primarily to the Israeli roadblocks and blockades. Most Palestinian males have been in an Israeli jail at least once. Most without any trial or reason for being there other than having been randomly picked off the street.
I witnessed tremendous suffering. The Israeli Occupational Force has created a system of roadblock and checkpoints throughout the West Bank, which are little more than harassment points to make the lives of the Palestinians tougher. The fact is that just like almost every other Israeli “security” measure, the checkpoint system has very little to do with security as all the checkpoints are easily bypassed on foot. Israel is also busy building the so-called security fence, a map of which I have provided for you as a handout, but yet if it has to do with security, why build it on Palestinian land, and why build it on the other side of the West Bank? Is Israel so concerned with protecting Palestinians against Jordanians? And why separate the west bank into so many small areas, encircling the cities? To protect Palestinians from… their fellow Palestinians? You can find much about the wall in the handout, but I should mention that most water sources will of course be on the Israeli side of the fence.
And of course there is the most evident and clear fact about the land grab: the settlements. We are literally talking illegal under all laws land theft. The settlements are literally groups of houses that are built on lands within the West Bank and Gaza, well outside of Israel’s internationally-recognized borders. There are over two hundred settlements within the West Bank. Ladies and gentlemen, if you needed open, clear cut proof of land theft by Israeli government, this is it. Under all international laws, the settlements are completely, entirely illegal. The settlements are the real goal of the occupation, and guess what? The Israeli government just a few days ago approved the construction of another 600 houses within the West Bank settlements, thus expanding them. Are the settlements also being built for self-defense? This of course while simultaneously expediting the construction of the wall, which will help grab the land.
I have witnessed numerous war crimes committed by the Israeli government. Of course, I fully and completely condemn the suicide bombings as being a war crime, but at the same time it is critical to recognize that the suicide bombings are necessary to keep the occupation going and to derail the peace process, a critical goal of the current Israeli administration — a point which I will talk about in a minute.
Collective punishment is the name of the game. I have personally witnessed Israelis demolishing homes, completely randomly shooting at buildings as well as civilians. Quite commonly the Israeli soldiers will use rubber-coated metal bullets to shoot at children’s eyes. The bullet will pierce the eye and enter the brain, thus killing the child. At checkpoints, men, women and children will often be made to sit out in the sun for a full day or more, regardless of how sick they are. Many women give birth at checkpoints because the Israelis won’t let them get through to hospitals, and many people die at the checkpoints because the ambulances are not allowed through.
I have seen the damage left behind by an Israeli tank that bombed a civilian hospital. And I have seen the shells of burned out ambulances which were shot up by the Israeli machine guns. The suffering created by the occupation is tremendously intense. It is designed for a single goal of driving out the Palestinian peoples from their lands.
The goal of the occupation is to cleanse the area of West Bank and Gaza by what some within the Israeli government have openly called the “Transfer”. Make no mistake about it, this is ethnic cleansing, ladies and gentlemen, the same exact thing that happened in Kosovo, except here it is simply slower. You know, for me the lesson of the Holocaust was “Never Again for Anyone”. It seems that the Zionists have instead taken the Holocaust to mean “Never again for the Jews” because what the Jewish peoples are doing to the Palestinians, well its almost identical to what was done to them by the Nazis.
And that brings us to the real point of my speech here today. When a murder occurs, what is one of the first questions that a police detective will ask?
Clearly the answer cannot be the Palestinian peoples. As I have described, most of their men have been sent to jails, their economy has been decimated, and many people left without homes. The average civilian has only been hurt by the supposed “result” of the suicide bombings, that is the occupation.
So let us ask, what would happen if the suicide bombings were to stop? Well this is where the motive we’re seeking really shows its ugly head, because if the suicide bombings were to cease, then the justification for the ethnic cleansing of the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza would also cease to exist.
You see, the suicide bombings and terrorism is a very useful tool, necessary in order to justify the terrorization of the Palestinian peoples and the ethnic cleansing of the occupation. Without the suicide bombings, you couldn’t have the occupation, and you surely couldn’t have the wall being built.
Most of you are probably thinking, “wow that is insane”. Well perhaps it is insane, but let me throw a few facts at you. As you probably know, one of the militant terrorist organizations is Hamas, which is responsible for many of the bombings. But did you know that Hamas was initially funded by Israel?
Yep, that’s right. A number of journalists with fairly mainstream corporate media have reported on this fascinating fact. Hamas was initially supported by the Likud, the party of Ariel Sharon, in order to allow for a religious alternative to the fairly secular Palestinian Liberation Organization led by the now-President of the Palestinian Authority, Yassir Arafat.
Then there is the little bit about the support the so-called terror organizations receive from within Israel from the Israeli-Arabic communities. Now ask yourselves, when was the last time you’ve heard about any Israeli Army operations against these communities? I was curious, so I did some searching, and through all the news articles indexed on the web I found only one instance of such an operation being carried out. Isn’t that a bit strange?
Also rather serious is the statistic number of people that die in suicide bombings. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 900 people have been killed by Palestinian violence and terrorism since September 2000. Now lets put that in perspective: that is about 225 people per year killed, compared to about 550 that die each year in car accidents. The suicide bombings claim about half the number of lives each year that are claimed each year to car accidents. If the so-called terrorists were truly out to wipe out the state of Israel, why kill so few? Why not go after more vital areas where more damage can be inflicted, such as water sources, or other methods of attack that would cause far greater number of deaths?
And then there are the so-called Quassam rockets that the militant groups fire against Israel. The tremendously fearful rockets always result in tremendous collective punishment against Palestinian civilians who happen to live near the areas from which the rockets are fired. Yet there is a funny figure attached here… 2000 of these deadly rockets have been fired, and yet not a single Israeli civilian has died as a result. Oooops. Something is wrong with this picture?
I can go on and on. However my main point is that it is in fact the Israeli government that stands to lose the most should the suicide bombings end. They are necessary for the continuation of the land grab in the West Bank, and Gaza. Is the Israeli government guilty of creating the attacks? I have seen little evidence thus far that would suggest that, but there is plentiful evidence that they directly allow the attacks to occur.
Most critical is the fact that the system of checkpoints can be fairly easily avoided by simply walking around them. This is likely the way most suicide bombers enter Israel. The Israeli soldiers are usually very well aware of this fact, so there is little doubt that the Israeli government is aware as well. And the wall? Well if it is being built for security, how come so many Palestinian and Arab-Israeli towns are being left on the Israeli side of the wall? Strange isn’t it.
So next time you hear about the right of Israel to defend itself, ask yourself who are the real enemies of peace? It is surely not the Israeli peoples, nor is it the average Palestinian. The true enemy of peace is the current Israeli government, who is quite likely of being guilty of at the very least allowing for the murder of their own civilians to occur, if not directly making the suicide bombings against their own people happen.
I would like to close by reading a short essay written by a fellow Palestine liberation activist, Alison Weir:
Left on our office voicemail at 2 a.m. on Oct. 3, 2003:
“Hi. I heard your speech today in University of California- Berkeley; the debate. I’m telling you this right now. On Monday, at 2 PM, you better not be in your office. Because me and my buddies, who were trained in the Israeli Army, will come and kill every single one of you son-of -a-bitches for what you are doing to destroy Israel. So watch out. This is not a joke. On Monday you better watch out. Don’t come to work.
And close your organization or you’re going to die.”
Dear Israel and your frenzied defenders, No. We’re not going to die.
I know you’re used to killing people who are in your way. Old people, young people, leaders, followers, mothers, fathers, teachers, doctors, factory workers, farmers.
It hasn’t seemed difficult for you. Human beings are immensely vulnerable. When people have no armor, no defending army, no power, all it takes is a few bullets. Skulls are easily penetrable by tempered steel. Rib cages are shattered with ease.
All it requires, really, is sufficient ruthlessness.
From the beginning of your nation you’ve made it clear that you possess this in abundance. In 1948 you ethnically cleansed the once-multicultural land on which you chose to impose your uni-cultural nation, of hundreds of thousands of human beings who did not fit your national vision of purity.
You call this your nation’s “War of Independence.”
Please explain this to me. Independence from whom?
From the farmers whose ancestors had tilled that land for centuries?
From the fishermen whose ancestors had fished in the Sea of Galilee and been turned, it is said, into fishers of men?
From the maintainers and harvesters of olive groves planted a millennium ago, orchards now daily uprooted by your cruelly efficient military bulldozers?
Independence from humanity? From morality? From normality? From everyone else in the world?
And then you killed some more.
You called farmers trying to return to their farms “infiltrators” and killed them. You called the nations who had reluctantly but ineluctably sheltered them “harborers of terrorists” and killed their citizens. You invaded neighbor after neighbor after neighbor. Not a single one escaped your ferocity. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon.
And you assassinated. How you’ve assassinated. Your assassins have roved the world with great success - except when you’ve killed the wrong person here and there. You kill a waiter, mistaking him for a “terrorist,” and you don’t apologize.
You crush 23-year-old Rachel Corrie “unintentionally,” twice, and you don’t apologize. You shoot 21-year-old Tom Hurndahl in the back of the head, and you don’t apologize. You shoot 26-year-old Brian Avery in the face “by accident,” and you don’t apologize. You kill Palestinian grandmothers, nine-year-olds, infants, and you don’t apologize.
Approximately 85 percent of the people you kill in Palestine are “collateral damage,” and you don’t apologize.
Have you no manners?
In this country you kill some more. You killed Alex Odeh and Iris Kones, and at least five other Americans.
But that’s not all.
You’ve killed careers. You’ve killed businesses. You’ve killed hope. You’ve weeded out sprigs of integrity from our Congress, journalists of principle from our press.
But no more. Your reign of terror has ended.
There are too many of us. You’ve called “anti-Semitism” once too often. You’ve pressured one too many newspapers, one too many universities, one too many mayors. You’ve made one too many anonymous phone calls, emailed one too many crude messages. Threatened one too many organizations.
It is over. You will continue to win your battles, for awhile. But the war has turned.
We have awakened to the brutality of your injustice, and our numbers are growing. We are of every ethnicity and nationality, including your own citizenry, and we are joining together to uphold the holiness of our common humanity.
We are working to create a world of equality, of brotherhood and sisterhood, of compassion and respect, of laughter and love.
You are few, we are many. You can’t kill us all. Please join us.”
Just a day ago, I got an e-mail from Mr. Andrew Goldsmith, the Executive Vice President of One Israeli Fund, a Jewish-American organization that funds the illegal settlements. In his e-mail he said, and I quote:
“Israel has the military might to wipe out its enemies easily. Why doesn’t it?”. That is a good question to ask, Mr. Goldsmith.
Thank you for being here today, and I truly hope that you will take the time to read up more about the conflict. I will be available for questions and you can always drop me an e-mail.
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