Open Letter to President Bush
The problem was that Arafat did not have a partner for peace on the Israeli side because Zionism – let’s give Israeli and lobby intransigence its proper name – was not, and is not, interested in peace on terms the vast majority of Palestinians and other Arabs and most Muslims everywhere could accept. (Yes, it’s true that in 1993, and thanks in part to President Clinton’s stage management and pulling power, Arafat did have a “perhaps” Israeli partner for peace in the shape of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, but he was assassinated by a gut-Zionist. And Rabin was succeeded by Israeli leaders whose prime objective, supported 100% and then some by the Zionist lobby in America, was to re-demonise and destroy the Palestinian leader. Arafat the terrorist they could handle. Arafat the peacemaker they could not. Didn’t Barak offer Arafat “95 percent” of everything he had said he wanted? No, he did not! That, too, was a Zionist propaganda lie).
At this point, Mr.President, I think I should pause to explain to you in very short summary the difference between Zionism and Judaism, why they are total oppposites and not as Zionism asserts one and the same.
Judaism is the religion of Jews (not the Jews because not all Jews are religious); and like Christianity and Islam, Judaism has at its core a set of moral values and ethical principles. Also, Judaism prohibitedthe return of Jews to the land of biblical Israel – one possible but woefully inadequate definition of Zionism – by the efforts of man. I bet you didn’t know that!
Zionism is not only a secular, colonialist ideology, it makes a mockery of, and has contempt for, the moral values and ethnical principles of Judaism. Which is why those most often described as “ultra orthodox” religious Jews say, and this Gentile believes they are right, that Zionism is destroying Judaism.
There is a very good reason why I believe it is important for you, Mr.President, to know the difference between Judiasm and Zionism, and I’ll get to it in due course.
To my way of thinking the most alarming thing you said in the course of your press conference in Ramallah was the following (my emphasis added). “The UN deal didn’t work in the past… this is an opportunity to move forward and negotiate a new deal… We can stay stuck in the past, which will yield nothing good for the Palestinian people or we can chart a hopeful path for the future.”
The obvious implication of those words is in two parts. One, which qualifies your headline-making statement that “occupation must end”, is that you, Mr. President, Zionist-like, have consigned to the dustbin of history all the UN resolutions and the requirements of international law relating to Israel’s illegal settlement of occupied territory. The other is that you have signed on to the Israeli plan, “the new deal”, as devised by Israel’s “bulldozer”, Ariel Sharon, when he was prime minister, and modified somewhat by his successor Ehud Olmert, who has realised that it’s “two states or the end of Israel” (for demographic reasons).
To people of all faiths and none everywhere who are reasonably well informed, sadly not too many Americans, there is no mystery about the essence of “the new deal”. It is entirely consistent with Zionism’s objective from its beginning in 1897. That objective (best documented in Professor Ilan Pappe’s latest book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine), was to expropriate as much Palestinian land as possible with the minimum number of Palestinians on it.
The “new deal” will offer the Palestinians (before you leave office, you hope) a limited or partial Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank. The main Israeli settlement blocks will remain part of the Zionist state but enough space will be created for two or three bantustans which the Palestinians can call a state if they wish. And this is premised on the Zionist and neo-con asumption that Hamas can be defeated before the offer is made; and that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is widely perceived to be little more than an American-and-Zionist stooge, will accept crumbs from Zionism’s table because he and his equally discredited Fatah leadership colleagues have no choice.
Mr. President, this “new deal”, if it is ever offered, won’t bring peace. It’s a recipe for disaster the like of which even the Middle East has not yet seen. And it won’t be confined to the region.
The Palestinian people, the masses, cannot and will not accept anything less than a mini state on all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem its capital. (Jerusalemas an open city and the capital of two states is an option the vast majority Palestinians could and would endorse).
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