By Yossi Schwartz, ISL the Section of the RCIT in Israel/Occupied Palestine, 10.11.2021
The Zionist settlers in Palestine have a long history of terrorism. The terrorist organizations of Hagana, Irgun Z’vai Leumi, and Lehi used terror against the native Palestinians long before the establishment of the Zionist state in 1948.
According to the Zionist narrative, the Zionist settlers were forced to form self-defense organizations to defend the “peaceful” settlers from the attacks of Muslim anti-Jewish mobs:
“The Haganah was the underground military organization of the yishuv in Eretz Yisrael from 1920 to 1948. The Arab riots in 1920 and 1921 strengthened the view that it was impossible to depend upon the British authorities and that the yishuv needed to create an independent defense force completely free of foreign authority. In June 1920, the Haganah was founded. During the first nine years of its existence, the Haganah was a loose organization of local defense groups in the large towns and several of the settlements. The Arab riots in 1929 brought about a complete change in the Haganah’s status…During 1936-1939, the years of the Arab Revolt were the years in which the Haganah matured and developed from a militia into a military body. Although the British administration did not officially recognize the organization, the British Security Forces cooperated with it by establishing civilian militia. In the summer of 1938, Special Night Squads — S.N.S. were established, under the command of Captain Orde Wingate” [i]
This narrative is a very different narrative from the one told by the native Palestinians:
“Jewish immigrants founded the Haganah terrorist organization in 1920 and the Irgun Z’vai Leumi terrorist organization in 1931 to intimidate Palestinian civilians to displace them and prepare the ground for the establishment of the state of Israel. The conflicts between Jews and Palestinians began in this period. Many Jews and Arabs died or were injured as a result of the events of April 1920 and May 1921. The incidents and strikes that started in 1936 lasted until 1939. In 1946, the Irgun terrorist organization carried out a bomb attack on the King David Hotel. A total of 91 people, most of whom were civilians (41 Arabs, 28 British, 17 Jews, 2 Armenians, 1 Russian, 1 Egyptian and 1 Greek), were killed in the attack.” [ii]
Who should we believe, the European Jewish settler colonialists or the native Palestinians? If you read the accounts by white racists on the Native American wars in the 19th century you get the impression that the army was defending innocent white settlers attacked and tortured by blood-thirsty Indians. For example:
“They were hunting Comanches. The reason was clear to everyone from the Washita River to Washington, D.C.: The western frontier was an open and bleeding wound, and the Comanches, more than anyone else, were responsible. What was once the vanguard of America’s westward migration had become a smoking ruin littered with corpses and charred chimneys. Victorious in the Civil War, unchallenged by foreign foes in North America for the first time in its history, the United States government now found itself unable to deal with a tribe that had for more than a century ruled a 240,000-square-mile empire of buffalo herds and horizon-spanning plains. Colonel Mackenzie and his soldiers were supposed to change that.” [iii]
Yet anyone who knows history is familiar with the fact that the white settlers protected by the army stole the Native Americans lands and the Native Americans who were not butchered by the army were removed to the reservations to give their land to the white settlers. The Native Americans fought back but lost.
“From the earliest days of European colonization of the New World, relations between white Europeans and Native Americans were plagued by violent competition for land and natural resources. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized the forced removal of numerous Indian tribes from their ancestral lands in the Southeast to what was designated “Indian territory” west of the Mississippi River. The Cherokee nation was subject to a brutal mass migration that came to be known as the Trail of Tears.
Some tribes fiercely resisted the forced relocations, and Native Americans and the US Army fought many battles in the East. The Seminoles of Florida, for instance, refused to leave their lands, resulting in the Second Seminole War, which lasted from 1835 to 1842 and has been described as “the longest and most costly of the Indian conflicts of the United States…Despite some major Indian victories in battle, the US Army ultimately succeeded in crushing this resistance, massacring or forcing into hiding those Indians who refused to march westward.
The Indian Appropriations Act of 1851 established Indian reservations in the territory that would become the states of Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Kansas. The US federal government envisioned the reservation system as a method of keeping Native American tribes off of the lands that white Americans wished to settle.” [iv]
Some Zionists including Zabotinsky, the founder of right-wing Zionism recognized the similarity between the colonialist settlers of North America facing Native American resistance and the Zionist settler colonialists facing the resistance of the native Arabs of Palestine:
“There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and Palestine
Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not
because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt.
Except for those who were born blind, they realized long ago that it is utterly
impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting
“Palestine” from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.
My readers have a general idea of the history of colonization in other
countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are
acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonization being
carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.” [v]
This article deals not only with the long list of terrorist actions by the Zionist state from the Nakba until today but a follow up on the designation of six Palestinian human rights organizations as a front for the PFLP. A designation that is another act of state terror.
The new development is that the European UN Security Council members: Estonia, France, Ireland, and Norway as well as Albania signed a statement demanding from Israel real proofs to sustain the allegation against the six NGOs: Al-Haq, Addameer, the Bisan Center, the Defense for Children International-Palestine, the Union for Agricultural Work Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.
The statement reads: “These listings are a matter of serious concern, as they have far-reaching consequences for the organizations in political, legal, and financial terms.”…”We will be engaging Israeli authorities for more information regarding the basis for these designations, which we will study carefully,” the five European countries said.” [vi]
The United Kingdom, which is also a UNSC member, did not sign onto the statement.
However, on Monday, Ireland’s Ambassador to the UN Geraldine Byrne Nason repeated that statement to reporters in New York: “This is a matter that concerns us deeply. We weren’t alerted to this. “We haven’t seen any credible evidence of the links of the Palestinian NGOs to terror organizations. We have asked to see what evidence there is,” Nason said.” [vii]
On Monday, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the Biden administration had “a constructive discussion with an Israeli delegation that was visiting last week. The delegation provided a verbal briefing on information that they had on certain groups. They also provided a verbal briefing on information that they had on certain groups. They also provided written materials. We intend, and we are, together with our partners throughout the interagency, to take a very close look at the information that was provided to us in written form, to cross-reference that information with what we may have in our holdings, and from that, we’ll form an informed judgment,” Price added.” [viii]
The 15 members of the Security Council are supposed to take responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Under the Charter of the United Nations, all Member States are obligated to comply with Council decisions. It has the power to resort to imposing sanctions or even authorize the use of force. At the same time, the veto power is probably the UN Charter’s most significant distinction between permanent and non-permanent members. Article 27 (3) of the Charter establishes that all substantive decisions of the Council must be made with “the concurring votes of the permanent members.”
Thus, it is almost certain that the UNSC will not impose on Israel any sanctions because of the veto power of GB and the USA. The UNSC has a history of imposing sanctions only on the leaders of semi-colonies and never on imperialist war criminals.
However, the fact those five European members of the UNSC demand proof from Israel is an indication of the growing isolation of the Zionist state. Despite developing bilateral relationships with several countries like with United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan where Israel was involved with the recent military coup, trade unions, universities, students’ organizations, city councils, political parties and the left wing of political parties no longer accept the Zionist war crimes and terrorism as acts of self-defense. Now we see that European states do not accept the Zionist lies on face value.
While Biden and other imperialist politicians claim that Bennet’s government is better than Netanyahu’s government, we observe that Bennett’s government is as bad as or even worse than the previous government. Like the previous government, it seeks war with Iran and Hezbollah. However, under Bennett’s government, the settlers in the West bank feel even more certain than the government is with them and attack more viciously the Palestinian peasants to steal their land and force them to leave the country in a form of ethnic cleansing. Army Radio report finds 60% increase in crimes committed by Jewish settlers in the West Bank since the beginning of harvest season. “A report by Army Radio on Monday stated that there’s been a wave of crime committed by Jewish settlers in the West Bank since the olive harvest season began in October with 67 incidents this year compared to 42 throughout the harvest last year, a 60% increase. The crimes included uprooting and setting fire to olive trees, causing damage to property in Palestinian villages, and more.” [ix]
“There will be no tolerance for terrorism and trouble, by either side,” Gantz said. [x] It is like saying after a woman is harassed, we will oppose violence by harassers and the attacked women.
Lately, the Israeli government has advanced plans to build more than 3,000 new settlement units in the 1967 occupied West Bank. A defense ministry planning committee led by Gantz, the minister of war, approved the construction of 3,130 new homes that would be spread across 25 existing settlements, most of them deep inside the West Bank. A step opposed verbally by Biden who praises Bennett’s government. Bennett was forced to appear in the Knesset on Monday to refute the opposition’s charges that he was engaged in peace talks with the Palestinians, including over territorial concessions. “I was asked to respond… Here is my answer: There are no negotiations on establishing a terror state in the heart of the land,” Bennett said in very brief remarks from the podium. His government has also expressed its opposition to the reopening of the US consulate in Jerusalem for the Palestinians.” [xi]
In simple words, Bennett is a prime minister of a government committed to a Zionist apartheid state from the river to the sea, which according to bourgeois international law: The Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (hereinafter Apartheid Convention) is a crime, even if in reality the Zionist crimes are shielded by other imperialist states like the US and UK.
This growing isolation is giving the BDS more power to isolate Israel. This by itself will not end the Zionist apartheid state but it will help the Arab revolution that when it will be won, will put an end to the Zionist apartheid state.
Down with the Zionist apartheid state from the river to the sea!
For a red and free Palestine from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[i] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-haganah
[ii] Ahmed Husrev Celik Analysis – Fundamentalist Jewish terror in Palestine dates back more than a century21.05.2021
[iii]https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/last-days-of-the-comanches/
[iv] https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/american-west/a/indian-wars
[v] Z Jabotinsky the Iron Wall 1923 http://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf
[vi] https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/european-unsc-members-press-israel-for-answers-on-ngo-terror-labeling-684441
[vii] Ibid
[viii] Ibid
[ix] https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/gantz-israel-almost-doubles-number-of-nationalist-crime-incitements-684458
[x] Ibid
[xi] https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-wry-retort-to-opposition-pm-says-no-plans-to-form-terror-state-inside-israel/