Issue No. 603
Opinion
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12 - 18 September 2002 Issue No. 603 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Where is the American Zola?
Who will unmask the distortions and outright lies that disguise the major tragedy of our time, asks Samuel Hazo*
In J'accuse Emile Zola accused the French government of gross injustice in what came to be called the Dreyfus affair. Zola claimed Dreyfus had been convicted because he was a Jew and that it was deemed expedient to sacrifice one man rather than indict the army as a whole. For Zola the issue was not political (espionage) but moral (anti-semitism). Dreyfus was eventually exonerated. Zola, though in exile in England, proved once again that one man plus the truth -- sooner or later -- equals a majority. France survived as France, but it lived with a wound.
Misguided policies can wound any nation. The history of America's support for Israel is relevant here. Forget, if you can, the early British duplicities of divide and conquer that fomented trouble between Palestinians and émigré Jews. Forget as well the hard ball politics in the UN, as well as in the American Congress, that led to Israel's creation in 1948, and forget, if you can, the actions of the muscular Israeli lobby (AIPAC) ever since. For the purpose of this brief analysis, consider the following three historical points, even though they are rooted in the very history you are being asked to keep in cold storage for the moment. Why? Because all three are tied to the current crisis in the Middle East -- they either prefigured or provoked it.
First the invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 1982. Determined to drive the PLO out of Lebanon, to forge an alliance with the Maronite government and to short-circuit Syrian influence in the country, the government of Menachim Begin mounted an attack, first in the south and then against the capital. The attack's architect was Ariel Sharon. Sharon himself received tacit approval for the invasion to proceed from none other than Alexander Haig, a man chosen to be secretary of state because, as has been reported, Nancy Reagan liked the way he dressed. Actually Haig's acquiescence simply meant keeping silent, which, of course, was all that Sharon and his legions needed to proceed with their grand design. The plan was to defeat and deport the PLO, install a quisling government in Beirut (Israeli forces actually surrounded the legislature when the presidential vote was taken) and drive the Syrians back to Syria, even though the Syrians were there at the invitation of the Lebanese government. The result was a calamity.
After Philip Habib, Reagan's deputy, arranged for the departure of the PLO for Tunisia by assuring them that families left behind would be protected, the Israelis took over West Beirut. They proceeded to circle the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps and quite openly allowed Lebanese Falangists to prey on the defenceless people there. Over 800 people in the camps were slaughtered while Israeli troops looked on, providing searchlight illumination for the killers. At the same time the newly elected president of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, who was regarded by Israel as "their man", suddenly bridled at being a lackey and was blown up for his change of heart by assassins unknown to this day.
The cost of Sharon's Napoleonism in Lebanon, as documented by the Christian Science Monitor, left 19,085 killed, 30,302 wounded and tens of thousands homeless. These figures do not include the victims in Sabra and Shatilla, nor the 285 marines and 59 French soldiers dynamited in their compounds. The IFD put Israeli military losses at 446. The oleaginous Haig was consequently fired while Israel's Kahan Commission forced Sharon to relinquish the ministry of defence, though he was allowed to remain within the cabinet. Charges against him as a war criminal have been on the docket at the Hague since that time. Witnesses who plea-bargained to testify against him have met with violent ends. Elie Hobeika, Sharon's Falangist ally in Lebanon, would have been a witness for the prosecution but was recently blown up near Beirut. The assassins, in a phrase used earlier, remain unknown to this day. Sharon's righteousness remains sufficiently intact for him to ignore international and UN pressures upon him, as well as a direct demand from George W Bush, to curb his attacks on the Palestinians. He has become a law unto himself, which is nothing new, and his campaign on the West Bank looks very much like Lebanon redux.
Second comes the so-called "offer of a lifetime" to Arafat and the Palestinians at Camp David. Though widely trailed as magnanimous, the Israeli "offer" was to give the Palestinians 80 per cent of their own land on the West Bank while the Israelis would control points of exit and entry at the border, crossroads between separated Palestinian cantons, sources of water and electricity and, as a final flourish, the entire sky. The controversial settlements, considered by the world as illegal obstacles to peace, would remain in perpetuity, as would an unspecified army presence. And, most importantly, there would be no further negotiations after the comprehensive take-it-or- leave-it agreement was signed. The Palestinians would be granted the largesse of living as a jailed source of cheap labour within their West Bank compound while the Israelis would remain as jailkeepers. No American Zola arose to expose this canard, and the sham of the actual offer has been extolled as "most generous" by those too lazy to read the fine print. Of course, it was justly spurned by the Palestinians since it prohibited forever what every human being and every nation needs to survive and live in freedom -- true independence and sovereignty.
Finally, the second Intifada was not ordered but provoked. And the provoker was Ariel Sharon. In the company of hundreds of soldiers Sharon decided one day to take a causal stroll on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Even Ehud Barak has described this provocative act as an attempt to embarrass him, stir up trouble and render him unelectable, which it did. The Palestinians responded initially by throwing stones in a spontaneous popular uprising, but the resistance grew incrementally, with resisters eventually detonating themselves as the ultimate weapon, destroying both themselves and others, innocent or not. Coupled with the accumulating humiliations and punishments suffered by the Palestinians for decades, their hatred for their humiliators was almost predictable, particularly when seen in the context of the longest occupation (35 years) of the past century. Here is how one Palestinian, a psychiatrist named Eyad Sarraj, accounts for his daily life in these circumstances: "To survive under the Israeli occupation you are given the chance to work in the jobs that the Israelis do not like: sweeping the streets, building houses, collecting fruit and harvesting. You will have to leave your home at 3.00am to go through road blocks and check posts, spend your day under the sun and surveillance, returning in the evening to collapse in bed for a few hours. We simply became the slaves of our enemy. Do you know what it does to you to have to be the slave of your enemy in order to survive?"
The present crisis is the result of the convergence of the three historical moments just described, but the burden it places on us as Americans is untransferable. It is largely American tax dollars that are funding illegal settlements, as well as underwriting the oppressive policies of a country that is 1/55th the size of the United States but with the third largest air force in the world. The annual $3,000,000,000 grant to Israel is supplemented by side gifts, and altogether these exceed the grants from America to all other countries of the world combined. Small wonder that we are seen as "pulling a Haig", or as accomplices in the current "incursion". And we will suffer from this self- inflicted wound for a long time in the eyes of many, regardless of what the future brings. You will not read this in the ventriloquisms of William Safire, George F Will, Charles Krauthammer or elected officials by the score, but it is undeniably true. The situation cries for an Emile Zola to unmask the distortions and outright lies that disguise this major tragedy of our time. But in many ways it may already be too late for that.
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