[This is the] iron law of every colonizing movement, a law which knows of no exceptions, a law which existed in all times and under all circumstances. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempts to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not difficult, not dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE! Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to be able to shoot-or else I am through with playing at colonialization.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Law, Selected Writings

There is no one left to tell the story but the few blankets the policemen used to overcome the cold nights, an old kettle and a few broken glasses from which the men drank their tea.  They left behind some dips that they were having for dinner and scarlet pita bread still immersed in blood and tracks where their bodies were dragged and dumped into a ditch.

This is what the Israelis left for us at the Palestinian police station in Bitunia, a suburb of Ramallah.  “There was suspicious activity going on at that security point and we had to fire at them for security reasons.” This is their explanation to the world for their actions. And just like the famous book describing Rwanda’s grizzly genocide, Leave None to Tell the Story, Israeli forces have committed murder so that only silence spells out the reality.  If Israelis can murder the best among us, perhaps those left behind will finish the job for them in chaotic actions of the grieved and furious.  I can hear the Israeli military thinking, “Those animal Palestinians, let them kill each other.  We’ll torment them until they lash out at whoever passes by, even their own.”

There is no honour in this war of “winner-take-all.”  I wonder, is this kind of killing based on the rationales of sheer imperialism?  Does this mean that Israel will start with us and act out the metaphor of their national flag with its two blue stripes and the Star of David in the middle—a Zionist State that stretches from the Nile to the Tigris/Euphrates?  Is it in American interests for them to do this?

The newly published “Mitchell Report” suggests, and evidently that’s all it can do, that one of the most important solutions for the massive ethnic cleansing occurring in our land is that Israeli and Palestinian security forces “resume security cooperation.”  Israel’s answer to that “suggestion” is to murder five Palestinian policemen at a remote security point where no violence has ever taken place throughout this whole inflamed episode.  Such an act of war is the result of Revisionist Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky’s gift to the Zionist movement, for it was he who taught Begin, Shamir and others right up to Sharon what it costs to destroy other people.  Evidently, the price is not too high for Israel.  I wonder, is this price too high for America and the international community it heads?

The dead policemen, who served in Bitunia for the last two years, have been sent home to Gaza from whence they came.  They did not realize their dreams:  to see their families again.  To Americans, Gaza is another place, another land.  How many know that it is only a couple of hours’ drive from Bitunia.  And, yet, these men, once stationed as protective guards at a Palestinian security point that separates the Palestinian-controlled area A from the Israeli-controlled area C in Bitunia, could not go home to see their parents, wives and children.  Distance was not the question; only Israeli security mattered. 

What about Palestinian security?  The Palestinian Authority made a plea to the United Nations Security Council to provide an international protection “force” for Palestinians.  “No,” said the government of Israel, “such a force would prove unresponsive to Israeli security concerns.”  Why is that?  Is it because even nations that violate human rights among their own people can see the discrepancies in the war the Israelis provoke?  Is that why places like genocidal Sudan remain on the UN Human Rights Commission, but the United States, the nation that supports Israel’s defense, does not?  Has the rest of the world awakened to the wrong of this war just as they did to Viet Nam?

Most people do not know about Revisionist Zionism which is political and has nothing whatsoever to do with Judaism.  Most have not heard about men such as Vladimir Jabotinsky, a racist traitor who betrayed his own Jewish countrymen on several occasions, a man who guided former head of the Irgun Terrorists and later Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.  I have read that the first thing Menachem Begin did when he became Prime Minister of Israel was to hang a picture of Jabotinsky in his office.   Jabotinsky was not a freedom fighter.  Ask Jewish historian and journalist Lenni Brenner about Jabotinsky.  He writes in his famous book, The Iron Wall—Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, that Jabotinsky writings render him a blatant racist and old-fashioned imperialist, a man whose writings make his views no more than “museum curios.”

Many Americans say that they must stand by their noble friend, Israel.  One member of Congress wrote to an American friend of mine who had pled with him not to fail the Palestinians, “Israel is one of our most loyal allies in their region of the world.   I believe it is in our nation’s best interest to remain committed to our special relationship with them.” 

He goes on, “However, I share and understand your concern regarding all the fighting taking place in this region.  I remain hopeful that a diplomatic solution for peace can be reached in a timely fashion.”  Obviously, this Congressman has not read the words of Jabotinsky or Begin or Shamir right on up to Ariel Sharon.  Peace without justice is not a reality in our modern world no matter how strong the rhetoric of hope.

My friend wrote to his Congressman, “What does Israel do for America?”   Let’s see, it offers an excuse for the friends of Israel to finance political careers in America, something that goes against the grain of democratic values for most Americans.  It creates dissent between friends of Israel and other Americans who favour justice and an end to racism, even in colonized nations.   It violates international laws including the mandates set forth at the end of the Holocaust in Germany that Americans fought to end.  Where is the understanding of the Nuremberg Commission which left us thinking “never again, never again such evil crimes against humanity?”

Beyond morally unjust provocation, what does this war in Palestine/Israel do for America?   First, it threatens America’s oil supply.  My friend wrote that he paid $30 for a tank of gas, the most he’s paid since the Gulf war days.

It alienates people from developing countries all the way from the Atlantic to the Tigris/Euphrates and on over the hills into India and Pakistan, not just between the Nile and the Tigris/Euphrates.  It displays none of the ethical values taught to us through our Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious traditions.

If Israel is America’s “loyal ally,” why does the Israeli government focus entirely on stirring up the world’s anger?   I believe that Israel and America are putting into action a Machiavellian “Zionist” Jabotinsky method to achieve goals which may lead to worldwide violence, the likes of which are not in any way party to America’s interests.

We speak on and on about peace talks, commissions, coming to the table, stopping the violence.  Yet, America continues to send billions of dollars to help finance Israel’s violent aggression and vetoes UN resolutions to send international forces to protect the Palestinians. I believe that until aggression really does stop, there will be no peace.  Another Palestinian medical student colleague of mine wrote, “Until Israeli aggression stops, we may have truces, but never peace.”  Jabotinsky, for all his disposition of not caring whom he harms, is right: “A voluntary agreement is just not possible.” He wrote in recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people, “As long as the [Palestinians] preserve a gleam of hope that they will succeed in getting rid of us, nothing in the world can cause them to relinquish this hope, precisely because they are not a rabble, but a living people.” And living people will be ready to yield on such fateful issues only when they have given up all hope of getting rid of alien settlers.

As long as Israel allows troops to murder their military counterparts without genuine provocation, to pass off the death of Palestinian babies like four-month-old Iman Hajjo as death-deserved or to permit crimes against humanity such as ignoring criminal acts of Israeli settlers—the latest of which was a horror in which Israeli soldiers in al-Mawasi/Gaza held back the frantic Palestinian parents of a now dead teenager, Kifah Zourob, while the settlers released their wild dogs to attack him and maul him to death—there will be no peace in Palestine as long as this behaviour is the norm of the day.

Atrocities are a part of war.  They are also evil.  Will we Palestinians surrender when we have no hope?  Perhaps, but not in our memories. In our memory, our anger will remain, pent up for generations.  Is it anti-Jewish to speak out about oppression and violence done in the name of colonization?  I consider my position to be pro-Jewish for surely no genuinely religious Jewish person would support such wrong.

I ask this question, “Does doing good of one nation justify evil done against another?”  Think about that in the days ahead. 

(Samah Jabr is a medical student working in various Ramallah hospitals. She witnessed the dead bodies of the five policemen as they were being put in the refrigerated storage facility at Ramallah Governmental Hospital. This piece was written with the assistance of Betsy Mayfield from Ames, Iowa, USA. This article is based on material from The Iron Wall-Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, by Lenni Brenner, Zed Press, London, 1984.)