Israel’s Settlers

By Geoffrey Cook, TMO

San Francisco–I was requested to write a Dear Editor note to the New York Times in protest to an outrageous Op-Ed piece published on their editorial page written by a hate-filled Hebrew Colonial settler on Palestinian lands at the request of the same progressive American civil society group who engendered my Op-Ed in last week’s edition!  Since mine and their end goals are similar – with minor negotiable differences; that is, all our goals center on peace within our mutual Holy Land with justice.  Therefore, I supported their request. 

A colleague of mine, who is close to the pulse of the Hezbollah Party in Lebanon; and, therefore, to Shia media and scholarship throughout the Middle Eastern lands thought it was a pertinent statement and asked if the that American City’s Times had published it.  

The basis of the request was not to get a letter into the New York Times (particularly voicing dissenting Jewish — even more voicing Islamic) opposition to their editorial positions since we are both repressed voices within the mainstream American media, but to voice a vote to the owners of the mainstream media to sit up and take a notice of dissenting visions, and, hopefully, to give us all a posture in the public sphere. 

Therefore, I told my colleague in the Levant, who is s a leading consultant on regional military strategies plus a scholar on Islamic Studies; further a journalist as well, that it, hopefully, would make a tolerable Op-Ed at the very least.  

I began my epistle by stating that I would like to comment on the N.Y. Times’ irresponsible publication of the Israeli settler, Dani Dayan’s, Op-ed, “Israel’s Settlers are Here to Stay,” by my quoting from an article (in a previous issue earlier this year in the Muslim Observer) on the significant Palestinian thinker, Dr. Omar Barghouti, M.D., who began a speech here across the Bay in Oakland (California) last spring:

That it is now “…the end of the illusion of peace [engendered by] the Oslo Accords,” for, as I then paraphrase him, “The likelihood of Palestinian Statehood is shrinking [with the expansion of the Jewish] Settlements.”

If the likelihood of a Palestinian State is shrinking, so, too, is the long-term probability of the survival of a Jewish State within their Middle Eastern environs by the counter-productive actions of those very illegal (under international law) squatters themselves.  (How Ramallah differs from Tel Aviv in their interpretation of a two-State solution is that the Hebrews envision it as the only means to maintain a Jewish-majority State within the zone whereas those Palestinians, who still cling to the concept envision a bi-Sectarian country along a real politick acceptance of a fair share of the Partitioned British Mandate of 1948.)

Continuing,  for any type of peace to survive, the two peoples must live side-by-side in equality and justice, and the best hope for that is the two-State solution which is dwindling fast by Tel Aviv’ ad hoc pro-Settlement policy against the wishes and interests of the U.S. (and U.N.) for an (inclusive) peaceful and harmonious and prosperous region.

By the action of those very Settlers themselves, a duo nation-state arrangement is sinking.  Many Palestinians intellectuals hold onto a one-State solution as well as the many righteous Jewish advocates such as Richard Falk, the U.N.’s Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and the courageous and esteemed South African lead author of the (Judge Richard) Goldstone Report on Israel’s 2008-2009 horrendous aggression against Gaza — Operation Cast Lead.   The window of opportunity is clouding over due to the irreparable geo-political damage of those Settlements.  I might add there have been two important meetings – on the swing towards a mono-Palestinian solution since the beginning of this year.  A Professor at the University of Bethlehem has sent me a proposed Charter for such a political entity which is the prelude to a Constitution for a unified Palestine, or as some have eluded, a Greater Canaan!

As I wrote to my friend in Beirut, although I have not yet thoroughly abandoned the two-State solution, I perceive it to be fading fast with the reality of those very Settlements themselves.  The Rubicon (the River in Italy through which Julius Caesar invaded the Roman Republic, and, thereby, established the Empire) for me would be an Israeli attack on Iran after which there would be no turning back.

If progressive Jewish-American civil society cannot convince their co-religionist to reform, and integrate into their Middle Eastern environment, more than likely the Zionist mirage will evaporate, and the “Jewish” State will be superseded by an admirable multi-sectarian nation resembling the civil society of the old British Mandate and the former Ottoman  Palestine — now with a Muslim plurality, and the Jews would become a minority under the rule of Palestinian law as the Hindu, M.K. Gandhi, had urged during the  twenty years leading up to the birth of modern Israel.   

14-33