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</a></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=5>Ethnic Cleansing and
Israel's Racist Discourse</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>
<br><br>
By Ramzy Baroud<br><br>
Al-Jazeerah, November 30, 2006<br><br>
“The term ethnic cleansing refers to various policies of forcibly
removing people of another ethnic group. At one end of the spectrum, it
is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population
transfer, while at the other it merges with deportation and genocide.”
<br><br>
According to this definition, and others including those emerging in the
1990s, following the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, Palestinians have
been and remain victims of a determined and unwavering ethnic cleansing
policy that began in 1947-48 and continues until today. <br><br>
However, it is important that when we examine the subject of ethnic
cleansing in Palestine, we take into account its various dimensions, one
of which is the accompanying racist discourse, which has become part and
parcel of Israel’s ethnic cleansing policies. <br><br>
Any act of collective punishment whether ethnic cleansing or genocide
or any other is often preceded and or adjoined by a racist discourse
that dehumanizes the victim and justifies the crime on baseless grounds,
a concoction of lies and fibs that may appeal to national or religious
psyches, but fails the test of law, morality or basic human norms and
expectations. <br><br>
Without such discourse, which depicted the original inhabitants of
Palestine as cancerous, subhuman and a nuisance in the face of
civilization and progress as defined by the founders of the Zionist
movement it would not have been possible to carry out a systematic
campaign of murder and ethnic cleansing in 1947-48, which saw the killing
of an estimated 13,000 Palestinians, the forcible eviction of 850,000 and
the depopulation and subsequent destruction of nearly 500 villages and
localities. Without such a racist discourse it would have been difficult,
to say the least, to carry out scores of preempted massacres, including
Deir Yassin, Tantoura, Abbasiyya, Beit Daras, Bir Al-Saba’, Haifa and so
forth. <br><br>
Were it not for a decided campaign of institutionalized racism that
occurred on such a large scale and which is maintained until today, it
would have been impossible and implausible to gun down scores of innocent
people after lining them up against the crumbling wall of the old Tantura
mosque in May of 1948, or to bulldoze the home of a crippled man in Jenin
in April 2002 without giving his mother the chance to evacuate him. Or to
describe as a “great success” the killing of 14 civilians, including
children when a one-ton Israeli bomb slammed into their apartment
building in the Zeitun neighborhood in Gaza in July 2002. Or the wanton
murder of 19 people, most of them women and children of the same extended
family in Beit Hanoun earlier this November. But according to Israeli
officials, every other method has been tried, and failed. “With
murderous, bloodthirsty terrorism that wants to wipe you off the map, you
have to respond accordingly: Wipe it out,” as Ben Caspit commented
following the brutal massacre of Beit Hanoun. <br><br>
But if what purely motivates Israel is the fear of its own annihilation,
then, how can the Zionist state’s morally flexible supporters explain
Israel’s continuous colonization of the West Bank and Jerusalem?
According to a 2004 Foundation for Middle East Peace report, the total
settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has neared
420,000: 220,000 settlers in the West Bank and 200,000 in East Jerusalem.
Expectedly, the number stands at a much higher figure. <br><br>
New settlements are being erected while existing settlements are
ever-expanding. According to a recent report drafted by the PLO’s
Negotiations Affairs Department, Israel approved tenders for 690 new
settlement units in two major east Jerusalem settlements: Ma’aleh Adumim
and Beit Illit. The housing units could accommodate up to 2,800 new
Jewish settlers. <br><br>
If the idea was indeed to shield Israel from Palestinian attacks, then
why is 80 percent of the wall being built on ethnically cleansed
Palestinian land? Why encircle the Palestinian population of the West
Bank from east and west, and those of Qalqilia from all directions? Why
do thousands of Palestinian schools kids have to stand for hours in front
of their gated villages to acquire permission from an Israeli soldier to
allow them access to their schools and back? <br><br>
Ethnic cleansing is indeed back on the Israeli political agenda, as
Avigdor Lieberman, an Israeli politician who has for long advocated the
ethnic cleansing of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, was recently
appointed as Israel’s new deputy prime minister. One of his early ideas
since the new post, aside from sending Palestinians packing, was the
killing of the entire leadership of the elected Palestinian government.
“They...have to disappear, to go to paradise, all of them, and there
can’t be any compromise,” he told Israeli radio last week. <br><br>
The unfortunate reality is that Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing,
though it might have changed tactics and pace throughout the years, has
never stopped and is now more active than it has been for decades. It’s
also clear that the adjacent racist discourse that made such a policy
sustainable for six decades is also at work, making advocates of war
crimes heroes in the eyes of most Israelis. <br><br>
Moreover, amid unabashed American backing of such policies and almost
total silence or helplessness of the international community, Israel
knows that the success of its colonial project in the West Bank is
dependent on the element of time. <br><br>
What’s even more disheartening is the fact that Palestinian infighting is
distracting and wasting energies that should be put to work to provoke
and sustain an international campaign against Israeli atrocities.
Infighting over governments that have no sovereignty, the lacking of any
national cohesion or consensus or a clear political program that unifies
Palestinians at home and in diaspora around one political and national
agenda, will certainly ensure the success of the Israeli program and
further contribute to the racist discourse that sees Palestinians as
incapable of taking on the task of leadership and self-determination.
<br><br>
-This article is based on a speech delivered by the author at a London
conference entitled: “Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: Methods and
Consequences” and broadcast by Al-Jazeera television. <br><br>
-Ramzy Baroud’s latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A
Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press) is available at Amazon.com
and in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. <br><br>
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