'Anyone who kills a Jew is a marked man'

by Rima Merriman

"Anyone who kills a Jew or harms an Israeli citizen or sends people to kill Jews is a marked man." These are Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's words to his people and to the world. They sound high minded and self-righteous; they play on the ever-present shadow of Jewish historical suffering; they sound a bit like President George W. Bush going after "the guy that tried to kill my Dad". What's more, they are politically correct, acknowledging that Israelis are not necessarily all Jews.

Most of all, they seem to justify Sharon's political and military crusade against the Palestinians, his wall building, and every other ignominy he visits on the Palestinians.

Now, what about anyone who kills a Palestinian or harms a Palestinian or sends soldiers, planes, bulldozers and missiles to harm Palestinians? Should not that person, in justice, also be a marked man?

Sharon's words suggest that Israel acts merely in self-defence. But under even a cursory examination, the "all for the sake of security" hogwash that Israel is bleating to justify its terrible wall does not hold water. What Sharon is doing is simply following Israeli stated policy, a policy that has been in place for a long time, changing with successive governments only in degree. It's a policy that uses aggression and superior force to destroy Palestinian houses in order to make way for Israeli colonies and roads on Palestinian lands; it's a policy designed to annex East Jerusalem, to drive as many Palestinians as possible from Jerusalem and to replace them with Jewish colonisers (mind you, not with "Israelis", as some of those are Palestinians); it's a policy meant to "Judaise the Galilee" by driving out Palestinian Israelis who Sharon has actually called "foreigners". It's a policy designed to keep Palestinian refugees out of their homeland. It's a policy aimed at destroying the infrastructure of the West Bank and Gaza, so that, in the end, Israel would keep a barely viable Palestinian state under economic control.

The wall is simply a concrete embodiment of this policy. It illegally grabs land and water for the Israelis and cuts Palestinian territory into enclaves, some with one-way exits, like medieval towns. This is the policy responsible for the death of Palestinians and for the death of Jews, and Israelis, 20 per cent of whom are Palestinian. More than any other person, Sharon is responsible for the killings on both sides.

So, if last week saw endless footage in the Western press of the bomb that went off in Tel Aviv, here are the headlines preceding this event that should have run at the bottom of that footage: July 9, 2004: two Palestinians murdered by Israeli forces in West Bank (AFP); seven Palestinians murdered in Gaza, includes mother, child (Palestinian Centre for Human Rights); July 8, 2004: Jewish state death squads kill eight Palestinians in northern Gaza (DPA); Israelis destroy 25 houses in southern Gaza, injure residents (AFP); Occupier blocks ambulances carrying Gaza injured (Xinhua); July 7, 2004 Issam Mahameed, 27, executed at funeral by Jewish state (AFP); July 6, 2004: 4 Palestinians, professor and son, killed by Israelis in Nablus (PCHR); Sleeping child killed by Israeli shelling in Khan Younis (PCHR).

When Palestinian resistance against a cruel and tyrannical occupation results in an act of tragic violence, Israel screams, "Look, killing Jews". Well, a terrorist Jewish state is killing Palestinians and taking their land, destroying their homes and their agriculture, and "settling" on hilltops ringing their villages. It is doing all of this, make no mistake, following a long-stated policy and a structured plan for a Greater Israel. What's more, Israel has far superior power on its side, and the guns the "settlers" carry around are not for "security"; they are to protect stolen property.

Israel's policy now, as in 1971 when it murdered 104 guerrillas, is not to arrest Palestinians suspected of acts against it, but to assassinate them. Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Likud's and Sharon's spiritual father, considered Palestinians as subhuman. His stated aim for Israel was to "push the moral frontiers of Europe to the Euphrates". He wrote: "Zionism is a colonising adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot - or else I am through with playing at colonisation."

This article was originally published in the Thursday, July 15, 2004 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.