"It's No Accident" column

Victory to the Intifada by John Lacny

There are moments in history when people of
conscience are called to raise their voices in unison
against can’t, hypocrisy, and those libels on a whole
people that facilitate a program of wholesale
race-murder. This is one of those moments.

Anyone -- even among those who fancy themselves
"apolitical" or unconcerned -- who cannot spare a
word of solidarity with the Palestinian people in
their hour of need (or who -- even worse -- side with the
aggressors) will stand condemned before the bar
of history as an accomplice to crimes against
humanity.

It is easy to feel helpless at this moment, as
the Israeli tanks crash through Ramallah, Bethlehem,
Nablus. Perhaps Hebron or Jericho will have
fallen by the time you read this, their men rounded up and
blindfolded, with even more homes destroyed,
random people -- including children -- gunned down in
the streets, curfews imposed and entire cities placed
under house arrest without access to basic utilities
like electricity or water.

And all of this -- the latest round of
humiliation imposed on a people who have suffered under
military occupation for thirty-five years -- facilitated
by the settler-state's degraded paymaster, the United
States of America.

When the Bosnian Serbs talked about "ethnic
cleansing,"the whole world recognized it as the
bloody-minded euphemism for mass murder that it was.

Now as the Israelis talk openly of "creating a separation"
(by which they mean the confinement of Palestinians
into even smaller and more meticulously-policed
ghettoes) and even "population transfer" (by which they
mean the wholesale expulsion of Palestinians from the
Occupied Territories), we indeed see outrage around the
world,but not where it counts: in the United States,
from which Israel draws its sustenance.

Let us not kid ourselves: without the resolute
action of decent people, the future looks very grim.
Ronnie Kasrils, the South African Minister of Water
Affairs who was a militant activist in the anti-apartheid
movement for decades, granted a fascinating
interview to the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly. Kasrils
points out that "The South African apartheid regime never
engaged in the sort of repression Israel is inflicting on
the Palestinians. For all the evils and atrocities of
apartheid, the government never sent tanks into
black towns."

For statements like these, Kasrils -- who is
Jewish -- has been attacked by the leadership of major
South African Jewish organizations, but he brushes off
such criticism: after all, these same organizations
used to denounce other Jews who struggled against
apartheid.

Yet those of us who cherish human rights must
embrace what the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish has
called "an incurable malady": hope. And there is cause
to do so.

As of this writing 398 Israeli reservists have
signed a statement (available online at seruv.org.il)
saying that they will not serve in the Occupied
Territories,and there are even more "refuseniks" out there,
even if they have not signed.

The bulk of world opinion outside of the United
States and the top levels of a few other governments is
resolutely on the side of the Palestinians. Many
a Zionist has used this as "proof" of the world's
enduring anti-Semitism, but as Israeli peace
activist Uri Avnery says bluntly: "World public opinion is
always on the side of the underdog. In this
fight, we are Goliath and they are David."

You will note that all of the inspiring examples
I have cited so far are Jews. This is no accident,
because these courageous individuals represent a break
from the grotesque tribalism that has led to so much
oppression and bloodshed. These individuals recognize that
the prerequisite for any solution in the Middle East
must be an unconditional end to the Occupation.

But above all, let us in these dark times honor
the courage of the Palestinians themselves who are
fighting for their survival as a people. For my part I
will say it unequivocally:

Victory to the Intifada.

- - - - - - - - - - "I am aware that many object
to the severity of my language; but is there not cause
for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as
uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do
not wish to think, or speak, or write with
moderation. No! No!

Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm;

tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the

ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from

the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation
in a cause like the present.

I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not
retreat a single inch -- and I will be heard."

-- William Lloyd Garrison, 1831

"It's No Accident" is a political column by John
Lacny, a student activist at the University of
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