Racism and Retaliation Replace the Middle East Peace Talks

By Rachelle Marshall

In one of the more shameful episodes of American history, the framers of the Constitution agreed to count African-American slaves as three-fifths of a person. In Israel today Palestinians rank even lower, with one Jewish life worth scores, if not hundreds, of Palestinian lives.

After Hamas militants killed four Israeli soldiers last December, the government retaliated by punishing more than a million Palestinians. All of Gaza and much of the West Bank were put under round-the-clock curfew, in effect turning the occupied territories into a giant prison camp. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced the "rules of engagement"—a term usually applied to combat between major armed forces, not confrontations with teen-age stone throwers—would be revised to allow soldiers greater freedom to shoot demonstrators.

Shortly afterwards, Israeli forces killed six Palestinians during a single protest at a Gaza refugee camp. One of the victims was a small child. In the days preceding the protest, Israeli troops had rounded up more than 2,000 "suspects," including Reuter correspondent Taher Shriteh, a non-activist whom The New York Times called "one of the major sources of information from Gaza."

Despite strong objections from the U.S. and the U.N., the government summarily deported some 415 of the prisoners to Lebanon. According to reporters on the scene, most were doctors, lawyers, scientists and other professionals. Meanwhile, crowds of Israelis rampaged through Arab neighborhoods shouting "Death to Arabs!" and smashing cars and windows.

One of the Israeli victims was a border policeman who was taken hostage by Hamas members in an attempt to secure the release of their leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who has been in an Israeli prison since 1989. When Yassin was not released, the policeman's captors stabbed him to death. Not one commentator remarked on the eerie resemblance of the Hamas action to the killing of two British sergeants in 1946 by Menachem Begin's Irgun guerrillas. Begin's men kidnapped the two soldiers, kept them in an underground dungeon, then hanged them and booby-trapped their bodies. Such acts eventually drove the British from Palestine, a lesson Palestinian extremists may have learned too well.

Most reports of the soldiers' deaths, and the reaction to it, also failed to mention that during the same month more than 36 Palestinians, including several children, had been killed by Israeli forces. Since the intifada began in December 1987, 22 Israeli soldiers and some one hundred Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinians. The number of Palestinian deaths during this period so far totals more than a thousand, including nearly 300 children. At least 125,000 Palestinians have been seriously injured. Yet it is the Palestinians who are routinely accused of "terrorism,'' while Israeli forces are engaged in "defense.''

A Carefully Nurtured Myth

Such language, a staple of Israeli and U.S. journalism, bolsters the carefully nurtured myth that Palestinians are morally inferior to Jews, an invention that has enabled Israelis to justify to themselves and to others crimes against the Palestinians ranging from wholesale theft to mass killing. The essential purpose of the myth is to convince the world that Jews are deserving of a state of their own while the Palestinians are not.

Continued adherence to this form of racism by the Israeli government and its U. S. allies threatens any possibility of a just peace settlement. Israel's policy of refusing to compromise with the Palestinians over control of the West Bank and Gaza, while enforcing ever harsher rule over these territories, made the recent outbreak of violence by Hamas virtually inevitable. For years, moderates have warned that if their efforts at compromise brought no results the Palestinians would turn in frustration to more radical leaders. In recent months, Palestinian negotiators Hanan Ashrawi and Haidar Abdel-Shafi have all but pleaded with Israel to be more forthcoming on the issue of eventual self-government in the occupied territories, arguing that otherwise they would lose all support at home to Hamas and similar groups, which oppose peace talks with Israel. Despite these warnings, Rabin has refused to budge. If he had deliberately set out to undermine the peace process he could not be doing a better job.

What has yet to sink in among those who still express optimism about Israel's Labor government is that despite Rabin's other differences with his predecessor, Yitzhak Shamir, he is just as adamant in opposing Palestinian independence. Rabin has never wavered from his long-held position that recognition of the PLO is out of the question because it would inevitably lead to the creation of a Palestinian state.

The Task for Peace Activists

No one is better aware of Israel's intransigence than the Palestinian delegates to the peace talks, who have repeatedly called for direct U. S. intervention as a means of pressuring Israel to come to a mutually acceptable agreement. Israel, which believes it has nothing to lose by maintaining the status quo, is opposed to any third-party involvement and so far is supported in this position by President Bill Clinton. At the moment, the task for American peace activists is to pressure and educate Clinton in the hope that, like Jimmy Carter, he eventually will recognize that U.S. support for Israel's continued rule over nearly two million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories is morally indefensible.

But judging by the news coverage of events in Israel and the occupied territories, it is equally important to educate the media. An Israeli bombing raid that destroys a Lebanese village and kills several civilians is still worth only a few inches of space on a back page. The killing of a single Israeli, whether a soldier or a civilian, warrants a front-page headline, often accompanied by a picture of the victim's grieving family.

To American newspaper readers, an Israeli who is killed has a name. A Lebanese or Palestinian child dies anonymously. Not until the killing of a Palestinian by an Israeli evokes the same degree of compassion and outrage as the killing of an Israeli by a Palestinian can there be progress toward Middle East peace.

Meanwhile, Israeli hard-liners who believe God has given them all of Palestine for eternity, and their Palestinian counterparts who refuse to accept Israel's existence in any form, can rejoice together that the Israeli government, backed by its U.S. supporters, remains an ally in their effort to prevent reconciliation.