Letter published in The Manitoban (September 25, 2002)

I would like to thank Kyle Lee Williams for her response to my earlier article on Israeli war-monger Netanyahu ("Burrows and Israel," The Manitoban, September 11). Williams demonstrates the typical ignorance, moral bankruptcy, and mud-slinging tactics of most apologists for Israeli state terror. Not only does she begin her attack with the obligatory, much-abused, and ridiculous charge of "anti-Semitism" -- a slur which has become the hallmark of those without the facts or intellectual honesty to carry on an actual debate. But she further implies that my criticism of Netanyahu and Israeli state policies constitutes "hatred and subjugation of Jews" in the tradition of Nazi Germany! (Ms. Williams, I would sue your sorry ass for libel if I thought it would deter other armchair Zionists, and more importantly, if I thought any ordinary, rational person might actually be convinced by your vacuous invective.)

Of course, Williams never once actually quotes me, nor responds to any of the substantive points that I made. Her "reply" is a series of non-sequiturs. In my Netanyahu article I called for one of two possible solutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict: either a "multi-ethnic, democratic state in all of historical Palestine, in which Jews and Palestinians have equal rights and decision-making powers," or a two-state solution "with shared rights to Jerusalem." Ms. Williams might wish to explain to confused readers of The Manitoban how appeals for an end to military occupation, and demands for equal rights to self-determination for Jews and Palestinians, constitutes "anti-Semitism" or warrants analogies to the Holocaust. Please, we are waiting.

Furthermore, Williams implies, for no reason whatsoever, that I "would support the political agenda of the people behind" the suicide bombings of random Israeli civilians. No quote. No reference to any statement or argument I actually made. Nothing. According to Williams' warped logic, criticism of Israeli actions is terrorism by definition, or amounts to support for terrorism. No need for evidence. Williams appears to share George W. Bush's Manichean certainty: If you're not with "us," if your obedience is not complete, if you let silly qualms about international law or universal principles of human rights get in the way of patriotism, then you must be with "the terrorists." Williams suggests that I should live in Israel in order to "feel what these people have faced every day for 50 plus years." But what the Palestinians have felt for the last 50 years, the history of their dispossession and ethnic cleansing, what they experience daily under military occupation and curfew, and the fact that three times as many Palestinian civilians have been killed as Israeli civilians, is apparently irrelevant. Williams seems content in her belief that only one side's victims, only one side's civilian casualties, needs to be lamented or halted.

Williams dismisses the notion that there are "occupied territories," suggesting that lands "lost in a war" should be considered forfeit. Never mind the fact that Williams knows nothing of international law or elementary justice. Never mind the fact that her views, if followed to their conclusion, would have justified the Nazi occupation of much of Europe. War does not justify annexation of territory, no matter who is to blame for the original conflict. Nor does it justify the construction of settlements on occupied land, or the expulsion of indigenous populations elsewhere (i.e., "transfer"). The Geneva Conventions were designed partly in response to Nazi occupation policies, which included the forcible expulsion of Poles and others from their lands, and the placement of German "settlers" in occupied territory. Ms. Williams would have to be willfully ignorant to suggest that the term "occupied territories" is somehow a disputed Palestinian propaganda term. The term has a specific meaning under international law, and is used by the United Nations to describe all the lands occupied by Israel in 1967, including East Jerusalem. Williams would do well to take a look at the historical record, including the relevant UN resolutions of the last 35 years.

As for Edward Said throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers, I must admit I've read a different story, but frankly, I could care less if it's true. Would Williams also dismiss Jews involved in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising for their lack of "objectivity," or for their use of violence against Nazi "law enforcement officials?" Ms. Williams also does not seem to know who is in a "foreign" land, and who is not. It is Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem who are the foreigners, having crossed the internationally-recognized 1967 borders and imposed military rule on another people. It is these Israeli soldiers -- many of whom carry a "western passport" -- who do more than hurl rocks at "law enforcement officials." They have successfully demolished the entire civil, political, and security infrastructure of the Palestinian people, and employed widespread collective punishment on a civilian population -- all in a "foreign" land.

Williams suggests that I should "do some reading up on [Vladimir] Jabotinsky," apparently because I do not understand that "his real motivations behind Zionism" lie in World War II, the Holocaust, and anti-Semitism world-wide. Never mind the fact that Jabotinsky founded the Revisionist Movement in 1925, calling for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland, before the rise of the Nazis, and before the Holocaust. Never mind the fact that the genocide perpetrated against one people never justifies the dispossession, slaughter, and herding into virtual concentration camps of another people. It’s simply ridiculous to defend Jabotinsky on any moral grounds. He was an open racist with fascist tendencies, and he advocated collective punishment and ethnic cleansing in the interests of establishing an exclusively Jewish state. Apart from the fact that Williams attributes motives to Jabotinsky which he could not have had without a time machine, does Ms. Williams really wish to suggest that Jabotinsky's advocacy of expelling Palestinians to Iraq or Saudi Arabia was justified by the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust? For the public record, Ms. Williams, please tell us: "yes" or "no?"

Finally, Ms. Williams' attempt to blame the Sabra and Shatila massacres on Syria is preposterous. No informed observer -- not Israel's official Kahane commission, not even Chris Giannou's book (which Williams recommends I read) -- suggests that. Giannou, a Canadian surgeon who once considered himself a PLO supporter, stated in 1982 that he had witnessed atrocities by the Israeli Defense Forces while he was working for the Palestinian Red Crescent in southern Lebanon. His testimony hardly undermines anything I wrote, and if Williams has actually read her "friend" Giannou's book she would have to be deliberately distorting the facts to suggest otherwise. For starters, Giannou's written account focuses primarily on the years 1985 to 1988, at least three years after the massacre in question. I would suggest that Ms. Williams re-read her own reference material, as well as take a look at Robert Fisk's book, Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War for a different perspective. She might even benefit from the testimony of another medical worker, Ellen Siegel, the Jewish-American nurse who worked at the Sabra camp at the time of the massacre 20 years ago.

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