A
Message from Ankara Conference: What To Do In And About
Palestine
Writers Articles And Opinions
3 January 2010
By Israel Shamir
Dear Friends, best regards from Ankara, the capital of
Turkey, where I am now at a conference on Palestine,
together with wonderful Cynthia McKinney and other
good and great persons. Turkey is changing its course,
from very pro-American and pro-Israeli to more
independent, and subsequently less zionized. The Turks
are proud of the brave stand of their prime minister
for Palestine and against an Israeli leader at Davos
last year, and they consider it a pivotal event.
Turkey is changing from violently secular,
anti-religious, so 1940s Kemalist regime, but there
are still a lot of vestiges, as huge portraits of the
supreme leader are still hanging on the capital
buildings while student girls in headscarfs are being
frowned upon if not actually forbidden to enter
university. Though kemalism was supposed to be the
proponent of modernisation, it is so dated, so
old-fashioned! There is nothing more dated than
yesterday's modernism. In Russia, they took this sort
of portraits down in 1955, and even Taiwan removed its
Chiang Kai Shek portraits in 1980s.
Surely it is not only portraits that annoy. They have
a Supreme Court which tried to outlaw the majority
ruling party because its very soft Islamic leanings do
not agree with strict kemalism. It seems that Turkey's
parliament has still much work to do on the way to
democracy - they should downgrade their unelected
Supreme Court, bring army and intelligence generals
into obedience, provide for religious freedom for
majority Muslims. But first, they should remove
American military bases and kick NATO out. In an
interview to a Turkish newspaper I called Turkey "to
make peace with its own past" - the splendid past of
the Caliphate, the ruler of the East, the head of the
Muslim believers and the protector of the Christians.
Here is the talk I give today with its advices What To
Do in Palestine:
What to Do in and about Palestine
Dear Turkish friends and fellow guests from abroad,
I am glad to speak again to you, the people of our
great neighbour and former sovereign Turkey. Your
latest developments inspire optimism. You are doing
fine! Turkey is growing stronger and more independent;
your leaders' obsession with joining the European
Union has been exorcised. You have restored the power
of the parliament, bridled military excesses,
streamlined your economy and improved relations with
Syria and Iran. Turkey is no longer an American
colony. You stopped joint air force exercises with
Israel and the US. You expressed your clear anger over
the horrors of Gaza. Now you pay more attention to the
area where you live; you play an important role
already and are destined to play an even greater role.
So much depends on you! We feel it every day in
Palestine.
I will not waste your time describing the horrors of
Zionist rule in Palestine. You already know them,
you've seen them on TV – dreadful pictures of burned
schools and napalmed children, of the Gaza blockade,
of check points, of night arrests. It is now exactly
one year since the Jewish onslaught on Gaza, last
year's Christmas war which Israel began while the
world was holidaying. Your president, Mr Gul, said a
few days ago to our president, Mr Peres, that he will
not visit Israel while the siege of Gaza continues,
and that was a very good decision. Indeed, it is
urgent to lift the Gaza siege, because no building
materials are being allowed to enter Gaza for the
repair of homes. Instead, the Israeli siege is being
tightened with active help of Egypt. However beyond
Gaza problem we must look for a bigger picture.
We are being told that the Gaza problem is that of
Hamas intransigence, that it is Gaza's own fault. If
only Gaza wouldn't embrace radical Islam, Israel would
accommodate Gaza's needs. Let us have a look outside
of Gaza, at the West Bank's jewel, el Bireh, the twin
city of Ramallah, the seat of Israel-approved ruler
Mahmud Abbas. This is a most prosperous city of
wonderful villas with a lot of greenery and purring
Mercedes cars, and a beautiful view. El Bireh decided
to build a football stadium; they asked for money and
they received funds from France, Germany and the World
Football Association, FIFA. The football stadium was
built within the city of el Bireh's limits.
Immediately, the Israeli court ruled: the stadium must
be destroyed, because it is within the eyesight of a
Jew.
Do you understand this? Mahmud Abbas is the most
compliant Palestinian leader now or ever; he is doing
everything that Israel asks. His police kindly retreat
when Israeli security jeeps drive into his cities to
arrest whomever they wish. He arrests every activist
who speaks against Israeli excesses. He even fired the
most senior Palestinian diplomat, Dr. Afif Safieh, the
former ambassador to Washington, London, Vatican and
Moscow because he spoke out against the Israeli war on
Gaza. Every Islamist, every supporter of Islam in the
West Bank is (or was) in Abbas' jail. Abbas is an
implacable enemy of radical Islam. You can't be more
conciliatory towards Israel than Mahmud Abbas. And
still, he can't even build a stadium for kids to kick
ball in his own city, because the Jews will not allow
it.
So, although Gaza is in a dreadful situation, the
problem is not only Gaza. Islam or not Islam is not
even a question we should be pondering. It makes no
difference. Islamists are in Abbas' jail, yet Abbas
can't even build a stadium. Stadium, not medreseh.
Fatah member Marwan Barghuti and leftist PFLP leader
Ahmed Sadat are in Israeli jails together with Hamas
MPs.
The problem is the Jewish state. Not only does it
besiege Gaza and destroy a football stadium in el
Bireh. These are local problems, painful but local.
The Jewish state focuses Jewish power all over the
world into action. Without a Jewish state, this power
would disperse; it would remain local, it would remain
chaotic, probably it would be subdued by the forces of
assimilation. Israel focuses these chaotic forces and
concentrates them into action.
This action is against Islam. Not only against Islam,
but Dar ul Islam (the Islamic world) is a prime
target. In the US, the Jewish Neocons led their
country into a crusade against Iraq and Afghanistan;
now they are spearheading the push against Iran. They
have formed a powerful front against President Obama
and have turned him into a laughing stock after he
uttered a few words of wisdom about Palestine. In
Europe, if you inspect the coffers of anti-Muslim
neo-Nazi groups, you'll find that they thrive on
Jewish support. In Russia, Jewish nationalists and
Zionists try to rally the Russians against their
Muslim brethren. Sometimes they do it under cover of
the Russian Church, or of Russian nationalism. I wrote
about this recently, as I had discovered that the most
fervently anti-Muslim forces in Russia are organised
by crypto-Zionists.
Even if a Palestinian state were to be established and
recognised, it wouldn't stop Israeli attempts to
undermine its neighbours, to bomb Iran, to sow the
seeds of discord from Russia to France, from Turkey to
India. Israel's too powerful intelligence services
would keep meddling. Neither would it neutralise the
armed forces of Israel, and you know as well as
anybody that the generals do not give up their toys,
their privileges or their influence easily. The
Israeli military machine is so powerful that it would
seek to exercise its might. Remember the Israel-Egypt
peace treaty: when it was concluded, the first thing
Israel did was invade Lebanon.
The bad influence of Zionism on Jews all over the
world would not vanish in case of a "two states'
solution. In 1920, Winston Churchill published an
article (Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 8, 1920,
pg 5) titled: «Zionism or Bolshevism». (http://www.library.
flawlesslogic. com/ish.htm ). There he noted that many
Jews tend to embrace the cause of social equality (for
him it was "impossible equality"), and the best way to
stop by far too dynamic and powerful Jews from
promoting equality is to infect them with Zionism. His
project was supported by the might of the British
Empire and by money of wealthy anti-equality Jews.
Zionism won. Equality was defeated. If we defeat
Zionism, equality will have another chance. And a two
states' solution will not defeat Zionism.
In short, even if Mahmud Abbas's dream of limited
independence were to be realised, it wouldn't be good
enough for the region, and it wouldn't be good enough
for the world: Israel in its form of
Jewish-supremacist state can't become a peaceful
neighbour.
Supremacism leads to wars. Only a democratic state,
the successor of Israel and the PNA, would be able to
live in peace. Compare it to South Africa: as long as
it was a white-supremacist state, it was the source of
warfare and trouble all over Africa. After its
supremacism was exorcized, it became peaceful. In the
same vein, independent Palestine would be just another
Bantustan of the type rightly rejected by South
Africans.
But I do not think that even this very limited cause
of limited independence for Palestine is likely to be
achieved. We have been told – for sixteen years! –
that there is a peace process that will lead to a "two
states solution". This is a fairy tale. If the Jews
will not allow even the most loyal and obedient of el
Bireh's kids to play football, do you think they will
allow them to have an independent state? Why would
they?
The Jews write frequently of how they envisage
Palestinian independence. (I refer here to the most
enlightened left-wing Jewish politicians! ) They speak
of a Palestine broken into a few enclaves surrounded
by a wall and barbed wire, its airspace and all of its
borders controlled by Israel; its water to remain
under Jewish control. And this is the best they can
dream of.
If you want to have Two States, it can happen only if
the Jews plead for it like they did in 1947. They did
so then, and they will do so again only if they feel
that the alternative, a single democratic state for
all inhabitants of Palestine, is on the table. This is
what they are afraid of: full democracy, full equality
in the whole of the land. So even for practical
reasons, we should call, not for independence of some
partitioned bits and pieces, but for the whole lot:
Let Palestine be united, let all of its inhabitants
have equal rights, and afterwards they can discuss two
states for ever and ever. The first thing is equality,
the rest can wait.
Speaking frankly, this mythic Two State Solution can't
even be envisaged. Jews and Palestinians live all over
Palestine, and they can't be physically separated
without a huge turmoil that would remind us of 1921 in
Turkey and Greece, with Turks leaving Salonika and
Greeks leaving Smyrna. This is not something one would
like to see happen.
The West gave Nansen his Nobel Peace prize for the
transfer of Greeks and Turks. In my view, this was a
terrible calamity, never to be repeated. Partitions
are awful; it is like sawing a living man into two
parts. Nor is it necessary. Greeks and Turks could
live together as they did for four hundred years;
separation did nothing good for them. Separation of
Israelis and Palestinians would be equally evil.
Now, Zionists often remind Turks of your so-called
"Kurd problem". This comparison is wrong, because
every Kurd in Turkey has Turkish citizenship and has
all the rights every Turkish citizen has; while
Palestinians usually have no citizenship of the state
of Israel and enjoy no rights. But in one sense this
comparison is right: it is impossible to separate
Kurds from Turkey, because people of Kurdish descent
live everywhere from Diyarbakir to Istanbul. Likewise,
it is impossible to separate Palestinians from the
immigrant populations which are called "Jews".
Indeed, the whole story of Palestine is a story of
immigrants taking over a country. Such things happen:
immigrants from Britain took over North America and
Australia. This is a sad thing, but it happened. Now
it is not realistic to hope that they will sail back
to England – they won't. It is wrong to try and create
an "independent state" for the native Americans – such
independent states are called "reservations" . The
right answer is equality for native and immigrant
alike. Some Jews would complain that they want a state
of their own. We shall answer them: you have built on
sand, and a house built on sand can't stand forever.
If you want a state of your own without anybody else,
find yourself a lonely uninhabited island. Palestine
was, and is, populated; the best you can wish is to be
equal citizens in Palestine with everybody else.
I spoke about this solution in the year 2001, when our
country was torn by intifada al Aksa. It was right
then, and it is right now. At that time I said: there
is no other solution but a one-state solution. People,
and even good people, activists, friends of Palestine
said: no, we are very close to the two states'
solution. I did not believe it then, I do not believe
it now. There is only one good way out, and that is
the way of equality and democracy, of deconstructing
the Jewish state by forcing it to give full rights to
all Palestinians under its rule.
So this is the goal we should strive for: full
equality and integration of Palestine and Israel,
South African style. Nothing less.
This does not mean that there is nothing to be done
until that moment. Turkey can do a lot even now, even
today, beyond expressions of solidarity. The Jewish
state is a horrible example of injustice gone
unpunished. For instance, an Israeli officer Captain R
murdered a 13-year old girl, Iman al Hams. He shot her
within eyesight of his soldiers and said that even a
three-year-old Palestinian should be killed if she
comes close to Jewish positions. The Jewish court
absolved Captain R of all guilt; the Israeli Army
promoted him to major and another court awarded him
damages for the mere discussion of his crime. Last
week, yet another Jewish judge gave another huge
compensation to the same murderer.
Turkey, as the former ruler of Palestine, could fill
in the void of justice by bringing this Captain R to
trial. Sooner or later he will leave the sanctuary of
the Jewish state and travel somewhere for a holiday. A
Turkish warrant for his arrest should await him
wherever he goes. And not only him, but the Jewish
`judges' who covered up his crime and became
accessories after the murder should be tried too. This
is not a job for amateurs, but for a state with all
its tools. If present Turkish law does not allow for
this, let the law be updated by taking a leaf from the
Israeli book. According to Israeli law, if a Turk does
wrong to a Jew in Turkey, he may be snatched,
arrested, tried and punished in Israel. Turkey should
introduce a symmetrical law, covering offences against
Palestinians who otherwise are not protected by law.
Turkey could also take the initiative to stop the
still looming Israeli-American aggression against
Iran. If they do take Iran, Turkey will be encircled
and cut off. The fate of Palestine also depends on the
fate of Tehran.
My New Year's wish to you: be yourself, be Turks, and
live in harmony and friendship with your neighbours,
with Russia, Iran, Syria, Greece and with all the
successor states of the Ottoman Empire. You are needed
for the world and for Palestine.
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