In his article “The Israel-Palestine conflict: Personal reflections on the hostage situation”, published online in AMUST on Friday 15 December 2023 (and in this issue Jan 2024, page 14), Mitch Ditkoff addressed the issue in occupied Palestine as if it started with the Hamas military operation and the kidnapping of Israelis on Saturday 7 October 2023.
Palestinians have been the victims of Israeli state acts of terrorism and a slow war of genocide for 75 years. In 1948 they were massacred, raped and ethnically cleansed, as documented by Palestinian, Israeli and international historians. Their properties and belongings were confiscated, and they were denied their inalienable right to return to their country.
All these crimes against humanity were committed and continue to be committed against them because of who they are, Palestinians.
While Ditkiff speaks in his article directed to the Islamic community of love, kindness, compassion, consciousness and true humanity, he deliberately closed his eyes to addressing those who brought hatred, cruelty, non-conscience, inhumanity, and bloodshed to our land, which is the root cause of the conflict.
Our culture and religion, do not lack love, kindness, compassion and humanity, as he insinuates, this is what our society and life were in Palestine until European Zionists came to our shores, not to live with us, but to colonise our country, ethnically cleanse us from our homeland and racially discriminate against us.
With the help of the British colonialists, and through tens of massacres they were able to ethnically cleanse over 70% of our people who were denied their inalienable right to return to their homeland, colonised, oppressed and treated as second-class citizens because they were not Jews.
Surely these are not the actions of people who have love, kindness, compassion and humanity, and you would not expect Palestinians or anyone else to love, be kind and have compassion towards such people, as you would not expect Jews to do, towards the Nazis.
Before you object to the stigma of Zionism as colonialism, let me remind you, this stigma did not come from me, but from the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, and it is precisely what it is practised on the ground in occupied Palestine.
In his proposal for the establishment of a Jewish colony, summarised in his book “A Jewish State” he wrote, “Shall we choose Palestine or Argentina? …In both countries important experiments in colonisation have been made…We shall take what is given us, and what is selected by Jewish public opinion.”
And in a letter he sent in 1902 to Cecil Rhodes, the British imperialist and colonist leader in southern Africa and Rhodesia, Herzl wrote, “Please give me a statement saying you have examined my programme and found it appropriate. And why do I come to you, Mr Rhodes, you will ask. Because my programme is a colonial programme.”
Another Zionist leader, Ze’ev (Zeev) Jabotinsky, defined Zionism in an essay he wrote in 1925 entitled “The Iron Law,” saying, “If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land or find a benefactor who will maintain the garrison on your behalf…Zionism is a colonizing adventure and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces.”
The head of the colonisation department in the Jewish Agency, Joseph Weitz, wrote in his diary in 1940 that he and other Zionist leaders concluded that ‘transfer’, “does not serve only one aim – to reduce the Arab population – it also serves a second purpose by no means less important, which is: to evict land now cultivated by Arabs and to free it for Jewish settlement.”
And in his memoirs, he wrote, “between ourselves, it must be clear that there is no room in this country for both peoples. The only solution is Eretz Israel … without Arabs, and there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries – to transfer all of them – not one village, not one tribe should be left.”
These quotes will suffice among thousands of others by Zionist leaders who acknowledge the reality of the Zionists’ colonial racist project and its goals of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people which has been carried out since the creation of Israel.
Since Saturday 7 October 2023, the Israeli occupation army kidnapped over 4,400 Palestinians in the West Bank including hundreds of children on top of the over 6,000 political prisoners who are subjected to the most barbaric torture.
Not to mention the over 305,000 homes destroyed, the 1,650,000 dispossessed, the over 18,987 killed, 70% women and children, and over 55,000 wounded in the last 70 days and still counting.
Don’t you think Mr Ditkoff, these people and children also have families and loved ones and need to be mentioned and the perpetrators of this war of genocide and crimes against humanity the world has not witnessed since the Second World War, need to be strongly condemned?
And what about Major General Ghassan Alian, Head of Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, describing the Palestinians as human animals stating, “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”
And again, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant saying, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly”.
Then Israel’s president Isaac Herzog said at a press conference, “It is an entire [Palestinian] nation out there that is responsible,” and Prime Minister Netanyahu called the Palestinians Amalekites, referring to the Bible’s instructions about them, calling on the army to deal with the Palestinians with lethal and devastating force.
According to the Bible, the Lord ordered the Israelite tribe to “go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”
So Mr Ditkoff we expect you and Australia’s Jewish community to join other honourable and humane Jews who say, ‘Not In Our Name’, condemn Zionist colonialism, occupation and apartheid, stop planting the seeds of hatred and crimes and recognise Palestinian human rights including their inalienable right to return to their cities and villages and equality, so love, kindness, compassion and humanity will return to the holy land, to Palestine.
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